After Caroline Page 24

  “Doc isn’t the only one with rotten timing,” he said huskily. “Joanna, you’ve had a hell of a day. I can’t take advantage of that.”

  Her eyes seemed huge, still gleaming with moisture, still darkened, but the smile that wavered on her lips was oddly amused. “Thank you,” she murmured. “But Griffin, I knew days ago this would happen. Didn’t you?”

  His thumbs rubbed across her cheekbones rhythmically. “Yes,” he admitted. “Still—”

  She didn’t let him finish, but simply leaned into him once more and pressed her lips to his. Against his mouth, her breath warm, she whispered, “I want you. And I know what I’m doing. Don’t make me sleep alone tonight, please.”

  Maybe some other man could have resisted that plea, but Griffin couldn’t. His arms surrounded her, drawing her as close as possible, and his mouth slanted over hers, deepening the kiss. She responded instantly, her arms slipping up around his neck and her upper body molding itself to his. And she didn’t feel vulnerable to him, not now; she felt like a passionate woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

  She was light when he lifted her from the couch, and it was a stark reminder of how physically delicate she was. The recognition sent a jumble of emotions clashing in his mind. Anxiety because someone had tried—twice—to kill her. Fear for her, because she would be helpless in the grip of almost any man. A sense of protectiveness he had never felt before. And an oddly primitive, iron determination to keep her safe. He had never felt anything like that before. And he had never felt anything like the oddly focused quality of his senses; all he could see or hear or smell or feel was her.

  He carried her into his bedroom and set her gently on her feet beside the bed, reaching out one hand to blindly fling back the covers. He couldn’t stop kissing her, driven to try to satisfy a need he didn’t even understand. Her mouth was warm and wild under his, as if she felt the same hunger for the deceptive simplicity of a kiss.

  But it wasn’t enough, for either of them. He felt her fingers coping with his belt even as his lifted to unfasten the buttons of the pajama top she wore, and both of them were abruptly frantic to do away with the barriers between them. He took his hands off her long enough to peel the T-shirt off over his head, then pushed the open pajama top off her shoulders. Her naked breasts touched him, the hardened tips like points of fire burning his chest, and Griffin felt more than heard a groan rumble up from somewhere deep inside him.

  “Christ, Joanna … I want you so much.” He hardly recognized the hoarse sound of his own voice. Her eyes gleamed up at him and she moved slightly, rubbing her breasts against his chest, and he thought he’d shatter into a million pieces with the pleasure of it.

  He wanted to look at her, to strip her naked and stare at her until he’d memorized every inch of her, but as strong as that need was, the urge to bury himself in her was far more overwhelming. He fumbled at the drawstring waist of the pajama bottoms until it was loosened, allowing the material to slide easily over her slender hips and down her legs, and felt her soft hands against his hips as she pushed his pants and shorts down.

  That intimate touch made every muscle in his body tighten in exquisite anticipation, and then the soft, silky skin of her belly pressed against his hardness, and the touch sent a jolt of pure raw desire through him. He felt her shift slightly as she worked the socks off and stepped out of the material pooling around her feet. Somehow, he got rid of his own shoes and socks, kicked them and the pants out of his way.

  Griffin lifted her onto the bed and followed her down. Her body in the lamplight was as beautiful as he had known it would be. As slender and delicate as she was, her small breasts were full and firm, and her hips curved gently in a shape that was all woman. Her eyes gleamed up at him, liquid and sleepy with desire, and her lips were full and reddened from his passionate kisses.

  He wanted to tell her what he saw and felt. Wanted to tell her she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and that he couldn’t think of anything but how much he needed her. But he couldn’t tell her anything at all, because he didn’t trust himself to even try to speak.

  Instead, he told her with his touch. He kissed her face, her throat. His hands touched her breasts, stroking the warm, silky skin and examining the stiff pink nipples. His mouth followed his fingers, and the tension and heat inside him surged wildly when she moaned and shifted restlessly in response. He could feel her heart thudding as rapidly as his own, hear her soft, quick breathing and tiny gasps. And the taste of her fed his desire until he didn’t think he’d be able to hold back another minute.

  His hand slid down over her belly, feeling her quiver, and his fingers combed through the silky blond curls until he found the wet heat that told him she was ready for him. He caressed her for a moment, stroking her sensitive flesh gently until her hips lifted and she made a pleading little sound.

  The last threads of his restraint snapped. With a groan, Griffin moved over her, spreading her legs and settling between them. He felt her hands on his shoulders, his back, her nails tiny darts of exquisite sensation, and stared down into her darkened eyes as his body penetrated hers.

  She was smaller than he’d expected, tighter, her body admitting him with a reluctance that made the slow joining infinitely pleasurable. He wanted to lose himself in her, to meld the two of them together until they were a part of each other.

  The winding, maddening tension built as he began to move, at first slowly. But as she responded, her body moving sensuously beneath his, her moans and husky little sounds urgent, a more primitive rhythm took hold of him. Joanna met his quickening thrusts, her body taut and sinuous, her hands gripping his shoulders. Her face was beautiful in passion, riveting his gaze until she was all Griffin saw, all he could hold in his mind.

  It was like being swept up into a storm of sensation, carried along helplessly toward a peak of release that had become an overwhelming necessity. Joanna cried out, and the inner spasms of her pleasure caught Griffin in a caress so shattering that he was blind and deaf to everything except the sheer power of his own blissful climax.

  “You’re a silent lover,” he said.

  Joanna opened her eyes to find him looking down at her, his head raised and propped on one hand. He had pulled the covers up over them at some point during the last few minutes, and she had been drifting peacefully in the warm cocoon of blankets and him, listening to the distant thunder of high tide battering the cliffs.

  “A big change from the rest of the time,” she murmured. She couldn’t read his face and wasn’t sure if her silence had disturbed him or if he was merely making a comment. That rugged face was grave, his very dark eyes—black? blue?—fixed on her face intently.

  “Is it … usual for you?” he asked almost tentatively.

  Joanna thought about the question for a moment. What did he really want to know? For some men, a woman’s past sexual history was a topic to be avoided; others wanted chapter and verse—and a comparison with those previous lovers to boot. On the other hand, Griffin might simply be wondering if she thought their experience a unique one.

  Slowly, she said, “I went steady with my high school sweetheart for three years; two years in high school and then during our first year of college. We waited until that last year to have sex, and it … wasn’t very satisfying. In fact,” she smiled faintly, “I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I don’t know why we were incompatible that way, maybe just because we were young and he didn’t have much more experience than I did. In any case, it didn’t get any better, not for me. And I suppose my lack of enthusiasm showed. Anyway, we broke up six months later. My next relationship that got as far as the bedroom was the one I told you about in your office. It lasted only a few months. So I don’t really know if being a silent lover is usual for me.”

  She drew a breath. “All I do know is that I never understood how anybody could be … overwhelmed by desire—until now.”

  His free hand reached over to brush back a strand of her hair, then lingered
to stroke her cheek gently. His expression still grave, he said, “We did click, didn’t we?”

  Even the mere touch of his hand on her face sent a surge of heat through her, and Joanna could only smile wryly at what was, on her part at least, quite an understatement. “Yeah, we did.” And then she added, “You didn’t say much, either. Is it usual for you?”

  “No,” he replied simply.

  Joanna waited, watching him.

  “I didn’t plan on you,” he said, his fingers still moving lightly on her skin as if the feel of it enthralled him. “It was almost like lightning out of a clear blue sky, it was so sudden. So unexpected. When I saw you that first day, when you turned your head—”

  “And I looked so much like Caroline,” she said.

  Griffin’s hand stopped moving and rested along her jaw-line and the side of her neck. His brows drew together just a bit, but his voice remained quiet. “That was my first thought, yes. It had to be. But the differences stood out too. Your voice and accent, your hair and eyes. But the resemblance made me cautious. I don’t believe in coincidence, and I had to wonder what you were doing here. Then, later, when I realized you were very methodically asking questions about Caroline, I didn’t know what to think.”

  “So you decided to warn me off?”

  “It made me uneasy, Joanna. You made me uneasy. I didn’t know what you might stir up—and God knows I didn’t expect a killer—but I knew many of the people in this town hadn’t gotten over Caroline’s death.”

  Joanna merely nodded, silent.

  “I didn’t expect this to happen, not then,” he went on. “I’m not even sure when my feelings began to change, but it wasn’t long before you no longer reminded me of Caroline.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure she believed that, but Joanna didn’t question him about it. She preferred—very much preferred—to believe that it was her he had taken into his bed tonight, not a stand-in for Caroline.

  He smiled suddenly, crookedly. “That’s when I realized I was in trouble.”

  “Swept off your feet?” she murmured, smiling.

  “Knocked on my ass,” he replied dryly.

  Joanna couldn’t help laughing.

  “I’m not kidding,” he told her in a pained tone with something serious underneath. “I’m thirty-seven, Joanna. I’m supposed to be beyond this stuff.”

  “Stuff?” she inquired innocently.

  “You know what I’m talking about. Daydreams. Ridiculous impulses.”

  Joanna wanted very much to ask him to describe those daydreams and impulses, but she was so surprised by what he seemed to be telling her that all she could think to say was, “Lost in lust, huh?”

  Griffin leaned over her suddenly, and there was an unexpectedly fierce glitter in his dark eyes. “I’ve felt lust,” he said. “This isn’t it.”

  She didn’t know what she would have replied to that if he’d given her the chance. But he didn’t give her the chance to say anything. His mouth came down on hers, hard without being rough, moving with the sensual heat that had so quickly and effortlessly ignited unfamiliar fires inside her, and Joanna lost interest in words.

  She fumbled her arms from beneath the covers and reached for him, her fingers blindly exploring a body still foreign to her. It felt wonderful to touch him. He was harder than she had expected, the muscles underneath his smooth skin taut. Her fingers probed his shoulders and back, traced the clean line of his spine, then moved around and stroked the smooth mat of black hair covering his chest. Her fingertips almost literally tingled when she touched him, and a hollow aching inside her grew until it seemed to fill her entire being.

  She had thought she was completely exhausted, limp and sated after their first joining, but tension flowed into her now as his mouth seduced her and his hands began to move over her body. She almost jerked when he touched her breast, the burning pleasure stealing her breath and making a helpless little sound of delight purr in her throat.

  A silent lover? She was hardly that, not when she couldn’t stop or control these disconcertingly primitive sounds of pleasure. But wordless, yes. The way he made her feel was so intense, so overwhelming, that words were beyond her.

  His mouth was on her breast now, drawing her into a blind storm of sensation, and his hand slipped down over her belly, finding her mound and the most exquisitely sensitive nerves her body possessed. Joanna knew her legs had parted for him, and she felt the most incredibly voluptuous sense of opening herself to him. It was a kind of abandon she had never known before, and it was wildly seductive.

  He stroked her until she thought she’d go out of her mind, until another of those pleading sounds escaped from her throat. Then he was moving over her, and Joanna nearly sobbed in relief. Her thighs cradled him, her arms slipped around him, and she stared up at his taut face as he came inside her.

  That sensation was still unfamiliar, being opened and filled by him, feeling him with an intimacy that tugged at all her deepest instincts. And then he was moving, slower this time, and the lingering strokes brought her quickly to the very edge of her endurance. It was wonderful and terrible, what he was doing to her. It made her mindless and turned her body into a creature of nerves and need and desperation. Instinctively, her body tried to quicken his rhythm, but Griffin maintained the maddeningly leisurely pace.

  He paid a price for that restraint, she realized on some level of herself. The muscles under her fingers quivered with the strain, his breathing was harsh and uneven, and his face was a mask of raw urgency. But his torment did nothing to soothe her own, and Joanna heard herself making sounds that were completely alien to her. She felt her body undulate with astonishing sexuality to meet his, and knew her nails were digging into his back as the tension inside her reached a height far beyond what she thought she could endure.

  He groaned suddenly and thrust into her almost wildly, his restraint snapped. Joanna cried out in fierce elation, the ecstasy sweeping over her in waves and waves of throbbing heat. He shuddered when her body clenched rhythmically around him, and buried himself in her with a harsh sound of overwhelming pleasure as her climax triggered his.

  When Joanna finally came back to herself, she was wrapped once more in a cocoon of warmth and him. Both his arms were wrapped around her, and her head was pillowed comfortably on his shoulder. This time, she was absolutely positive she lacked the strength to move, and though not sleepy, she drifted along the edge of sleep contentedly.

  “Joanna?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Would you consider going back to Atlanta until all this is settled?”

  She raised her head, then levered herself up on an elbow so that she could look down at him and see his face clearly. Before she could respond, he spoke again, his voice low.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  It was very difficult for her to refuse him, but Joanna had to shake her head. “I can’t leave before it’s over. Even if I wanted to. I can’t explain it, but I know I have to be here.”

  His dark gaze searched her face for a moment, and then he nodded reluctantly. “I had a feeling you’d say that. Just for God’s sake be careful from now on, will you?”

  Joanna smiled. “I’ll do my best, I promise.” She leaned over to kiss him lightly, then settled down once more at his side. It was still fairly early, but the day had been long and the evening definitely active, and this time she drifted off to sleep.

  The dream began very much as usual. The sounds of ocean waves crashing and a gradually forming image of that beautiful, lonely house on the cliffs. Then the house sort of faded away into a kind of fog, and other images formed. Misty and tilted slightly, the colorful painting on an easel drifted before her mind’s eye. Dimly, far away, she could hear a child’s miserable, frightened sobs, the sounds tearing at her heart. A clock ticked softly, steadily. A paper airplane soared on coastal winds, lifting and swooping before coming to rest at last on some kind of boards. Still mistily, an image formed of beautiful pink roses in a vase, with petal
s scattered all around it. Then it vanished, and the brightly colored carousel horse bobbed and whirled briefly before coming to a stop. It remained there, clear and real, its surroundings vague, while the child’s sobs grew closer and more distinct, and the clock’s ticking became so loud it echoed.

  Don’t let her be alone.

  The clock was booming now, drowning out everything else until it sounded like an amplified heartbeat, then quicker and quicker—

  Joanna sat up with a cry, her arms reaching out for … something. She couldn’t seem to breathe, and her heart was racing so fast she felt dizzy, and the fear she felt, something akin to terror, went as deep as her marrow and clogged her throat. She could feel wetness en her cheeks, tears shed in pain and grief and regret she could still feel. She wanted to sob with it, to release all the pent-up emotions in primitive sounds of loss.

  “Joanna? Honey—”

  As soon as she heard his low voice, she began to calm down. The desire to sob wildly faded until it was gone. Her breathing slowed, steadied. Her pulse dropped to normal. The terror inspired by the dream lost its grip on her, and her tense muscles relaxed. When Griffin’s arms went around her, she slumped against his hard body.

  “We don’t have much time,” she whispered.

  The bedroom was filled with the faint light of early morning, and the frown on Griffin’s beard-stubbled face looked more dangerous than usual. “The dream again?”

  “Every night,” she told him, settling back on the pillow as he eased them down again. “That’s one reason I can’t leave—the dream won’t let me.” Caroline won’t let me. “It’s … it’s moving faster somehow. There’s a feeling of urgency there getting stronger every time. Something’s going to happen. I know it is. Soon.”