Proposition: Marriage

It was too much, too fast. She’d lurched from terror to flight, skidded from flight into laughter, and now she was being ruthlessly kissed by a man who made her knees silly and her soul shiver. In a day already ripped loose from everything Jane knew about herself and her world, the sudden surge of passion caught her and flung her into a mad riptide she had no way of resisting.

When he pushed his thigh between her legs and pressed up, she heard herself moan. And it was her. She was the one making those soft, urgent sounds. She had to stop this, stop him—only he pressed up again with his thigh, and his tongue wet her lips while his hands, both hands now, kneaded her bottom, lifting her, then pressing her down on the leg she straddled. He taught her to ride him, taught her a slow, rolling rhythm that carried her mind the rest of the way out to sea, and left her body in charge.

And her body knew what it wanted.

He pulled her down with him. The forest floor was damp and spongy, and the moist, fecund odor was almost as intoxicating as the way he smelled when she pressed her face to his neck.

He didn’t unfasten her clothing. He ran his hands over her as if there was no part of her he didn’t need to feel, to know. Her knee, her breast, her shoulder. The soft swell of her belly But he didn’t take her clothes off, which gave her a spurious sense of safety.

Then his mouth left hers and closed over the tip of her breast. Right through her dress and her bra he suckled her, and no one had ever done that to her. She hadn’t even known people did that—not with their clothes on—and she was almost shocked back into conscious thought. Almost. But by then he had her dress and her bra wet from his mouth, and he did things with his tongue and his teeth that rasped the dampened material against her sensitive nipple, and she moaned instead, and clutched at his shoulders.

His mouth moved to her other breast, and that was good, too; that was what she wanted. He sucked. She felt his hand on her leg, and it was drawing her skirt up, and that felt good, too—the warmth of his palm on her thigh, on her—

She yelped when he pressed his palm against her there, right between her legs. He slid a finger beneath the elastic of her panties and touched her even more intimately, and she moaned again, and this time she shocked herself, because her hips lifted pleadingly.

“I—I—” she stammered. “I don’t—ah—”

He licked her nipple. His finger slid inside her feminine folds and rubbed her lightly. She made a sound she’d never made before, and her hips turned wanton again, making that greedy pushing-at-him movement. But she held on to the thin thread of consciousness and gripped his shoulders hard, willing him to look at her.

He raised his head. His mouth was wet and his eyes gleamed with hunger, and his finger was still moving, stirring her unbearably. He looked so entirely delicious she knew this was her last chance “I don’t do this sort of thing!” she gasped.

“But I do, Jane,” he said gently, and he moved his hand, stretching the elastic of her panties so that his finger went up inside her. “I do.”

And he did, too. First he kissed her again. And he tasted like danger, but he also felt like safety and home—solid and strong and eager for her, so eager. Maybe she could have fought her own hunger, the need that had grown in her all day. She couldn’t resist his.

He wasn’t cold now. Now he burned just as she did. Now he needed her.

And when he pulled her panties down and shifted between her legs, she helped him. He gripped her hips in his hands and guided himself inside, and the sensation was so rich and huge it almost sent her over the top right then.

Her eyes closed. She slipped her hands inside his loosened shirt, and delighted in his skin. “John,” she gasped. “John.”

He didn’t move He was fully, firmly inside her, but he wasn’t doing anything. Jane wasn’t exactly a woman of the world, but she knew what was supposed to be happening now, and it wasn’t.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

His eyes were full of all sorts of blue—the restless blues of oceans and ghosts and sorrow, and the hot blue at the heart of a flame. “My name isn’t John,” he said softly. Then, at last, he began to move.

She was warm and limp beneath him. Instinct or some last gasp of reason had kept him braced on his elbows so that now, as he slowly seeped back into himself after the sensory explosion of climax, his upper body, at least, wasn’t crushing her.

Unlike her, he was still fully dressed. But he felt naked. Trapped and naked and exposed.

Fear was a swell he rode, a great, ocean-deep wave too vast and familiar for panic. Reason rode the wave with him—a slim craft he clung to. But reason told him he had just made himself into a fool. Fools died quickly in his business. And sometimes they caused other people to lose their lives, too.

He looked at the woman beneath him. Her eyes were closed. A half smile curved her lips. Sweat dampened her face and shoulders, making her glow. The little chain she wore around her neck hung crooked now. The locket dangled in the dust beside her.

Ah, Jane.

He pushed off her. “Get up.” Grimly he put himself to rights and zipped his pants.

She blinked up at him, obviously confused, a trickle of hurt altering the curve of her mouth. He had to force his voice to soften, but it took no effort at all to reach out one more time and cup her cheek; her skin was so soft. “I’m sorry,” he said more gently. “I’ve endangered both of us. We have to get out of here, quickly.”

His shirt hung outside his pants. It was partly unbuttoned. He remembered her hands—such warm, avid hands—struggling to undo a few buttons so she could stroke his chest

She did sit up, but then just sat there, looking bewildered. The skirt of her dress slipped from her waist to puddle in her lap. Her bodice was still damp over one nipple. “You didn’t put us in danger,” she said. “There’s no one around.”

She didn’t understand. He’d forgotten everything but the need to bury himself in her. That went beyond danger to sheer foolhardiness. How could he have lost control so completely?

He’d been doing all right until she’d laughed.

He tightened his lips. “The federales we saw were looking for me. They intend to shoot me, Jane, not take me prisoner.”

“But why?”

He hesitated, but there was no reason not to tell her this much. “I have information some people don’t want leaving the country, and those people have enough money to bribe any number of government officials. If you’re with me when they find me, they’ll kill you, too. I have to get you to the village so I can get the hell off this island.” He didn’t want to die on his last assignment. He didn’t want to see this bright, plucky woman shot down because she was with him.

She bit her lip, her eyes wide with fear. Slowly, she stood. “Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”

He met her gaze, and wondered if the sadness he felt showed. “Who and what I am doesn’t matter at all. You can forget me under the name ‘John’ as well as you could under another name.”

“I’m not going to—”

“You will. You have to.”

Three hours later, Jane sat on a cot in a rapidly-darkening room in a village whose name she still hadn’t heard. Her host, a British expatriot, was in the parlor of the small but pleasant house, talking secrets with the man whose name wasn’t John.

He had to leave her here, she knew. He couldn’t stay and be found by the government troops quartering the area for him. She knew he had to leave and she knew she would never see him again, but she sat there and waited for him to at least come and say goodbye.

He never did.

Four

It was not yet dark, but the light was fading as dusk slowly replaced daylight In an old frame house on a street lined with elms, a light came on in an upstairs window. Most people in town still referred to the old house as “the MacAllister place,” though all but one of that family had died or moved away years ago. The one remaining MacAllister, Frances Ann, lived downstairs with her cats, her needlepoint and her family albums.

Jane lived upstairs.

She flipped on the light switch in her kitchen and hurried to the pantry. She pushed aside the gingersnaps, the rice and two boxes of breakfast cereal, muttering under her breath. She was due at the meeting of the Atherton Combined Charities in fifteen minutes. As secretary for the community-wide fund-raising project, she absolutely had to be there. But she was not leaving without her crackers.

She probably wouldn’t be late, she told herself as she switched her search to the second shelf. Even if she had to stop and buy more crackers, she had time. She could get from anywhere in Atherton to anywhere else in fifteen minutes, usually with time to spare. But she didn’t want to get into her car without crackers. Although she seemed to be over the stomach bug that had afflicted her off and on for the past two weeks, she wasn’t taking any chances. The nausea might come back when she started driving.

Ah. She straightened as her hands touched a cellophane-wrapped package. Success.

Jane grabbed her purse, shrugged it onto her shoulder and flipped on her porch light. It would be dark by the time she came home. She stepped out onto the landing and was just pulling her front door closed when the phone rang. She froze.

Her hand went to her chest. She could barely feel the lump her locket made beneath the wool of her favorite pink sweater. Her fingers pressed against that tiny lump. Don’t be silly, she scolded herself. It was probably her mother, calling to check on her. Marilee Smith’s normal fretfulness had escalated to nearly unbearable levels since Jane had returned from the island.

She really ought to go back inside and reassure her mother, but—

The phone rang again.