He wouldn’t think about that now. He was doing his job. He was protecting her. He wouldn’t think about that now. She was slipping away.
The aftermath was usually a letdown. Nobody liked to leave the top of the mountain. But this was scary. He hadn’t only been to the top he had taken off. He had flown. He had been lifted into spaces he had never before encountered. He had heard about this stuff; he had expected some day to encounter it, to enjoy it, to embrace it as an exciting new kick.
He had enough action going that he was doing a fair sampling. Odds were, eventually, he’d connect with Someone Special.
This was nothing like he had expected. He had experienced phenomenal sex but he had also experienced flashes ofyes! Glints of‘this is what it’s all about. We’re talking hearth and home, stud. Sticking-with-this-forever, stuff’. Marc felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. His heart sang. His belly hurt. Maybe he had pulled something.
A couple of hard slam dunks and those thoughts of hearth, home, commitment were outta sight, outta mind. He slowly rolled off Amanda, careful to maintain the plastic barrier that separated them. On his back he slipped off the shield of modern sexuality and laid it carefully aside.
Maybe it could be preserved as a memento.
He snorted a derisive grunt at his romantic foolery and flung his arm over Amanda’s head, snuggling her into his side. She looked at him, amber eyes wide and mellow, dark lashes moist and glittering. He remembered her warm body against his, underneath him, encompassing him, containing him.
The tactile memory of the swell of her perfect breasts rolled over his chest. He had meant to taste the buds of her nipples as he had tasted her perfection. He had meant to tickle the firmness of her beautiful bottom with his unshaven jowls, trace the perfect indentation of her backbone with his mouth. Examine her toes, kiss the inside of her elbows, explore the classical transition from her breast to her arms. He lay drugged in a perfect state of bliss.
She murmured beside him and began to trace the line of his breastbone with her fingernail. She continued on, droopy-eyed with languorous teasing, down the rippling rises of his abdomen, into the tangle of hair at the apex of his thighs, and lower.
Her eyes widened and she sat up. “Good grief, Marc.”
They made frighteningly passionate love again.
New territories, new spaces, new intimacies discovered. He was astonished at her vastness. He could spend the rest of his life charting her.
He remembered once watching from a stormy Southern California shore the most amazing surf exhibition he had ever seen, the day violent, the waves near terrifying. He had seen a surfer ride through a death-defying barrel roll and catch a perfect incoming swell that seemed to raise the young daredevil triumphant into the glowering heavens and deposit him effortlessly onto the beach.
Marc had raced to the young man, to bathe in the aura of one who had experienced such total triumph.
Tears had streamed down the kid’s face.
“I’ve done it, man. It’ll never be like that again. Never. No matter how hard I try to find it.”
An endless pursuit of what he would never be able to achieve again. Because the experience itself had changed him irrevocably.
Marc pressed his face into the perfect nape of her neck and scrubbed the wetness from his cheeks with the waves of her hair.
The kid was way wrong. Perfection could be reattained.
Marc lay still. He had never been at this place before.
Chapter 12
NOR HAD either of them been at the place they were the next morning.
They both were tentative in dealing with “the morning after,” Amanda felt, though their good-morning kiss was languorous and passionate, and weakened her knees in remembered passion, it seemed a part of the relaxed friendship between them had been lost.
But there was nothing lost that couldn’t be recaptured, Amanda told herself. They had already gained so much else. A certain amount of readjusting was to be expected.
Neither spoke as they stumbled through breakfast.
So.Neither of us are morning people, Amanda thought glumly.
Why? Why? Why? Can’t we talk to each other?Amanda berated herself for her silence as puffed something-or-other overflowed the rim of her cereal bowl onto the countertop. Marc sleepily grinned and scooped the over-processed grain into his fist and popped it into his mouth, grinding nosily away.
He bent over and kissed her lightly on the cheek.Just like an old married couple.
Suddenly he jerked back and choked, as if he had put his mouth to a hot griddle, spraying cereal.
I know just how you feel; I’m just as screwed up as you are, Amanda grumbled to herself, sloshing milk into the bowl, rising the puffed whatevers over the top. Not even bothering to wipe the counter, she plunged a spoon into the mixture and began to chomp away.
Well, it looks like he’s not going to say anything. And it looks like I’m just as gutless. I guess it wasn’t as great as I thought.
She looked across at Marc, who in his shocked haze was contemplating how to put the toast and the knife and the lite cream cheese together to make it work for him. He glanced up.
Well, it’s not exactly “little boy lost.” More like big “stud not quite sure what to say the next morning to the bimbo he boffed.” Ha!She laughed out loud.
“What’s funny?” He rubbed his shadowed face.
God, how sexy he looks unshaven.
He sighed apologetically. “I don’t wake up quick.” His dark gray-blues fastened on her and began to clear as though an obscuring summer cloud had glided away to reveal infinite azure skies. “Last night… uh, this morning…” He bit his lip and his brow wrinkled. “…was great.” He swallowed, waiting.
She smiled, hopefully sexily, hopefully not putting him off. “This morning is great.” That part was true. Just to be with him was almost enough to still the rancorous calamity going on in her.
What? Where? Head? Heart? Lower regions?
She flicked a bit of cereal and milk his way from the end of her spoon. He laughed, grateful she had accepted his vocal offering and thankful she didn’t seem to be requiring more. He reached over and tousled her tangled hair in relief.
“Marc, I’ve got to know what’s going on. I’m obviously in the middle of whatever kind of ‘caper’ you’ve got going and you really make me nervous throwing around terms like ‘attempted murder,’ and ‘finish me off.’ I… I don’t want anybody to finish anybody off.” She finished off the cereal and, collecting his, threw the bowls in the sink with a clatter.
“Come with me to see David. I called the hospital and they said he could handle a visit. He’s awake. The doctor said a conversation would help clear his head. We can tell you everything you want to know. Okay?”
At the very least it would get them in the company of other people.
“Okay.”
DAVID’S COLOR was coming back. All his vital signs were good. Another twenty-four hours of observation and he should be able to leave the hospital, the nurse explained, but his condition needed to be monitored for the next several days. She indicated the doctor would prefer if they didn’t tax him too much this first visit.
Marc was going to the Met to report back to David how the mounting of the exhibition was progressing after he kept his appointment at the auction house to meet the insurance men.
Amanda waited patiently as they discussed the riot at the League and David’s impression of how things had gotten out of hand.
“What do you think, Ace? Was it just a fluky escalation of events or did someone trigger it? Was there a deliberate attempt to get David hurt?”
Amanda thought back. Christine’s actions appalled her; Nathan had been scarily detached, even in the middle of chaos; Mr. Wilde had tried to calm the class from the beginning. Professor Angeli had lost it completely, angry and vicious beyond all comprehension, but she couldn’t believe his actions sprang from anything other than spontaneous reaction to buried anger.