Loving Grace (15 page)

He husked low, “Take me in.”

Grace did, her fingers digging into the back
of his strong arms. She arched into him. A long moan of pleasure
ended on a gasp of exquisite wonder. Their bodies slid, fit, and
locked tight one to the other.

His forehead rested against her temple. He
grit out tightly, “Grace, Grace...”

“I know.” Her legs trembled and her thighs
quivered against his hips. She could feel her inner muscles
constricting against him. When he braced himself and leaned up so
he could look at her, their expressions were equally telling. He
pulled back, sliding inches out. Their breaths left for a moment
until he was sinking back in, and starting a slow, deliberate
rhythm that had them moaning deep and trembling with each new
thrust. He kept moving slowly until she bit down on her lip, her
eyes pleading for more.

Grace could feel their hearts thundering
violently against each other. She grasped the comforter. Noel
shifted to his knees and raised hers higher, moving his body,
flexing, thrusting in a way that sank him deeper, harder. She was
aware that he watched her face, saw her lips parting, her teeth
baring down on a moan of ecstasy when he was fully inside, as deep
as he could be.

Nothing mattered, nothing existed as they
arched, thrust, lost themselves in the getting and giving of sexual
fire. It was erotic, with its own cadence, and Noel leaned up at
times, kissing her lips, suckling her breasts. She nearly sat up,
to lave and suckle his own, to kiss him and tug at his hair.

Time ceased and they moved, rolled; sliding
sleek limbs against each other, and twined tongues and fingers.
Whispered words floated above them, between them. Intimate ones,
uninhibited phrases that expressed yet didn’t, the feel, taste,
pleasure. At one point, Noel growled low in his throat, holding her
still while he slid his hand between them, stoking her fever higher
again.

His skin was damp, his breathing hot. He
rolled her to her stomach, and slid inside her again. His hands
moved over her back, her hips, capturing her breasts and shaping
them while he rocked into her, meeting her own rhythm when she
pressed back to take him.

Her braid came undone; her hair clung to her
damp cheek and neck. Grace knew the moment he was letting go, the
moment he withdrew, turned her and sank in deep, thrusting quick
and short, holding her hips tightly.

“Yes.” She arched up feeling tears burn her
eyes.

“Grace, now.” He slid his hand down,
massaging that sensitive spot until she cried out, trembling, and
shivering. He held her tight with arms and legs and absorbed his
own forceful climax.

Heavy pants echoed in the room. They drifted
apart and lay on their backs. Grace had to focus on the room, past
the waves of pleasure flowing through her. She rolled her head to
find him catching his breath, one arm over his eyes, the other on
his stomach. She was still gazing when he slid his arm away, when
he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her.

They stared several extended moments, merely
taking in that after-sex expression of incredible satisfaction.

Grace eventually got up and went to start the
shower. He followed in a few moments. Bathing, not saying anything
as they shifted around the small cubicle. Grace was wrapped in a
towel, sitting on the bed when Noel came out. He padded over, but
instead of picking up his jeans and dressing, he removed her towel
and eased her back on the bed. He arched over her, braced by his
palms beside her head.

Noel visually searched her countenance.
Whatever he discovered made him straighten and help her to a
sitting position, before he picked her up, astride him, and
reversed, so that he sat on the edge of the bed.

Grace had combed her wet hair back and now
smoothed her hands over his already springing curls. “This has to
be it for us, Noel. I won’t take a chance of messing things up for
you.”

He kissed her, pulled back to look at her. “I
know. So let’s get all we can.” He used her hips to rub her against
his swiftly hardening flesh. “Take what you want, Grace. Let me
have what I need.”

“Oh God.” She leaned in and ran her mouth
over his, down his throat. “I don’t know if there are enough hours
to do that in one night. You have to leave before daylight.”

His fingers squeezed her buttocks. “Take it
Grace.”

She trembled, rose, and found him hot and
ready. Sinking down until they were locked tight again, Grace took
and gave with every ounce of her passion. She expressed sensuality
that had been buried, hidden for so long, she became the woman she
was in the deepest part of her being. Grace loved him, with kisses,
touches, with the rise and fall of her hips, and the arch of her
body.

~ * ~

Noel had arrived without plan or thought, or
anything beyond the questions that gnawed at him since his life had
shattered. He was a man with no sense of direction, except to make
it through the nightmare and come out without a life sentence.

There was no one but his mother, whom he
refused to allow to come to America and see him through it. No one
he knew or trusted or could vent, or open up to. The turmoil in a
mind, that used to purge itself with canvas and paint, he could no
longer release with his hands.

He came to Grace a constrained mass of skin,
bone, muscle and emotion. And, in this hour, she became the one who
was unrestrained, open, giving and uninhibited. He reveled in the
erotic sensuality. Noel lost himself, surrendering to moments that
strung out like endless seconds, of the ultimate experience, of
feeling and not thinking, of being a man in the most elemental
way.

Noel experienced it, giving yet observing
those golden eyes, flushed face and parted pink lips. He watched
the sleek body move and undulate and take him, and give to him more
passion than any man deserved.

When Grace trembled, he rolled to his side
and then shifted so she was beneath him, and he filled her
repeatedly, until the explosion of his climax mingled with her
sweet cries of satisfaction.

Chapter Seventeen

Grace didn’t have to be reminded after waking
up alone in her rumpled bed, that she had made love with Noel for
hours. Her bones and muscles felt it, but moreover, more than the
scent clinging to her body and the sheets, were the vivid pictures
in her mind, the echo of his voice, and the way he felt against her
in those last seconds of flesh joined to flesh.

After her shower and coffee however, the
stark reality of the risk she had taken hit her like cold water.
The only thing that soothed her fear in the following days, was the
fact Noel didn’t call, and that Crumm, during their meetings,
didn’t seem upset with her.

In fact, the attorney was pleased by her
progress, already convinced that there was no way to prove that
Noel profited from the drug money, while several reports from Seth,
of his findings on Bryce and Elisa, provided proof of the opposite.
Seth had a hunch that the Feds would discover Elisa’s dirty nest
egg somewhere. It only left Crumm to distance his client from Elisa
and to prove she acted on her own, or with Bryce.

Grace had been told her brother met with Noel
several times. When she and Seth had dinner on that Friday, sitting
in an Italian restaurant, he finally shared the fact Noel told him,
that Elisa withheld sex while swearing she was faithful. At times,
she had suggested Noel’s sex drive stemmed from his passion for his
art, not herself, or even women in general.

“Surely he had enough experience not to
assume his appetite was anything more than normal?”

Seth shrugged. “That wasn’t the point for
him. He did think he was in love with her, so what mattered is what
she wanted and thought, not what every man or woman in the world
thought. You know, Grace, he’s a grown man, mature, but for all
that, he’s really sensitive to women. I don’t know if that guided
his paintings the past year, but I expect it did. I think what
angers him is that he was reaching for something that would help
him understand Elisa, to satisfy her.”

“He was that in love with her?” Grace felt
her stomach knot.

“Maybe. However, I think he’s always been
drawn, in the past at least, to women like her. I believe he’s like
most men, we’re all trying to understand what women want.” He shook
his head. “I suspect he hates every painting he’s done over that
year, simply because it reminds him of how his mind got screwed
with.”

“But—”

Seth held up his hand. “I know. She played
him. She lied to him and messed with his head. Believe me, I don’t
think he has those sensitive feelings anymore. I think he’s woken
up and realized he had a pattern that ran true to form. He’s had
one too many Elisas. She had two years to work on him, and did it
while he was getting his first taste of a dream. Men make mistakes,
Grace.”

“I know that. I’m simply not connecting what
you’re saying with the man I know.”

Seth gazed at her across the table. “That’s
because you believe in him and you’re in love with him, for real.
You don’t want his money, fame, gifts.”

Grace looked away and then back. “He
doesn’t... He didn’t say anything?”

“No. I just know you. I also drove by your
house earlier in the week.”

Grace sucked in her breath and sat back in
her chair. “I know. It was stupid, a big risk.”

Seth took a sip of his wine and wiped his
mouth on a napkin, then pushed his plate away and also sat back. “I
don’t want to hurt you, Grace. Nor do I want to see you hurt.
However, with a guy who’s going through what he is, as much as I
hate admitting we’re like that, it could be all about his needing
to feel like a man. You have to admit she stripped him to the bone.
He—”

“I have considered that, Seth,” Grace cut him
off, softly. “I happen to agree with you. I’m no fool, no matter
how limited my experience. I don’t kid myself that it was anything
more than you assume.” She fiddled with her fork, adding, “It won’t
happen again. I know that and so does he.”

Seth said only, “The nicest, most decent guy
can use a woman without meaning to. Particularly a giving woman,
who happens to be the only one who believes in him.”

Later that night Grace did her crying as she
laid in the dark bedroom and let the truth crash down upon her. She
wasn’t the kind of woman men like him fell in love with, and he
wasn’t the kind of man she needed for forever. Whatever drew them
in this time of their lives, was all they would ever have.

~ * ~

June ninth was the day the trial would start.
Grace finished her reports and handed them over for Crumm to do
with as he saw fit. The only thing the lawyer said to her, on their
last meeting, was to remind her that he knew of her prior
relationship with Noel, as model to artist, and to ask her to stay
available. She was not to talk to the press, and not to see
Noel.

Grace agreed with everything. Her nerves
stretched taut now that the first phases of hearings were
beginning. Seth’s findings were vital and he might be called to
testify. Before she had her last dealings with the case, she took
the photos she’d taken to Crumm, and handed them over.

He skimmed through them, chewing his cigar
and shaking his head, muttering more to himself than to her.
Finally, he looked up at Grace.

“Hopefully what we have will make this
unnecessary. But if I have to, I’ll sacrifice the money evidence
for something meatier. I’m going to share these with the Feds. It
puts Elisa’s and Bryce’s hands on those crates.”

“I understand.”

“When Noel told me you had them, I didn’t
realize how incriminating they were. The ones you took at the
studio, other than alibi, don’t carry half as much punch. We can
always suggest you had a thing for Noel and were at the Gallery and
just got suspicious enough to follow these two.”

“No.” Grace shrugged. “If you use them. I’ll
tell the whole truth.” She smiled and sighed. “I want him free,
either way. I want him cleared.”

“I know.” The older man set the pictures
aside, leaning back in his office chair and steepling his fingers.
He regarded her a long time before saying, “I knew you were a woman
we could trust. I just didn’t see you were in love with Hawthorn
until now.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

His brow rose. “No, I guess not. And, I’m
sorry for that. Even sorrier that I have to warn you, if you are
called to testify, you can’t be anything but that woman I met the
first day. All business, no emotion.”

“I’m prepared. I won’t lose my
perspective.”

“Good.” He nodded.

Grace left shortly after, conscious of the
fact that she was going to spend many restless nights not knowing
when Crumm would call her, or which of the truths she’d have to
tell. And the sense of satisfaction that she might help clear Noel,
didn’t ease the hollowness that came from falling in love with a
man who was really as much a mystery to her now, as he had been
before they had made love.

~ * ~

Noel hated suits and Crumm didn’t want him
wearing expensive ones. He wanted him in a jacket, dress shirt, and
off-the-rack slacks, nothing that reeked of crime boss or good
taste. He had to keep his hair short but got the beard close and
more like a mustache and goatee. What Crumm thought looked more
like an artist should look.

Having found out he’d handed his life and
dreams over to people like Elisa and Bryce, Noel chafed under the
dictates of Crumm, but the old man had his own expertise, and Noel
wanted freedom bad enough to do anything to achieve that.

Days at the courthouse and evenings in the
dusty, hollow, warehouse, hearing nothing but the flow of
fan-generated air and his own footsteps, were making him crazy. He
had sold everything, the sound system too, and he hadn’t been able
to paint, hadn’t been able to pick up a brush or even look at one
since the Feds showed up that day.