White Lies (18 page)

           
 
He lifted his head. "Let me inside
you," he rasped. "Now." The need was riding him hard, just the way
he wanted to ride her. He put his hot mouth over a pouting nipple and sucked
strongly at it, rolling it around with his tongue and listening to the
incoherent sounds of pleasure she made.

           
 
Jay thought she might die from wanting him,
even though he had scared her and hurt her; even though he'd made her angrier
than she could ever remember feeling at another human being. He'd loosed the
passion that had always been in her nature, torn it out of her control. Her
hands were shaking, her entire body was shaking, and she wanted more.

           
 
He lifted his mouth from her breast, and the
shock of the cold air on her wet flesh was so painful she whimpered. Their eyes
met, hers wide and dazed with the sudden passion, his narrow and burning, and
she knew what he wanted, knew he was silently waiting for her permission. She
knew that if she made the slightest sign of acquiescence he would take her
there, in the cold and snow, and her entire body throbbed with the need to let
him do just that. She started to whisper his name; then terror washed over her
like freezing water and she stared up at his hard face as he waited for her
answer.
She didn't know his name
! She
could call him Steve, but he wasn't Steve. His face wasn't Steve's. She knew
him and loved him, but he was a stranger.

           
 
He found his answer in the sudden rigidity of
her body beneath him. He swore viciously as he got to his feet, one hand
rubbing the back of his neck as if that could relieve his physical tension. Jay
fumbled with her shirt, trying to draw the edges together, but the buttons were
gone and her hands were shaking too badly, so finally she just fastened her
coat and got to her feet. She had been burning up only moments before, but now
she was freezing. She was covered with snow. She shook it out of her hair and
dusted it off her jeans and coat as best she could, then retrieved her knit
cap, but it had snow on it both inside and out, and would be worse than wearing
nothing at all. Without a word, unable to look at him, she started toward the
cabin.

           
 
He caught her roughly by the shoulder and
swung her around. "Tell me why, damn it," he rasped.

           
 
Jay swallowed. She hadn't meant to stop him,
and she couldn't explain the dreadful fear she lived with every moment, every
day. "I've told you before," she finally managed. "They're good
reasons." A single tear tracked down her cheek and formed frozen salt
crystals before it reached her chin.

           
 
His face changed, some of the angry
frustration leaving him, and he wiped at the tear with his gloved hand.
"Are they? Your reasons don't make much sense to me. It's natural to want
each other. How much longer do you think I can live like a monk? How much
longer can you live like a nun? That's not my calling, baby, and damn it all to
hell and back in a little red wagon, it's not as if it'll be the first
time!"

           
 
She thought she would scream. She wanted to
cry and she wanted to laugh, but neither would make sense. She wanted to tell
him the truth, but the biggest fear she had was of losing him. So finally she
did tell him the truth, or at least part of it. "It
will
 
be the first
time," she croaked, strangling on the words. "This time. And it
scares me."

           
 
She walked away again, and he let her go. She
was shaking with cold by the time she got back to the cabin, and she took a
long hot shower, then dressed in dry clothing. The smell of fresh coffee came
from the kitchen, and she followed her nose to find him frying bacon and
whipping eggs in a bowl. He had changed clothes, too, and she faltered under
both his physical impact and a sudden realization. He was tall and muscular, as
powerful as a puma, his shoulders and chest straining the seams of his shirt.
In the weeks they had been there he'd gained weight and muscle, and his hair
had grown enough that now it was a trifle long. He looked uncivilized and
dangerous, and so utterly male that she quivered instinctively. He was no
longer a patient. He had recovered both his health and his strength. She had
followed him because she had been worried, but in her mind he had still been a
wounded warrior. Now she knew that he wasn't. Her subconscious had recognized
it earlier, when she had fought him. She never would have done that before.

           
 
He looked up at her, Ms gaze assessing.
"I made fresh coffee. Drink a cup. You still look a little shaky. Does the
thought of making it with me scare you that much?"

           
 
"You scare me." She couldn't stop
the words. "Who you are. What you are." An icy motionlessness seized
him as he realized that she had guessed. "You said I was using Super Spy
tricks."

           
 
"Yes," she whispered, and decided
she did need that cup of coffee. She poured it and watched the steam rise for a
moment before sipping. Why had she said that? She hadn't meant to. She was in
agony, afraid that it would trigger his memory and he would leave, and equally
afraid that he might never get his memory back. She was caught, trapped,
because she couldn't call him hers until he regained his memory and chose her.
If he would. He might just walk away, to his real life.

           
 
"I didn't think you knew," he said
flatly.

           
 
Her head jerked up. "Do you mean you
did?"

           
 
"There had to be more to it than the
possibility that I had seen something before the explosion. The government
doesn't work that way. I guessed, and Frank confirmed it."

           
 
"What did he say?" Her voice was
thin.

           
 
His smile was equally thin, and a little
savage. "That's about it. He can't tell me more because of the
circumstances. I'm a security risk right now. How did you guess?"

           
 
"The same. There just had to be more to
it."

           
 
"Is what I am the real reason you turned
me down?"

           
 
"No," she whispered, an aching,
needing expression in her eyes as she watched him. How could loving a man hurt
so much? But it did, when the man was this one.

           
 
His entire body was taut, his mouth twisted.
His voice was harsh. "Stop looking at me like that. It's all I can do to
keep myself from pulling your pants off and laying you down on that table, and
that isn't the way I want to take you. Not this time. So stop looking at me i
as if you'd melt if I touched you." But I would, she thought, though she
turned her eyes away. His words made her feel hot and shivery, thinking of the
act he'd described, the scene forming in her mind. It would be raw and hot, and
purely sexual. If he touched her, they would burn each other up.

           
 
He spent most of the day outside, but the
tension between them didn't ease; it hung there, as thick and heavy as fog.
When darkness finally drove him inside, his eyes burned her every time he
looked at her. Instincts she hadn't known she possessed pulled her toward him,
despite the reasons her mind presented for not letting their relationship
progress. She lay alone in her bed that night, aching with the need to go to
him and spend the long, dark hours in his arms. He was right; what did her
reasons matter? It was already too late. She already loved him, for good or
bad. That was the real danger, and it had been too late for a long time now.
Keeping herself from him wouldn't lessen the pain if the worst happened and she
lost him.

           
 
But she didn't go to him. Things often seemed
different in daylight than when lying alone in the darkness, but caution wasn't
what kept her in her own bed. Circumstances were hard enough; she had to call
him by a name that wasn't his own, had to pretend he was someone else, but she
wanted to be able to see his eyes when they made love. More than anything she
wanted to know his real name, to be able to call him by it in her heart;
failing that, she wanted to see his eyes, for they were his own.

           
 
A chinook blew in during the night, chasing
away the weather system that had covered them with new snow. Mother Nature must
have chuckled to herself as she promptly began melting the high white drifts
with her hot winds, teasing them with a hint of a spring that was still over a
month away. The melting snow dripped from the trees with a sound like rain, and
there were crashes in the night as limbs dropped their white burdens.

           
 
The rise in temperature made Jay even more
restless, and she was up at dawn. She could barely believe what she saw when
she looked out. The hot wind had turned their winter wonderland into a wet,
brown meadow dotted with shrinking patches of snow. The melting snow still
dripped off the roof, and the heated air made her feel as if her skin would
explode. How could it have happened so fast?

           
 
"A chinook," Steve said behind her,
and she whirled, her heart jumping. She hadn't heard him approach, but he moved
like a cat. He looked so ill-tempered that she almost stepped back. His eyes
were hard and frosty, and a day's growth of beard darkened his jaw. He glanced,
from ner to the window. "Enjoy it while you can. It'll feel like spring
while we have it, and then it'll be gone, and the snow will come back."

           
 
They ate breakfast in silence, and he left the
cabin immediately afterward. Later on in the morning, Jay heard the solid bite
of the ax into wood, and she peeked out at him from the kitchen window. He had
taken off his coat and was working in his shirt sleeves, which were rolled up
over his forearms. Incredibly, sweat had left dark stains under his arms and
down the center of his back. Was it that warm?

           
 
She walked out onto the front porch and lifted
her face to the warm, sweet wind. It was incredible! Her skin tingled. The
temperature was at least forty degrees higher than the day before, and the sun
burned down from a cloudless blue sky. Suddenly her jeans and flannel shirt
were much too heavy, and her skin began to glisten with moisture.

           
 
Like a child made giddy by spring, she hurried
to her bedroom and stripped off her heavy, restricting clothes. She couldn't
stand them another minute. She wanted to feel the air on her bare arms; she
wanted to feel fresh and free, like the chinook. So what if winter could come
back at any time? Right now, it was spring!

           
 
She pulled her favorite sundress from the
closet and slipped it on over her head. It was white cotton, sleeveless, with a
scoop neck, and far too flimsy for the temperature, which was probably only in
the fifties, but it suited her mood perfectly. Some things were just meant for
celebrating; this chinook was one of them.

           
 
She hummed as she began the preparations for
lunch; it was a while before she noticed that Steve was no longer at the
woodpile. If he'd gone off just at lunch-time, she would eat alone and he could
do without! She still hadn't quite forgiven him for the day before.

           
 
Then she heard a slight noise from out front,
and she removed the soup from the stove before walking to the front door. He'd
pulled the Jeep around and was washing it. It was such a domestic scene that it
lured her onto the porch, and she sat down on the top step to watch him.

           
 
He glanced up at her, and his eyes flickered
over the dress. "Pushing it a little, aren't you?"

           
 
"I'm comfortable," she said, and she
was. The crisp air was both chilly and warm, and the sun beating down on her
was a delicious sensation. He'd given in to the rising temperature, too, by
unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it out of his jeans.

           
 
She watched as he alternately scrubbed and
rinsed, each time having to stop washing to take up the hose and spray the soap
off the Jeep. Finally she went down to pick up the hose from where he'd dropped
it. "You wash, I'll rinse." He grunted. "Do you expect the same
deal with the dishes?"

           
 
"Sounds fair to me. After all, I'm doing
the cooking."

           
 
"Yeah, but I'm having to eat all that
food so it won't goto waste." She gave him an awful look. "Poor baby.
I'll see what I can do to take that burden off you."