The Silken Web Read online

  At first, his thrusts were tentative, but then nature took over and there was no stopping him from reaching that ultimate goal. It was as natural for Erik, at that moment of fulfillment, to cry her name, as it was for the whippoorwill to call plaintively to his mate.

  There was something primeval and innocent about their nakedness. The rushing river, the whisper of the wind, the black, starry sky, were all testimonies to the forces of life. No less were Kathleen and Erik.

  They became one with the night.

  * * *

  “Kathleen?”

  “Hm?”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She snuggled closer against him and laughed softly. “What must I do to convince you? That’s the fourth time you’ve asked me that since we came in.”

  He placed a hand on her shoulder and stroked the smooth skin, reveling in the feel of her. Ever wandering, his hand slipped under her arm and found the fullness of her breast. “I know. I just want to make sure you’re not uncomfortable.”

  She laughed again. “Believe me, I’m comfortable.” Moving closer, she fit her hips against his abdomen as they lay on the narrow bunk in the guest cabin.

  She had never imagined that love could be this consuming, this absolute. Even though an hour had passed since they lay together beside the river, the magnitude of the experience hadn’t diminished. She relived each second of it.

  Erik had put his trunks back on, and Kathleen had pulled the T-shirt over her bikini bottom. They had laughed over the destination of her top and wondered who would eventually find it. After they had folded the blanket and began walking back to the Blazer, their arms entwined around each other, she had said, “Erik, it was wonderful.”

  “For me it was.” He kissed her fleetingly on the forehead. “It will get better for you. I promise.”

  How could it get any better? She thought it had been beautiful, though she didn’t feel that satisfied weightlessness she had read about. Her body still ached with some indefinable longing.

  “Do you think we’d be expelled from camp if you spent the night in my cabin?” he had asked her as they drove through the main gate. He had extinguished the headlights of the car and was creeping across the compound at a snail’s pace.

  “Not if no one catches us,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “I knew I liked something about you, Kathleen Haley. You’re a lady of adventure.” He caressed her knee.

  “Wait!” she said suddenly. “Pull around to the back of the kitchen.”

  His grin was devilish. “Did you work up an appetite?”

  As punishment for his question, she kissed him soundly on the ear. “No, but I want to get something.”

  “Well, hurry up, or we’ll get caught.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she whispered as she opened the car door.

  In less than a full minute, she was back, carrying a brown paper sack. “What’s in the bag?” he asked as he quietly engaged the gears of the truck again and tried to find his way down the darkened drive toward his cabin.

  “Wait and see,” she teased as he maneuvered past the last tree.

  When they got inside and accustomed their eyes to the darkness—they didn’t want the disruption of bright lights—Erik declared that a shower was in order.

  “I wish we had a deep bathtub, but we’ll make do with what we have,” he said in a voice feigning martyrdom.

  The shower had been an orgy of warm water, soap, naked skin, curious hands and insatiable mouths. “Wash my hair, woman,” he commanded playfully as he dropped to his knees and tossed her the slippery plastic bottle of shampoo.

  She laughed but fell to the task enthusiastically, working the soap into a rich lather and squeezing it through the strands of his hair. She was only distracted from the labor of love when his mouth relentlessly navigated her stomach. His hands caressed the backs of her thighs and hips as his mustache played havoc with her navel. When he stood up again, Kathleen was trembling.

  The small reserve of hot water for the cabin began to run out and the water cooled. “Are you clean?” Erik asked her as he continued to massage her soapy breasts.

  She leaned against the tiles of the shower stall, oblivious to anything but the gifted hands that touched her so expertly. “Squeaky clean,” she murmured.

  “Are you sure?” Something in his tone caused Kathleen to open her eyes, which had fallen shut in sleepy contentment. That hungry desire she had come to know quickened in her again as his hand moved down her body to the tight auburn nest between her thighs. His eyes grew smoky with passion as his sudsy fingers stroked her.

  “Erik,” she pleaded, lifting her arms around his neck and rotating her hips against the erection that had replaced his hands. She was pressed to the tile wall as he kissed her long and deep until the water became quite cold.

  They dried off, but remained unclothed. Kathleen presented him with the paper sack she had picked up in the kitchen. “For you,” she said. The sack was full of ripe, luscious Arkansas peaches.

  “Thank you!”

  They sat on a rug on the floor, and with a small paring knife she had remembered to bring along, Kathleen peeled a peach for him slowly with a tempting Eve-in-the-Garden look in her eyes. They ate lustily, sharing two of the peaches, letting the juice run down their bodies in appealing rivulets.

  “Your face is sticky,” she observed.

  “It sure is. Do you mind?”

  She shook her head and with a naughty glint in her eyes said, “Uh-huh.” Leaning toward him, she placed her lips against his and licked them lightly. Erik had long since ceased to breathe even before her mouth left his lips for his chin and beyond to his neck. When her lips moved over the skin of his chest and her small pink tongue found his nipples, he groaned and wound his fingers through her hair.

  Now, after another, briefer shower, they lay on his narrow bed, their limbs entwined. He murmured love words into her hair and continued to examine the mysteries of her breasts and take pleasure in the changes in them that he could bring about with his caressing fingers.

  Tiny tremors began to dance in Kathleen’s veins. She loved the feel of his hair-matted chest against her skin, the long legs rubbing hers. The scent of his masculine soap, combined with his unique muskiness, made her eager to know him once again.

  “Erik?”

  “Shhh. You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  “Erik, please—” She couldn’t speak as her distended nipple was gently pressed between his fingers. His mouth was at her ear, provoking it with a persuasive tongue. “Erik, love me again.”

  “Kathleen, you’ll be sore, darling, and—”

  “Please.”

  “Kathleen…”

  She heard the indecision, the hesitation in his voice. Purposefully, she rubbed her hips against him. His heartbeat became irregular and accelerated. Slowly, his hand slipped to the back of her thigh and gently pushed it upward until her knee was close to her chest.

  He probed her slightly, easing himself into her and then withdrawing gradually. The hand on her breast smoothed down to her abdomen and flattened there, bringing her closer. Then his fingers brushed downward through the auburn curls.

  Kathleen sighed and murmured something incoherent, but Erik seemed to understand. Even as he sank more surely into her, his searching fingers found that sensitive bud that silently cried out for his touch. Her whole body quivered. He touched her again ever so lightly, but with infinite caring and a need to give.

  Kathleen felt her soul swelling, expanding, and she soared with it. In rapid succession, tiny explosions erupted within her, rippling outward from that flowering of pleasure, igniting each nerve, firing her spirit. She pushed her hips against him, forcing him deeper, crying his name in wonder and love.

  He let her come back from that seductive oblivion slowly, welcoming her return with words she expected never to hear from a man’s mouth in reference to her. Was she that beautiful? Was she that woman he praised so highly for he
r femininity? She hoped so. She wanted to be that for him.

  But when he left her, she stared at him in surprise. “Erik, you’re still—”

  He smiled down at her tenderly. “Yes. That time was for you,” he said before settling his mouth against hers and kissing her deeply. “I want to watch your face.”

  She was an eager pupil but afraid of disappointing him. “I don’t think… I mean, just now… so soon…”

  He laughed as he stretched over her. “You have a lot to learn, Ms. Haley, and I’m going to love teaching you.” He dipped his head and flicked his tongue across the straining pink crests of her breasts in turn.

  Raising his head, he studied her face as he slipped his hand between her thighs and trailed his fingers along the dewy skin. “You feel so good.”

  “So do you.”

  “You’re so soft here.” His fingers went beyond the protective folds.

  Her neck arched. “Oh, Erik. I can’t believe that you’re touching me this way.”

  “Believe it.” He leaned down and kissed her on each breast, then on her parted lips. “You are incredibly sweet,” he grated as he continued to stroke her from the inside out.

  She knew then that he had been right about his ability to arouse her again. She was more than ready when he poised above her and then filled her. Sighing, she surrendered to every sensation that inundated her. Her body rushed toward that now-familiar crescendo. She opened her eyes and saw that he was staring into her face. He clasped her to him and plunged deeper than he had before, giving her all he had to give. And when the wave crashed over them both, his lips formed her name, but his eyes spoke of love.

  * * *

  They met at breakfast. Whenever their eyes locked, they laughed at each other like guilty children who shared the delicious secret of having committed some mischievous transgression and gotten away with it. Indeed, they had. Unseen, he had walked her back to her cabin just before dawn.

  Edna eyed them suspiciously, but they were unaware of it. The other adults were too despondent to notice anything except the rain outside. Rain spelled disaster to a camp counselor who would be forced to spend the day indoors with two hundred cantankerous children.

  Thank heaven for Walt Disney, for he was on the agenda for today. They would show one movie in the morning, have lunch and then show another movie after crafts session in the afternoon.

  Erik took the change in itinerary with the gladheartedness with which he was accepting everything this morning. “I can show how you handle a rainy day. And I’m not quite finished looking over those files,” he explained to Edna.

  An hour later, the children were seated around a large-screen TV. The film was started over much hand clapping and foot stamping. Erik set his camera on the tripod, but the moment he turned it on, he knew that it was malfunctioning. He cursed softly under his breath, but the soundtrack of Lady and the Tramp made it inaudible to anyone except Kathleen, who was standing with him.

  “It’s too difficult to explain,” he told her when she questioned him about it. “But these cameras are so specialized that when the least little thing goes wrong, they’re out of commission. I know what’s wrong, but I don’t have the part that needs to be replaced.” Agitated, he raked his hair as he said another low “damn.”

  “What can you do?” Unseen in the darkened room, she slid her hand under his sleeve and up the inside of his upper arm.

  “Stay in bed with you all day,” he suggested with a comical leer as he leaned toward her.

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  She cleared her throat authoritatively. “I mean about the camera.”

  “Oh, about the camera.” He pretended sudden enlightenment. “Well, I’ll have to go to St. Louis and have it fixed.”

  “Erik,” she whispered despairingly.

  He cuffed her under the chin and said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He left her and slipped out the door.

  Forlornly, she watched the cavorting, singing characters that flickered on the moving screen, but couldn’t even appreciate the ingenious animation when she thought of spending the day without Erik.

  When he came back, his walk was jaunty despite the fact that his shoulders and hair were rain-dampened. “I called the airport in Fort Smith. They have flights to and from St. Louis today. If we leave right now, I can catch a two-thirty flight, get my business done and return tonight. I’ve called the engineers at the television station. They’re tracking down the part I need and will have it by the time I get there.”

  “You’ll be gone all day,” she moaned.

  “And you’ll be with me. At least, part of it.” He pressed a finger against her lips when he saw the rapid questions forming there. “I asked Edna if you could drive me to Fort Smith. She said because of the rain, you could be spared. That is, if you don’t mind fooling around in Fort Smith until I come back tonight.”

  “Oh, no, Erik. I’ll go to a movie or do some shopping. And we’ll have all that time in the car together.” Impulsively, she wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his damp shirtfront.

  “Careful,” he whispered as he disengaged himself. “The movie won’t be all that engrossing if we’re providing a better show, and besides, we have to hurry. I’ll pick you up outside your cabin in fifteen minutes. Okay?”

  “Yes,” she answered eagerly.

  When he honked the horn for her in the specified amount of time, she dashed to the Blazer wearing a tight pair of jeans, a green silk blouse and a clear plastic windbreaker as protection against the rain.

  “Do you always look sensational?” he asked as he leaned over to caress her firmly on the mouth. What had been intended as a brief, perfunctory kiss became as passion-filled as all the others. With the merest contact, their mouths became hungry for each other and wouldn’t be denied. When at last they breathlessly pulled away, Erik grumbled, “This is going to be the longest day I’ve ever spent in my life.”

  She gave directions to the highway that would take them to Fort Smith and he drove as fast as the rain-slickened road would allow. It took them the better part of three hours to reach Fort Smith, and that barely allowed Erik time to catch the 2:43 flight to St. Louis. He picked up his reserved ticket at the counter and turned toward Kathleen. “I’ll be on the flight arriving at eleven-ten tonight. That’s almost nine hours. Can you entertain yourself for that long?”

  “I’ll think about last night.”

  “That ought to keep you busy.” He grinned. Then his face sobered. “Keep an eye on the Blazer. I’ll have the camera with me, but all my other stuff is in there, so lock it up if you leave it.”

  “I’ll guard it with my life.”

  “Don’t ever say that.” He placed his camera on one of the turquoise vinyl and chrome sofas that were scattered through the small air terminal and gripped her shoulders. “Our lives are too precious now to be gambling away.”

  “Oh, Erik,” she pleaded, “kiss me.”

  Impatiently, he looked around the waiting room. Outside the large plate-glass windows, he saw the arrival of the turbo prop airplane that would be his flight. “Come here,” he said as he grasped her hand and dragged her toward a telephone booth.

  He squeezed them inside it and tried to close the door. “Damn this door,” he muttered as he tried unsuccessfully to unjam it. “What the hell. Let them look.” His arms went around her in a possessive clench. His mouth opened hers, his tongue dipping into that sweet recess between her soft lips and promising greater fulfillment when time and circumstance allowed.

  Shakily, he pushed her away from him. “We’d better get out of here before we’re arrested.” He tried to laugh, but the imminent departure was too close, and neither wanted to be separated from the other.

  His flight had been announced over the public-address system, but they were granted a few more precious minutes to cling to each other while the aircraft was refueled.

  “We’re being silly,” he whispered into h
er hair as he embraced her one last time. “I’ll see you in just a few hours.” He kissed her hard on the mouth. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “I’ll be here,” she said, smiling.

  He went through the security check, nervously watchful of the attendants who examined his camera. He blew Kathleen a kiss before he ran through the door toward the portable steps that led up to the fuselage of the waiting airplane. Just before he climbed aboard, he took the camera off his shoulder and cradled it in one arm. With the other, he waved to Kathleen, who stood behind the glass where nonpassengers were consigned, and then he disappeared from her sight.

  A lump swelled in her throat and she swallowed it impatiently. What was wrong with her? She would see him tonight. Silly! she admonished herself.

  The airplane door was closed. The portable steps were wheeled away. Slowly, the airplane taxied to the end of the field and turned to its takeoff position. It waited for a private plane, which had just landed, to cross the runway on its way to the terminal.

  Kathleen, from her position behind the glass, heard the roar of the engines as the pilot revved them, preparing for takeoff. The pilot accelerated and the aircraft barreled down the runway. Kathleen was just about to walk away when her eyes were drawn to the single-engine plane that had entered the intersecting lane off the runway. It began to spin crazily on the wet pavement, and with horror she saw it swerve back onto the runway and in the direct path of the oncoming larger airplane.

  She didn’t know then that the dampness she felt in her palms was blood from the death grip with which she clenched her fists, driving her nails into the soft flesh. All she was aware of was the inevitable crash of the two airplanes in front of her.

  “No!” she screamed at the moment of impact. The smaller plane careened into the nose of the larger one and immediately burst into flames, disintegrating before her eyes.

  “No!” she screamed again, held in suspension for an expectant eternity. Then there was a rumble that shook the earth and shattered her world as the full fuel tanks on Erik’s jet exploded in a blinding light.