Loveplay

The smile left his face. “What do you mean?”

“Your `girlfriend’ made a huge joke about my hanging like an albatross around your neck. She made me the laughing stock of the entire company.” Her eyes darkened with remembered pain. “I finally left because of it.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t consider that.”

“No, why should you? I was handy, and you needed someone to amuse yourself with, wasn’t that it?”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “No. Walking away from you was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

“Were you so fond of juvenile adulation?” she asked with a laugh.

“It was more.” He finished his coffee. “I’m a single, not a double, Bett. I’ll live alone all my life, except for the occasional diversion. But not you.” He watched her quietly. “Someday you’ll marry and have those kids you used to dream about having. Three, wasn’t it?”

Something odd in his voice touched her and she frowned. But before she could question it, he checked his watch and rose. “We’d better get some rest. Rehearsals are grueling, aren’t they darling? Thanks for the coffee.”

“Any time,” she said lightly, showing him to the door.

He turned unexpectedly, and framed her face in his hands, watching it like some tawny cat. “You’re as beautiful now as you were then, Bett,” he said quietly, and his eyes were hungry. “Hair like wild honey… I used to dream of seeing it fanned out across my pillow.”

Her lips parted under her roughened breath. It wasn’t fair that he could still affect her this way. She felt the warmth of his big body and wanted to feel it against hers, wanted to drag that hard mouth down over her own and taste him just once again.

“That’s something you’ll never see,” she managed tautly.

“Challenging me?” He drew her chin up and bent his head, opening his mouth just as it made brief, shocking contact with her own. “I don’t have any more noble sentiments to protect you, Elisabet,” he whispered. “Because you’re not a virgin anymore. And frankly, darling, you’d be a pushover.”

Even as he spoke, he was folding her into the curve of his body. His mouth opened hers, biting at it in the old remembered way, his own wild prelude to the deep, hot kisses he liked. Her fingers went to his chest to push, but lingered on the soft silk of his shirt under the sweater he was wearing. He had a mat of hair just over his breastbone. That one time in the park when they’d almost gone all the way, she’d felt it tickling her breasts just before it had crushed her into the soft grass.

“Cul,” she moaned, and all at once her hands went up to hold him, her body arching into his.

He whispered something into her mouth, and his arms half lifted her against him while his tongue penetrated the soft dark recesses and made the teasing kiss into a declaration of possession.

She clung, moaning, drowning in the sensations, totally yielding. She was eighteen again, and Cul was her man, and she loved him, loved him, loved him….

He put her down abruptly, his eyes flashing. “No,” he said on a harsh laugh. “Oh, no, little redhead, not again. I’m not going through it twice. Practice your witchcraft on Hadison, but keep your spells off me.”

He turned, slamming out the door. She stared at it for a long time before she went back to put the cups in the sink. She lifted his, studying it with eyes gone soft and sad with love. Impulsively she brought it to her lips and kissed the place where his had been. There were tears in her eyes as she washed it.

If she’d hoped that Cul might soften, even a little, after that wild kiss, she was disappointed. He was as cold as winter stone with her the next day, tossing instructions around like bullets. Once she paused just a second too long before lines, and he went through the ceiling. It didn’t help that she started getting involuntary stares from the rest of the cast. She was being ridden deliberately, and they knew it.

“What have you done to him now, darling?” David teased at the lunch break as she started out the door with her brown bag in hand.

“Still breathing,” she told him with a smile. “Never mind, we’re old enemies.”

“Are you really?” he asked, his eyes openly curious.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m off to the park for lunch. See you.”

“Want some company?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but I need to be alone for a little while.”

He stared after her quietly, his dark eyes wistful and sad. She felt that long gaze, and almost turned around to invite him along. But what David was looking for, she couldn’t offer. She had nothing to give him, not even half a heart. Everything she was belonged to Cul, whether he wanted her or not.

She sat down on a park bench and watched children play near the lake, smiling at their antics as they fed the ducks. She could have given Cul children, if he’d ever felt strongly enough about her. Once she’d thought he did.

The last time they were together had been on a day like this, she recalled, looking around at the blue sky and the warm sunshine on the grass. They’d lain together in a secluded spot in an Atlanta park under a spreading oak tree and talked lazily of fame and fortune and the future….

* * *

“What do you want to be, eventually?” she asked him, lying back in the grass. She was wearing a white peasant dress that day, with an elasticized bodice that showed off her golden tan. He was wearing his usual jeans and a burgundy knit pullover that day, a shade that emphasized his blondness.

His green eyes darkened as he let them run from her loosened reddish hair down to her long, slender legs where the skirt of her dress had ridden up over her knees. “Your lover,” he murmured wickedly.

She laughed almost bitterly, her arms thrown back over her head as she closed her eyes. “That will be the day,” she muttered.

She felt him before she saw him. Her eyes opened suddenly as his formidable weight settled over her torso, his forearms supporting him.

“How about today, then, Bett?” he asked softly, bending to her mouth.

They’d kissed before. Soft, clinging kisses. Even a few deep, hard ones. But this was a different way, an oddly sensuous way. His mouth nibbled and brushed and bit at hers in a slow rhythm that made her feel odd from the neck down. Her legs began to tremble as his tongue traced the outline of her mouth and penetrated the soft line of her lips.

He lifted a little, easing onto one elbow so that his other hand had free access to her body. It slid gently over her waist for a long time before it moved up and brushed lightly over her breast. She caught her breath and he lifted his head, but he didn’t move his hand.

He searched her eyes quietly. Seeing the yielding fascination in them, he drew the elasticized bodice slowly down until it rested beneath her breasts, baring them to the sunlight and his darkening eyes.

She held her breath, remembering how it had been. The impact had been frightening; she’d never let a man look at her like that. His eyes were narrowed, glittering and spellbound by the swelling softness of her.

Around them, the deserted park was quiet. Only the soft cries of the birds interrupted the burning silence.

“Oh Bett,” he breathed huskily. His fingers touched the hardening buds as if it were the first time he’d ever touched a woman that way, and they trembled. “Bett, do you even know what it means, when this happens to your body?”

She didn’t, but he told her, in soft, sensuous whispers as he bent to kiss them. She remembered crying out just before his mouth came down to smother the wild little sound. His hands took possession of her, gentle hands that stroked and probed until tears were running down her cheeks.

Her own hands were busy, trying to get his shirt out of their way so that she could feel the thick mat of hair over the warm muscles of his chest. With a shaky laugh, he stripped it off and rolled onto his back, pulling her hands down to his body.

“Learn me, the way I’ve learned you,” he coaxed, his eyes wild with passion as he watched her touch him, watched the fascinated wonder in her eyes as she explored him hesitantly, slowly.

“Don’t stop there,” he whispered when her hands trembled at his waist. He took her hands in his and moved them, and her breath caught at the harsh sound that broke from his lips.

The ground was hard at her back. The hardness of his body was like a brand, melting down onto every inch of hers in the shaded warmth of the day. His hands were under the dress, and only the sudden sound of people in the distance kept him from taking their lovemaking to its natural conclusion.

She could still hear the hard groan against her mouth, feel the trembling of his body as he rolled away from her.

The worst part of it all was that he had to put her back into her dress. She was trembling and crying too hard to do it alone.

“You mustn’t,” he whispered, rocking her against his bare chest. “It was beautiful. The way I knew it would be. We wanted each other, and that’s all, it’s so natural, Bett. Like breathing. There’s nothing in the world to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” she whimpered. “I’m frustrated.”

“Try to imagine how I feel,” he murmured dryly.

She looked up at him and felt as if she had the world. He was looking down at her as if she were the most precious thing he’d ever seen, as if he loved her.

“Cul, I love you,” she whispered to him as her pride yielded to the exquisite sensations he aroused. “I want to marry you and have your children!”

The glow of passion faded from his face. It was always this way whenever she mentioned children or anything permanent.

He framed her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. And then he kissed her, in a way he never had before or since. A cherishing, tender, utterly passionless kiss with his whole heart in it.

“Yes, I know,” he whispered back. “I’ll live on that all my life.”

It was an odd thing to say. He helped her to her feet after he’d retrieved his shirt, and they walked back to her apartment hand in hand.

Shyly, she invited him to come in with her, but he shook his head.

“You’re a virgin, darling,” he said softly, brushing the long hair from her cheeks. “Despite the fact that I lost what little sense I had today in the park, I’ve got just enough left to walk away from you. I’ve nothing to offer you, Bett, don’t you see?”

“I don’t care about money…” she began fiercely.

“I know. Neither do I. But that wasn’t what I meant.” He bent to kiss her forehead with a tender brush of his mouth. “You deserve so much more than I can give you, darling. One day, you’ll thank me. So long, Bett….”

* * *

And he’d walked away. She hadn’t known it at the time, but he was walking out of her life. It was later that day that he’d announced his departure for New York, grimly, without looking at Bett. And it was that night that she’d discovered him with Gloria. From dream to nightmare, in only a few hours.

She felt tears in her eyes as she finished her sandwich and reached for her coffee. Her hand withdrew sharply as she recognized the man standing beside her.

“It brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Cul asked coldly, glancing around them with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his usual jeans, with a yellow knit shirt today, and she hated him for the powerful sensuousness of his body and the longing that had never died.

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