Memory Lapse Read online

  He groaned low in his throat, his entire lower body tightening compulsively, as if electrified. He had come to her already half-aroused, but the maddening trail of anticipation she had just mapped across his skin had taken him to a level of frantic readiness he had never known before.

  He wasn’t sure he could stand it. He felt stretched to the screaming point, and he had a sudden fear that her touch alone might bring him to a shameful, wonderful, mind-bending climax right here, right now. He felt it starting already, coiling and twisting deep in his gut, and in some crazed corner of his mind he even wanted it. Wanted it fast. And hard. And now.

  But no...this was all wrong. He didn’t really want to do this, not like this. He fought for control, fought to hold back the blood that was already racing through him, struggled to quiet the muscles that had already begun to quiver in her palm.

  No. He took her hand and stilled it, squeezing his eyes shut and letting his head fall back so that he could breathe deep, bracing gulps of air. No.

  “Drew,” she whispered again, plaintively. “I want you so much.”

  His heart skipped a beat, then thudded with a thick, slow, dreadful thrill. He had never heard her say that before. “I love you,” she had said tenderly, desperately, even apologetically. But never “I want you.” And she had never touched him like this.

  “Laura, are you sure?” Was that his voice, that tight, fevered sound? “Oh, God, Laura, don’t do this to me if you're not sure.”

  For answer, she took his free hand and placed it at the neckline of her robe, where the zipper’s silver pull ring lay cold and flat under his fingertips. Though it was not what he had expected, her message was clear.

  For one emotionally paralyzed moment he couldn’t force himself to do it. What if this time was just like all the others, just another terrible, teasing torture, a rack on which to stretch and break his self-control?

  She shifted, and the gentle swell of her breast grazed against the underside of his arm. Oh, God...

  He held his breath, once again fighting for control, as he took the ring between his thumb and forefinger. He pulled it down slowly, trying to give her a moment to adjust to what was happening. Never before had he been able to unzip a single zipper, undo a single button, unhook a single clasp, without Laura clutching desperately at his hands, fighting, rejecting, begging him to stop.

  Miraculously, this time there was no reaction at all, except perhaps a subtle quickening of her breath and the moist glistening of her lips as she ran her tongue across them.

  “I'm going to take your robe off, Laura,” he said in low, measured tones. It was torture to force the wild bolero beat of his blood into this tame, saraband pace, but he knew he had to try. “Nothing is going to happen unless you want it to. If anything I'm doing frightens you, just say so, and I'll stop.”

  He hoped that was true. He closed his eyes, dragged in a deep breath and prayed for the strength to make it true.

  He slid his hand inside the robe, caressing the velvety mound of her shoulder as he eased the robe down her arm. Then the other side, an inch at a time. The robe caught briefly on her elbows, then fell to the floor in a whispering blue cascade.

  A deep, unseen shudder shook him. “You're so beautiful, Laura,” he whispered, wishing some other, more iridescent, magical word existed to describe the milky symmetry of her body as she stood in the cold winter moonlight.

  “Let me see the rest of you,” he said, running his finger along the lacy neckline of her gown, nudging the shoulder straps aside slowly, until they dangled around her upper arms, useless. The gown was made of a material so delicate that he could almost see the exquisite curves, the tantalizing swells and shadows, of her body beneath it. Almost. But almost was just another word for torture.

  “Show me,” he said, his voice thick. He could feel a faint vibration of her muscles, a shimmer of tension that told him she had, for the first time, grown taut, mutely wary. But she didn’t resist as he pulled the soft material of her gown over the swell of her breasts, exposing her to the muted moonlight.

  Oh, Laura... His knees liquefied as pure, undiluted hunger shot through him. He had imagined her, dreamed of her, longed for her, but never had any of the fantasy Lauras he created come anywhere close to the gut-wrenching beauty of the reality. He nearly doubled over with the need to touch her.

  Still he struggled for control. He had to be prepared to stop whenever she asked him to, as he had promised. Don’t ask me, Laura, he prayed silently. Please don’t ask me to stop.

  He slipped her arms free, one elbow at a time, then he dropped to his knees, gently tugging the gown around her hips, letting it fall alongside the abandoned robe.

  He stopped, waiting, trying to slow his heart, to absorb the miracle that had come to him, trying to make himself understand that he really could touch her, taste her, learn her, own her. His body was suddenly racked with shivers, and he buried his face in the warmth of her stomach.

  “Drew.” Her voice was shaking, and the hand she placed on his shoulder trembled sharply. “I need you,” she said, inhaling raggedly.

  Swiftly, cursing his heartless self-absorption, he rose to his feet. She was pulsating with need—he could feel it in her neck, her throat, her temple—but that jagged sound of tears in her voice proved that she wasn’t yet quite free of old chains.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, taking her damp face between his hands, kissing where the tears had been. “It’s going to be all right, Laura. I swear to you, this time it’s going to be all right.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her quivering body against him, a slender, battered reed seeking shelter. Drew was suddenly filled with a sense of power, a thrill of certainty. The time for pulling back was past.

  Scooping her into his arms, he carried her to the rumpled cot and lay her down, murmuring soothing sounds. He stepped back to shed his sweatpants, and in less than a heartbeat he stood before her, no longer able to conceal the evidence of his formidable desire.

  “Look at me, Laura.” But she wouldn’t. He could see in her face the first flickerings of their old enemy—full-blown, paralyzing panic. He wouldn’t let her give in to it. “Laura. Look at me.”

  Time slowed to an agonizing pace while he waited for her to obey. He knew that, to her softer, passive body, he must seem aggressively male, threateningly potent. But they had to get past this moment. She had to face the truth. All sex had an element of violence. She had to trust him, not because he couldn’t hurt her, but because she knew he wouldn’t. Slowly he sat beside her on the narrow cot.

  “There’s no need to be frightened. I’d never hurt you, Laura. You must know that.” She didn’t answer, but she opened her eyes, and the wildness had taken over even more of her. Gently, deliberately, he placed her hand on him again, though the nervous fluttering of her fingertips almost unmanned him.

  “You know what this means, don’t you, Laura? It doesn’t mean power, and it doesn’t mean pain. It means that I want you, that I want to be inside you, to be a part of you.”

  She moaned, her hand closing around him tightly. He shuddered, but hung on. “Our bodies are made this way for loving, Laura, not for hurting. There is a place inside you that is waiting for this. If you shut your eyes you can feel it.” Her eyes drifted shut, her brows constricting as if in pain, and her pelvis shifted again restlessly.

  Her hand moved, too, and Drew knew he had to hurry. He reached out slowly, brushing the dusky darkness between her legs with a feathered touch. “You want me, don’t you, Laura?” A sweet heat guided his fingers easily to the tiny pinpoint of her desire, and he thumbed it softly. “Open for me, Laura. Let me come in and love you.”

  As if his voice, his touch, had hypnotized her, she let her legs fall apart with tantalizing grace, making a small, surrendering sound that seared along his flayed nerve endings like liquid fire.

  He focused his attention on the swollen bud beneath his fingers, drawing small circles with his thumb and foref
inger. Soon her head was tossing gently on the pillow, and thankfully her hand fell away from him as she reached up to clutch the sheets beside her head. She had forgotten fear, had apparently even forgotten him, lost in her mounting passion.

  “Drew!” Her sudden cry was frantic, and she reached out blindly. She was almost beyond him now, arching painfully, caught in some black inner spiral of sensation.

  It was time. He pulled away his hand and, poising himself over her, he finally allowed the moment of truth to arrive. If she rejected him now, there was nothing more he could do....

  It was the sweetest, most excruciatingly painful moment of his life. He entered her gently, lowering his lips at the same moment to the pebbled peak of her breast. She cried out, digging her hands into his hair, arcing under him with an uncontrollable passion.

  He groaned with a relief that shimmered through his veins like a dawning. She tasted like midnight nectar, and she felt as warm as heaven, throbbing around him tightly but welcoming him, wanting him, needing him as much as he needed her.

  He thrust slowly past the barrier of her maidenhead, hating that he had to hurt her, gathering her up against his chest to ease the momentary burning. She sobbed, tightening, and it was strangely as if her pain was his pain, too. A tear fell on his shoulder, and his own eyes grew wet. But then her tension eased, and with his hands under her hips, he completed the joining with a lover’s long, deep, infinitely gentle stroke. It was done. She was his.

  He couldn’t tell the precise moment when they lost control, but suddenly her hips were writhing wildly under his, and her fingers dug into his hips, begging, demanding, controlling. He felt her begin to shatter, untutored muscles contracting helplessly, rhythmically around him, and he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

  And then, with joy and pain and love and a thousand drowning emotions he didn’t even have names for, he exploded, pouring into her every ounce of aching need he had stored for all these years inside his broken heart.

  * * *

  WHEN HE AWOKE, she was gone. For a horrible, heart-stopping moment he thought it had all been another dream. Through the years, he had actually imagined things almost as real as this had been....

  Then he saw the tiny red stain on his sheets, and the fist of fear relaxed its hold on his chest. It had been real. It had happened. He had found Laura last night, his Laura, the real Laura. And this morning all the world was different.

  He rose, pulling on the sweatpants he must have kicked under the cot, and covered the stain with the sheets. She might well be self-conscious this morning, still confused, perhaps, by last night’s encounter. No need to confront her with this intimate proof before they had time to talk, to get comfortable with one another again. It had, after all, been three long years.

  But suddenly, before he could pull on his sweatshirt, she appeared in the doorway, fully dressed, a cup of coffee in her hands and a tense, false smile on her lips.

  “Oh, Drew, good. I'm glad you're up,” she said politely, and a shadow of déjà vu fell briefly over his spirits. This was exactly how she had sounded last night before they went to bed—friendly but superficial, bright chatter covering tightly strung nerves.

  “You should have warned me what a sound sleeper you are,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes, just as she had done last night. She smoothed her skirt and adjusted her belt. “That could be a problem, couldn’t it, I mean, if you don’t wake up when I start walking in my sleep?”

  She tried to smile, but it was a dismal failure. “I think maybe I'm going to have to wear bells, or rig an alarm or something. Otherwise I'll be wandering all over Winterwalk without you ever knowing it.”

  Drew frowned. What the hell was she talking about? His instincts prickled. Something was wrong here. Sickeningly wrong.

  She flushed under his scowling scrutiny, but the bright, impersonal voice stumbled on. “I'm pretty sure I walked again last night. I found my nightgown near the doorway between our rooms.” She took a sip of her coffee, glancing at him over the rim of the cup. She seemed to be waiting for him to jump in with explanations.

  But he didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He stalled, tugging his sweatshirt over his head while he tried to sort out what her oblique comments really meant. She wasn’t quite making sense. He didn’t dare speak, not until she made it clear what she felt about last night.

  What she felt? That was hardly the main issue right now, was it? He forced himself to face the truly frightening implications of what she was saying. He couldn’t be sure, what she even remembered about last night.

  “It’s rather awkward,” she went on. “I don’t know if I ever got as far as the conservatory. Maybe sleeping up here instead of in my old bedroom confused me.” She grimaced in a misguided, miserable attempt at levity. “But you don’t make much of a guard dog, do you? Apparently you slept through the whole thing.”

  4

  SHE DIDN'T REMEMBER.

  Drew was glad he was sitting down. A rather horrible burning feeling seemed to be sinking through his body, pooling in his suddenly weak legs. He stared at Laura’s flushed cheeks, at her anxious eyes that were mutely begging for reassurance that she hadn’t made a fool of herself last night. His chest tightened. This was impossible, unendurable, insane. But it was true nonetheless. He could see it in her eyes. She really didn’t remember.

  “It’s so embarrassing,” she rushed on when he didn’t answer. “I probably spent half the night on the floor next to your bed. Although...who knows? I could have been dancing the hula on the roof.” She tried to laugh, but the sound came out more like a choking sob. She set the coffee down on the end table, rattling the cup against the saucer as her fingers trembled slightly but talking all the while.

  “Oh, it’s just too ridiculous, isn’t it, having a problem like this? It’s like being two people, as if there’s another me who wanders around at night doing God knows what.” She shook her head helplessly and, sagging, propped herself against the wall. “And I can’t control this other me. I don’t even know her.” She turned her begging gaze to Drew. “You can see what I'm up against, can’t you? I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I needed someone I could trust.”

  Trust. Suddenly Drew couldn’t look at her, and he focused intently on tying his jogging shoes, though his fingers felt as rubbery and uncontrollable as elastic bands. Someone she could trust. He tried desperately to remember how she had looked last night, what she had said, but her words kept echoing hollowly in his ears, making thought difficult. Trust, trust, trust, the word was repeated, a battering ram against his brain. She needed someone who wouldn’t take advantage of her nakedness, her helplessness.

  Oh, God. He yanked the laces so tightly his foot throbbed, as the horror of it finally sank in. He had made love to a woman who had been, for all practical purposes, asleep. But he hadn’t known, some remnant of self-defense cried thinly, rationalizing. She had seemed normal. She had spoken to him, looked at him, touched him...

  Sudden self-loathing washed over him like nausea, and he smothered the pitiful excuses into silence. What he had done was indefensible, an act of ultimate treachery. He should have known. There must have been signs—signs that, in his rush toward gratification, he had ignored. The soft monotone of her voice, repeating his name over and over, almost hypnotically. The bold, uninhibited desire in her fingers. Her strangely passive submission as he removed her gown. And then, later, the confused, wild, unfocused stare he had believed was the product of passion.

  His heart sped, sending a new stream of hot shame through his veins. God, yes—the signs had been everywhere. He should have realized instantly that Laura would never have done any of those things. Laura, who had always panicked, choking on her fear, whenever he had tried to touch her. Could he honestly have believed she’d suddenly turned into a hot-blooded siren?

  But he had believed it. God help him, he had. That was, perhaps, the most damning evidence of all. Driven by lust, he hadn’t even suspected that she might not be fully conscious. H
e had needed so badly to believe she really wanted him, that she was finally ready to return his love, that he had blinded himself completely to the truth.

  “Laura,” he began, still staring at his shoes. How could he say this? She would never forgive him. “Laura, listen—”

  But abruptly she sank onto her knees beside him, her warm palms resting on his thigh, burning through his sweatpants, just as her hand had done last night. The muscles in his leg contracted painfully.

  “Drew, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help. I know you didn’t want to do this.” Her hands tightened, and, the words dying in his throat, he looked up. Her eyes were smoky and dark, full of an open vulnerability that made his stomach lurch. “I know I didn’t really even have any right to ask you. But coming home has been very hard for me. Even harder than I imagined it would be. I honestly don’t think I could go through with it if I didn’t know you were the one...the one watching me. Protecting me.”

  He groaned deep in his throat. “Christ, Laura.”

  “No, let me say it. It’s important. I know you have other women in your life now, Drew. Women who, well, who might not understand why your ex-fiancée is sleeping in your upstairs bedroom.” She smiled bravely, but she swallowed hard, and her fingers quivered slightly against his tense, aching muscles. “So I wanted you to know I'll try hard to sort things out as quickly as possible. I've got two weeks' vacation. If I haven’t made any progress in that time, I promise I'll go on back to Boston and leave you in peace. Does that sound fair?”

  Fair? His vocal cords felt paralyzed. Who was he to say what was fair? His moral barometer was obviously profoundly off kilter.

  As she watched his face, her smile faded, her eyes darkening. “One week, then? I know it’s a lot to ask, but...”

  He stirred restlessly. “Two weeks is fine.” He stood, and her hand fell away from his thigh. Leaving her kneeling by the cot, he moved to the window and looked down at the gleaming landscape. “But do you think you're being realistic, Laura? Do you really think you can undo fifteen years of damage in two weeks?”