The trip to Bozeman took less than an hour. Michael was in no rush, driving at a pace slower than other cars. This was the first entire day taken off from work in… he could not recall the last time he'd taken off. Maybe he had not taken a day. His life had been so routine since the trial, he could just about chart his activities for any particular time of day since he started running the bank. The only variation to his routine was the time spent building his house, which he subcontracted out and oversaw the construction. Then there were the occasions when he and Caroline went out to eat, or came by and spent the night with him.
Everything that once comprised his existence since the death of his father and stepmother suddenly seemed unimportant. His interest lay in the beautiful auburn-gold haired woman sitting on the seat beside him. He was quite amazed at how easily she filled his head, his mind, and his senses. He speculated that perhaps the monotony of his dissatisfying lifestyle was at the root of his deep attraction for Rochelle. Whatever, he was hooked.
“Michael, do you think they'll deliver the car? I'm not a competent enough driver to drive back on this busy highway, especially in a car I've never driven.”
He laughed at her. “Rochelle, what good is a car if you can't drive it? You might just as well forget the car. I'll be happy to chauffeur you,” he teased.
Her expression soured, and Michael realized immediately he had stepped on his tongue.
“Thank you, but I only thought it would be better if I learned to drive on a less busy thoroughfare,” she snapped indignantly. “I haven't been behind the wheel of a car for more than five years.
Surely, you'll agree a little practice driving might be in order before I venture into busy traffic.”
“I'm sorry, baby. I am certain they will deliver the car. Do you mind telling me how you got around without driving?”
“Please do not call me baby. I loathe the word as an endearment,” she ordered sharply. “I got around with a chauffer driving me.”
“I see. Now, I don't suppose you want to tell me why you don't want to be called baby?” Michael asked reservedly, glancing toward her from the corner of his eyes.
“No, I do not,” she snapped in a piqued tone.
His quick glance held frosty amusement. “Then I apologize for calling you baby. If my endearments offend you, then perhaps it would be well for you to sit down and make out a list of everything I am not supposed to say that might be offensive to you. And if you think for a minute that I have purposely said anything that might imply mockery, then perhaps you could add that to your list, too.”
He was grinning wryly and glancing cockily at Rochelle from the corner of his eye. When Rochelle looked at him, she knew he was teasing.
She raised her brows, looking at him dryly, a stingy grin softening her features. “Okay, I get the picture. I'm being a pain, and I know you don't deserve it.” She faced him, a placating expression on her face. “I'm sorry. I suppose I was taking my frustrations out on you and I'm glad you didn't let me get away with it.”
“Does that mean I can call you baby? I really did mean it in the nicest sort of way.”
“I don't like being called baby. The word has negative connotations which I don't plan to discuss with you.”
“Why are you so secretive?
“I'm secretive for the same reason you don't tell me all there is about your life. You've never told me much of anything, Michael, but you know a great deal about me.”
“Perhaps that's because there's not much to tell.” The truth was that he simply did not like discussing his past. Like everyone else, there were skeletons in his closet best left undisturbed. How could he tell her his father and stepmother were murdered and the police charged him with the murder? Rejected by Stepmother was the headline blasted across the front page of the newspaper. The assumption was that he and Tina were having an affair and she dumped him. Nothing could have been farther from the truth! That period of his life was so terrible that he hoped to God, he never faced anything as humiliating again.
“Perhaps…” she said, letting the word trail off her lips in an unfinished thought.
“I tell you what, let's sign a truce and move on to something we can discuss,” he said, taking her wrist and tugging her gently toward him.
“Such as?”
“Such as it gets lonely over here when you're way over there,”
he said teasingly.
“I'd like to sit over here.”
“Just come a little closer,” he cajoled, gently tugging at her arm.
“Do you know you can hardly buy a car anymore with this kind of seat? Everything has bucket seats now. I have to take advantage of a good thing while I can.”
With a shrug, she moved closer, regarding him with a questioning look, and asking herself if she had forgotten so soon her silent advice about keeping a safe emotional distance from Michael.
“That's much better,” he said, pecking her on the cheek and putting his arm about her shoulders. A vision of beautiful bare breasts flashed across his memory and the remembered touch of his hands and lips upon silky soft skin. His thermometer must have soared by twenty degrees. It became an intimate moment as he caught her looking up at him with a gentle expression of warmth. He wanted to question her about that morning, her reaction to his attempt to make love to her. The timing was all wrong, however, and the questions would have to wait.
Sitting so close to Michael, with his arm across her shoulders, the faint smell of his aftershave teasing her nostrils, she remembered him trying to make love to her that past morning. She had wanted it to happen, needing to know if she were capable of experiencing sexual pleasure with a man. She hated Tobias for what he did to her, hated him for taking away the joy she might have experienced through complete sexual surrender and fulfillment. Would it ever come? Would she know the spiraling spring of passion, and the convulsive completion such as she had read about in books? Did that really happen to women?
They were entering the city limits of Bozeman and traffic had quickly become heavier. The weather was superb, slightly cool, and breezy enough to sway treetops and send foliage dancing gaily.
“Have you thought about the kind of car you would like to have?”
Michael asked, trying to determine the best dealership to start with.
“I have no idea.”
At their first stop, Rochelle liked the first car that the salesman showed her; a blue sedan. Even when she looked at other cars, she kept coming back to the first one she saw. Michael suggested they go to other dealerships, but she had made up her mind. She wanted the blue sedan. In less than an hour, they took care of the transaction and arranged for the delivery of the car.
They went on a shopping trip that lasted long past noon, and Rochelle finally stopped buying when she decided there was no more room in Michael's car for further purchases.
With all her bags and packages loaded in the trunk and back seat of the car, having personal things again boosted her morale. She felt lighthearted. Not since high school, when she and her friends found gaiety in many simple pleasures, had she enjoyed herself quite as much as she had thus far with Michael. He was jovial, cheerful, and had an easy temperament making him a comfortable companion.
“I've really had a nice day thus far,” she told him. “I know we've only known each other a couple of days, but it seems like forever.”
“Well, if I haven't known you forever, I certainly want to,” he said less teasingly than usual.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN Michael turned off the road toward Windy Point.
“I'm tired,” Rochelle said, while Michael helped carry her parcels into her motel room. “I think I'd like to hang up my purchases, put things away, and take a long nap.”
“Aren't you going to model the negligee for me?” he asked with a mischievous grin on his face. “After all, I did choose it for you.”
Ever since their outing last night, he had one thing on his mind.
“Michael, you're a skillful manipulator, you are,” she said, laughing, and falling down on the bed with her arms stretched high above her head. “Oh, this feels good.”
Michael sucked in a deep breath of air. She could not possibly realize how seductive she was lying in such a reclining position.
God, he wanted to make love to her.
When she gave a long, relaxing stretch, the temptation was too much for Michael. He lay down on the bed next to her. He bent across her torso, his fingers touching her cheek. “That red hair is gorgeous,” he said, running his fingers through its silky tresses.
Rochelle was about to say something, when he quickly lowered his mouth to hers. His hand ran down her side, cupping her hip, her buttock, running over her thigh, tracing his fingers along the inside toward the triangle between her legs. Her jeans were an impediment to his touch. The kiss continued, until a soft moan oozed from Rochelle's lips.
“I want you, Rochelle,” Michael said, his breath coming in short spurts.
She recalled her reaction that morning when her fear strangled their passions. “We can't, Michael. We can't,” she said, pushing him away.
“Give me one good reason,” he said, his lips moving toward hers again.
She turned her face aside. “I just can't. We barely know each other. Can't we just be friends?”
He rolled over on his back, breathing in a big gulp of air. “Can't I even kiss you?” he asked, sidestepping her question.
She did not answer.
He bent over toward her again, touched his mouth to her lips.
She pushed him away. “I'm afraid to get intimately close to you.
Involving you in my life could become too complicated.”
“And what if I say I'm already involved?” he asked, nuzzling her cheek.
“Then you're contradicting yourself. You said this afternoon that...”
“That was then. This is now,” he whispered hoarsely. When she would have answered, he stopped her words with his lips, holding her in his embrace until her arms snaked reluctantly around his neck.
The kiss deepened and he felt her response, timid and slow at first. Then she became like raging heat beneath him, her kiss as hungry as his own. The very sight of her lying beneath him kindled a fire in his blood that flamed and raged. His hand moved up her side again, and he gave another groan as he cupped her breast, his thumb nudging fire into the taut pink orb beneath her shirt. His lips left a chain of kisses across her cheek, down her neck and beneath her throat, traveling even lower, as he pulled her shirt up above her breast, and reached behind her to undo her bra.
“No, Michael,” she pleaded as he lowered his mouth to her breast, his tongue sending shivers along her spine with electrical currents shooting to her lower abdomen. Her breath was as ragged as his was, and she could feel his hardness pressing against her hip.
“Just let me touch you, kiss you. Let me show you what we can be like together?” His hand was relentless, as his lips and mouth tested her last restraints. His foreplay evoked tiny sounds deep in her throat and she pushed her breast at him, now encouraging him.
Suddenly, he had an attack of conscience. She had said no, and meant it, even as he continued to seduce her. He could feel his thermostat temperature falling as his mouth became still at her breast. His caressing hand that had sneaked into her jeans slowly ceased plundering. With a groan of pure torture, he rolled onto his back again, pulling her over on his chest. “Are you sure you want me to stop?” he asked, hoping she might say no.
“Yes, I want you to stop.” It was hard to say, but she managed to get it out. Her skin felt flushed and looked rosy, and she could feel a need so strong that what she really wanted to do was encourage him not to stop. Instead, she took a deep breath and tried to divert her attention from something too special to describe.
He lay on the bed holding her a long time, waiting for his thermostat to cool, daring not look at her lest he do the deed and reap the guilt later. He could feel her eyes upon him, and if she knew how much they served as an invitation, she would turn the other way. Instead, she rose up on the bed and touched his shoulder.
“I'm sorry, Michael.”
She crawled off the bed. Taking one of the shopping bags, she dumped it on the bed next to him, and proceeded to find a place for everything, passing by the foot of the bed to go put things on hangers. Her round little butt in the tight fitting jeans brought another groan from Michael's throat as he watched her.
Eventually, Michael went into the bathroom, splashed water on his face and dried it with a towel, then came out. He knew he had to get out of there or he would end up in bed with her again.
“I'll see you at seven,” he told her without asking if it was okay.
“We'll dress up so you can wear one of your new dresses.”
She nodded at him, watching him go out the door and pull it shut behind him. She heard the sound of his car engine, then the tires making noise on the pavement as he backed out and pulled away.
She sat thinking a long time before she remembered the unlocked door and went to hook the chain and fasten the lock.
Her thoughts grew tormented, but this time it had nothing to do with Tobias or the reason she ran away. It had to do with Michael, and with the hunger and raging flames racing through her in quivering fury when he had kissed and caressed her. It had to do with a need lying dormant all the years that she was with Tobias, a need born by Michael's touch and kisses.
She wanted him to make love to her.