Beyond Desire

“What’s set you off?” she asked him testily. He ignored her peevishness and grinned.

“‘Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.’ I’m about as close as you can get to a combination of the two.”

She glared at him, trying to ignore the mischievous dance of his luscious eyes. That quote was not only to the point, he could hardly have found one more fitting.

“Why on earth would you read Helen Rowland? She wasn’t exactly enamored of the human male.”

So he had thought that this time he’d outwitted her, had he? He shrugged in the manner of a man caught loafing on the job. “Helena was always quoting her to me, so I read the stuff in order to defend myself. Phooey was my judgment.”

That was the opening she wanted. “‘The average man’s judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.’”

Marcus spread both hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, you’ve got me. What pseudo genius wrote that?”

“Ed Howe. And I don’t know whether or not he was a genius.” Her interest in their fun game waned, and she had begun to favor her left shoulder. He remade her bed quickly, carried her to it, lay her there carefully and gently tucked the covers around her.

“I’m going to the drugstore for your medicine.”

“Could you help me into my gown before you go, please?” It worried him that she favored both her left shoulder and her lower back and that she seemed reluctant to move. And the silent plea in her eyes…Was she praying for her baby’s safety? He couldn’t think of anything but that the woman whom he had loved and who had taken his name in a solemn vow had not wanted either one of the children he gave her.

Marcus looked down at Amanda, rooted in his tracks, as the picture of her completely nude in his arms floated back to him. In his mind’s eye, he could see her beautiful and generous breasts with the glistening beige tips, the soft brown flesh of her body, her slightly rounded belly and, below it, the thick, curly black patch that guarded the seat of her passion. He turned quickly, hoping that she hadn’t seen the sudden and unmistakable evidence of his desire for her, and tried to deal with the wild sensation that had him suddenly shackled.

“I’ll be right back” was all he could manage, as he moved away from her bed. He found the peach gown, choosing that one because it was so feminine, and managed to help her into it without looking at her. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He patted her in a self-conscious gesture of comfort, but he wasn’t looking at her and was unprepared for the feel of her erected nipple under his palm. Shocked, he looked over at her to apologize and swallowed it when he saw that she was as disconcerted as he. Best to pretend that nothing had happened.

The medicine she took in the emergency room had begun to make Amanda sleepy, but that light touch of Marcus’ big hand on her breast brought her fully awake. It was accidental, she knew, but that made it all the more erotic. She didn’t like being vulnerable to a man who didn’t want her close to him or to his motherless child. And she certainly didn’t want to feel the raw attraction for him that had begun to suffuse her with increasing frequency. Thank God, he didn’t seem to know it.

There was much about her that Marcus didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to learn. Her almost total lack of experience with men wouldn’t gain her any kudos with him, she reasoned, and might even place her at a disadvantage. And it wouldn’t help if he knew how low her self-esteem had sunk when she learned of her pregnancy. Only that would explain her willingness to bargain marriage with a stranger. She rubbed her tingling breast, wanting his hand back there. “Slow down, Amanda,” she admonished herself. “Only the man responsible finds a pregnant woman attractive, and even for some of them, it’s a turnoff.”

She looked up at the ceiling. Lord, was it too much to ask that a man care deeply for her just once in her life? Forever was too much to hope for. But couldn’t she know what it was like, how it felt, just once? She almost wished that Marcus—when he was tender and caring—hadn’t taught her what was missing in her life.

Marcus returned from the drugstore and found her asleep, her body curled into a fetal position. He stood over her for all of ten minutes, wanting her. Then, in a fit of disgust with himself, he put the medicine on her night table and went to the kitchen, where he dumped the chocolates he’d bought for her safely into the garbage pail. Then he wandered around the kitchen trying to find something to cook for dinner. He hadn’t prepared dinner since coming to live with Amanda, and he had gotten used to her mouthwatering meals. He got busy preparing the food, but his mind was on Amanda. An unusually interesting woman; he hadn’t counted on that.

He let his mind wander over the day’s events. His dangerous attraction to Amanda gave him reason for concern, though he could handle that, but what he’d felt for her when he’d carried her in his arms, dressed and undressed her, was more than lust. He had to watch his step with her. And she was more vulnerable than she knew, he suspected. When he had stopped by the school to report Amanda’s illness, the female colleague who had taken the message had been vicious.

He suspected the woman of jealousy. But why? Unless the two had competed for the principal’s post—and from the look of her he doubted that—what reason could she have for such blatant animosity toward a person with Amanda’s gentle manners? He’d been astonished both at the woman’s words and at her willingness to reveal her dislike to her boss’s husband. He hated seeing black women with their hair dyed red, and this one looked as though her head was on fire. He shook his head as though to rid his vision of her image.

“You don’t mean that Amanda Ross married a number twelve like you. What did you do, make her pregnant?” the woman had asked him. His acerbic reply had definitely not gained Amanda a friend. Sensing that he’d seen her somewhere before, he’d asked her where that might have been. After assuring him that, if she’d ever seen him, she’d never have forgotten it, she replied, “If you’re in on Portsmouth’s social life, you might have noticed me at the Lamont estate. They’re friends of mine.” It was clearly something of which she was proud. He had been careful not to react visibly, because he had learned not to show his hand to an adversary. The woman was a potential source of trouble for Amanda, an unsuccessful competitor and a friend of her unborn child’s ruthless grandfather. He’d have to find out what she knew. She had wanted to prolong their conversation, but he’d finished it, probably more curtly than was wise given the woman’s antagonism toward Amanda.

Odor and smoke from the frying chicken legs warned him that his dinner was in jeopardy, and he brought his mind to the present. He arranged trays of the chicken, baked potatoes, string beans and sliced tomatoes, got iced tea from the refrigerator and hesitated. What the heck? It never hurt to be nice. He’d eat his dinner upstairs with Amanda, he decided, adding glasses of water to their trays. But the minute he saw the glow on her face as he set out their food, he wondered if he was sending her the wrong signal.

Marcus had stayed away from his factory while Amanda was recovering, and he had a backlog of work. “I intend to spend all of Saturday and Sunday in Portsmouth at the factory,” he told her as they cleared away the remains of Friday night’s supper, “but I’ll be here as usual Saturday night.”

“Want me to drive you to the station tomorrow morning?” His answer was going to disappoint her, but he couldn’t help it. She wanted him to accept their relationship and was looking for a sign of his willingness to do that. But he didn’t see how he could accept it, when he couldn’t feel like a man so long as she footed the bills.

“That won’t be necessary. I need the exercise.” It was a pitiable excuse, and he knew it, but he didn’t want to encourage her by letting her do things for him. Afraid that he’d hurt her, he looked up from the pan he was scrubbing, ready to gloss it over, and was surprised that her slacks had gotten so tight, showing her pregnancy, and that her breasts were getting larger. But what shook him was the open plea in her eyes. A wordless appeal to his decency and, God help him, to his masculinity. He dropped the brush and didn’t bother to dry his wet hands; getting to her was an all-powerful urge, and he gave in to it. He’d barely touched her shoulder, and she was in his arms. She looked up at him, her eyes ablaze with passion, and his defences disintegrated. He lowered his head and brushed her voluptuous lips with his own, then raised up slightly to look into her eyes. To check her submission. Females had craved him ever since his voice had changed. But not like this. He squeezed her to him, one hand at the back of her head and the other spread across her buttocks, and kissed her with all of the yearning and hunger that he’d stored in five weeks of want and deprivation. He ran his tongue around her lips and, when she didn’t respond to suit him, he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. Her lips parted, and he found a place for his foraging tongue within her sweet mouth and let it roam until, as if aching for more, she caught it between her lips and sucked it as if it were the essence of life. He felt her fingers weaving through his thick curly hair, caressing his shoulders and neck, testing his biceps, learning him.

Her response almost brought him to his knees, a position with which he was unfamiliar, and his heart was a pounding drum, beating furiously in his chest, as he gloried in the warmth, the feel, the taste of her. He told himself to pull back, to stop before it got out of hand. But instead, he increased the pressure, deepened the kiss, relishing the fact that she was with him all the way. He told himself to let it go, before it was too late. But he didn’t want to stop, and she didn’t appear to want him to. She seemed to want and to need exactly what he was giving her. And she clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her ears, her neck and her throat as he murmured unintelligible things to her. She trembled from head to foot, enthralled in his sweet loving and consuming passion, released, as if he were catapulting her into the stratosphere. Learning what a man’s tenderness could do to a woman. She craved him in every molecule of her body, and could not have withheld her feelings if her life had depended on it. I should stop him, she thought, because he’ll make me suffer for this. But I don’t care; I need him. I need this. She burrowed into him, holding him. His arousal stunned her, but she accepted him without reservation and tightened her grip on his waist.

As if shaken, she swayed unsteadily and he set her away from him. “Don’t you know how to say stop?” he asked her, his voice a gravelly whisper. She reached for him as she reeled backward, and he caught her, holding her just a little too long.

“Amanda, the way things were going, I would have been inside of you in minutes. I don’t think that’s what you want, and I know it isn’t what I want. We’re both tired and strung out. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He headed down the hallway.

She ran after him, amazed that he could turn his feelings off at will, while she still staggered under the impact of the first genuine loving she’d ever had. “What’s with you? You may be tired and unstrung, mister, but I’m not.”

He paused, his expression bland, as though his energy had been sapped. “Unless angels come down here, Amanda, we’re going to separate on April eleventh. You know it, and I know it and, if we ignore that fact, we will both regret it. So let’s not fool ourselves. We could easily step across that line and then find the consequences intolerable.” His voice softened. “I won’t risk it, and neither should you.”

“You’re not willing to try?”

“Amanda, a sensible man won’t stick his bare hand in the fire twice, no matter that the flame is a different color. I can’t risk it. I thought I could, but then I remember what is was like…I’m sorry.”

Amanda climbed the stairs with difficulty. She couldn’t say she was sorry that he’d kissed her that way, but she knew she would go through hell reliving it for the rest of her life. What a man he was, she mused. He had stood there in all his ebony male glory, a faultlessly crafted colossus, surrounding her with his consummate male magnetism, beguiling her senses. He had shown her the strong, but loving, gentle and tender man that he was so clever at hiding. Then he had gently, but firmly pushed her away. She didn’t think she could tolerate eleven more months of it.

Amanda got ready for bed and reached for the light to turn it out. Her gaze caught a reflection of herself in the mirror and she walked toward it. What did he see in her? Why had he kissed her and held her like that? She knew he hadn’t wanted to do it and had given in to it against his will. Maybe he just needed a woman, and she was there. That doesn’t make sense, she reasoned; a man who looked like Marcus Hickson didn’t have problems getting a woman. If he needed a woman, there was probably one waiting somewhere.

Agitated and, for the first time, uncertain that she could handle living with Marcus on their agreed-upon terms, she slipped on a cotton robe and walked out on the porch. She listened for the lapping and sloshing of the waves and heard it, but for once, the tune that had nourished her since birth failed to comfort her. Cool, salty air whipped in from the Albemarle Sound, bringing goose bumps to her arms, and the brisk wind that brought it trapped her long thick hair in the branches of a ficus tree that stood behind her in a corner. She looked out toward the Sound for a few minutes and turned to go back into the house, but she couldn’t free her hair. She looked over her shoulder at the tree. I’ll never be able to move it, she thought, declining to panic.

Amanda had been alone for so much of her life that her next thought was whether she could scream loud enough to attract attention. She relaxed when a light flickered on in Marcus’ room. Amused at herself that she could have forgotten his presence after what he’d done to her only minutes earlier, she took a deep breath and called him.

Marcus stepped out on the porch and looked around. “Amanda, did I hear you call me?”

“I’m over here.” She disliked the plaintive sound of her voice; after all, any husband could do what she was about to request of him. Any husband! “The wind blew my hair into this tree, and I can’t get it out.”

“Don’t you have a light out here somewhere. It would be a pity if you had to stand there until daylight.” She told him where to find the switch, and he turned on the light and walked over to her.

“I can’t get between you and the tree, so this will take a while.” Heat suffused her cheeks, and excitement raced through her when he reached over her and began to free her hair strand by strand. He must have noticed her unsteadiness, because he tried to put her at ease.

“Hold on to me, Amanda. If you lean back, you’ll be in a worse pickle than you are now.” Apparently searching for levity to abate the rising sexual tension, he added, “And don’t act so scared; I don’t usually bite.”

“I notice you said, ‘usually.’” She folded her arms across her middle in an effort to create a buffer between them. But he leaned over her to unthread some of her hair from around a branch, and she felt his chest against her face. She couldn’t stop herself from inhaling deeply the scent of his male body. Strength and power emanated from him, and she stifled a rising resentment that it should have such a heady effect on her even as she squelched an urge to wrap her arms around him and let herself soak up the sweetness and know again the torment of holding him close.

He stepped back and looked down at her, his mouth pursed in a rueful smile. “Are you getting the impression that something or somebody is playing tricks on us?” She didn’t answer at once and nearly stepped back, but he quickly prevented it, holding her head with his hand.

“You want to undo all this tedious work I’ve done? You didn’t answer my question.” Amanda couldn’t think of a reason for the dazzling grin that spread across his face, unless it was from a desire to bamboozle her more than the scent of him and the heat of his body had already done.

“How about you’re a human trip-hammer, and I’m standing over a trapdoor? Where’s the trick in that?” she asked him, unwilling to pretend. He let several recently freed strands of hair cascade over her shoulder.

“You wouldn’t be fooling, would you? If you aren’t, let me tell you, lady, that kind of joking is dangerous. And if you are…” He shook his head. “It’s still dangerous.” She wanted him to move away from her, but he didn’t give her an inch, just continued unravelling her hair from the ficus branch.

“Have you almost finished?” she asked him, embarrassed by the quake in her voice. “Maybe you ought to get a pair of scissors and whack it off.”

“Come on, now. Much as you love this thick wooly stuff, you’d cut if off just to get rid of me? That’s hardly flattering.” Let him think what he liked. She had learned that Marcus mastered his emotions with the ease of a glider. She didn’t know much about men, much less how to handle herself around them. But she figured that even if she’d been an expert on them, Marcus Hickson would still be an enigma to her. That is in the past, though, she assured herself. She had just begun to learn that he could have the kind of feelings he generated in her and she knew that, if he were a different kind of man, she’d be in his bed right then. In court, whose word would have the greater weight? Blood rushed to her face, neck and ears, and she lowered her head to prevent his seeing her telltale facial expression. He reached around her and began to untangle some strands from a branch below her waist.

“Marcus…Marcus, would you…please…”

“Would I please what?” He released her hair, grasped her shoulders and took a step back. She looked up into eyes that burned with want and struggled not to let her gaze drift down to his beguiling lips. His rugged breathing tempted her to test her feminine power, and excitement sent shivers through her, as he seemed to weigh her in some way, to anticipate her next move. His hands tightened on her shoulders.

“You’re new at this, Amanda, so listen. Whatever you’re feeling, I’m feeling it at least twice as strongly. That’s because I know what there could be between us, and you don’t. If I get into trouble, Amanda, it’s on my own terms. Nobody leads me astray. So don’t be tempted to see how far you can go with me.” He put a hand behind her head, pulled her hair over her right shoulder and pinched her playfully on her nose. Then he turned and went to his room.

Marcus caught the first morning train to Portsmouth. He’d spent the previous night wrestling with the feelings of tenderness and possessiveness he’d had for Amanda while he picked the strands of her hair from that tree. He wondered where their relationship was headed, but the thought left him when he arrived at the factory and noticed that Jerzy Heiner was already at work.