The Unknown Beloved(98)

The heat in his veins bellowed and blasted like the boiler in the basement.

“Is that all?” He kept his voice level.

She nodded, and she raised her hands slowly and settled them on his chest.

“And what do you think I’m feeling right now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’m still drunk on your undershirt. I held it to my face for five minutes before I folded it and brought it in here,” she confessed. “Are you mad?”

“How could I be mad?” he whispered.

“Please don’t make me beg you to kiss me, Michael.”

When she called him Michael, he wasn’t just the man who’d been wrung out by life, the man who did his duty and little else, the man who had paid the price and would continue paying it. But there was always a price, that man warned.

“What will this happiness cost me?” he asked, though he wasn’t really talking to Dani.

“Maybe it will only cost a little sleep.” She swallowed, nervous, as if she’d said something suggestive. “Or . . . maybe you’ve already paid.”

“Maybe I have.”

He kissed her then, shoving his trepidation away with such force that it obeyed and his mind was quiet as his mouth touched hers. Her lips were soft but perfectly still, and her breath fluttered like she didn’t know what to do. He was reminded that she was young and he was old, she was sweet and he was salt, she was innocent and he was . . . not.

Her hands rose to his neck and she pulled him in, lifting her chin as she did, and his inner dialogue became nothing more than the rush of surf against the sand. He forgot to judge or justify and simply enjoyed the moment. Her inexperience was not hesitancy, and her eagerness swept him up in weightless wonder. He swept her up too as he floated by, locking his arms around her waist, and taking her weight into his chest. He’d never been one to close his eyes, even when kissing, but his lids were so heavy and his heart so light, he couldn’t have lifted them if he tried.

He kissed her until they were both breathless and red-cheeked, gasping and returning for more, and he felt like a boy again, throwing rocks at Irene’s window and waiting for her to steal out into the night for a kiss beneath the moon. But that was so long ago, and the woman in his arms and in his heart was new. Her flavor filled his mouth and the press of her limbs made him long to begin that slow and steady climb to the point of no return.

“Why me, Dani?” he asked, almost desperate. He knew what was in his head, but he couldn’t imagine what was in hers.

Her lips were watermelon pink and her cheeks were mottled from the roughness of his, but she shook her head, bewildered.

“Oh goodness, we are a pair, aren’t we? I see everything and you refuse to see what is right in front of your face,” she said.

“Tell me,” he pled.

“Why you, Michael? Because you make my heart do this.” She took his hand in both of hers and placed it in the valley between her breasts.

It was a hummingbird in his palm, and he curled the pads of his fingers against the skin above the row of buttons, before seeking the flesh beneath them.

“It’s not that hard to understand, is it?” she asked, her breath hitching with the caress. Her lids fluttered closed, and her head fell back on a sigh.

No, not that hard to understand at all. No harder to understand than her hips in his hands and his mouth at her throat. No harder to understand than the bed beneath them and the desperate ache in his belly. He needed another kiss. Just one more, and he would stop.

But one became another, and another.

The clanging of a passing fire truck, the flutter of the drapes, the slam of a car door, and the tinkling of the bell as someone entered the shop. None of it registered. None of it intruded. He was in a lust-soaked haze, basking in the details of the woman beneath him.

Dani’s skin was especially soft above her elbows. And behind her ears. She wore a lace slip beneath her dress and had a long run in her left stocking. He tugged them off, wanting to touch the silk of her legs. She purred when he kissed her neck, trembled when he stroked her breasts, and cried out in protest when the pounding in his chest became a knocking at his door.

“Mr. Malone? Are you in there?” Lenka called.

He rolled away from Dani at once, the haze parting, and his attention veered to the things he’d ignored.

He didn’t know if he should answer. The door was locked. Lenka would go away. Dani straightened her clothing, her movement drawing his eyes. She’d lost her stockings, her lips were swollen, her buttons undone, and her hair tumbled. But no great damage had been done.

“Mr. Malone?” Lenka insisted again. Knock, knock, knock.

“I know he’s in there. He hasn’t left all day. Maybe he’s having a little nap,” she said, the sound shifting like she’d turned her head away.

“I’ll wait for him in front. He probably got past you.”

It was Eliot. Eliot was looking for him.

Malone grabbed his suitcoat and stuffed his billfold into the breast pocket before snatching his hat and his keys from atop the dresser. They had been sitting next to the stack of undershirts.

He strode to the window, pushed it up a little higher, and climbed through it. Thoughts of the boy he’d been resurfaced. Rocks on the window, kisses in the moonlight, a girl in his arms, hope in his chest. Those days were gone. And he couldn’t go back.