Chapter 16 #2
He didn’t remember how he managed to strip his pants off, but he did so in record time.
He was blind with need, wild with it wild with wanting her, and the calm, sane part of him had vanished into some dark, dangerous place, where all that mattered was Susan, reaching for him, opening for him, taking him deep inside her as she wrapped her body around his and held him tight.
She kissed his mouth and stilled him. She touched his face and calmed him. She arched her back, taking him deep, deep inside, meeting his thrusts until he felt her shiver and clench around him, and he let go, tumbling down and down into the hot wet darkness of soul-shattering completion.
He could feel the breeze blowing on his sweat-soaked back. He could sense the flickering oil lamps around them, and when he lifted his head to look at her, to say something, anything, declare his undying love, he saw that she was asleep. Again, as she had been for the past two days.
He climbed off her carefully, but she was dead to the world. He lay beside her, pulling her up against his body, and she slept on, a faint, blissful smile on her face. He wrapped his arms around her, buried his face in her thick honey-colored hair and slept.
There were dreams. Vivid, sexual dreams. The bed rocked beneath them, and she didn’t know whether it was from the power of their lovemaking or the roll of the ocean beneath their bunk. She didn’t know whether she was Susan or Tallulah, she didn’t know whether she lay with Jack of Jake.
It didn’t matter. It was dark and gloriously sinful and utterly right, and she moved in the darkness, the breeze cooling her fevered skin as she slid over his body and took him deep within her, rocking and surging until she shattered around him, helpless in her powerful response, and he turned her beneath him and finished it.
She hid her face against his chest, licking his skin, whispering dark and wicked secrets, and he kissed her eyelids and her throat, kissed the small of her back and behind her knees, and nothing mattered but that the night would never end.
But it did. And when Susan awoke in the rumpled bed in the ramshackle garage she was alone. Abandoned, as she’d always been afraid she would be.
She didn’t bother to look for a note—she knew there wouldn’t be one.
Her body ached, she had scratch marks and bite marks and bruises that would make a hooker blush.
She dressed herself, stealing one of his worn khaki shirts to add a little warmth to the morning chill.
And she headed out along the path, refusing to look back.
Her car wouldn’t start. There was no way in hell she’d go back to the garage, she simply started running, a slow, easy pace that got faster and faster, as she ran from her fears in the early sunrise hours.
Her mother’s house was empty. It was six o’clock in the morning and her mother’s bed hadn’t been slept in, and Susan knew Mary had spent the night with the man she’d always loved. The wrong man, or the right man, who could know for sure?
It didn’t matter. Susan had made the same mistake. Like mother, like daughter, like aunt Throwing away a life for the sake of crazy passion. Throwing away comfort and security for uncertainty. She was as crazy as they were.
She took a long shower, wiping all trace of the night from her body. She called Edward, but his answering machine was on, and she had no idea where he’d be at that hour. She made some toast and ended up throwing it in the trash. And then she went back into her bedroom.
The wedding dress hung from a special hook over the door, the flowing satin gleaming in the early light. It didn’t look as if she’d slept in it, it didn’t look as if she’d traveled backward in time in it.
And for what reason? She hadn’t been able to save Tallulah, she hadn’t been able to change a thing. She’d only complicated her own life past bearing.
Maybe she could go back again. Maybe if she put on the dress she’d be magically transported fifty years into the past, where life was simpler, and there weren’t so many choices.
But that was bull. Life was just as complicated back then, and her mother had already told her the truth. You can’t change the past, you can only change the future.
She stripped off her clothes and put on the wedding dress, staring at her reflection in the mirror, squinting, trying to see Tallulah looking back But it wasn’t her long-dead aunt, and it wasn’t the familiar Susan, either.
The woman in the mirror was different Softer, sadder, more human.
She looked vulnerable, Susan thought Like a woman in love.
She blinked again, but the minor didn’t waver. Outside she heard a car drive into the driveway, but she didn’t move. She’d lost the will to do anything but stand there, staring.
“You look gorgeous, darling.” Edward’s voice was like a glass of ice water thrown in her face. She whirled around, feeling her face turn pale with shock and then red with shame.
“I didn’t hear you come in! Edward, you shouldn’t be here...”
“Don’t be silly, Susan. I don’t believe in any superstitious garbage about not seeing the bride before the ceremony.
We make our own luck And I must say that’s a spectacular dress.
Mother’s livid about her dress, of course, but I’ve managed to calm her down.
Looking at you now, I’m glad her dress ripped. ”
Susan stared at him numbly. “Edward...”
“Yes, love?”
“I can’t many you.”
His Teflon smile faded slightly, and his perfect brow wrinkled slightly. “Bridal nerves, darling? I’m sure they’ll pass.”
She’d almost forgotten how impervious Edward was to subtleties. “I don’t love you, Edward.”
“I know that,” he said with an expansive smile. “I don’t love you, either. But we’ll make a marvelous pair. We’re perfectly suited to each other—haven’t I always told you that?”
He had, indeed. He’d even managed to convince her of it for long enough to get her into this mess.
“You don’t understand. I spent last night with someone else. In bed with someone else. Making love with someone else.”
His smile faded, but only slightly. “I can guess who it was. That friend of your mother’s, isn’t it? The romantic one from the jungle. The one with the impossible name. Surely you’re not thinking of marrying him, are you? He’s hardly your type.”
“Who is my type?”
“I am, darling, and you know it Listen, I’m prepared to be magnanimous about this. After all, you’re only human, prey to the same hormonal urges as most people. I certainly won’t condemn you for being tempted. After all, you’re under a lot of stress.”
“Aren’t you prey to hormonal urges?” she asked, curious.
He shrugged. “I’m good at sublimating them. There are a great many things more interesting than sex when it comes right down to it I thought we were agreed on that.”
“You don’t want to have sex with me?”
Edward sighed, a long-suffering sound. “We’ll have wonderful, energetic sex, dear one.
I’ve been told I’m very adept And we’ll have children if you want I have no objections, as long as we can find proper help.
And if our marriage ends up as more of a friendship than anything else, then we might count ourselves blessed. ”
“And what if I’m tempted again? Fall prey to my hormonal urges?” She was staring at him in complete fascination. She’d always thought Jake Wyczynski was an exotic creature. He was absolutely normal compared to the man she was supposed to marry.
He smiled sweetly. “I know I can count on you to be discreet.”
She walked toward him, slowly, and placed her hands on his broad, perfect shoulders. “No, Edward,” she said gently. She brushed a sweet kiss against his perfectly shaven cheek. “I won’t marry you.”
For a moment doubt clouded his fine eyes. And then he shrugged, undeterred. “I’ll be waiting for you at the church, Susan. You’ll come to your senses. I know you will. What in heaven’s name do you think that man has to offer you? A life of roughing it, living out of your suitcase like some gypsy?”
“Goodbye, Edward.”
For a moment bis perfect features darkened, and she remembered Neddie Marsden’s dangerous rage. But that was another time, another man, another life. Chances were it was only a dream.
“You’re making a huge mistake, Susan.”
“Goodbye, Edward.”
And then she was alone, in her mother’s house, in her aunt’s wedding gown. More alone than she’d ever been in her long, lonely life.