Jennifer Greene - Conquer the Memories

She encouraged the black maillot down her long, slender legs until it fell like a little puddle on her toes. Stepping out of the shadows, she gave the suit an impish kick in Craig’s direction. The moonlight shimmered down on her bare skin like a cloak of silk. “Want to swim?” For a big man, he could certainly move fast. His canvas shorts joined hers on the deck. “What I want, ” he growled, “is to hear what the hell happened. Keeping in mind that with that attitude, I’m surprised your parents didn’t keep you permanently locked up.”

He was aroused, she noted. They hadn’t even touched, and he was…definitely, vibrantly, aroused. And coming toward her.

She took a swift step to the ladder, stepped up and around the rail, and posed for a racing dive. “Heck, he kissed like a fish,” Sonia called over her shoulder. “I decided all that sex stuff was vastly overrated. Of course, when I was seventeen…” She sent one quick, teasing grin over her shoulder before diving in.

The water was cool and dark and buoyant-all delightful qualities to cool her husband off, Sonia considered. Except that his hands were cleaving through the water as if he were in the Olympics. Which would be fine, if gold medals were all he wanted to get his hands on.

And it wasn’t time. His wanting to touch her wasn’t enough.

She held her breath and went down, deep down, and switched directions. Evidently, she hadn’t gone as deep as she planned, because their toes touched once, and she heard a garbled sound ringing through the night air when she surfaced. She was hardly about to let that slow her down. She lapped around the boat once, then twice, then a third time. Craig was by far the better swimmer but lacked the basic, purely feminine deviousness to keep changing directions on a whim.

Gasping, Sonia took the last lap around the boat and reached for the ladder. Water streamed from her body as she pulled herself up, and a quick chill trembled on her bare skin in spite of the warm night air. By the time Craig heaved himself up behind her, she was swathed in floor-length white terry cloth, all chaste and prim.

“No sharks got me,” she said demurely.

“The night is young.”

Unfortunately, yes, she thought sadly. The night was young and an ideal one for lovers, and Sonia managed to keep the two of them busy gathering up the telescope and pillows and whatever. Down in the cabin there were a few other little washing-up chores from dinner. Sonia showered first, and while Craig was washing the salt water off himself, she was burrowing under the covers and forcing her eyes closed and trying to make her breathing seem even.

Craig clicked open the shower door and stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist. His pulse was racing at an odd rate. It had been racing that way all day. Sonia was the cause, and when he stepped out into their stateroom, there was a glint of something dark and unfathomable in his eyes. Torture would have been easier to handle than the teasing that Sonia had handed out all day.

At first he’d been amused by her antics. Sonia had never been predictable. He loved that in her, but sometime earlier that day his humor had died. In part, he thought she’d just been playing, enjoying the high that came with their impromptu vacation. In part, he’d been so wrapped up in his own problems that he hadn’t really thought out her motivations. And in part, perhaps, after living on the ragged edge of frustration for so many weeks, he just hadn’t noticed that Sonia’s behavior was distinctly out of character.

Dropping the towel, he spotted her curled-up form on the bed. His pulse abruptly stopped racing. Sonia was totally still, except for the odd pattern of her breathing.

She wasn’t asleep, only pretending to be.

Very quietly, he turned out the light. Instead of joining her in bed, he slipped out into the salon, closing the door behind him. Collapsing in a chair with his head thrown back, he closed his eyes.

She didn’t want him to make love to her? She’d been sending him sexual S.O.S. signals all day.

It was past time he figured out what game she was playing. He felt as if he’d been kicked, hard and painfully, in the ribs. For weeks, he’d survived his own deprivation. That wasn’t the same thing at all as being deprived of his right to love her, please her, touch her. A man could survive a hell of a lot longer without food than without water. And no, he wasn’t in a desert.

His heart was just beginning to feel as if he were lost in one.

Craig woke to find himself alone in the bed, his arms curled around a pillow. He groped for his watch on the bedside table. It was barely six. Not a likely hour for Sonia to be up and around-barring World War III or Christmas.

Unless she was making a distinct effort to be out of touching range whenever he was around.

Again.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he broodingly tossed the pillow aside and dragged a hand through his hair. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the faint scream of gulls fishing for their breakfast. A brilliant sun was trying to peek through the opaque curtains of their cabin, and beneath his feet the boat undulated in peaceful sway.

None of that peace touched the almost violent determination inside his head. He’d gone to bed with the mood, he’d slept with it, and again awoke to the same powerful, indefinable feelings gnawing at him. He felt driven to the wall. But hadn’t he driven himself there?

Impatiently, he stood up and reached for his jeans. Very few minutes later, after splashing his face with cold water and raking a brush through his hair, he stalked barefoot over the thick carpet toward the salon.

He stopped abruptly when he saw Sonia with her head buried in the refrigerator, her back to him. Silently plunging his hands into his back pockets, for a while he just studied her. During the night, he’d come to several conclusions about what she was up to, which now appeared rather useless. In a single glance, he could see very quickly that her game plan had changed. For one thing, she was wearing a bra, and she certainly hadn’t done that in the past thirty-six hours.

And she’d pulled on an oversized T-shirt that denied any claim to sexiness; it was blue and wrinkled and voluminous. Beneath it, he could just see the bottoms of her white shorts when she bent over. Her hair was pulled back with a terry-cloth band, and she wasn’t wearing even a touch of makeup; her skin was clear and soft and golden, her lips their natural color.

She hadn’t spotted him yet. She was too busy noisily stirring orange juice in a pitcher with a big wooden spoon. When that was done she yawned, a huge, lazy yawn.

For the first time in days, Craig felt a natural smile form on his own lips.

A very complicated set of devils had been chasing him for weeks. For an instant, they receded, and it was as if a spring had uncoiled, a key unlocked some door. Love, at times, could be foolishly simple. And as powerful as the pulse suddenly erratically beating in his throat. Sonia was that power, and her feminine games had been driving him nuts. Tease and withdraw, tease and withdraw-they’d never played those kind of games with each other. Sonia was very subtle and had never played such immature tricks as trying to make him jealous of her former beaux. Exhibitionism. Chase. Tease.

If she thought she was actually getting away with something, she was terribly…right. Every male nerve ending would have been delighted to explode very early last night. All night long, he’d felt on the fragile edge of violence.

And this morning, if her choices of bulky T-shirt and sweatband were supposed to calm anyone-in-particular’s raging libido, they had certainly failed. Her breasts were well buried and her fanny hidden…and neither had anything to do with the essential desirability of Sonia. She was terribly mistaken if she thought they did.