He wanted to make love.
She wanted to make love. She could smell the lake and the trees. She could feel the night all around them like something tangible, privacy and darkness and silence. The rich scent of the man only added to that, a primal, evocative scent that she could inhale, that filled her lungs.
He was leaning over her, his hands parting her jeans. His hands slipped inside the fabric, almost but not quite touching… She murmured at his teasing. As he shifted her just a little, one of his hands slipped to her back, sliding the jeans over the curves of her hips, then down over her thighs, over her calves, then off.
The cool night air was enough to make her shiver-she reached instinctively for him-but not quite enough to make her open her eyes. She was loving the sensations coursing through her too much to open her eyes; in the darkness every nerve ending, every heartbeat, every tactile sense was intensified. Desire was a soft, silky cloud covering all of her, protective and luxurious and sweetly wild.
Her hand brushed his thigh, then moved up to where his legs parted, vaguely aware that for some reason her own legs were no longer cold, but covered by the fabric of a sleeping bag she didn’t want. She wanted freedom to twist her legs around him, to scissor him close. He wanted the same. She could feel his arousal in her hand, through his jeans; she could hear his sucked-in breath in that night silence.
She opened her eyes.
Their gaze met that instant in the darkness. Brooding and indigo-dark, his eyes were filled with desire, as deep as the night. She could see a pearl of moisture on his forehead. Two pearls. A row of them. Abruptly, he moved her hand, tucked it into the sleeping bag and zipped the fabric up around her.
“Kyle-”
“Dammit. Sleep, Erica.”
She heard him rustling next to her. While she’d been dozing in the Jeep, he’d been busy. He had spread a tarp beneath both their sleeping bags to ward off the night’s dampness; their totes were next to both of them. She heard him take off his jeans and slide into the sleeping bag not two feet away from her. He turned on his side, facing away; by that time her eyes had adjusted to the starlight.
Her whole body ached, trying to cope with rejection. In nine years of marriage, she knew his body as well as her own. He had wanted her. His body was stiff with tension from wanting her now; he wasn’t sleeping. She knew Morgan was the problem; and she still wasn’t sure how to bridge the distance between them. It mattered too much that Kyle believe her. “Kyle…”
His tone was abrupt, as if he’d been waiting for her to try. “We’re here to talk, Erica. Not make love.”
She took a shaky breath. “You can’t think I would let anyone else touch me, Kyle. Not intimately. I know you don’t believe that. Please let me tell you what happened-”
“There’s no need to,” he said harshly. “I know, Erica. Now leave it and we’ll talk in the morning.”
For a long time, she stared up at the sky. Separating was what he wanted to talk about in the morning; she understood that. Believing she’d been with Morgan had only intensified the feelings she’d been afraid he’d had all along. He was angry and he was proud and he’d built an impenetrable wall between them…and she thought of the sweatshirt that he must have dug out solely to make sure she was warm, of the possessive way he had cradled her to him, of his light kiss on her forehead as he’d carried her to the sleeping bag.
No, Kyle, she thought. I just don’t understand, I’ll admit that, but you’re going to have to work harder than you know even to bring up the subject of separating.
She awoke to a watery sunlight on her face and the screeching calls of gulls. Totally disoriented, she sat up immediately…to see the most desolate stretch of beach she had ever seen in her life, strewn with driftwood and fallen logs. Behind her, tall birch and spruce encroached almost to the water’s edge. Birds were screaming as they fished for their breakfast, and there was water as far as the eye could see ahead of her, beginning with a splashing, foamy little surf, the lake smoothing to glass beyond.
Rationally, she knew they had reached Vermilion last night, but the fact didn’t register until she looked east. The lighthouse, a hundred yards away, was a crumbling structure, all but covered with sand as if it had been deserted for centuries. There was no sign that any human being had been here in years. The silence was eerie, ghostly. Perhaps too many ships’ captains had tried to save themselves by following the lighthouse beacon. The air around the whispering sand had a give-up sort of sadness, the isolation complete.
Erica turned quickly to the sound of copper pot meeting copper cup. Kyle’s sleeping bag was next to her, but empty. The Jeep was farther down the beach, and the sounds came from the other side of it, along with a wisp of smoke that said Kyle was up and fixing breakfast and had probably built a driftwood fire.
She crouched in the sand and brought out clothes quickly from her tote, suddenly half smiling-at herself. Her first need was a bathroom, the lack of which startled more than appalled her. Spoiled, Erica… There might not be any marble taps or makeup mirrors, but a few thousand acres of privacy lay in the woods beyond the beach.
She headed for the trees. Fallen pine needles, softened with weather and brushed with sand, made a carpet for her bare feet. Inside the woods, it was instantly cool. The breeze from the lake was incredibly crisp; on the beach she had been conscious only of the steady beating of the sun.
She stripped completely and put on fresh jeans and a short-sleeved lime-colored top, leaving her feet bare as she started, with toothbrush in hand, for the shore again. Marital crisis notwithstanding, one did not begin a day without brushing one’s teeth…
She yelped when her bare toes tested the water. The playful surf was like ice just melted, and the stones that made up the shoreline were smooth and slippery. She rolled up the cuffs of her jeans and bent down; the splash of ice water on her face destroyed any further illusions of sleepiness. After she had brushed her teeth, she stood up again.
Kyle was standing a few feet from her, his hands on his jeaned hips and his open-necked shirt flapping in the breeze. She liked the way he stood with shoulders back in this desolate country, the sunlight behind him. She saw a man with a bearing of fierce pride, yet those shoulders relaxed just perceptibly as he came toward her, as he took in the tumbling red-gold hair and the rolled-up jeans, the peach freshness on her skin from the icy water, her face tilted up to his.
The kiss wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t forced it. She ignored his sudden stiffening and simply reached up; her lips tentatively brushed against his just long enough to feel the slightest answering pressure, the slightest tightening of his hand on her shoulder. He might not want to talk, but he was not immune to her. She rocked back on her heels, smiling at him. “I was worried.”
“You didn’t sleep well?”
“I slept perfectly well. It was the toothpaste. Whether it was biodegradable. This is a very special place, Kyle, and when we leave it, I don’t want to think we’ve mucked it up in any way.”
“I really don’t think you have to worry about a dab of toothpaste in sixty-seven trillion gallons of water, love.”
The last word had slipped out; she could tell from his eyes. But then, maybe he wasn’t quite prepared for her particular brand of nonsense this early in the morning; nor did she make it easy for him to rebuff her when she laced an arm around his waist, hugging him. “I love it. You couldn’t have chosen a better place to get away from it all in a thousand years.”