Сандра Браун - Adam's Fall

"That's hardly a correlation."

She sighed with exasperation. "What do you suggest, that I brand a big red V on my forehead?"

He linked his hands at the small of her back and held her tightly. Nuzzling her neck, he said, "It's too late now."

"That's right. So why are you making such a big deal out of it?"

"I was surprised. No, shocked is a better word. And you still haven't given me a straight answer."

"I never wanted to make love before. It's as simple as that."

He was already shaking his head. "No, it goes deeper." He tried to delve into her eyes and find the truth, but she wouldn't hold eye contact long enough. "Does this have anything to do with that conversation we had about your feelings of inadequacy?"

"Of course not!"

"Bingo."

She glared at him. "Okay, maybe it does, what of it?"

"You're a beautiful, funny, sensual, sexy woman, that's what of it. Why have you deprived yourself of the most fulfilling experience the human being can enjoy?"

"Because if there was a way to mess up the most fulfilling experience the human being can enjoy, I would have found it."

Adam softened his tone. "Care to expound?"

"No, but I will since I get the impression you're going to persist until I do."

"Right."

She drew a deep breath of resignation and expulsed it slowly. "I figured that I would be as clumsy and awkward about sex as I was about everything else. I don't mean in bed exactly. I mean all the trappings that go with it. I was afraid I'd get pregnant despite precautions. I'd be the one and a half percent the pills didn't work on. I was afraid that I'd fall in love with the guy but he wouldn't fall in love with me, or the reverse." Her wide blue eyes appealed to him to understand. "I know it sounds ridiculous now, but I'd flubbed everything else I had ever tried."

"Except basketball and tennis. Elizabeth told me."

"Well, I was okay skillwise, but I got kicked off the high school basketball team."

"Dare I ask why?"

"For sewing a row of sequins on the hem of my trunks. Well, those uniforms were ugly , Adam," she stressed when he burst out laughing. "And men would get mad as hell when I beat them at tennis, so I quit playing. See? It followed that I'd fail at sex too."

A trace of vulnerability had crept into her voice, though she was unaware of it. "I didn't want another failure on my record. By the time I was old enough to say yea or nay to any guy who happened to ask, Elizabeth was married to John Burke. She was the perfect little homemaker. Her husband adored her. She gave birth to absolutely gorgeous, precious, precocious babies. If I had entered into a relationship with a man, it would end in some kind of dreadful tangle."

"But you dated."

"Yes, lots of men. But I always halted them before the final countdown."

"Poor suckers."

"Hey, the dates didn't come with a guarantee for goodies. It wasn't as though I made promises and then welshed. I didn't love any of them, so I didn't care if they read the signals wrong then ranted and raved, called me names, went away in a huff, and never asked me out again."

"But Lilah, the way you act, the way you talk, you can't blame a man for feeling manipulated if you don't come through."

"I guess not," she admitted. "But there was too much at stake. Everything I was, everything that makes me Lilah was at risk, and I just never thought it was a risk worth taking." Her gaze grew lambent. "At least, not until this afternoon. Now I know what I've been missing."

"Don't look at me like that, you little hustler. You should have gone into advertising. You sure as hell know how to package the product and launch a convincing campaign. You've turned a self-defense mechanism into an art form." His eyes moved over her, taking in the tousled hair, her lips, which were rouged by his kisses, the I'm-game-for-anything glint in her eyes. "God, you're sexy."

"You thought I was an easy lay."

"Certainly not easy," he said, chuckling, "but definitely worth the trouble." He pressed his palms over her derriere. "With your lusty nature you were loaded and primed. No wonder you were so quick to fire yesterday."

Lilah actually blushed. "What you were doing to me, I couldn't help it." His mouth spread into a wide grin. "Proud of yourself, are you, Cavanaugh? Well, don't get smug. As you've so ungallantly put it, I was primed. Any man could have pulled the trigger."

"But you didn't let any other man," he reminded her softly. "You let me. Why?"

Smoothing his eyebrow with the pad of her thumb, she thoughtfully considered her answer. "Maybe I knew you'd be grateful for a guinea pig and wouldn't mind my amateur performance. In fact, I knew you'd feel more self-confident with an amateur."

"You're no amateur. You're a natural. I feel sorry for all those poor slobs who tried to bed you and failed. But I'm glad they did."

He cupped the back of her head and forced her face down to his. With their lips pressed together hard, his tongue boldly entered her mouth. He separated her thighs with caressing hands. His touch was delicate and deliberate and deadly to her senses.

"Adam," she said on a ragged sigh, "can we do it again? Once more with feeling."

"Yes, yes," he moaned. "I can do it again. Now I know I can do anything."

His self-confidence hadn't flagged when he woke up the following morning. He tossed back the covers and for a second, intended to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and do some calisthenics as he had done every morning of his adult life until his accident.

With the return of awareness there usually came a depression too. This morning, however, he smiled and willed away that depression.

He was invincible. He could do anything. He had successfully made love to a woman. The return of sexual facility was only the beginning. He would soon be able to walk. Then to run. And it was all because of the woman lying beside him.

With a fond smile he turned his head and was disappointed to see that Lilah was no longer there. All night they had remained coiled together on the narrow hospital bed. The pillow bore the imprint of her head, the sheets the scent of her body, but sometime in the wee hours of the morning, after he'd finally fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, she had evidently sneaked back to her own room.

Adam laughed to himself. If she had done that for Pete's benefit, she was wasting her time. Weeks ago Pete had dispensed some unsolicited advice, telling his boss that he should "Keep Rirah in bed. Make rove all day. Then she not talk so much, not be so wired."

Adam laughed again, this time out loud, thinking about all the times last night when Lilah had opened her mouth to speak only to have it stoppered by one of his kisses. Frequently he had kissed her into silence. Or near silence. She made that little catchy sound in her throat that never failed to arouse him. Just thinking about it made the blood in his loins grow thick and warm.

As for being wild, she was a tigress of a lover. When stroked, she purred. When excited, she snarled. God forbid that she ever be tamed.

Lilah a virgin, he thought, chuckling and shaking his head in patent disbelief.

He worked his shorts up his legs. Wearing nothing more, he hoisted himself into his chair. He didn't even have to think about the movements anymore. They had gone from seemingly impossible to second nature under Lilah's incessant instruction. Often he had wanted to banish her from the planet when she nagged him to do one more despised exercise. Now he was grateful for her dictatorship. Look at all she'd done for him.

When he entered the hall, he glanced at her door and saw that it was closed. He aimed his chair in the opposite direction, toward the elevator, and rode it down to the first floor. Pete wasn't in the kitchen nor in his apartment.