"So you've noticed that, too … you see, I do the same sort of thing." Travis named the international organization he'd worked for the last ten years, establishing that he'd left Tanzania the year before Julie had arrived.
She frowned at him. "I thought you were a rich doctor who looked after the rich."
"And I thought you catered to the privileged and pampered."
"You know the kind of things people think. Do-gooder with a savior complex."
"Guilt-dumpers. Disturbers of the status quo."
"Weirdos, wackos and neurotics."
He gave her a warm smile. "It's not easy work, is it, Julie?"
His smile made her tingle all the way from her head to her bare toes. "No," she muttered. "No, it's not. Would you like some more pop?"
"Sure." As she padded into the kitchen, he followed her. "I'll help you with the dishes."
If he'd dwarfed the living room, he filled the kitchen. Almost dizzy with longing, Julie picked up the sweet peas and buried her face in them. "They're my favorite flower," she mumbled.
He put down his glass on the counter. "It's interesting that we do the same kind of work … means we share a basic value system."
"So what?" she blurted.
"One more thing we have in common."
"You're playing games with me, Travis."
"Okay-I'll cut to the chase. Do you know why I'm here?"
She looked at him warily. "Not really."
"Then I'll tell you. I've thought about you all week, night and day. I'll be honest-I figured if I came here today and saw you again, I'd realize that you weren't anything special, that I'd been fooling myself."
She looked down at herself with a shaky grin. "You've got your proof. In spades."
"It wouldn't matter what you wore or how you looked," he said with suppressed violence. "The moment you answered the door, I knew nothing had changed."
She found she was gripping the edge of the counter with bruising strength, mostly to keep herself from pulling his head down and kissing him until neither one of them could breathe. She said carefully, "What exactly are you saying?"
"Hell, I don't know." He ran his fingers through his damp hair. "I want you as much now as I wanted you on Manatuck. I guess that's what I'm saying."
The intensity in his face made her tremble. She reached past him for the pop bottle, inadvertently brushing his bare forearm with her own. The pop was forgotten. Her hand stopped in midair. Then, very slowly, she lowered it to lie on his arm. She closed her eyes, oblivious to everything but his nearness and a tumult of longing. All those authors were right, she thought. Desire does exist. It's like fire, hot and urgent and leapingly alive.
In a strangled voice Travis said, "Julie … "
His arms went around her. She buried her face in his shoulder, inhaling the clean masculine scent of his skin, so very much a part of him, so uniquely his. Then, of her own accord, she looked up, took his face between her palms and kissed him full on the mouth. As she'd been wanting to do ever since he'd arrived.
She'd learned a thing or two about kissing on Manatuck. But just in case he doubted her intentions, she whispered in between fierce, heated kisses, "Make love to me, Travis. Now."
"There's nothing I want more in the world," he said, kissing her back with such blatant hunger that her body melted into his. Then, awkwardly because the kitchen was so small, he picked her up. "Don't kick the pop bottle," he added, his eyes giving her a very different message.
His eyes were undressing her. Against her cheek she felt the hard pounding of his heart, under her knees the sinewy strength of his arm. As he edged out of the kitchen, she said, "Down the hall on the right," and added with a tiny chuckle, "it's not usually so tidy."
Because the room was small, she'd bought a three-quarter spindle bed, covering it with an old-fashioned quilt. Not bothering to pull the quilt back, Travis laid her down on the bed and covered her with his big body, his weight on his elbows. She was trembling very lightly. Then his head swooped down like a falcon to the prey, his mouth plundering hers until she was nothing but an ache of passionate need.
Only then did Travis reach for the top button on her shirt. His fingers brushed her skin; his irises were a blazing blue. Straddling her, he eased her arms out of the shirt, then in the same intent silence undid her bra, tossing it to the floor. She said softly, "Take your shirt off, Travis."
His hands weren't quite steady as he fumbled with the buttons, and this, more than anything, touched Julie to the heart. Travis, she already knew, was a man both self-contained and very much in control of himself: that she should make him lose that control filled her with a confusing mixture of wonder and excitement. Very deliberately she reached for the zipper on her shorts, easing them down her hips, then kicking them to the floor. She said with a faint grin, "Because I always wear utilitarian cotton in the tropics, I go overboard on lace when I'm home."
"Black lace," he said huskily. Then with sudden impatience, he stripped off his slacks and briefs.
She wriggled out of the black lace. "Watch out for my knee, it's still sore," she said, and pulled his head down, her tongue darting to meet his in a kiss that seemed to last forever. A kiss in which the old Julie vanished.
The new Julie, not knowing quite what to expect yet utterly willing to find out, tugged at Travis's shoulders. "Lie on top of me," she begged, "I want to feel every inch of you."
He slid his mouth down her throat, finding her breast, his hips pressing her into the quilt. She wrapped her arms around him, glorying in his weight, crying out with pleasure as he laved her nipple with his tongue. Sensation lanced through her, fiery and imperative. With a sensuality she had never thought she possessed, she ran her fingers through his chest hair, tugging at it gently, following it all the way to his navel and then beyond.
Briefly he lifted his hips. And then she found his center, hot and silky, infinitely desirable. He groaned deep in his throat as she touched him, burying his face in her shoulder, his heart pounding against her ribs. As though he couldn't help himself, he eased her legs apart and plunged into her.
She gasped with delight, welcoming him and gathering him in. Inexpertly she moved her hips until he filled her, so that she scarcely knew where she ended and he began. Her own rhythms seized her, urgently and inexorably, mounting toward an unbearable peak. "Travis," she muttered, "oh Travis … "
"Sweetheart … " he said roughly, his fierce thrusts pushing her over the edge, the hard plane of his chest inflaming her nipples until she arched to meet him, crying out his name in an avalanche of release. He convulsed within her, his own cry echoing in her ears. Then he collapsed on top of her.
Julie lay very still, and for several minutes couldn't have said a word to save her soul. Gradually she came back to herself, to two hearts racing as one and a feeling of peace and fulfillment such as she'd never known. I've come home, she thought. It's taken me all these years and many thousands of miles, and now I've come home …
Abruptly Travis raised his head. "Julie, I'm sorry-that was over before it began."
A slow smile spread across Julie's face. "You're sorry?" she said. "I hope not. But maybe I'm the one who should be apologizing. I was so impatient, so demanding-in such a big hurry. I wanted you so much, I couldn't bear to wait."
Travis gave a sudden exultant laugh. "How about we both forget the word sorry? And how about we do it again? Say in five minutes. And this time maybe both of us can restrain ourselves so that it lasts longer than five minutes."
"You were timing us?" she said, batting her lashes at him.
"Not exactly. Too much else was going on. As you may have noticed."
"Who, me?" Julie chuckled. She'd never known laughter could be part of lovemaking. She was beginning to suspect that there was a lot she'd never known. Letting all her newfound wonderment show in her face, she said ingenuously, "So I'm supposed to kiss you with restraint? Is that the way it works?"
"No," he said, "you're supposed to kiss me like this." He bent his head, finding her mouth, moving his lips over hers with tantalizing lightness. His tongue sought out hers, dancing with it, advancing and retreating. And at the same time, with exquisite pressure, he was stroking the warm slope of her breast, again and again.