The Silken Web Read online

Drowsily, she could smell the intoxicating fragrance of his cologne—potent, but not overwhelming or cloyingly sweet. It was brisk and clean and sharp, conjuring up thoughts of sea air or autumn breezes. The image of a Viking sailing his warship into a fjord was projected onto her mind. The Viking had Erik’s face, and the girl wildly waving at him from shore looked like her.

  The dream grew even more pleasant as the returning warrior bounded off the ship onto shore and gathered the girl into his brawny arms, raiding her mouth, tickling her ear with his mustache. She, giggling, clutched at his back and drew him to her.

  Kathleen was still smiling at her fantasy when the truck pulled to a stop outside her cabin. She lacked the energy to move. “Are you awake?” Erik’s breath ghosted over her neck as he whispered to her.

  “No,” she answered sleepily.

  He chuckled. “That’s what I thought. We’re home. Come on.”

  Before she realized what was happening, he had opened the passenger door and was reaching inside, catching her under the knees and around the shoulders, lifting her out of the front seat and carrying her to her cabin.

  He opened the squeaky screen door and caught it with his back as it closed, not wanting it to slam shut. Then he moved through the moonlit room toward the bed.

  He laid her gently on the pillows and kissed her forehead. Leaving her for a moment, he went back to the electric panel next to the door and switched on the overhead fan, but left off the lights. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it onto a chair.

  Kathleen was strangely languorous. She couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this helpless. All her muscles seemed to have dissolved, yet they all strained toward Erik as he lay down beside her on the narrow bed and gathered her to him.

  His lips claimed hers hungrily. There was no persuasion in his kiss this time, no subtlety. His lips and tongue were greedy for her, but they were robbed of a conquest as she met their eagerness with a reciprocal response that surprised even her, opening her mouth, welcoming the pillage, contributing to the seduction.

  Gradually, the initial hunger abated, though it was by no means appeased. Pausing only to draw a breath, Erik’s lips were still resting lightly on hers as he murmured, “I’ve waited all day for that. Every second of last night, I spent tasting you, trying to get the way you smell and look and feel out of my mind so I wouldn’t go completely insane. And now, I can’t get enough… I can’t… I can’t…” Once again, his lips descended on hers.

  Kathleen received them confidently. He moaned deep in his throat as she ran her tongue along his bottom lip and then under the brush of his silky mustache. “God, Kathleen, I want you.” That was all he could manage to say before he hooked his thumbs under the straps of her bodice and lowered them.

  He nibbled her lightly, sampling each morsel of her throat and chest as if he were a gourmand at a feast. Kathleen’s hands cradled his head, luxuriating in the feel of his hair between her fingers. When his mouth reached the top curves of her breasts, it lingered, hovering over her, waiting.

  He raised his head and looked into her eyes, searching them for signs of objection. His fingers manipulated the top button on the camisole until it came open. When she didn’t protest, only stared up at him with wide, trusting eyes, he released the second. The third. The fourth. All lay undone under his fingers, and still he continued to pierce her with the laser-light quality of his blue gaze.

  Then, slowly, prolonging the anticipation, he lowered his eyes and parted the front of her bodice until he was looking at her breasts. “I wish I dared a light,” he said hoarsely. “I want to see you. Your color. I want to see what you look like when I do this.” As he spoke, he touched one bewitching crest with the tip of his finger and felt it pucker under the merest suggestion of stimulation. Then he rolled it gently between his fingers.

  I should stop this. I should stop this. The words were repeated in her head like a catechism, but she was powerless to carry out the intention. Erik’s fingers were gentle and yet demanding as he explored her, learned her, stroked her, brought her to a pitch of arousal she had never known before.

  And she was to find that it had only begun. He lowered his head and covered her with his mouth. She was enveloped in a sweet, hot, wet trap from which she didn’t want to escape. His tongue curled around her nipple even as his cheeks flexed to draw her deeper into the enchanting cavern of his mouth.

  She felt his hand moving up her thigh in a sensual caress. When had she raised her knees? Why were her hips rotating in an erotic rhythm out of some pagan ballet? It didn’t matter. Nothing did as he continued to pleasure her with his mouth on her breasts.

  His hand was alarmingly close to the center of her body where the heat was becoming unbearable. Every nerve ending in her being was pulsing toward that one point that ached to be relieved.

  Did she murmur his name? Did she beg him to touch her with a healing hand? Did he sense a silent plea? She never knew, but was helpless to resist when his hand settled over her with an accuracy that startled and thrilled her. She gasped in mingled shock and delight when his fingers insinuated their way under the lacy, elastic leg of her panties. With infinite tenderness, he touched her, finding her bathed with the sweet moistness her body had provided at the coaxing of his fingers.

  She was catapulted out of her lethargy when he left the bed and started unfastening his shirt, virtually ripping the buttons from the fabric.

  For the first time since they had entered the cabin, Kathleen realized the dangerous game she was playing. My God! What am I doing?

  Erik had his shirt off and was furiously working at his belt buckle, muttering impatient deprecations to the suddenly stubborn metal.

  “Wh-What are you doing?” Kathleen asked shakily.

  “Well, you may like it wearing clothes, and I’ll admit that it can be fun, but it’s too hot tonight. Besides, I prefer nakedness.”

  “No!” she cried in a stage whisper, and bolted from the bed, clutching her bodice over her heaving, bared breasts. “No!” she repeated, shaking her head.

  He stopped his frantic efforts and jerked his head up to stare at her in bafflement.

  “What do you mean by ‘no’? Do you mean ‘No, we leave our clothes on,’ or ‘No, period’?”

  She averted her head to keep from looking at him. “No, period,” she mumbled to the wall.

  “Why? Damn you, why?”

  Why? She was ashamed of the real reason, and even if she told him, he wouldn’t believe her. Who, in this day and age, remained a virgin to the ripe old age of twenty and five? No one. No one except Kathleen Pamela Haley.

  “I… I don’t…” She had started the sentence timidly. But then she gained conviction and raised her head stubbornly, meeting his eyes defiantly. “I don’t want to.”

  “Like hell you don’t,” he said savagely.

  For a moment, she was too startled by his ferocity to speak. His arrogance was unequaled. Who did he think he was? She was? Had he never been turned down before? Well, she was no one to trifle with, and he might just as well learn that now. “I said I don’t want to, and I meant it,” she hissed loudly.

  The chiseled lines on either side of his mouth hardened, and his eyes went cold. “Well,” he drawled in a voice that was deceptively calm, “I hate for you to have gone to all this trouble without knowing the fruit of your labor.”

  His arm went around her waist with the speed of a striking snake, and his other hand clenched her wrist. He dragged her hand downward until she gleaned his intention and gurgled, “Nooo!”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t know what your game is, but we’re playing by my rules now.” He flattened her hand against his manhood, which stretched the front of his trousers.

  “Stop this, Erik. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t,” she warned in a hard voice.

  He laughed scoffingly. “Do you think I care? Go ahead, Kathleen. Touch me. Feel me. I want you to know how all your careful teasing paid off.” He rubbed her hand up and down the hard shaft while
his breathing became more labored. Then, abruptly, he flung her away from him in a gesture of utter disgust.

  She covered her face with her hands to halt the angry, debasing tears that were coursing down her cheeks.

  “Goddammit!” he cursed. “I don’t know why I’m bothering myself with you.” The quiet room was filled with his harsh breathing. He turned on his heels, grabbed his shirt and coat and stalked to the screen door. Kathleen heard it squeak as he opened it. He paused before he went out.

  “You know, the boys in that nightclub weren’t wrong. You are a hot little number. And you were primed and ready.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Kathleen walked on leaden legs toward the dining hall. She dreaded meeting Erik face-to-face because she wasn’t sure what she would do when she saw him. Would she feel compelled by rage to slap his face for the insulting words he had flung at her? Or would she want to weep because he thought her capable of intentionally leading him on? Every time she recalled the revulsion in his voice, she shuddered. Yet by what right did he expect her to sleep with him? Wasn’t the choice hers? After a sleepless night of debate, she still had no answers.

  He wasn’t in the dining room when she went in. She behaved normally, responding to the hellos the children called to her. When she joined the other counselors at their table, she offered the obligatory pleasantries, though it was impossible to hide the red puffiness of her gritty eyes.

  Her heart leapt to her throat when Erik stalked in, but he stayed only long enough to retrieve a thermos of coffee from the kitchen, then slammed out, having looked neither right nor left. His back was ramrod stiff.

  The other counselors curiously shifted their eyes toward Kathleen, and there was a noticeable cessation of conversation. She sipped her coffee nonchalantly, trying to act as though she hadn’t even seen him.

  Edna was standing on the porch when Kathleen left the dining room after pretending to eat a hearty breakfast. The older woman went straight to the point. “Things didn’t go too well last night, did they?” she asked with uncanny intuition.

  Kathleen was tempted to brazen it out, to respond happily, but she knew it would be useless. She had known Edna too many years, had grown up under her watchful care. This woman knew Kathleen’s heart and mind probably better than most mothers knew their own daughters.

  Kathleen sighed heavily. It was with relief that she let her shoulders, which she had been holding so proudly for the benefit of the staff, slump in dejection. “No.”

  “I’m sorry. I was foolishly trying to play matchmaker. B. J. warned me to leave well enough alone, but you two seemed to be attracted to each other. I think you look beautiful together. He’s so masculine and you’re so—” Edna was startled into silence by Kathleen’s uncharacteristically bitter laugh.

  “Not being attracted to each other isn’t our problem,” she admitted.

  A light dawned on Edna’s kind face. “Ahhh. Then may I presume that quite the opposite is true?”

  Kathleen looked away guiltily. “Yes,” she mumbled. “He’s much more… He’s sophisticated and I’m…”

  “I think I get the picture,” Edna said sadly. “Come on. Let’s walk. I’ve asked Mike to take your group to the soccer field with him.”

  How had Edna known that she didn’t feel quite up to coping this morning? Affectionately, Kathleen placed her arm around the older woman’s waist. They strolled toward a tributary of the river, little more than a stream, which flowed at the back of the Harrisons’ cabin. By mutual consent, they sat on the clover-carpeted ground. It was shady and peaceful. The campers had filed off to their first morning activity. From somewhere, the purr of B. J.’s lawn mower could be heard. The birds chirped as they flitted through the sun-dappled branches of the trees. Noisily, a squirrel and blue jay argued over territorial boundaries. The brook bubbled over its rock-strewn bed, unaffected by grief, indecision or hurt.

  “Are you in love with him, Kathleen?” Edna asked gently.

  Kathleen shook her head, the ponytail whipping her neck like a brush. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I’ve only known him a few days.”

  Edna laughed with genuine humor. “My dear, time has very little to do with love. Some people know each other all their lives and love each other for that long. Others meet and fall in love in the space of hours. Love doesn’t have a timetable. Nor does it discriminate. It happens to the best of us, you know. Are you afraid of loving, Kathleen? I don’t mean physically,” she stressed. “I mean are you afraid of losing Erik as you did your parents?”

  Love? Only in the last few hours had Kathleen realized that Erik was a man she could care a great deal for. She wasn’t quite ready to attach the label of “love” to the emotions he brought to the surface. But those emotions were too strong to be taken lightly or to dismiss completely.

  That was another problem. Erik was interested in her. She knew that. The chemistry between them couldn’t be denied. But if she slept with him, what then? He would go on his way, to another assignment anywhere in the world, to another woman, with a new scalp dangling from his belt. What of her? She would be left with nothing except a sense of loss—of the man and of her self-respect.

  Most contemporary women would hoot over her old-fashioned code of morality. That didn’t bother her. It was important to her. But was that the only reason she had resisted him?

  Perhaps Edna was right. She was afraid. Pure and simple. What to her would be a commitment, to Erik would be an episode. Yes, she feared that. But she wasn’t ready to confess it. “He’s arrogant and extremely selfish and spoiled,” Kathleen said crossly.

  “Yes, he is,” Edna agreed. “And B. J. is a procrastinator, downright lazy sometimes, and snores. But I’d be a basket case without him, even though at times I feel like killing him.” She grew serious again and took Kathleen’s hand in hers. “You loved your parents, and in your young eyes, they deserted you at a vulnerable time in your life. You’ve overcome all the obstacles of that trauma and grown into a beautiful woman. But you’ll decay and dry up from the inside out if you don’t share all that beauty with someone, Kathleen. Don’t be afraid of loving.”

  Tears gathered in the corners of Kathleen’s eyes. She placed her hand on Edna’s shoulder and said softly, “I love you.”

  Edna reached up and patted Kathleen’s hand briskly. “I know you do. But that’s hardly the problem right now.” She got to her feet with an economy of movement unusual for a woman her age. “It may make you feel better to know that your misery’s got company. If Erik’s mood this morning is any indication, I’d say he’s got it bad, too. He was as cranky as a bear with a bee sting in the butt.”

  “Where is he?” Kathleen asked quietly.

  “He’s in the office. He asked permission to look through the case-history files for background information.”

  “Oh,” Kathleen said indifferently as she stood up and dusted off the seat of her shorts.

  She and Edna returned to the compound, and for the rest of the day Kathleen exhausted herself with activity. If thoughts of Erik interfered, she put them down, refusing to think of him for more than moments at a time. Thus, he was constantly on her mind.

  He didn’t make an appearance at lunch. She was disappointed that he didn’t see how unaffected she was by the night before, how calm she was, how indifferent to him.

  He was at dinner.

  He came through the screen door of the dining hall with the bearing of his most regal ancestors, charming whomever came under the light in his eyes, smiling from beneath his mustache with the ease of a worshiped movie idol.

  Kathleen chatted with Mike Simpson, who was surprised and delighted with her attention. She sat beside him at the table and engaged the others around them in a steady stream of lively conversation.

  After getting his tray, Erik swung his long leg over the bench across the table and down from Kathleen. He sat next to a female counselor who flirted unabashedly. Kathleen gnashed her teeth whenever the girl’s high, s
hrill giggle reached her over the noise in the dining room. She refused to look in their direction.

  When the Harrisons joined the table, Edna assessed the situation at a glance, and when her eyes met Kathleen’s, the girl noticed that Edna’s were highly amused.

  What’s so funny? she wanted to demand.

  After she finished eating, she picked up her tray to return it to the kitchen. Without going out of her way, it was necessary for her to walk past Erik and his adoring companion. She resolved to ignore them.

  She stood up and tugged on the bottom of her T-shirt, straightening it, not knowing how the automatic gesture outlined and defined her figure. Casually, she stepped over the bench and took two purposeful steps toward the kitchen.

  “Hello, Kathleen.”

  She practically tripped as her tennis shoes screeched to a halt, almost as if her feet had usurped her brain’s authority and given an independent command.

  She arranged her face into a bright, cheerful smile, then turned her head to look at him.

  The girl was draped over his arm, and Kathleen had the wild impulse to set her tray down and yank the girl’s long hair from her head. Instead, she said sweetly, “Hello, Erik, Carol.” Her voice dripped with saccharin and her smile was brilliant. She was the only one who couldn’t see the green fire smoldering in her eyes. “How was your day?”

  “Erik stayed cooped up all day in the office, but then he joined my group at the river for their swimming time.” Carol rolled her eyes toward him as if they shared a great secret. Then she met Kathleen’s eyes again. “He didn’t even bring his camera. He said he was there strictly for pleasure.”

  Kathleen loathed the smug expression on the other girl’s face, but she was made more furious by the mirthful twitching of Erik’s mustache. “How nice!” she said with false enthusiasm. “He’s been known to need cooling off.”

  “Is the tubing trip still scheduled for tomorrow?” Erik asked, all but laughing out loud at Kathleen’s clever slur, which the other girl was too dim to catch.

  “I’m still going,” Kathleen said, with emphasis.