Chapter thirteen

CATHERINE WAITED UNTIL she reached the expressway before calling Rebecca. She drove with one eye on the traffic, preparing herself for disappointment as she half expected that the detective would not be home. When the phone was answered on the second ring, she realized she'd been holding her breath. Hurriedly, she said, "Hi. I'm done early and I was wondering—"

"Terrific. Would you like to go out or—"

"No," Catherine said quickly, "let's stay in. We can watch a movie. I can cook—"

"I'll take care of that," Rebecca said swiftly, then broke into laughter. "Maybe if we stop interrupting each other, we'll be able to figure out what we're doing. Is thirty minutes all right?"

"Anytime," Catherine said, her voice suddenly husky. God, she'd never thought she could miss someone so much after just a day.

"I'll be right there," Rebecca replied in a tone filled with promise.

In fact, by the time Catherine found a parking place and walked the half block to her brownstone, Rebecca had arrived and was waiting for her on her front steps.

"Have you been waiting long?" the psychiatrist asked as she hurried up the stairs, searching in her briefcase with one hand for her keys.

"Only a minute."

The four marble stairs bracketed by wrought iron railings that led to Catherine's front door were not very wide, and as she reached past the taller woman to fit her key into the lock, their bodies brushed lightly together. Absurdly, her hands began to shake. It was moments like this that made her wonder how she had ever believed that she understood anything about life, or human relationships—when she had never experienced anything like this before. Of course, there was no understanding it because it made absolutely no sense that the mere presence of this woman could reduce her to nothing more than raw nerve endings and mindless desire.

"Are you all right?" Rebecca murmured.

"No," Catherine said as she pushed the door open and entered.

Rebecca followed with a paper bag filled with groceries tucked under her right arm. She set it down on the telephone table just inside the door and stood still, regarding Catherine as she dropped her briefcase. "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

"No. Everything is fine." She hesitated, wondering how much to say and then, at a loss for logic, simply said, "It's just that...these last few weeks, I was so used to coming home and you would be here. We'd have dinner; we'd talk; we'd sleep together. I miss you."

For an instant, Rebecca was stunned. She still wasn't used to the fact that someone like Catherine, someone so accomplished and intelligent and...so damn wonderful, could even want to spend any time with her, let alone miss her when they were apart. It was fantastic and terrifying and she expected at any moment for it all to disappear. But there Catherine stood, three feet away, looking at her with something close to sadness in her eyes, and the thought of Catherine hurting in any way tore through Rebecca more sharply than any bullet ever could. She crossed the distance between them and pulled the other woman close, whispering fervently, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about last night. I wanted to be with you."

Threading her arms around Rebecca's neck, Catherine pressed tightly against her, content for the moment to forego words and simply feel. Besides, there were no words to describe the sensation of everything suddenly being made right by a simple embrace. She didn't understand it, but the veracity of it was undeniable. Rebecca's hands moving softly over her back felt more essential to her being then the air she was breathing. "I love you."

Rebecca closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the silky softness of Catherine's hair. "I love you."

"Is there food in that bag?" Catherine asked after her breathing had steadied, leaning back slightly in the circle of Rebecca's arms and letting her eyes play over the blond's face.

"There is," Rebecca replied, but it wasn't food that she hungered for. Deftly, she lifted the blouse from beneath the band of Catherine's slacks and slid her hand onto the warm skin at the base of Catherine's spine. Circling her fingers over the hollows just above her lover's hips, she pressed her own hips forward, drawing a gasp from the woman in her arms. "But it will keep."

Their lips met, and for a time they merely swayed together in the midst of the gathering darkness, hands claiming flesh and lips making promises with kisses that grew more abandoned with each passing second. Catherine finally pulled back when she thought she was in danger of falling, her legs shook so badly. Gasping, she asked, "Does this go away? This feeling of never being able to get close enough?"

"I don't know," Rebecca answered desperately, her chest heaving. "I've never felt it before."

"It doesn't really matter," Catherine murmured almost to herself as she began to work the buttons free on Rebecca's shirt, pulling it from her trousers as she did. She pushed the constraining fabric aside and slid her palms over firm muscles, capturing the soft swell of breasts in her palms. "It's beyond my control."

"Good...don't stop then..." Rebecca groaned, her knees nearly buckling as pinpoints of pleasure streaked from beneath Catherine's fingers. Arching her back, she closed her eyes and tried to steady herself with her hands on Catherine's shoulders. She'd never had a woman take her this way, and she'd never even known before how much she'd wanted it. But she did. The feeling of surrendering to Catherine's passion was more freeing that anything she had ever experienced.

"Can't," Catherine moaned, her head throbbing and her vision nearly gone. Some small working part of her mind reminded her that they were standing in the middle of her living room, and she grasped Rebecca's hand and pulled her urgently toward the sofa. "Sit down," she commanded as she yanked down the zipper on Rebecca's trousers.

The backs of Rebecca's knees hit the edge of the sofa and she had no choice but to comply, feeling the clothes stripped from her body as she went down. She found herself nearly naked, Catherine in her lap, their mouths dancing over one another's skin again. When fingers slid between her thighs, all she could do was drop her head against the back of the couch and moan. It had been like this that first night, her need rising so fast she'd never had a chance to contain it, but this time she didn't resist. She welcomed the fire that burned through her blood, purging the wounds far deeper than flesh. "Please," she begged.

Catherine slipped to her knees between Rebecca's legs, and then leaned forward to take her with tender hands and demanding lips. No thought, no insecurity now. This--this splendor, this wonder, this indescribable beauty—this was hers for the taking, and take her she did. With certainty of touch and surety of heart, she lifted her lover on the wings of her own breathless desire to a place beyond knowing.

Rebecca sifted strands of thick auburn hair through her nearly lifeless fingers, unable to muster enough strength to lift her head from the cushions of the couch. Her thighs still trembled, and her stomach rippled with aftershocks. "Catherine?" she asked hoarsely.

"Mm..."

"I'm wasted."

"Me too."

"If you help me up, we can probably make it into the bedroom. You must be uncomfortable." With effort, she slipped her palm beneath Catherine's chin, raising her lover's head from where it rested against her own inner thigh, and managed to focus on the deep green eyes. "If you give me a few minutes, I might be able to reciprocate, too."

"I'm fine." Catherine smiled. "Making love to you seems to set me off."

"Still, I have plans for you." She was tired, and her chest ached, and the lassitude that lingered after her release had nearly lulled her into sleep, but she needed Catherine to know how much she wanted her. She needed to show her, and there wasn't much time.

"Hold that thought," Catherine said warmly as she pushed herself upright and extended one hand to Rebecca. "Let's have dinner first. We both need to eat."

"All right. Food first, but don't think I'm forgetting."

"Oh, believe me, I won't let you forget."

As it turned out, time slipped away and it was close to midnight by the time Rebecca had stir fried the vegetables and noodles she'd picked up earlier in the evening, and even later by the time they'd finished eating and piled the dishes into the dishwasher.

"Come on," Catherine announced, grasping Rebecca's shirttail and tugging her away from the sink. "Bed. I'm fading and..."

"I need to go out later."

Catherine stopped moving abruptly, letting the material fall from her fingers. "What?"

Rebecca turned and rested her hips against the counter. She didn't want to see what was in Catherine's eyes—she was afraid it would be that combination of hurt and resentment that had so often been in Jill's—but she forced herself to meet the other woman's gaze. There were questions in the depths of those green eyes, and confusion, but they hadn't grown cold. Not yet. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself for the pain that was sure to come when Catherine turned from her in anger. "I've been away from the job a long time. I need to get a leg up on this new case, and there are some people I need to see."

Catherine stared at her, struggling to absorb the words and place them into some context she could deal with. There wasn't any. "Tonight? In the middle of the night—alone?"

It was Rebecca's turn to be confused. "Catherine, I'm a cop."

"Of course, I know that, Rebecca," Catherine snapped, rubbing the bridge of her nose and pacing the length of the kitchen. "I thought this was desk duty. A paper chase."

"It is—well, it is and it isn't. It's a real investigation, and a lot of it will be done through computer searches and whatever the hell else it is that those eggheads are going to do, but there's real police work to be done, too."

"What about Watts? I thought he was going to do the street work?" She forced herself to slow down. Screaming would not help, and the very fact that she wanted to scream was upsetting enough.

"He is," Rebecca affirmed. She took a chance and walked the few feet to her, tentatively taking her hand. The slight contact eased some of the tension in her stomach, although Catherine's response was guarded. "But he can't talk to my contacts. It took me years to cultivate them, and they don't talk to just anyone. I'll just be talking. I swear."

Catherine took a step away, but she kept her hand in the detective's. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier? When you got here--or on the phone when I called you from the car?"

The cop was silent.

"Rebecca?"

"I was..." she ran a hand through her hair, shrugged her tight shoulders. "I thought you'd be angry. I thought you wouldn't want to see me."

"Angry," Catherine said softly. "Did you think that I might be worried? That I might be concerned that you've barely been out of bed a week and you're already working fifteen hour days? God, Rebecca—"

She walked over and sat down at the small kitchen table, motioning to the adjoining chair with one hand. "Sit down. You look tired."

Rebecca sat. "I meant to tell you, but when we got here—"

"I didn't give you much chance to talk then, did I?" Catherine filled in, a faint smile relaxing her troubled expression.

"I wanted you, too. Badly." Rebecca took her hand again, and this time Catherine's fingers laced comfortingly between hers. "When you touch me, everything just...falls into place. Everything makes sense."

"I know." She brushed her fingers over the detective's cheek. "For me, too. Our non-verbal skills are just fine. Outstanding, as a matter of fact. But we need to do a little better on the verbal parts."

"I'm bad at it," Rebecca said honestly. "Around my house, the job came first. My father never explained; my mother never complained. But I know there were a lot of nights he never came home. And then—well, then he never came home."

Catherine's heart thudded painfully, but she just nodded. Rebecca's expression was distant, and she doubted that the detective really saw her.

"I grew up with silence. That's the way most cops are." The blue eyes she lifted to Catherine's swirled with anguish. "I've never even said these things out loud before."

"And that's exactly why I love you," Catherine whispered. "Because you're saying them now."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16