The Touch of Love Read online

  He dropped her wrist. She stood motionless, vulnerable and exposed, because he could see and she could not seem to cover up what he was taking from her eyes. He raised one hand and slowly brought it to her. She could feel the movement of the air, herself shivering as his fingers slowly found the front of her sweater. She could feel herself tightening, and when his fingers stroked lightly over the peaks of her breasts through the wool, the hard buds of her nipples felt so achingly sensitive with waiting, needing, knowing the touch would come, that she groaned aloud, choking the sound to a gulp and silence.

  Please, she whispered.

  He pulled his hand back, but his voice was seduction overlaid with a low anger. I don't ravish youngsters, music lady, and you're no child, so make up your mind. His eyes found the thrust of her aroused breasts, telling her without words that he knew she wanted his touch.

  I don't understand what you mean, she whispered, confused.

  He shook his head. She felt the tension break when he turned away. She sagged down onto the carpet, staring at the fire as he moved around her room. She did not watch him, kept her eyes on the flames. He was moving, pacing. In a minute there would be his footsteps on the stairs. Why could he not let her play the harmless game of self-deception? She could say go, and he would touch her, kiss her, and somehow despite her protests he would make love to her before he walked away.

  Oh, God! She ached for his touch, but so much better if she said no even though she trembled for him, because she would have herself intact later. A night's passion, but not of her asking.

  Love.

  If she turned and looked at him, whispered a word of consent, it would happen. An affair, hot and quick and over. If it happened now, in the morning he would leave, or perhaps even earlier. He was a stranger, a sailor who had come and would go, and she knew almost nothing of him, except that he was tender with the baby, and that he was not a man for staying. And that he would not take her and sweep her away on a tide of passion, not without making certain first that she was just as responsible as him.

  Lover. A lover, for a night. Temporary. She tried to put the words into her mind, but although she knew he would walk away, his soul touched hers when their eyes met.

  The music released her. Had he known it would? How much did he know? How far past her barriers could he see? She turned and felt as if the yellow flames from the fire were still in her eyes, but he was there too, at the stereo, the music flowing over them both. Her own words, flowing over her mind, with meaning they had not had when she wrote them two years ago. Robin's voice, singing, Touch of a stranger, a lover's touch. Two souls meeting before they part.

  She did not look away, could not look away. He moved slowly, deliberately, crossing from the stereo to the fireplace where she sat on the thick carpet. Her hand moved and she saw it stretch towards him, but he passed her. He went to the fire and shifted a log, sending sparks blazing around. When he turned back to her he was all hardness and control.

  She swallowed and her lips parted, but the words were somewhere else.

  He said softly, Melody, do you want me to go away? Now?

  She shook her head, wordless. The door would close and the truck would drive down her tortured hill. She would have to go out and move her van to let him out, and she would be shivering, watching the red of his taillights as he drove away. Forever.

  They would meet again, around the baby, over the years, but there would never be loving, because whatever happened tonight would be isolated, a memory only. She did not dare let Scott be a part of her life, or he could consume her.

  He stroked the dark hair away from her cheek, his fingers curling around the full curve of her cheekbone. If I stay, he said intently, his eyes on hers, You know what's going to happen.

  If he walked away now, she would never know what her own songs were about. Dreams, she had thought, writing them, but the dreams were here, now, in his eyes and her veins. She curled her fingers around his wrist and felt his pulse beating, strong and hard. And she said, Don't go. Not yet.

  It was like a song. The music ... the magic ... the slow dance of reality and anticipation. He sank down beside her slowly, not touching, only eyes, and she felt her lips curve in a smile as she turned towards him. The smile and the movement and the anticipation of his touch were all dreaming. His eyes followed the curves of her body and she realized that the sweater that covered everything, covered nothing.

  She licked her lips and he touched them with his, pulling back to see her eyes. What did he want her to be? She saw his chest swell beneath the brown shirt he wore as he took in a deep, powerful breath. Her fingers curled, wanting to touch.

  Touch me. Touch my soul. Words, her song, flowing over them. His fingers reached her shoulder and stroked her arm through the sweater, a teasing hint of how his touch would be on her naked flesh. Her hand moved between them and she traced the contours of his hard chest.

  He took her mouth. The music exploded.

  She needed this, had been aching for him always. His lips covered hers and she opened to him, invited his invasion of her warm, moist mouth, shuddered and groaned soundlessly as her body flowed against his, his hands holding her arms, bringing her close, arms surrounding her. A safe ... warm ... hot nest where there was only warmth and touch and feeling and the surging of the music felt in their veins.

  Her breasts pushed hard against his chest. His hands spread out to span her back, fingers touching to make flames along her nerves. Her spine arched and he molded her fine-boned torso to his hard muscles. She gasped as one hand slipped under her sweater and his fingers traced up her spine with sensuous, soft abrasion.

  When he lifted his lips from hers, she found herself staring up at him, lying on her back on the soft plush carpet. Behind him, she could see the red brilliance of the sun's last glow, the sunset surrounding his head like a halo of fire. Longer days, she thought. Summer coming soon. Then she could think of nothing but him.

  He said, I want to see you, and she needed his eyes on her with the touch of a lover. She stroked the crispness of his shirt, found the place between two buttons and slipped her fingers through, into the rough curls of his chest hair.

  He growled, If you do that ... and she laughed, her voice husky and teasing and drowned out by the song. Touching. Loving. Your mind caressing mine.

  Touch me, she whispered, and his eyes turned to flames. His hands traced the shape of her, through the clothing, and she was naked while fully clothed, shuddering, feeling his caress everywhere. His hands settled under her breasts, curving to hold them, and she gasped, Please.

  Don't be impatient. He gave a low laugh, stroking her midriff, the sweater transmitting his message. Her eyes fell shut and there was only the soft teasing of his hands everywhere, and her fingers worrying at his buttons, her groan as he stroked her thigh through the jeans, her swollen breast through bra and sweater, her hip.

  Then stillness. Her eyes dragged open. She had found her way through the buttons, or he had. His shirt was gaping open, her hands threading through the hair, finding the hard curve of his male breast, the arousal of his tiny nipples, the rigid tension of his upper abdomen. His fingers were resting on the naked flesh of her midriff, under the sweater, but motionless. In a second he would move, the sweater would be gone, then everything else, and she would go up in fire, consumed.

  Melody, are you prepared for this?

  She stared at him. His fingers moved, so slightly, and her flesh shuddered. Prepared? She was aching for him, needing him with a drugging, wild passion that had come from somewhere inside, from the place where the songs came, the secret, mysterious, all-consuming, hidden part of her.

  Yes, she whispered, because she had been waiting all her life for his touch on her soul. Please touch me.

  It was more than she had thought it could be, so much more. He pushed up the sweater, so slowly, and his eyes aroused her long before his hands and lips could touch. She writhed with impatience, with need, and the sweater was gone.

>   He cupped her breasts with love, and bent to the sweet curve that he had pushed up from her bra, his lips and his breath hot on her. Then he freed her of the scrap of lace with an abrupt motion and took his freedom of her warmth with his lips.

  She would go mad with the sensations. Touching, fire, the song in her ears and her blood and the pounding of her wild heart. She twisted, writhed, told him with formless moans how she needed the feel of his lips and his hands and his body on hers, while her own hands roamed over his chest and his shoulders with restless seduction.

  I've dreamed of you like this, he groaned as he freed her of the last trace of clothing, as he bent to take the place of the flames playing light over her softly-glowing flesh. The rough hair of his leg invaded the softness of her inner thighs and she moved to reach for his possession of her. Loving you, he whispered, tracing fingers over the curve of her belly. Touching, he breathed, and his lips moved to the places his hands had been. I dreamed of you needing me the way I burn for you, he said harshly as she pulled him closer.

  She rose to meet him and he filled her as the rain fills the river, the thunder invading the mountains with gasping rightness. His need was hers, so that when she groaned, he shuddered with an echoing passion that grew to consume them both. Then the music was gone and the sun was gone, and she felt only the explosion of the stars, the earth shifting, torn out of its orbit as she fell spinning into the place where there was no Melody, no Scott, only the soft, hot, wild, hard demand that was their shuddering fulfillment.

  ***

  Scott looked in on Robbie after he packed. The baby was just stirring, grumbling sleepily that it was time for his night feeding. Best if he walked away and let Melody wake to tend the baby, he told himself, but then he picked Robbie up and took him into the kitchen. He forced himself not to look at Melody as he carried the baby past, but he saw her, lying nestled under the quilt he had brought down to cover her.

  She was lying on her stomach, her face pillowed by her forearm. Her long, dramatic eyelashes were fanned over her full cheeks. Even in sleep, with her normally sleek hair tumbled by the passion of their loving, she looked fresh and beautiful. None of her dramatic coloring was artifice.

  He heated the bottle, fed Robbie, then burped him and changed him and put him back into the playpen upstairs. He stared down at the baby, feeling guilty in the knowledge that he was about to walk out on his young nephew.

  But he had to go. Self-preservation.

  He had never met anyone like Melody before. The dreamy passion of her songs lay deep in her eyes, peeking through the barriers of her mask. He had sensed it from the first, had wanted her from the beginning. She had been more than he expected, had touched him in places both moving and terrifying. Melody Connacher. Dangerous Melody. She looked so smooth and sophisticated, so carefully groomed even in that sloppy sweater she wore. Controlled on the outside, only her eyes exposed the emotional woman underneath. High color in her cheeks. Eyes that went black with emotion. Body that curved to hold and comfort a small child.

  Lord! He had started dreaming about her, and now the dreams had burst the bounds of his sleeping fantasies. Dreaming, And doing things for her. It had started out as the old, learned habit of his childhood, because he knew that she did not want him here, and he felt a stubborn determination to stay.

  Thrown into foster homes when his parents died, Scott had learned quickly that while his two-year-old sister Donna was cute and cuddly, eight-year-old Scott was awkward and difficult. Donna could smile and gurgle and win anyone over. Scott knew, even at the age of eight, that he could not win his place in strange homes with a smile. Instead, he worked quietly, looking for the jobs that needed doing, trying to make himself indispensable. The dishes. The garbage. Chopping wood.

  It had worked for three years, until their foster mother discovered she was pregnant and pushed away both Donna and Scott in favor of her natural child. When they were placed together again with a fisherman and his wife, Scott had vowed to make himself completely indispensable this time.

  That was how it had started with Melody, he supposed. The old habit, quietly looking for tasks to do to compensate for his unwelcome presence. Then it got out of hand, and he had fallen into the pattern of protecting her working time, sharing Robbie with her, sharing moments in the evening with her, lunches and cups of coffee, moments of listening to music.

  Insane though it was, he had begun to think of this place as if it were his own home, had begun to think of the woman as if she were his. That was the frightening part, because he had vowed years ago that he was never going to let anyone get close enough to tear his life apart by walking away. Never again. A child had little choice, but a man could choose his life, choose his women. Far better to have a woman like Caroline, cool and independent and more concerned with her own career than with their relationship.

  That was how he wanted it.

  He stopped on his way out of the house, stood in the darkened living room and stared down at Melody's dark curls. He caught himself before he actually reached down to touch her. If he touched, stroked, whispered her name, she would murmur and sigh and finally turn to him, open her arms to him and make him whole again.

  Angrily, he broke away from her spell, her soft trap. How could a man possess her complexities? Songwriter, semi-recluse, passionate lover. If he didn't get away quickly, she would have a stranglehold on his soul. She would have him begging for the moon, then she would drift out of his arms with a few words of poetry. He didn't need risks like that. A life of turning on the radio and hearing her words, dreaming of her with dreams he could not escape.

  He managed to get the truck out without driving on the soft part of her lawn. He couldn't avoid leaving tracks on the edge of the grass, but he thought the grass would spring back if he raked it. He stopped the truck at the top of the twisting drop and pulled on the emergency brake. It would only take a minute to get her rake from the shed behind the house.

  Get the hell out of here, before it's too late!

  He had the door half-open, but he jerked it shut. The slam of metal on metal burst the quiet of the night. He clenched his jaw and forced his actions to slow. Then he let the brake off and eased his way down the hill.

  Sneaking away, his heart pounding with turmoil. God! Here he was, thirty-six years old, and he felt like he had when he was fifteen after that big blow-up with Tom, his second foster father. Scott had been kicked out of high school for continuous truancy, and Tom had laid the law down. School, or work, or get the hell out. Tom, accustomed to the harsh life of a fisherman, had enforced his anger with blows, and Scott had run when he caught himself about to strike back.

  That night he'd been on foot, roaming Vancouver's streets, not driving a big, powerful truck along a winding island highway. Steamed up, angry, frightened and too foolish to admit it. He had moved from the respectable area into the wild, and somewhere in the angry night he had begun to see what was around him. Homeless people. Old men without families, girls pretending to be women, selling what should only be given with love.

  Inside the houses, safe and secluded, were the families. Scott had no family except Donna, and his lately sister was clinging to Tom and Sylvia so hard that she seemed to have forgotten Scott was her brother. He had felt cut off, isolated by the anger of the man he could not bring himself to call father. Then, somewhere between the drunk asleep in the alley, and the girl on the street who looked so much like Donna, he lost the anger and realized that no matter how alone he felt as a barely tolerated foster child, it was nothing to the isolation of having no one.

  In the morning, when Tom arrived at the Lady Sylvia, Scott had been waiting. They had stared at each other. If Tom had said anything about the night before, Scott would have been gone. Perhaps Tom realized that, because his face had worked silently, then he had nodded abruptly and said, Sandpaper in the wheelhouse. We're stripping down the gunwales to paint them.

  That stormy night had been over twenty years ago. Tom had never been hi
s father, but after that night they had developed a restrained relationship that worked. Perhaps by the time the old fisherman died, they had become friends of a sort.

  Turning back had been the right choice then, but tonight was different, the risks the other way, and safety was in getting away before he got in over his head. So he drove, instinctively putting miles between himself and Melody. He followed the only highway there was, the winding, narrow route north along the east coast of Graham Island. He had a lot of time to kill. The ferry that would take him away was not scheduled to leave until midnight. He had the dawn to wait for, then a full day.

  He stopped at a stream beside the road, cupped his hands and filled them with cool mountain water. The water tasted of pine. There was a sign posted at the edge of the clearing where he had pulled off the road. He read the legend and learned that anyone who drank the waters of St. Mary's Spring would always return to the Misty Isles.

  He felt a sudden, irrational terror, as if the legend was another strand pulling him down into quicksand. He slammed into the truck and drove on and managed to talk sense to his crazy imagination. All right. Of course he would come back. For Robbie, his nephew. He would come back and visit, take his nephew out for fishing trips.

  Would Robbie live here? Did Robin Conners actually live in the Queen Charlotte house, or was it merely a place he visited? Did Melody live alone with her music and her dreams? The music room seemed to belong so totally to her that he had trouble imagining her sharing it with anyone else.

  Were there men? Jeff, for instance, who had telephoned and seemed to know her habits so intimately. Would Scott come to visit Robbie and find her with another man? Any man would want her, and Jeff probably did. A woman like Melody, filled with warmth and dreams-

  One day he would return and she would be married. Another man's child would lie in her arms, nuzzling against her breast for comfort and food.

  A car came at him, then swerved. Then the haze in front of Scott cleared, and he saw the yellow line on his right. He was on the wrong side of the road! He jerked the wheel and the car flashed by, horn blasting in a wail of frightened protest.