The Wild Side Page 12

  Make a plan. What would outraged-virgin-school-boys do in this situation? Riley smiled and shook his head. If he had to ask, it had been way too long.

  Melissa might freak, might balk, might squirm and think of excuses, but you never knew. She might also smile that dynamite shy smile that turned his insides loopy, and say yes.

  Either way, at their next meeting, in the middle of whatever kinky creations they could cook up, Riley Anderson was going to ask Melissa Rogers out on a good, old-fashioned date.

  MELISSA SIGHED as the last sparkling explosion of firework stars faded from the night sky over the Charles River. The crowd around her cheered and stood, packing away picnics and blankets before attempting to make its way home, a huge flowing river of people being absorbed back into the dark city. She smiled at her friends from her alma mater, Boston University, and said goodbye, not in the mood to linger. Brad, a blond preppy guy she’d always secretly lusted after, shot to his feet, put his arms around her and tried to persuade her to stay. She brushed him off, laughing, and waved good-night. Even his unusual attentiveness tonight didn’t do much to make her feel part of the celebration, though it didn’t hurt.

  She generally loved being in the middle of this mass of humanity on the Fourth of July, humanity united by love of partying, if not of country. But for some reason this year she’d been strangely lonely, dogged by thoughts and questions about Riley—whether and how he was celebrating, whether and how he was thinking of her…

  Melissa rolled her eyes. As if. Just because Riley was the embodiment of her every fantasy didn’t mean she was remotely the same for him.

  This preoccupation wasn’t at all part of her bargain with the dark side. Not at all what she wanted to be feeling. Instead of being thrilled with the fabulous physical experiences, all she could think about was his intensity, that sense of restrained power that made her feel protected and endangered at the same time. The delightful sense of satisfaction, of triumph when she made him smile or laugh. Admiration for the fact that he’d had the guts to drop out of his preprogrammed life and tour around the world, that he’d grabbed the chance to become so richly colored by experience, where she stopped short every time.

  Face it, the experiment was turning out to be a disaster. She was a failure as a sex goddess. Had she really thought she had even a third of the female power Rose had? That she could use a man’s body and toss him aside in the interim, indulge her physical needs and leave her emotions untouched?

  All Riley had to do was touch her, put his hands on her body, and she went nuts wanting him to—

  “Now I know what cattle feel like at roundup time.”

  Melissa glanced up and met the frankly interested hazel eyes of a nice-looking, brown-haired, thirty-something guy shuffling next to her in the enormous crush of people. He winked and grinned a dynamite grin. “Want to wait out the crowds? We have a place staked out over there.”

  He pointed to a blanket well-stocked with attractive Yuppie types, mostly male. Melissa blinked, then smiled politely, shook her head and thanked him anyway. He shrugged and disappeared into the crowd, leaving her slightly stunned. Did that just happen? That never happened. He was seriously cute, and looked to be just her type. If not for her strange solitary mood, she would have been tempted—once she got over the shock.

  The crowd thinned slightly and she joined the throng headed for the Charles Station T-Stop, unable to suppress a lingering smile. A male friend had once told her women could tell when he’d been getting good sex. They flocked to him. He’d sworn they could smell it on him.

  Well, that idea was pretty disgusting, but Melissa couldn’t help remembering the concept now. First Brad, then this guy…

  Okay, maybe she wasn’t a total failure as a sex goddess.

  Half an hour later, she managed to cram onto a Red Line train, and swayed and bumped her way to the Harvard Square stop. She came up the steps, out into the square, and nearly bumped into the major hunk who lived on the floor below her, who she’d managed to smile at in the elevator a few times when she was feeling particularly brave.

  He greeted her and fell into step beside her; they chatted easily up Mass. Ave to Garden Street, past the Cambridge Common into their building and into the elevator. At his floor he turned abruptly and opened his mouth to say something, then appeared to change his mind, turned beet-red and fled with a mumbled good-night.

  Melissa stared at the doors closing slowly behind him. Ho-ly mo-ly. He’d been about to ask her out. He blushed, for heaven’s sake. A man she could barely summon up the nerve to glance at. What was up?

  The elevator reached her floor; she strode out and flung herself into her apartment, totally hyped. Maybe her self-condemnation had been a little premature. Maybe her adventure with Riley had changed her. Maybe she wasn’t quite the disaster as a bestial slut from hell she feared.

  She prowled around her apartment, trying to find an appropriate outlet for her pent-up energy, and finally decided to watch the Sex and the City tapes a friend had lent her.

  An hour and a half and an endless parade of differently partnered couples later, she rewound the tape and pressed the eject button with a flourish. Ha! That was it. The life she was heading for. This affair with Riley would be the opening of the floodgates that would lead her to a tidal wave of sexual satisfaction.

  The tape ejected from the machine with a groaning whine of motor and gears. Melissa slid it back into its case and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, brimming with new confidence. She’d see Riley tomorrow night. After the hit-and-miss ride of last Saturday, she’d make sure they could settle into a more comfortable flow this time. Skip the emotional tug of war that unearthed feelings she didn’t want to have. Get into and onto and around the bed and do whatever felt right.

  She grimaced at herself in the bathroom mirror, toothpaste dripping out of one corner of her mouth. Except that last Saturday night what had felt so right was wanting him to make love to her with everything in him instead of staying off to the side, a clothed, casual spectator. She wanted him with her, on top of her, inside her…

  So? That was a natural human instinct. Someday she’d indulge those deeper feelings with the guy she’d wake up next to until death did them part. Someone more like her—gentler, more…ordinary. Not someone who could emerge from a phone booth in a blue-red-and-yellow costume and not make her blink. Not someone who challenged every sense to the straining point when she was around him. Someone who would find her as fascinating as she found him.

  That said, she would like Riley to…participate more. He resisted, held back, as if he were impotent or asexual, which, judging by the width and breadth of his pants after she’d been writhing around in ecstasy in front of him for a while, was definitely not the case.

  So why did he force himself to remain so irritatingly neutral? Was he neurotically modest? A voyeur? Diseased? Hideously deformed?

  She snorted at the idea and nearly got toothpaste up her nose. Then laid down her brush and stared at her reflection, white foam ringing her lips. Or was he afraid of the same thing she was? That connection, that longing that had pulled them to each other, that had made them wrap themselves around each other and strive to join. Was that why he pulled away and got hostile with Mr. Honey Bear?

  Melissa shook her head and spat viciously into the sink. Right. And tomorrow she’d open her front door to find Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford duking it out for her favors. Maybe he just forgot condoms. Maybe he was married. Maybe penetration went against his religion or his mommy had told him never never never do that naughty naughty thing.

  Maybe he was just doing what Melissa had asked him to, from the beginning—staying away from the same old missionary grind.

  She dragged a cream-colored towel across her mouth, stalked across the gray carpet into her bedroom and tugged on a T-shirt. Whatever the case, it didn’t concern her. She was getting what she wanted from him. As long as she remained as selfish as possible, took what she needed from their relati
onship and concentrated on the pleasure, the affair would stay in control, stay exactly where it was supposed to.

  The only change she wanted, one she might insist on tomorrow with her sex goddess status firmly reinstated, was that Riley take his own pleasure, teach her to give him release in as many ways as he wanted to give it to her.

  Her toe bumped against a box under her bed as she climbed in between the plain cotton sheets. Melissa grabbed it, opened it and grinned down at the sheriff’s badge and handcuffs. Would she ever have the nerve to ask Riley to use them on her?

  She held them up; the light from her bedside lamp sparked off the shiny twisting metal. The fantasies of Riley shackling her to the bed or locking her wrists to the towel rack in the shower were suddenly replaced by another quite different scene. An inspiration.

  Melissa’s grin turned wicked. She was suddenly quite sure she’d have the nerve to use them.

  Riley wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  9

  SLATE STRETCHED HIS LEGS on the chaise and lifted his cup of coffee for a slow, warming sip. After a couple of days of thick gray fog, the sunshine and view had returned, to make one of the clear sparkling mornings for which Maine was, in his experience, unparalleled. He leaned forward on the porch to peek out the side screen, toward the east. This was his favorite time of morning, when the sun had risen on the other side of the peninsula, but hadn’t yet cleared the tall pines to shine directly here. In the early light the lobster buoys glowed cheerily, like gaudy jewels scattered on the still water. Above them the sky warmed from pink to pale to blue at the horizon. Lobster boats buzzed from buoy to buoy like bees among flowers, leaving the water behind them plowed to a wavy froth.

  He heard Rose up, moving around the cabin, and tried to still the tenacious, ever-optimistic hope that she’d appear in the doorway naturally rumpled and still sleepy, just out of bed wearing the ratty nightgown he’d supplied.

  “Good morning.”

  He nodded and made himself smile, taking in her neat outfit, purchased on a cabin-fever trip into town the day before. Short stylish pants that followed the contours of her legs to midcalf, a low-necked top and a cotton sweater. As usual, she’d plastered gunk all over her face, though if he wasn’t imagining it, maybe with a lighter hand today. He turned back to his coffee. Anything put on heavily enough to obscure the wholesome, beautiful lines of her features was too much for his taste.

  “Looks like whoever stole the view decided to return it.” Rose gestured out at the far side of the bay. “I never understood the term pea-souper until three days ago.”

  “The Maine coast is famous for lobster and the thickest, most tenacious fog in the country.” He swung his legs over the side of the chaise and stood. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled up at him as he passed.

  He went into the kitchen, poured coffee and cut her a slice of the coffeecake they’d bought at the supermarket bakery. At least he and Rose had settled into a predictable if uneasy rhythm, ever since the night he’d gone downstairs and found her in tears. He’d held her soft body against him for over an hour in the darkness of her bedroom, battling desire and the equally powerful need to help her. To release her from the burden of hiding herself and offer her…

  Slate shook his head. That’s where he stopped every time. Offer her what? Completion? Wholeness? The beauty of self-actualization? Did he think he was suddenly the expert of New Age psychiatry? Wanting to break a person wide-open, when neither he nor she might be able to deal with what came pouring out?

  Then what?

  He wasn’t committed to her, hadn’t promised to love, honor and cherish. This wasn’t a case where “for worse” had won out over “for better.” In some ways he was being selfish, wanting her to give up a defense system that worked for her, when he wasn’t sure what protection he could promise in return. Except the chance to explore what might be between them. And who really knew what that was?

  He brought her breakfast out onto the porch and handed it to her with a carefully friendly grin. But damn it, he ached to see her run free. See her spiritually, emotionally and yes-please-ma’am physically naked. See if they’d be as good together as he thought they could be.

  She ate; he chatted amicably until she stood and took her plate into the kitchen. He followed like a smitten puppy, wondering if he could stand letting her go back to her life unchanged. Wondering if he could go back to his own life and think about her, day after day, and the parade of men she’d alter herself to please.

  “The house looks really nice. A whole different place from when we arrived.” Rose put her dishes in the sink and ran water into a plastic basin.

  Slate nodded and glanced around. Cleaned, scrubbed, painted, polished, the house had regained the cheerful freshness his mom always maintained there. For some reason, instead of restoring comforting familiarity, the house’s transition bothered him. It felt artificial, contrived, almost disrespectful, as if with the passing of his mom the house she and his dad had loved so much should be allowed to go with her. Illogical, maybe, but he couldn’t shake the feeling the sprucing had negated her death, somehow.

  “Slate…” Rose spoke from the sink, her back to him as she rinsed out her mug. Something in her tone made him step closer and focus attention on her profile. “Your mom must have had more things around the place.”

  “Things?” He tensed, suspecting what she was going to say.

  “Decorations. Like, I don’t know, ceramic figures or pictures you drew or things you all collected on the beach, pottery, vases—something.” She put her dishes in the drying rack, turned and gestured behind him. “All those shelves. They must have had something on them. The house looks so…unlived in.”

  Slate crossed his arms over his chest. “She packed everything away before we left. To protect it from dust, mice, prowlers. Whatever.”

  He turned to go back onto the porch, movements stiff, hoping Rose would drop it.

  “Why don’t we dig out some things and put them around? It would look really nice. We put this much work into the house, it would be fun to cheer it up some more.”

  Slate stopped in the doorway to the porch, muscles rigid. All his mom’s precious bits and pieces, carefully unpacked every year and set in their appointed spaces, carefully repacked and hidden before they left each September. The house’s history, the family’s history, now down to just him. All the years of his life, represented by carved wood and pottery and beeswax and feathers and who knew what else, in those damn boxes.

  He didn’t want to unpack the stuff. He didn’t want to be reminded of how the house had looked when his mom was alive. She was gone and buried. Why dig her up and pretend everything was the same?

  “No point. We’ll only be here another week.”

  “Slate.” Rose came up close behind him, laid her hand on his arm. The warmth of her fingers seeped through the thick flannel of his shirt; he had to force himself not to pull away from her sympathy. “My mom has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t know who I am anymore. But I write to her every week, a long letter for the nurse to read to her. I think I’ll probably keep writing to her even after she dies. It…keeps her alive to me.”

  Her words came out low and halting, unlike her usual musical delivery. Part of Slate responded, wanting to encourage her. In that short moment she’d told him more about her life than she had the entire week they’d been here. But he couldn’t. Not on this topic. He swung around. “I’m sorry about your mom. I’m glad that works for you.”

  “Try it.” She gazed at him earnestly. “You’ll be amazed how seeing things that belonged to her can bring her closer.”

  He shook his head, the hateful bite of grief sharp inside him. “I don’t need reminders. I don’t want reminders. I think that’s understandable.”

  Rose opened her mouth to protest, then bowed her head and readjusted her features, hands clenched tightly at her side. “Yes. Okay. I’m sorry.”

  He took her shoulde
rs, his own pain forgotten in the need to release hers. “You’re not sorry. You don’t agree. Say it, Rose. I dare you.”

  “It’s not my place. You were right.”

  He gripped her hard, as if he could squeeze the confession out of her. “You think I’m wrong. You think I’m full of it. Say it.”

  “No.” The word was abrupt and furious.

  “Damn it, Rose, say it.”

  She lifted her head, eyes freed from their shutters, blazing rage and passion. “Okay. Fine. You want me to tell you what I think? I think you buried the woman, but you won’t let her die. You think if you ignore her long enough she’ll come back? Maybe you even feel guilty, that somehow you should have been able to cure her where every medical specialist couldn’t, because you’re so damn perfect and capable in everything you do.”

  He let his hands drop from her shoulders. Her words were like rasps drawn along existing wounds, scraping open grief and guilt he thought he’d already worked through.

  She jabbed her thumb to her chest. “I refuse to cheat myself out of more of my mom than fate already has. Someday when you start having trouble remembering what she looked like, what she sounded like, how she smelled, you’ll be standing here in this nice vacuum you’ve created, wondering why you ever thought locking your mom out was going to keep her in your heart forever.”

  Slate stared at her, stupid, unable to speak, half in awe of her power—more than he’d dreamed of—half in an agony of bewildering fear.

  Rose moved forward and shoved furiously at his chest; he stepped back heavily.