Give Me Tonight(74)

Addie was the first to move. Sleepily she threw her arm across his shoulders and pulled herself on top of him until she was lying across his chest. With her bright eyes and ruffled hair, she looked so much like a curious kitten that Ben's mouth twitched in amuse­ment. He trailed his fingers down the curve of her back.

"Ben?"

"What?"

"Do you still visit that woman in Blue Ridge?"

He smiled ruefully and framed her face in his hands. "God knows why I should be surprised by anything you ask."

"Well?"

"I haven't seen her in a long time. I haven't been with anyone since I first realized I wanted you." Ab­sently he played with her hair, winding it through his fingers, brushing the ends across his face, enjoying the softness of it. "You've absorbed all my interest and desire for weeks. There wasn't enough left for anyone else. "

Addie hated the thought of his being with another woman. In spite of his reassurance, she couldn't help feeling jealous. She didn't want him to have memories of other women and the pleasures they had given him. Did he think of her in a different way than he thought of them? Had making love with her been the same? Her thoughts wandered back to the woman in Blue Ridge.

"Did you care about her?"

"I didn't know her enough to care about her."

"But you and she—"

"We enjoyed each other's company in bed. But there's more to knowing a person than being familiar with her body. "

She'd never pondered deeply what it must be like to make love with someone you didn't care for. "Did you even like her?"

"I guess you could say we were friends. But neither of us wanted anything more than that. I didn't want to know what was in her heart, and she felt the same about me." He was silent then, allowing her to think over what he'd said, and he resisted the urge to pull her closer.

"How cold." Her expression was a cross between distaste and confusion.

"In some ways it was."

"In what ways?" she asked, increasingly nettled.

"After the time in bed was spent, there was always silence between us. There was nothing to talk about, nothing to share. The satisfaction from our encounters was shallow. It didn't linger. "

"Shallow or not, she obviously had something that made you come back for more. You went to her more than one time, didn't you?"

Ben paused and considered what lay at the heart of Addie's questioning. Perhaps it was uncertainty that had flared up in the form of a waspish temper. Was she afraid he would make comparisons between her and the women he'd had before her?

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Addie de­manded peevishly. "Too busy counting?"

For a brief moment Ben wavered between sympathy and a strange kind of resentment. He was no knight in shining armor, nor could he ever be. He heard the disillusionment in her voice as she began to realize it. But she had to accept him for all that he was, including the imperfections.

"I've never pretended to have led a perfect life, Ad­die. I'm a man with all the needs any other man has. I've done my share of living, and that includes having been with a certain number of women. "

"How many? Am I the third or fourth? The twen­tieth? The fiftieth?"

"I don't carve notches on my belt. I've never taken a woman for the sake of adding to the number that have passed beneath me. Only when I needed to be with someone. Sometimes I knew the women, some­times I didn't. It never made a difference. But you're the only one I've ever been in love with."

She was silent for a long time, and he couldn't begin to guess at her thoughts. Finally she spoke in a small voice, all trace of combativeness gone.

"Do you ever think about any of them?"

"No. The truth is I don't remember much about the time I spent with them."

She frowned as she traced the line of his collarbone. "If you never saw me again after tonight, how much of this would you remember?"

"Every detail," he said gravely. "Every second. Everything you said, every touch and sound, until my dying day."

Addie flushed and laid her cheek against his chest. "Ben, do you mind that I don't have experience? I didn't know what you wanted from—"

He rolled her onto her back and silenced her with a long kiss. When he lifted his head, his voice was rag­ged at the edges. "What happened between us a few minutes ago makes everything I've felt before pale in comparison." He paused, entranced by the sheepish smile that had begun to curve her lips. "As a mere novice, you nearly did me in. I don't know how I'll survive when you have a little more experience."

"You'll just have to grin and bear it," she said, and he chuckled as he lowered his mouth to hers again.

The hours raced by, slipping away until Addie began to dread the moment when Ben would leave her. All they had were precious minutes, mere parings and shavings of time, when they craved so much more. They talked drowsily and drifted in and out of slum­ber, and always when Addie awoke, she rediscovered the bliss of being nestled against his body, his arms securely around her. There were moments in which she felt as if he could see through to her soul. Whether they were locked together in frantic desire or peaceful exhaustion, the sense of oneness remained the same.