Kathleen Creighton - Memory of Murder

“Yes.” Finally, she walked past him and into the room. He closed the door, then turned to find her gazing at him, arms wrapped across her body, eyes fierce and bright. “I keep thinking about how it felt when you held me the other day. I’ve thought about it quite a lot, actually. I thought it felt very, very good.”

“Yes,” Alan said. “I thought so, too.”

“So,” she said on another breath, “maybe you wouldn’t mind too much, holding me right now.” She gave him only a split second, then rushed on. “I know you think it’s a bad idea-I get that. I just want you to know I won’t expect anything-”

“Hush,” he said, and folded her into his arms.

But, after a small, faint gasp, she went on talking. “Except tonight. I just need you to get me through this night. Please help me…”

“Like the song says?” he asked with a husky laugh.

She pulled back to stare at him. “What song?”

“‘Help Me Make It Through The Night…’”

Nestled once more against his chest, her laugh was a tiny whimper of sound. “Oh. I was thinking of, ‘Make The World Go Away.’”

“I guess this probably beats the hell out of a bottle of Scotch,” he said after a moment, when neither of them had moved.

“I’ve never been much of a drinker,” she whispered, turning her face toward his. “Me, neither.”

What the hell, he thought as he took her mouth. It wasn’t the first time he’d known something was a bad idea and gone ahead and done it anyway.

She was glad when he turned the light off. Less glad that he didn’t undress her. Leaving that choice up to her might have derailed the whole thing, if she’d been less determined. Less desperate. But she’d disengaged her thinking mind when she’d left her room and gone to knock on his door, and it was without thinking that she took off her clothes in the kindly darkness and laid them neatly over the room’s only upholstered chair. She turned back toward him, and watched him in the faint light that leaked into the room from outside the uncurtained window, watched him tug the bedcovers back, then hold out his hand to her. She took it, and he drew her to the bed, then got in and held the covers open for her. Once again, leaving the choice up to her. She could come to him…or not.

She felt her heart thumping with appalling force inside her chest. Moving in a dream, not thinking, she sat on the edge of the mattress and lay down beside him. The cool, crisp sheets settled over them both.

She lay in the darkness with the rain pulling a curtain of sound around them, shivering at first, curled tightly against him-this man she barely knew-with her fist nested in his chest hair, the thump-thump of his heart loud in her ear and her hand rising and falling with his slow, even breaths. She closed her eyes, and the images came and played through her mind like an old-time newsreel, the faces, one after the other: A lovely young girl, the bride and her groom…like children playing at a make-believe wedding. A little boy, laughing and fat in his snowsuit, throwing snow at his mother. Her mother and father-her daddy, the one she knew and adored-gazing at her with love and pride. Her mother’s face as she’d seen it last, haunted and terrified…her dad’s face growing sadder and sadder by the day. Holt Kincaid, a grown man asking in a man’s voice a child’s question: Why?

The pain came and this time she didn’t fight it but let it wash over her in waves and waves, and he-this hardened cop, this man she barely knew-stroked her gently, so gently, until gradually the pain subsided and the shivering stopped and her body grew heavy and supple, and unfurled along his side the way a flower opens in the sun.

“I should have known you’d be so gentle,” she whispered. “So kind. You are a kind, gentle man, Detective Cameron.”

He gave a snort of laughter and growled, “That’s just what every homicide cop wants to hear.”

“I’m sorry. It’s true, though.”

“How do you know? You don’t know me that well.”

“Maybe not well, but I know that . I saw it that first day I met you, you know-the way you were with my mother.”

He didn’t reply, and after a moment she added, “I knew that you wouldn’t turn me away, even if you do think you shouldn’t-”

“Hush,” he said for the second time, and raised himself so that he loomed above her, big and solid in the darkness. His head swooped down, blotting out what light there was, and his mouth found hers unerringly.

She gave a gasp and sank into it-the sheer pleasure of being kissed, held, stroked. Sank into it as she would a hot tub, sighing with the pure sensual pleasure.

After a while-she lost all track of time-he lifted his head and said in a soft growl, “Maybe I’m not all that kind. Maybe I just want to make love to you. Did you ever think of that?”

She laughed, and just as softly growled back, “That’s okay, too. Make love to me, then.”

Her eyes closed and she didn’t notice or care; her body was doing what it wanted, with no direction from her thinking mind. She felt his lips brush her eyelids…his hands cradle her head while his thumbs stroked her cheeks…so lightly, so tenderly.

And it was the tenderness that was her undoing.

Prickles washed through her body in a stinging shower, a wave of longing that caught her unawares. It was pain, yes, but different from the other, the pain that had weighed her down and brought her to this almost-stranger’s bed in the dead of night. This was bright and breathtaking, and she let herself be carried on it, into a realm of fantasy…of possibility…of what if?

What if this wasn’t just for tonight, but for always?

What if it wasn’t just making love, but love?

What if I love him?

What if he could love me?

What if he does?

So easily, the lines between fantasy and reality blurred and ran, like watercolors in the rain. She felt as if she’d always known him, this man who held her and touched her so tenderly. His hands seemed to know her body better than she did. His mouth, his fingers, his body came into her most intimate places, not as explorers, but as loved ones welcomed home.

She felt safe in his hands. Beyond the gentleness, there was strength in this man. How did she know that? It wasn’t something she asked herself, then, her mind having disengaged from her body. It was just something her body knew . She was safe in his hands.

“Make love to me,” she whispered, not even remembering she’d already said it.

He didn’t reply with words, but simply did as she asked.

He’d never known a woman like this, so completely immersed in the act of making love, so utterly without reservation, self-consciousness or inhibition. Yet, not in a frantic way. Her body was pliant…relaxed, her movements so languorous and sweet he felt as though he could sink into her and lose himself there completely.

Her joy, her pleasure, her delight in his touch, his kisses, made him feel bigger, better, stronger. More. More of everything good and admirable than he’d ever felt in his life before. He felt blessed and yet humbled, as if he’d been entrusted with a great treasure to cherish and protect. Which should have been daunting, perhaps, except he also felt completely up to the task. Not only that, it seemed to him he was the only man alive who would be.

She sighed when he kissed her…swelled under his hands. He no longer heard the rain or saw the darkness, because the world was her, and him…nothing more. Just the two of them and then, so easily, so naturally, one.

Being inside her seemed so right, the only place he could be, then, the only place he felt he belonged, as if he’d come home after a long, long time in exile. He felt a swelling in his chest, an unanticipated sting behind his eyelids, and quickly ducked his head to claim her mouth again, releasing emotions in a way he could understand and allow-in passion.