Сандра Браун - Adam's Fall

Keeping her eyes on his, she pulled the stretchy knit tank top over her head. She held her arms high above her for several seconds before gradually lowering them and dropping the tank top on the floor. Her hair sifted back into place and settled on her bare shoulders. Adam followed each movement His eyes glowed their approval of her breasts and their taut, coral centers.

Lilah reached behind her for the button on her shorts. Her fingers had lost their usual dexterity, but she managed to get the shorts unfastened and unzipped. She hesitated a tempting moment before inching them down over her hips, then letting them slide down her legs to the floor. She stepped out of them, leaving her in only a sheer pair of briefs. Her characteristic arrogance evaporated. Her smile was shy, half-formed, and uncertain. Terribly arousing to the man on the bed.

"Come closer," he ordered gruffly.

Lilah took hesitant baby steps to bring her even with the side of his bed and within his reach. He extended his hand and touched the faint white scar that marked her childhood appendectomy. He drew a breathtaking circle around her navel. His fingertip slowly traced the triangular perimeter of her bikini briefs. "Pretty," he said of the ice-blue lace panel and the delicate blond cloud behind it.

He slid his hand beneath the lacy elastic strip that rode her hipbone. His hand was very warm against the cool flesh it conformed to. His thumb revolved over her hipbone. Even after he withdrew his hand, he lingered to play with the lacy elastic.

"Finish."

"I … I can't, Adam."

"Why?"

"I'm nervous."

"Surely you've undressed in front of a man before."

She made a helpless gesture. "But it was always … I mean — "

"Please, Lilah."

The appeal on his face melted the last of her modesty. With only a trace of reservation she slipped her thumbs into the waistband and worked the briefs down until she could step out of them. Then she, who didn't have a single modest cell, who had always scorned those who did, who had no misgivings about the human body in any form, straightened and faced him bashfully.

Adam swore softly. "I knew you'd be beautiful, but…" He was too busy visually feasting on her to complete his sentence. "Lie down."

His arms, made steely and powerful because of all the demands he'd made on them lately, encircled her waist. He drew her down and close against him. Madly he kissed her hair, her temples, her nose, her cheeks, finally her mouth.

With a low moan, he said. "Ah, that feels good."

"Nakedness?"

"No. This."

He took her hand and carried it beneath the sheet and down his body. Quite naturally and of their own accord, Lilah's fingers closed tightly around the iron warmth of his sex. He hissed another string of swear words and sought her lips with his. Their kiss was deep and hungry, their tongues carnal and selfish.

Reaching down, Adam positioned her thigh to lie over his. His palm smoothed her hip, the back of her thigh. Together they sighed.

"Can you feel that?" she wanted to know.

"I can feel the pressure. I can feel your skin. I can feel this." Slipping his hand between their bodies, he touched the feathery softness between her thighs. Her reaction was electrical. She shuddered violently.

He hesitated. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, no. You didn't hurt me at all."

She ground her forehead against his breastbone as his fingers pressed into her creamy softness. Clutching his shoulders so hard that her nails bit into his flesh, and squeezing her eyes closed, she surrendered to the sensations his stroking fingers evoked. She rocked her body upon his hand. Heat waves of pleasure radiated through her, each one more exquisite than the one preceding it, until she was consumed by them.

And even for moments afterward they shimmied through her, tiny shock waves of light and ecstasy.

When at last she opened her eyes and raised her head, she realized that his arms were no longer around her, but resting at his sides. He was lying against the pillows, his face expressionless and cold. His eyes were open but sightless. Worst of all, he was no longer aroused.

"Adam?" She had barely enough air to make a sound, but she knew he had heard her. He said nothing, so she repeated his name.

"You'd better leave me alone now," he said curtly. "I'm tired."

Lilah stared at him with misapprehension. Remorsefully she eased away. She paused, but when he made no move to stop her, she swung herself over the edge of the bed. Mortified and confused, she swept up her discarded clothing and fled the room.

She was glad the guest bedroom had a ceiling fan. That gave her something to stare at. She had watched it for hour after hour as the blades circled above the bed, stirring the air and drying her tears into salty tracks as they fell onto her cheeks.

She must have reviewed it at least a thousand times in her head, but she still couldn't pin down a logical explanation for Adam's behavior. His blood had been running high and hot. What had turned it so cold so fast? What? What had she done? What hadn't she done?

Anguished and miserable, she rolled to her side. One tear was too heavy for the fan to dry. It slid down her cheek, rolled off the tip of her nose, and splashed onto her pillow. She rebuked it … and all its predecessors and successors. She never cried. She never, never cried over a man. It made her furious that she was breaking that rule and weeping over Adam Cavanaugh. What a heartless cad he'd been to virtually kick her out of his bed.

Yet he hadn't been smug about it. It wasn't as though he had used her and disposed of her like a plastic razor. If anything, he had appeared more shattered than she. But why when she had given him what he wanted and needed, when he had proved himself capable of —

The thought crystallized and gave her pause.

Slowly she rolled to her back again. Her lips parted in surprise. Why hadn't she thought of it sooner? Clearly now, she recalled Adam's face as it had looked when she left him. Not triumphant. Quite the contrary. Failure had been stamped on his features. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to look at her. He hadn't wanted her to look at him.

Absently she rubbed all traces of tears off her cheeks and whispered something unladylike into the darkness. "No wonder he was upset."

She knew Adam's body intimately. He had a small birthmark in the shape of Utah on the underside of his upper arm. He had stepped on a tin can at the beach when he was a kid, and the cut had left a scar on his heel. There was a dusting of soft, fuzzy body hair in the small of his back.

But just as intimately as she knew his physiology, she knew his psyche. She knew what made him tick. She knew how he thought. Given any set of circumstances, she would be able to make an educated guess what Adam's reaction would be to those circumstances.

And because she knew him so well, she now understood what had upset him.

She also realized what she would have to do about it. It would cost her some pride, but that hardly seemed of consequence when the quality of a man's life was at stake. The method she had in mind was highly unethical, surely grounds to have her license as a physical therapist revoked. Nonetheless she would do what she must. Her motivation was the strongest known to man short of survival: Love.

Lilah breezed into Adam's room the following morning, looking as chipper as Flamingo Wing lipstick and half a tube of dark-eye-circle concealer could make her look.

"Morning, Ace. How goes it?" Adam was sitting in his wheelchair, staring out the window. His mood was morose, just as she had predicted.

"Fine."

"Sleep well?"

"I slept okay."

"Pete said you didn't eat much breakfast."

"What are you, my mother?"