Nikki (18 page)

“The worst thing,” she began and caught her breath in sharply. “The worst thing is that I hurt Val’s feelings.” Everything seemed to dissolve in her, her mouth began to quiver out of control, and tears flowed down her cheeks. Jim sat closer and drew her against him. She rested her head against his shoulder and wailed. “But I bought her toys. Her and Jimmy. I didn’t mean to disappoint anybody.”

“Don’t I know,” he said huskily, patting her.

I
, not
we
. In spite of herself, a tiny thrill went over her. His heart, his whole heart was open to her. She had seen him once when Val cried; she had seen the aching sympathy in him, the profound flow of his love when he had taken his little girl to him to comfort her. She could feel his tender strength, his possessiveness, and in a moment, Nikki knew, she was going to turn her face to his and give him her lips, and he would kiss her and hold her. A shuddering pleasure went through her whole body. Ah, the joy she could give him, the passion; the happiness and strength this good man could give her.
I will be wife to you, child to you …

“Jim!” Her voice was sharp, tight. She drew back, her face stark. “Jim, you’ve got to go!”

He looked at her, desiring her intensely; she could see it, she could feel it. She closed her eyes, weak against his potency.

“We could stop,” she whispered. She left her mouth open a little, her eyes closed, and she could feel the firming of his grip on her shoulders and the almost motionless sense of his motion toward her, then the hovering of his lips near hers. His mouth brushed hers lightly, drew away, brushed again with a surprising delicacy, as though he were savoring her. “We musn’t,” she said, she held her eyes closed, and his mouth teased hers again. Then he gave her a swift feel of the passion in him, kissing her hard and pressing her body back and down.

She found herself on her back staring up at him as he withdrew a few inches and gazed down at her, his expression almost harsh. Then, again, slowly, gently, he touched her lips with his, withdrew, touched her again. She found herself waiting tensely for the naked flash of his next fierce kiss; she was tingling, not alone to the sensual pleasure but to the feel of his mastery.

He held his own craving under the command of his will and he took his pleasure from her with an unrushed confidence. Again he kissed her hotly, and the final resistance of her own will yielded, and there was a mindless, feverish craving through her whole body, and at the same time a dark, triumphant sense of exultance.

“Mine!” she whispered. “You’re mine!” Her head began to ache violently. She pushed at him. “Jim, we’ve got to stop.”

“I know.” He didn’t move.

“Now. This instant.” Her throat trembled.

He nodded, stayed where he was. Her hands were against his shoulders. She pushed again, lightly.

“Why lie, Nikki? You don’t want me to go.”

“But go. If you don’t …” She turned her face, hopelessly. He turned her face back up to his. As he lowered his lips to kiss her again she said, without turning away, “If you kiss me again, Jim, I won’t let us stop. Then I’ll die.” There was such a tonelessness to her voice that he narrowed his eyes, backed off.

“Don’t be hysterical.”

She didn’t answer, just lay waiting for his decision.

He half sat up, peered at her in silence. “Stop looking like that, Nikki!’ he demanded. He touched her cheek. “It you want me to go, I will.”

“I don’t.”

He nodded, sat upright and away from her. He took a long slow breath, looked out into the room, holding his head rigid. Finally he got to his feet. He stood looking down at her. He laughed humorlessly.

“ ‘If you kiss me again, Jim, I won’t
let
us stop. Then I’ll die,’” he quoted her. “You’re just as dramatic as they say.” He looked at her, added a little uncertaintly, “Aren’t you?”

“More,” she said dully.

“No,” he decided. “You meant it. I don’t want you thinking like that, ever. Hear? A lovely girl like you …” He shuddered. “I can’t stand it. Listen, you don’t have dark feelings like that, do you?”

“I’ll be all right. Jim, it started with my making you sympathize with me. Now if you get to worrying about me again I’ll … I’ll strip naked.”

“I’ll go down and make us some coffee.” He glanced at his watch. “They ought to be back in an hour. We’d better get composed.”

She looked at him forlornly, the green irises of her eyes rolling to the corners. “Yes,” she said. “And, Jim, your strength will make me treasure you forever. But I must get out of this house as soon as possible, say after Val’s birthday party Wednesday. I wouldn’t want to miss that.” She choked up, turned her face, covered her eyes with a forearm. She shook her head, uncovered her eyes. “You’re not to back Dolores up if she tries to coax me to stay. You’re to help me.”

“Nikki.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed again. “I promised you in your apartment that I’d not make it hell for you, and I have made it hell, and I’m driving you away from the person who means more to you than anybody in the world. I can’t stand doing that to you.”

She twisted her mouth in a wry smile. “I went to a beauty salon the afternoon of the banquet-ballet thing. I deliberately got the masseuse to lose her temper, and you know what she said to me? I bring out the worst in people. I have a talent for destruction. Whatever’s good and strong and solid and fine I attack.”

“Nonsense!”

“You listen to me, Jim!” She clutched his sleeves in her fists and stared compellingly up at him. “There’s a part of me that’s never rested since you told me you couldn’t be tempted by any woman to betray Dolores. That part of me wants to bring you low, Jim, and bring her low.” She flattened her lips to her teeth and sucked air. “Yes. It kills me to say that, to know that I want to defeat even Dolores. Stop looking at me as if I’m beautiful. God damn it, listen to what I
am
and think what’s been happening. Did you like me or approve me at first? No. You lusted only. I made you like me. I crawled in here on my belly like a serpent and gave you an illusion of being everything you love. I stole Dolores’s personality, and Val s, and I flaunted them around in my body, and how the hell could you help anything! No, Jim, no. Dolores tried, Val and Jimmy tried, you tried, to lift me up, but I’m just me. Let’s face it.”

His face had been hovering closely over hers, a vagueness in his eyes. When she stopped talking he moved his outspread left hand slickly along the satin coverlet under her back. He lifted her and kissed her parted lips, while his right hand tugged her red sweater upward, exposing a wider and wider band of smooth white skin. Before he had finished the kiss her breasts were naked. He peeled her sweater upward over her face, and Nikki, panting a little, began pulling at the sleeves. He caught her wrists.

“Don’t!” he said huskily.

He began manipulating her arms.

“What are you doing?” she protested. The body of the sweater covered her head. “I can’t breathe.”

“You can breathe! Relax!”

Of course she could breathe through the thin sweater. Nonetheless there was an edge of panic to her heartbeat as she made her arms pliant. He laid her arms on the bed, so that they framed her head, the upper arms flanking her face, her forearms folded beyond the crown of her head.

He placed her hands so that they grasped her elbows and said huskily, “Now just stay there and keep still.”

The realization came with a sharp piquancy that he had banished her head, her words, her mind, her will. She lay blindly submitted, tight with suspense and excitement, and waited for him to use her flesh. Her skin shivered as he spanned her upper ribs in his hands and began to stroke slowly downward, keeping his hands warmly fitted to the curve of her body as it narrowed to her waist. He stroked upward along her stomach, and her breasts quivered with expectancy. As he caressed the slopes and nipples with a lingering, lightly trembling touch, she could feel the warmth of his slowly exhaled breath.

When he kissed her breasts her whole body suddenly elongated, her legs and feet and toes reaching. When his beard scraped the sensitive skin, the sensation was so exquisite that her legs glided open and tightly shut in a quick spasm of motion, and the muscles at the small of her back tensed, arching her upward from the bed. He drew one nipple into his mouth and teased it with his tongue, then the other, and then his hands signaled for her to lift her buttocks.

She braced her heels, spread her knees, made a taut arch of her body and squirmed her hips to help him as he moved her Capri’s down, his head dipping quickly to kiss her belly.

His hand moved around and under and across and down and over every inch of her flesh to the tips of her toes, as though needing totally to possess her. Then he was off the bed and she could hear his breathing, and she did not move to free her head until he should command it. She could hear the brushing sound of cloth, the brief exasperated curse, as he undressed himself.

Then he was clawing at the covers, pulling them down, rolling her out of the way. He pulled the sweater off her head and arms, then guided her feet and legs in under the covers. He came into the bed with her and lay on his side and pulled her to him and kissed her mouth. She shut her eyes and lay under the covers snug against his body, and moved herself rhythmically against him. He caught her hand and tried to force it down his body.

“No. I won’t do that.”

“You’ll do that.”

Her tensed arm yielded slowly to his forcing and she said, “I won’t. I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me.”

She caressed him. He put her on her back and in the first feverishly joyous moment of naked contact she became giddy, and she locked herself to him, convulsing.

“Lover, lover, lover. I’m all done,” she whispered.

He laughed down at her.

“That never happened to me. You’re my man.”

“You’re my woman!”

“I don’t want this to end. O-o-o-h,” she moaned softly.

His rhythm was strong and slow and he brought her alive to sensations she’d never known existed. She let herself be carried, their harmony of motion a dance, a beautiful dance. “How can you stand it?” she said.

“I can stand it. I’ve been waiting for you too long to have it over with. Do I make you happy?”

“Yes, yes, yes. You’re ruining me for any other man in this world. Stop it, stop it, lose control.”

She began to kiss him and to agitate her body fiercely. She felt herself rising to the pinnacle of ecstasy again and Jim was panting and blind and then he was hers, all hers, his whole being lost and given over to his joy in her. After it was done, they lay together as though they couldn’t part.

Finally she said, “You’re getting heavy.”

He rolled away and she looked at his profile and he was staring with a deep soberness at the ceiling. She teased a corner of his mouth, a flood of gleefulness churning in her.

“You’re something to have captured. A guy like you who never-never-never cheated. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“True,” he said unsmilingly, not looking at her. “You feel pretty triumphant about it, I take it.”

“Doesn’t it flatter you at all that I think you’re worth feeling that way over?”

“All I can think is that I’ve done something absolutely unforgivable to the woman I love and who loves me with absolute trust.” He sat up, got out of bed and began to dress.

“Yes,” Nikki said, sobering. “Now the long hangover. One moment of complete happiness, then the long hangover.” She left the bed for the bathroom.

She came out, a dark blue robe across her shoulders, and found him dressed and standing there, smoking. His eyes went at once to the pale strip of exposed flesh and she jerked the robe shut.

“I thought you’d be out of here!”

“I wanted to make sure that what’s done is done. Neither of us wants to hurt her.”

“Or ourselves. Admit it,” she said disgustedly. “So rest easy. I won’t squeal.”

“Ah, Nikki, let’s not argue.”

He opened the bathroom door, fired his cigarette into the toilet. He turned and came to her quickly, one arm circling her upper back, the other gliding possessively under her robe.

“Not again.” She twisted and turned, resisting him, resisting the unwelcome waves of sensation. He stroked her and kissed her throat and shoulder, and the robe dropped.

“There’s time,” he whispered. “Dearest, I’ve got to have you.”

“Jim!” she hissed. “Any minute they could get home.”

“I don’t give a damn!”

She pushed roughly at him. “Get hold of yourself,” she said harshly.

When she finally got him out she paced around the room, trying to taper down, her eyes brilliant, little smiles flickering around her lips every few seconds. A thrilling man, she thought giddily.

She found herself walking on tiptoe, her head at a haughty tilt. He couldn’t resist her. He had been strong, master of himself, but now he was at her feet, panting and whimpering with desire.

Abruptly tired, she sat on the edge of the bed, her body inert, her face lifeless, her eyes staring and empty. Minutes or years later she heard the car and the voices of the children and Dolores and Jim reuniting, and she smiled, warmed by the sweet, alive, happy sound. Then she realized her hands were clenched so tightly her nails were almost puncturing her palms.

She forced her hands open and stared at them, her face dull and deathly white. She couldn’t look into those sweet trusting baby-blue eyes. She had to get away from here at once. She shook her head. No, it couldn’t be suspiciously abrupt. Wednesday, or Thursday at the very latest, she had to go. That much was settled. She nodded her head. Simple. She would move to her own apartment in town. And then, after that, she would— A chill ran over her flesh. She shuddered faintly.

Hearing them in the house below, she rushed into skirt, blouse, loafers. She discovered that her hair was a wanton mess, grabbed up a pair of ribbons and slipped out to the sundeck. She got her hair into a casual semblance of order, waited listening nervously at the stairwell as Dolores, shushing the kids, brought them up for a nap. When Dolores had come out of their room, Nikki went lightly down to the second floor.