Hot Streak

CHAPTER 18

T heir fingers touched like a bridge between poignant memory and hope, and he pulled her into his arms, folding her against his chest, her head cradled with the gentlest pressure close to his heart. She heard the quickening acceleration of his heartbeat through the muscle, sinew, and bone of the honed athletic body that had altered so little. He held her lightly, tense and rigid despite the tenderness of his embrace while a warmth and wonder inundated their souls. It was as if time had been turned back, all the pages of the calendar in some bizarre time warp had flipped backward, and they were transported to an enchanted long-ago summer. He felt the warm tears first, and then looked down at her, lifting her face gently with a crooked finger. “Don't cry, Honeybear,” he murmured. “We're together.” His lips touched her eyes, lightly kissing away the tears, his fingers reaching up to slide through her golden hair. “Oh, Honeybear,” he groaned, “I've missed you so.” And his hands slipped to her shoulders, tightened, almost hurt as he covered her mouth with his, tasting her lips and the sweet interior of her mouth with a desperation that would have startled any of his current friends and lovers. Carey Fersten was never a desperate man.

Molly's hands smoothed over his pale hair, moved down over the powerful muscles of his neck, glided laterally and clung to his solid shoulders while she cried tears of joy, her mouth welcoming his fevered urgency. And when the first powerful demand to feel and touch and know for certain had diminished, they nibbled between soft sighs and giggles, delicately exchanging low murmurs of pleasure.

Long moments later, Carey drew back enough to look into Molly's face, his dark brows slanted in raven-winged swoops over deep-set smoky eyes that always had the power to melt her at a glance. “Welcome home, Honeybear.” His smile was warm, tender, soul-shattering. “No more tears… never any more tears for us.”

Feeling enchanted, content, as if she'd arrived in a safe fjord after a calamitous stormy sea, Molly raised tear-splashed lashes. A blissful radiance filled her eyes as she murmured, “Sure as ever.”

“Not as ever,” Carey whispered, his glance smoldering. Molly's cheeks were brushed with a rosy glow, her lips reddened to bright cherry by his bruising kisses, her mouth slightly open as though the warming pleasure coursing through her needed release. “But older and much, much wiser,” he added, lowering his head to recapture the passion her melting lips offered, “and damn sure, this time.” His breath was warm on her lips, his mouth brushing a seductive caress back and forth as he eased her down on the couch, his hands insistent on her body, arranging her carefully beneath him.

His fingers moved to the buttons of her blouse. Between tantalizing kisses, between gentle nudges of his lean hips which enticed with the magnitude of his need, he deftly opened her lemon-colored blouse. Deliberately sliding the fabric aside, he exposed her full breasts, the slender curve of her rib cage, the unmistakable arousal of her peaked nipples.

He touched one begging peak with a delicate fingertip and watched its swelling response. Molly felt the cushioned couch under her melt into mythical, pink-tinged olympian clouds, felt the spiral of flame spin downward to the throbbing center of her trembling senses. And when his slender hand moved to her other breast, his warm palm rubbing its crested point, she moaned a low, purring sound.

“You haven't changed,” he breathed in a husky tone. He glanced down at her gently undulating hips, and his hand moved to the waistband of her slacks.

Suddenly, she saw herself as naive and vulnerable, a prey to his expert seduction. How could she, she anxiously thought, when every rational argument decreed Carey Fersten not only unreliable but inconstant? He was hardly the kind of man who offered a stable future, despite the honeyed words. He hadn't been years ago and certainly wasn't now, with his star status. She felt foolish, confused. “No.” On impulse, she pushed him away. “No, please don't.”

Raised on his elbows, he gazed down at her. Her eyes, full of entreaty, held his. “I want to,” her voice shook, “and I don't want to. Do you know what I mean?” she inquired with candid honesty.

His body tense, he exhaled slightly. “No,” he said. Balancing on one elbow, he covered her hands pressing against his chest. His eyes were pitch-black with desire. “You told me that once before. Remember?”

Molly nodded mutely, her breath shallow and labored.

“And do you remember what I did then?” His voice was hushed, shaken.

Her eyes were large, infused with sudden tenderness.

“I told you what holding you did to me. I told you how every touch of your small hands set me on fire. Touch me. Touch me again, now, like you did then,” he implored, pulling her hand downward, “and you'll see the power you still have over me…”

She hesitated, but in her mind's eye she saw the hard length of him, and a shiver raced up her spine. “Could I take this a little more slowly?” she asked on a long exhalation of breath, trying to deal with ten years of longing and instant gratification simultaneously.

“As slow as you want, Honeybear.”

“I'm sorry.” She felt guilty somehow for her green uncertainty. “I want you very much,” she added in a whisper.

“I know.” She didn't have to tell him when their heated bodies were talking in their own fervent dialogue. “You're my sweet and earnest virgin,” he whispered back, lying over her with his erection hard against her stomach, their naked chests only inches apart, her hands trembling in his.

“I thought I was more blasй.”

“I'm glad you're not. I know half a world of blasй people, but I don't know any sweet and earnest virgins.” His grin was intoxicating, like a drug that touched your senses, curled into your nostrils, drifted down the back of your throat so you could taste its offered pleasure.

“I'm too old for trepidation,” she murmured, trembling.

“You're forever young to me. I'm feeling sensations-” He stopped to swallow, staggered by emotions he would have written off as mawkish sentiment two hours ago, seeing Molly as he had the first time…

His hand still covered hers, the heat of his palm so much warmer than her skin. “Do you remember what you used to call me?”

Tiger, tiger, burning bright… she silently recited, seeing Blake's potent icon, its animal spirit boldly evident in Carey's burning eyes. “Tiger,” she whispered, and the softly uttered name brought back every bittersweet memory of her youthful love. It brought back warm summer nights at the lake, lying in Carey's arms. It brought back the scent of wild roses and pine trees and crushed meadow grass. It brought back a rumpled bed in the moonlight, a strong young body holding her, filling her, teaching her about love and pleasure and fierce contentment.

“And do you remember,” he went on in a low voice, “what I said at the very last, after you'd whispered that to me?”

A hot rush of pleasure stabbed through her body, and though she didn't answer, her eyes told him she remembered.

His words were hushed, just as they'd been when his young body had hovered above hers on Mrs. Larsen's rented bed. “Try and stop me,” he said.

After that she was lost. Reaching up, she pushed his shirt from his shoulders. He helped, and with two impatient shrugs it was off completely and sliding to the floor. Molly's hands were trembling when they touched the zipper of his jeans. His hands covered hers, sliding them down over the strained denim. Pressing against his maleness, feeling the hard desire, the enormous size, she whimpered in shivering excitement. Carey's eyes closed for a brief moment, his breath in abeyance, then he swung up from the couch in one swift movement and stood. In a few seconds he was stripped to the naked beauty that always reminded Molly of sheer male strength. She caught only a glimpse of his marvelously made body, his maleness so rampant it hugged his belly before he was back beside her, unbuckling her belt, undoing buttons and zippers, slipping off her shoes, slacks, lace panties, all with a quiet haste that beat like drum rolls, that spread a fiery ache of anticipation through her.

“I'm not doing this right,” he murmured as he eased over her and lowered his body, an expression of intense concentration drawing his dark brows together. His hand was already reaching to touch her, to make way for the urgency that was exploding inside him. “But I can't wait,” he whispered, this man known for his skill as a lover. His breath was hot on her lips, his rigid arousal forcing its way into her soft, warm body. “God, Honeybear,” he groaned and thrust forward with a fierce, uncontrolled madness.

Molly cried out, passion flaring, and she arched up in ancient welcome as he filled her deeply, crushing her in an embrace that spoke of harsh need and restless homecoming. In mere seconds she felt him begin to shudder, felt his initial movement of withdrawal. “No,” she cried softly, her hands strong against his arching back. “Please stay,” she whispered, reaching up to kiss his mouth, his cheeks, his strong jaw.

“I can't,” he moaned, knowing she was wrong, knowing he shouldn't stay, knowing with the exception of a few youthful moments of reckless passion with her, he'd always been careful. Since Vietnam and Agent Orange, since bouts of nausea and intermittent periods of nerveless fingers and toes, he'd forced himself to be careful.

“Yes, you can,” Molly breathed. “Stay… don't leave me…” Her words were full of lush invitation and searing want, they were words for now and for the past. She looked up at his face in the lamplight, his eyes stark with strain, the predator's gaze softened by need, and she felt as though it were she who were the possessor, not he. It was a primeval emotion, a female feeling of triumph that defied explanation.

It was too late by then-moments past any rational decision.

She felt his unchecked trembling, the first small orgasmic spasm. This time when her demanding hands urged him closer, he capitulated, crushing her savagely close, grinding into her, pouring out his pent-up white-hot climax.

“Damn…” he breathed softly when it was over. His body still covered hers, impaled her, his face buried in the curve of her shoulder.

She was smiling in a way she'd forgotten existed, stroking his back, lazily sliding her hands down the heavy muscles bordering his spine, touching the smooth dip in the small of his back where pale, silky hair formed a swirling pattern. “It's all right.”

His head lifted, dark brows creased into a mild scowl. “It's not, and you know it.”

“No problem,” Molly said, moving her hips gently. Feeling his reaction, she smiled again.

He looked down at her face, contoured with the rosy flush of passion, and his scowl disappeared. “You're still the same.” A lopsided smile creased his cheek. “Still demanding.”

“You haven't changed, either,” she replied, a teasing light in her eyes, “except maybe a little more… impatient.”

“Sorry about that.”

“How sorry?” Her slim hips moved again with the requisite response.

“About two-minutes-more sorry,” he answered in a husky drawl.

“You always were reliable,” she announced graciously with an impudent, seductive smile.

His mouth quirked and his eyes crinkled in the corners. “I recall you commenting on that before.”

Gently arching upward, Molly wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him close. She felt the full length of him surge, strong and hard, deep within her waiting body.

His smoldering glance held her in a current of understanding. “This time, Honeybear, you can have as long as you want.” He said the words slowly in time with the driving motion of his lower body, his rich voice promising fulfillment. “You tell me how long you want.”

“A day, a week, a hundred years…” Molly dreamily murmured.

He began leisurely, as if the hundred years were beginning that moment. Teasing her, pleasing her, lightly kissing her, nibbling on her lips for an infinite amount of time, he whispered seductive words, words that shamelessly stroked the delicate mind centers of sexuality. With languid abandon she followed him or led him where she wanted to go. But he wouldn't allow her to order the pace, to order his strokes or hasten the excruciatingly disciplined pauses, or keep him deep inside her so it would be over too soon. He knew what she liked, he remembered as if they were both back in his bed at Mrs. Larsen's. He remembered, so he ignored her protests, whispering, “No, Honeybear, wait… wait.” With infinite skill he brought her pulses beating to such an intensity that when she climaxed she sobbed great, panting sobs of release. Then-fainted.

She had always been a spendthrift with her body, generous, reveling in the hurtling temptations of passion, wanting things too fast, he thought, wanting everything right now, wanting him. Thank God.

He put both his arms around her slim body, rolled over, and lifted her into his arms. She woke in a few moments, cradled against his body. He was stroking her hair, cuddling her. And when he saw her eyes flutter open and look up at him, he grinned at her and said, “Gotcha.”

She clung to his smiling warmth and strength, giving herself up to the joy of realizing that Carey Fersten, whom she'd never stopped loving, was holding her and kissing her and telling her the world would be right. Blotting out all thought, she abandoned herself to an incendiary happiness.

He queried her later with that essentially pragmatic side of his nature about the “no problem” comment. “On the pill?” he asked. Rarely permitting himself to surrender so completely, he was now troubled with his carelessness. “No?” he apprehensively uttered at her negative headshake. “Has your body altered into some regular schedule now, that you can so assuredly say, ‘no problem'?” he asked, startled and newly suspicious.

“Sort of.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he urgently demanded. She was half-turned into the curve of his chest and arm, and he lifted her within inches of his serious face.

“It means I think so. It means I'm more or less regular. It means I haven't slept with anyone for two years so I'm not totally certain if the regularity is regular or only that it hasn't been put to the test.”

He looked incredulous. “You're joking,” he said in a disbelieving voice. “You were joking before, right? Look,” he went on with a quick shrug, “it's none of my business, really.”

She slowly shook her head. “No joke.”

His brows arched in astonishment over narrowed eyes: “Not you, Honeybear.” Not only recent events but carefully preserved memory fostered his incredulity. “Don't expect me to believe that,” he crisply added.

Molly shrugged, innocent of deception, calmly acceptant of her own idiosyncracies. “They have to appeal. I told you and I mean it. And appeal is mystical, esoteric, an inexplicable feeling with me as the only authority.”

“They?” he said with territorial maleness, his black on black eyes piercing, jealous and edged with worldly cynicism.

“He,” she corrected, knowing even with Bart it had never been like it was with Carey. But she wasn't foolish enough to inform him of that fact. “He,” she repeated. “Don't get agitated,” she teased. “I always take men one at a time.”

“That's reassuring,” he mocked. “But not for what-two years?” His skepticism was blatant.

“Nope.”

And that single word inexpressibly gave him more pleasure than a thousand Cannes Film Awards. He didn't realize how moral he could be.

“Unlike you,” Molly returned. And despite her best intentions, an edginess came through. “Your prowess with starlets, models, Italian countesses is world news. Wasn't there a Berber beauty at the last location in Morocco? You see how busy the paparazzi are keeping us titillated Stateside.”

His own good mood restored, Carey reached out to smooth away the hostile line between Molly's pale brows. “Honeybear, I don't care about all those women. They're just there. It goes with the business.”

Mild affront greeted his casual disclaimer and too many photos over too many years colored her reply.

“Don't try to tell me there's no enjoyment in all that adulation.”

“They all want something,” he said, speaking deliberately. “Most of them, anyway,” he added, “and it's not necessarily me. They'll go after anyone who can give them a role, a job, a chance in a film. A lot of those beautiful women have been trained from birth to sniff out the scent of power. Understand? But no one has ever come close to touching what we had. You've always been in my heart, my soul, in hidden corners of my mind.”

“Tell me about Sylvie,” Molly said with impudent bad manners. Until today she'd never allowed herself to deal with the jealousy that had eaten at her when she first saw the wedding pictures splashed across the tabloids. The timing had been disastrous. Bart had just moved out of the house the month before for the first of their trial separations.

Carey grimaced. “A very bad mistake,” he said with rue in his voice. “I should have known better; but I'd turned thirty… thought maybe I should consider settling down. She'd moved into the villa and was… well, insistent.”

“And you married because some pretty German countess was insistent?”

“No, not really. If that was the case, I'd have been married any number of times. But don't forget, love,” he added to forestall the flashes of fire in her eyes, “insistence does play a role occasionally. Remember Bart? Hmmm?”

“Touchй,” Molly admitted, her temper deflected by the reminder.

“You lasted a long time. What-six, seven years?”

“Eight. I was dumb. Stubborn. Believed in marriage till death do us part. And then there was Carrie. She needed a mother and father. Or at least I thought so.”

“What finally changed your mind?” he asked curiously.

Molly sighed. “The proverbial straw was when one of his girlfriends came over to the house to return the wallet Bart had ‘forgotten.' He told me he was going out of town on business. Arizona in winter. The girl had a beautiful tan. At that point, I decided Carrie would have to make do with a one-parent family, anxieties or no anxieties. It was better than having a murderer for a mother.”

“I'm sorry,” Carey said quietly. “I wish I could have been there to help.”

“It probably was better I went through it alone. I grew up beaucoup fast. Finally recognized the frustration as counter-productive, started shifting priorities and revising my notions of marriage to more accurately reflect my reality, not someone else's. I learned to take care of my own life and enjoy the freedom. It was, as they say, educational.”

“And Bart?”

“Bart who?”

“Does your daughter miss him?”

“He was never home much.”

“Oh,” Carey said, startled. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be, or I'll have to be sorry for you and Sylvie,” Molly responded pertly.

Carey broke into a grin. “That would be a great waste of emotion.”

“Ditto, in my case. Underlined, exclamation points.”

“Do you think we made a mistake somewhere down the line, Honeybear?”

“I'd be inclined to conclude perhaps our judgment in spouses had a flaw or two,” she agreed with an easy smile. “Although,” she went on, her tone less facetious, “my marriage wasn't so different from others I knew. None of my friends adored their husbands. No one thought marriage was made in heaven. We all agreed that marriage was a mutual compromise, a great deal of hard work and an occasional sweet, tender moment in a hectic schedule. All the men had their flings, and lots of the wives did, too. That was life. We were mature adults. We read the statistics on marital fidelity and understood life's passages. I didn't expect to have a marriage different from anyone else's. But…” She seemed to reflect for a moment, considering.

“But what?” Carey inquired, wanting to know everything about the years he'd missed: how she felt, what she cared about, how she lived. He stroked her back, for the pleasure of feeling her warmth, for the reassurance.

She propped her chin on the flattened back of her hand, gathered comfort from the solid feel of his chest beneath her palm, and tried to explain her coming of age in America. “I finally decided,” she said very softly, “I wanted more. More, in capital letters. It wasn't a sudden revelation. Just a small germ of an idea that grew and wouldn't be set aside. I realized in the slow evolution of this concept that I didn't care what other people were settling for-the house in the right neighborhood, the new cars, boats, vacations, memberships in the clubs that mattered, the trade-offs for the void in their marriages. I didn't want to be in a marriage that was just okay. Even being alone, I decided couldn't be any worse than ‘just okay.' And hell, I thought, it could be a whole lot better. At least I wouldn't be running into any more girls with winter tans returning my husband's wallet.”

“Was it better?”

“It was great. It was hard work and scary sometimes when the money was low, but independence is primo.”

The warm glow in her eyes was just as he remembered. She was so intensely alive that other women seemed pale in comparison. He used to go through the intellectual games occasionally when his spirits were disastrously low, because thinking of Molly was like popping a pleasure pill. And he'd mentally catalog all her charming assets: her radiant beauty; how she could make him laugh; the way she felt when she clung to him, lush as silk, hot and wanting him with a ferocity that matched his own. And her smile. It was the eighth wonder of the world.

“How independent has your independence become?” he asked cautiously, remembering her fierce streak that had generated many clashes that summer when his own independence met hers. They'd never quite learned to deal with it then.

“I'm not eighteen anymore,” she said and looked him straight in the eye.

“In that case, a quick refresher in the Queensberry rules might be in order.” One dark brow rose in provocative challenge.

“Is that the sound of the bell?” she asked, but her eyes were amused.

“We'll have to see how much you've learned in ten years. How many rounds can you go now before I win?”

“What makes you think you'll win?”

“I always win,” he murmured. Her eyes were emitting little sparks now, so he touched her cheek with a caressing finger and whispered, “Used to win… And,” he said with a grin, “in the interests of future universal harmony, I'd better see that you get home, for your mom and dad and Carrie.” He glanced at the clock. “We'd better fly.”

“What about my car?”

Junk it, I'll get you a new one, he thought. “Someone will drive it back,” he said instead.

“Someone?”

“There's about two hundred people up here on my payroll. I'm sure one of them has a driver's license.”

“What if I say I'll drive myself back?”

Carey smiled. “I'd forgotten how difficult you could be. Don't you like to fly?”

“I'm used to running my own life. You get a taste for it, like rattlesnake meat.” She slid away from him and sat up.

“Okay, okay, no problem… I'll drive back with you and Jess can fly down and pick me up.”

“Carey!”

“Hey,” he responded, wondering what he'd said wrong now. “I'm being understanding as hell. You make your own decision.”

“From a list of your choices?” Molly asked testily.

“Look.” His voice was quiet, his glance placid. “Arrange it anyway you like, only I'm staying with you until you get home because I don't want to miss a minute of our first night together in ten long years. In the morning I've got to shoot come hell or high water. Delays cost eighty thousand a day. You have to work tomorrow, you already primly informed me; your daughter needs you; your mother and father expect you and your banker, who holds your note currently up for renewal, wants his interest money. Only until tomorrow morning, I'm going to stay with you. Now, should we try and eat quickly before we leave? You haven't tasted my fettucini since I learned how to cook and I love you no matter what you say, but keep in mind I outweigh you by at least ninety pounds when you decide how to respond.”

“You love me?” Molly said so softly her words wouldn't have carried another inch.

“Always have,” he said, equally softly.

“I wish I would have known…”

“I know, Honeybear… It's been the longest ten years of my life. But,” he went on briskly, shaking away his melancholy and reaching for her, “the next hundred are going to be great.”

As it turned out, they were chauffeured down to the Cities in Carey's limousine while Molly's car, driven by one of Carey's numerous employees followed behind.

Isolated in the plush darkness of the backseat, Molly and Carey watched the late show and the late, late show, seated hand in hand, kissing occasionally or just squeezing each other's hand in a message of contentment.

The sun was rising when they reached Molly's.

“I'll call you tonight,” Carey said. “Don't go away.”

“You're going to be late getting back.”

He debated his answer for a moment. “Jess is waiting at the airport.”

She grinned. “I can see it's going to take awhile to whip you into shape.”

His brows rose and fell like Groucho Marx. “I'll hurry back.”

And they were both giggling when they kissed good-bye.