He laughed. “Let’s bring Theron in here to sleep with us tonight.”
“Okay, but later. I’m selfish and want you all to myself for a while longer.”
“I think I can suffer through that.”
She kissed him, and as with all their kisses, what had been intended as a brief caress became one of passion. Finally, she dragged her mouth from his. “When will you marry me? Tomorrow?”
He stretched lazily and said, “Gee, I don’t know.” His eyes rested on her breasts as he drawled, “I may not respect you in the morning.”
Kathleen’s green eyes narrowed and she slipped her hand down his body. “It’s not your respect I want right now.” His breath was sucked in quickly as she found her target.
“Perhaps we… Perhaps we should set the date after all… ah, Kathleen.”
“Do you know what I’d like?”
“No, but it’s yours,” he said breathlessly. “Anything, darling, anything.”
She chuckled and continued her sweet torture. “I’d like for all of us to go to Arkansas and get married in the chapel at Mountain View. I want B. J. and Edna to be included. We could invite your mother, Bob and Sally, Jaimie and Jennifer, George and Alice, maybe even Eliot would come. And, of course, Theron will be there.”
“Right now,” Erik ground out, “I’d agree to… to anything.”
She draped his chest with her hair and leaned over him, brushing her lips across the flat brown nipples as she asked, “Do you love me?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
Her tongue flicked over him and he moaned in ecstasy.
“Tell me,” Kathleen insisted, her mouth now teasing his lips.
He caught her hand with his and pressed it against him. His blue eyes pierced through the darkness like a beacon and captured her in their magnetic light. “Yes. With my heart, with my life, I love you, Kathleen.” He lay atop her, gathering her to him and relishing her nakedness. His lips kissed her while his hands stroked the silkiness beneath them.
“See how right we are, Kathleen.” Her eyes followed his down the length of their bodies lying entwined. He straightened his arms, levering himself up so they could see his virility nestled in her receiving warmth. Lifting his eyes to hers, he nudged her provocatively. “Touch me. Please.”
She lowered her hand between them and closed her fingers around him. The smooth, love-bathed tip knew the brush of her thumb. “I love you, Erik.”
“I love you.”
As they watched, his body was fused with hers. Their loving knew no bounds, but it was far more than physical. This time, it was made complete by the knowledge of the other’s commitment. Not only their bodies, but their spirits as well, were forged by a conflagration that burned in a timeless sphere.
* * *
George opened the door quietly and peered around it. “They’re all in there, all right,” he told a curious Alice who was trying to see over her husband’s shoulder. “Snug as three bugs in a rug, all in the same bed and apparently naked as jaybirds.” He chuckled. That earned him a slap on his arm.
The three people lying in the bed were unaware of their audience. They all slept facing the same direction. Erik’s arm was stretched across Kathleen and his hand rested on the shoulder of his son, who was curled up against his mother.
“They belong together like that,” Alice whispered as George shut the door.
“Yes, they do. Indeed.”
When Dr. Emory Charbonneau disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina, her heart-pounding story of survival begins, taking the age-old question, “Does the end justify the means?” and turning it on its head.
Please see the next page for an excerpt from Mean Streak
Prologue
Emory hurt all over. It hurt even to breathe.
The foggy air felt full of something invisible but sharp, like ice crystals or glass shards. She was underdressed. The raw cold stung her face where the skin was exposed. It made her eyes water, requiring her to blink constantly to keep the tears from blurring her vision and obscuring her path.