Four
“Hey.” Maxim spoke into Adelaide’s hair, next to her ear, but she didn’t move. “You still with me?” he said, more loudly.
When her head lolled on his arm, he grew alarmed enough to shake her. “What are you doing? Wake up!”
No answer.
With a curse, he leaned on his elbow. A moment before, he’d caught his own mind wandering, blanking out as if preparing for sleep. It’d happened so fast he almost wondered if he was the one who’d slipped away and was now hallucinating. “Listen, we’re not...giving up, okay?”
She mumbled a few words. They weren’t coherent, but at least they proved she was alive.
Thank God!
Closing his eyes, he let go of the breath he’d been holding. “If they find us...like this...they might...take a picture and...and put it on the front page of The Bee. Can you...imagine the caption?”
He hoped his comment would cause a reaction, and it did. “They’d better not!”
“They could. We have to remain conscious, make sure they don’t.”
“We’ll...be...conscious.”
Not if they didn’t do something to stay awake. Less than sixty seconds later, he felt the tension seep out of her body.
“Adelaide, come on.” Come on what? Where was he going with this thought? It took a moment, but at last he remembered. “We have to...to keep dalking.”
“Keep...what?”
He was having trouble enunciating. He had to capture each word, chase it around in his head, then drag it to his mouth.
“T-talking.” There, he’d said it. But the effort was wasted. His warning brought no response.
“Adelaide, fight...please.” The sexual desire he’d felt earlier was completely gone. Now he wished for that spike of testosterone, for the flare of physical strength it had given him. In its place sat a hard knot of dread, but it was muted like everything else seemed to be. It certainly wasn’t enough to overcome the sluggishness bogging him down. And with the storm still raging, they had a long wait ahead.
“Shall...we sing...some Christmas carol?”
No answer.
“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way—” He stopped. That was all he could remember, which was ridiculous. He wasn’t any kind of Scrooge. He liked Christmas. But apparently he hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics of even the more popular songs in quite some time. Probably because he didn’t usually sing, didn’t have what he would consider a voice. So he settled for something more repetitive and less vocally demanding. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”
His words ran together as if he was drunk. He tried to sing more clearly, hoping Adelaide would join in, but she didn’t. Only the flutter of her heartbeat, which he could feel when he pressed his lips to her throat, gave him hope—until that heartbeat became erratic, weak.
Feeling her heart wind down finally triggered the release of some much-needed adrenaline. Suddenly, he could think. Almost as important, he had the energy to move.
“Adelaide?” He kissed her throat, her jawline, her cold lips. “Hey, you’re naked...with...the enemy.”
Forgetting the scruples that had kept him circumspect and discreet, he unfastened her bra and slid his hand up to cup her breast. He didn’t care about right and wrong anymore. He cared only about saving her life. To do that, he needed to rouse her to some level of awareness. “Can you feel me touching you?”
She moved, which encouraged him.
“Do you like it?” Parting her lips with his tongue, he kissed her while his fingers sought the more sensitive parts of her body. He wasn’t having fun. He was too frightened. But he was putting everything he had into trying to interest her—or at least anger her. As far as he was concerned, either reaction would work. He simply needed to evoke an emotional response. Even a small rush of adrenaline could keep her lucid.
“Mark?”
He went still. She was out of it, all right. She thought he was her late husband.
He opened his mouth to correct her. But he feared despair would set in if he did. She was trapped on the side of a mountain, in the middle of a terrible blizzard, with little chance of survival. With him, a man she hated. But only when she knew who he was.
“Yeah, it’s me.” He cringed at the lie but didn’t regret telling it when it worked better than he would’ve guessed. For the first time since the crash, he sensed some fight, some real strength in Adelaide. She was weeping now, but she clung to him, kissing him so passionately he began to experience a flicker of the desire that had crashed over him when he’d first encountered her barely clad body.
God, what am I doing?
He was saving her life, he told himself and, at her urging, slid his hand down her flat stomach to take off her panty hose.
* * *
It wasn’t Mark, and Adelaide knew it. But that didn’t mean she had to accept it.
Shutting out the reality, she concentrated on Maxim’s mouth, his muscular chest, the thickness of his hair—and told herself it was the husband she’d lost. Sure, his kiss seemed a little different than she remembered, but it was so good she didn’t mind. He showed more emotion, and the groan that rumbled from deep in his throat let her know he wanted her. The way he handled himself—handled her—was slightly more commanding. She liked it better. Because it’s been so long.
“I love you,” she whispered through tears she couldn’t seem to suppress.
He stopped moving. She imagined him staring down at her, even though neither of them could see. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Adelaide—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. She didn’t want him to ruin it. She had her husband with her. That was all that mattered. Maybe he’d disappear in a few minutes, leave her as alone as she’d been before. But at least she’d have this final memory—a better parting than the one she’d agonized over for so long—to carry her through whatever came next.
“Tell me you love me,” she whispered, craving those words more than any others.
He hesitated.
“Mark?”
“You know it’s true.” Although he’d spoken a little too gruffly to make it entirely believable, there was no mistaking the sincerity in the words that followed. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, Adelaide Fairfax.”
She chose to focus on that instead. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.... Wrapping her fingers around the proof of his arousal, she couldn’t help smiling at his sudden intake of breath. The passion that had begun to wane in their marriage was back. Her doubts, her insecurities, they were stupid. Wasted energy, just as he’d always said. “Feels like you’re ready.”
“I’m ready. But—”
“Shh.” She regretted ever breaking the silence. She’d only wanted to clear the air between them, hated that he’d died before she could apologize for the accusations that had sent him storming from their home. “Just make love to me. Tell me I’m all you ever wanted. Tell me that never changed.”
“You’re taking my very soul,” he murmured.
“Don’t fight it.” She meant that teasingly, but he seemed to take her response at face value. His hands and mouth found her again, drawing a greedy response from every single nerve—until she was so sensitized she quivered at his lightest touch. She wanted to be with him completely, craved the old sense of connection they’d known when they were first married. But he resisted her attempts to take their lovemaking that final step.
“What are you doing?” she asked, confused by his hesitancy. “I want to feel you inside me. One more time.”
“Adelaide, I can’t. I’m not Mark. You know that, don’t you? I’m—”
“Shh!” Couldn’t he take what she was willing to give him and spare her the harsh reality? It was her last night on earth; this was all she asked of it. “I don’t want to hear what you’re saying.”
“It’s the truth. I can’t do this unless...” He seemed to struggle to find the right words. “I have to know you’re okay with it, that I’m not taking advantage of you.”
“We’re taking advantage of each other,” she said and arched into him, seeking the fantasy that had enveloped her only moments before.
Stubbornly, he clung to his resistance. “You’re sure?”
She let her kiss answer for her, let it coax him to succumb, to forget that she was pretending he was someone else. And it worked. His restraint snapped. She felt it go.
Mumbling words she couldn’t quite make out—heaven help me or something like that—he rolled her beneath him.