Petals on the Wind (Dollanganger 2)

He started to see me there, so near his chair, in the middle of the night, though he didn't speak to break the spell that was somehow binding us together in a mutual need.

There was a lot I didn't know about myself, nor did I understand what impulse lifted my hand to caress his cheek. His skin felt raspy, as if he needed a shave. He put his head back against the chair and tilted his face to mine.

"Why are you touching me, Catherine?" His question was asked in a tight, cold voice, and I could have felt rebuked and hurt, but his eyes were soft, limpid pools of desire, and I had seen desire before, only not in the kind of eyes he had. "Don't you like to be touched?"

"Not by a seductive young girl wearing flimsy clothes who is twenty-five years my junior."

"Twenty-four and seven months your junior," I corrected, "and my maternal grandmother married a man of fifty-five, when she was only sixteen."

"She was a fool and so was he."

"My mother said she made him a good wife," I added lamely.

"Why aren't you up in your bed asleep?" he snapped.

"I can't sleep. I guess I'm too excited about school tomorrow."

"Then you'd better go to bed so you'll be at your best."

I started to go, really I did, for the thought of warm milk was still in my head, but I had other thoughts, too, more seductive. "Dr. Paul . . ."

"I hate it when you call me that!" he interrupted.

"Use my first name or don't speak to me at all."

"I feel I should show you the respect you deserve."

"A fig for respect! I'm not any different than other men. A doctor isn't infallible, Catherine."

"Why are you calling me Catherine?"

"Why shouldn't I call you Catherine? It's your name, and it sounds more grown up than Cathy."

"A moment or so ago, when I touched your cheek, you flared your eyes at me, as if you didn't want me to be grown up."

"You're a witch. In a second you change from a naive girl into a seductive, provocative woman--a woman who seems to know exactly what she's doing when she lays her hand on my face.

My eyes fled before the onslaught of his. I felt hot, uneasy, and wished now I'd gone directly to the kitchen. I stared at the fine books on the shelves and the miniature objets d'art he seemed to crave. Everywhere I looked was something to remind me that what he needed most was beauty.

"Catherine, I'm going to ask you something now that is none of my business, but I must ask. Just what is there between you and your brother?"

My knees began to click together nervously. Oh, dear God, Did it show on our faces? Why did he have to ask? It wasn't any of his business. He had no right to ask such a question. Common sense and good judgment should have glued my tongue to the roof of my mouth and kept me from saying what I did in a shamed, lame way. "Would you be shocked to hear that when we were locked up in one room, always together, four of us, and each day was an eternity, that sometimes Chris and I didn't always think of ourselves as brother and sister? He attached a barre in the attic for me, so I could keep my muscles supple, so I could keep on believing someday I'd be a ballerina. And while I danced on that soft, rotten wood, he'd study in the attic schoolroom, poring for hours over old encyclopedias He'd hear my dance music and come and stand in the shadows to watch. . . ."

"Go on," he urged when I paused. I stood with my head bowed, thinking backward, forgetting him. Then he suddenly leaned forward, seized hold of me and yanked me down onto his lap. "Tell me the rest."

I didn't want to tell him, yet his eyes were hot, demanding, making him seem a different person.

Swallowing first, I continued with reluctance, "Music has always done something special for me, even when I was small. It takes me over and lifts me up and makes me dance. And when I'm up there's no way to come down except by feeling love for someone. If you come down and feel your feet on the floor, and there's no one there to love, then you feel empty and lost. And I don't like to feel lost or empty."

"And so you danced in the attic, and dwelled in your fanciful imagination, and came back to the floor and found the only one there to love was your brother?" he said with icy heat, burning his eyes into mine. "Right? You had another kind of love you reserved for your little twins, didn't you? You were mother to them. I know that. I see that every time you look at Carrie and speak Cory's name. But what kind of love do you have for Christopher? Is it motherly? Sisterly? Or is it--" He paused, flushed, and shook me. "What did you do with your brother when you were locked up there, when you were alone?"

Seized by panic, I shook my head, and pushed his hands from my shoulders. "Chris and I were decent! We did the best we could!"

"The best you could'?" he fired, looking hard and belligerent, as if the kindly, gentle man I knew had been only a disguise. "What the hell does that tell me?"

"All you need to know!" I flared back and flashed my eyes with temper as hot and red as his. "You accuse me of seducing you. That's what you're doing; you sit and you watch every move I make! You undress me with your eyes. You take me to bed with you with your eyes. You talk about ballet classes, and sending my brother to college and medical school, and all the while you imply that sooner or later you are going to demand your payment, and I know what kind of payment you want!" I took my hands and ripped open the peignoir so the skimpy bodice of the aqua nightgown was revealed. "Look at the kind of gift you gave me. Is this the kind of nightgown a girl of fifteen wears? No! It's the kind of gown a bride wears on her wedding night! And you gave it to me, and you saw Chris frown, and you didn't even have the decency to blush!

His laughter mocked me. I smelled the strong red wine he liked to drink before retiring. His breath was hot on my face, his face very close to mine so I could see each strong dark hair that poked from his skin. It was the wine that made him act as he did, I thought. Only the wine. Any woman on his lap would serve-- any woman! Teasingly he touched the peaks of both my nipples, skipping from one to the other, and then he dared to slip his hand beneath my bodice so he could fondle the young breasts that were fired with heat from his unexpected caresses. Then my nipples rose up hard and I was breathing just as heavily and fast as he was. "Would you undress for me, Catherine?" he whispered in a mocking way. "Would you sit naked on my lap and let me have my way with you? Or would you pick up that Venetian glass ashtray and crash it down on my head?"