Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,68

you...”

Sloan’s shivers of agonized thirst slowly abated as he filled her with his heat, making love to her with a gentle trembling thoroughness that proved the truth of his words. Beneath the assault of hands and lips that enticed and seduced while they commanded and took, she came alive as she had never been before, craving release from her consuming madness, but savoring each touch of hungry lips upon her, lips that bruised her breasts, her thighs, sending lightning streaks of electric excitement ever closer to the core of her need. Nor could she fill herself with the taste and touch of him, drowning deeper and deeper in sensation as he rumbled groans of the pleasure she gave him.

He burst within her and she was filled, so sweetly gratified that she was at peace, realizing only then how sorely empty she had been. And he whispered softly that he loved her, and she clung to the words because she wanted more than anything to believe them.

Wes did mean his ardent whispers, uttered with passion in the dark because he was afraid to face them by day. Her sighs of pleasure made him tremble. The darkness had hidden the shattering joy in his eyes when she had come to him...a humble joy...his wife was perfection...a potion that slipped into the blood and intoxicated for life.

There was so much he wanted to say to her. He wanted her to know how sorry he really was, but it could never be explained, only felt.

And he couldn’t explain anyway. She had taken him so easily once, cut him to the bone. She had the power to destroy him; he couldn’t let her do it a second time. He couldn’t talk to her as he wanted, until he could begin to believe, until time healed. They were wary opponents, ever circling...

He couldn’t even assure himself that insecurity would keep him from striking out again...But now, as he held her close in the darkness, they had precious moments of mutual need...and caring. The battle tactics were out of the bedroom. Here he could love her.

And he did.

All through the night. He took what was his and cherished it, knowing morning could bring dissension and inevitably the light of day. Here, in the shadows, he could even accept her tentative whispers of love in return as the lazy comfort of satiation held them both in a spell and he cradled her to his form, softly stroking her hair.

“I do love you, Wes,” she murmured softly against him, her voice so hesitant, so beseeching, that it hurt and he stiffened. Very, very faintly, he thought he heard a muffled sob.

“I love you,” he said quietly. “But I don’t trust you, Sloan.”

“Then where do we go from here?” she murmured bleakly.

He was silent for a long time, but he continued to stroke her hair gently. “Trust is something that has to be earned,” he said very softly, and fell back to silence.

Dawn was streaking through the windows, dispelling the guardian shadows of darkness, when they both slept, held together by the first tenuous thread of communication.

Wes was grateful that he held her in his arms against him, but his sleep was still not content or easy. He still had to wonder if she didn’t wish that she slept with another man, a man she had also called husband and formed a relationship with that was her dream of near perfection...

And he had to wonder if she really loved him, or if she still gave her love only to the ghost who remained in her dream.

She was a wonderful actress. He had learned that already. She could be protesting love for the mere convenience of saving the wealth she had plotted to obtain...

Thank God she didn’t know that any further acting was unnecessary. He loved and needed her so desperately that he would stay with her, give her anything in his power, no matter how she felt, just as long as he could be with her...

CHAPTER TEN

“WHAT IN HELL ARE you doing?”

Wesley’s voice, rasping over her shoulder, startled Sloan so badly that the pill she had been about to take flew from her hand and sailed into the kitchen sink. Whirling to face her husband, she stated the obvious with confusion. “I’m taking a pill.” He stared at her stonily for a moment, his arms crossed over the white terry of his robe, then brushed her aside to pick up the packet she had left on the table. Very deliberately,