Thanks for your continued support of my stories, and your patience in waiting for them... Your comments are much appreciated! Please send to my e-mail address or post on the message board. Thanks!
* * *
Leaning his weight heavily against the kitchen counter in front of the sink, Sam sighed heavily. He'd never felt this confused in his entire life. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried, the boundaries between his love for Josie and the love he'd once felt for Lara were suddenly blurry and he just didn't know for sure what was real and what was not.
Until a few minutes ago, Sam had been confident in his knowledge that because of Josie, Lara had no power to affect him anymore. But when his passion and desire for Lara resurfaced from the tempting picture she'd made in his bedroom, he knew for a fact that he'd been wrong. Lara definitely still had the power to affect him. And that fact shook him to the core and made him feel incredibly guilty, as if he were somehow betraying Josie's trust in him. He looked over toward his telephone and answering machine on the counter by the fridge. For a second, he wished that Josie would call, but then he looked down at the floor, ashamed. How could he ever speak to her after his reaction to Lara?
Looking up toward the heavens, Sam prayed silently, "Please God, please help me do what's right. I'm so confused�help me find my way." Then, swallowing his panic, his eyes searched the small kitchen, as if he could find the answers to all his questions tucked away in some small overlooked corner of the room.
Finally, Sam's eyes settled on what he considered at least a short-term cure: his coffeemaker. Smiling just a little, he decided, "I sure could use the caffeine right now�maybe a clearer head will help me deal with this situation better."
So, with at least a little hope of improved spirits, Sam moved to the cabinet above the coffeemaker and pulled out his sealed tin of coffee, using the scoop to measure the grounds into the holder. Walking over to his refrigerator, he grabbed his pitcher of filtered water and filled the carafe. Placing the water pitcher down on the counter, he poured the water from the carafe into the machine, placing it back on the burner and pushing the start button. Then he replaced the water pitcher back into the fridge and removed his creamer to place it next to the sugar bowl on the counter.
After a moment, the aroma of brewing coffee filled the kitchen and Sam breathed in huge gulps of the familiar smell, almost as if he thought the smell alone would help. Then he walked back to the cabinet above the coffeemaker and opened it, searching his mugs for just the right one. Sam chuckled to himself at this small idiosyncrasy of his� Choosing just the right cup to fit his mood was almost a karmic thing for him, and it was something that Lara had never understood.
"Aha! There!" Sam thought to himself in desperation, "You see? It's already starting to come back to you�" trying to think of the reasons he and Lara were not a good match.
After another moment's thought, Sam reached into the cupboard and pulled out a large, rounded gray stoneware mug. Gray certainly seemed to fit his mood at the moment, he decided with a sigh.
Sam had just finished pouring coffee into his mug when Lara entered the kitchen. Sam turned as he heard the familiar sound of her high-heeled shoes tapping against the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Then he stood silently in awe, knowing his mouth was probably hanging open.
Lara was dressed in a very feminine black skirt suit that fit her like a glove and showed quite a bit of the stocking clad legs he'd seen earlier. And her hair�for once, she was wearing it down in soft curls around her face the way he liked it, instead of pulled up and away in her more businesslike approach. Sam swallowed hard, but continued to stare and stand like a statue, his coffee mug still in hand.
Lara bit back her triumphant smile at Sam's stunned reaction to her and instead pasted a soft smile on her mouth. Sauntering over to Sam, she took the coffee mug from his unresisting hand and took a sip, making sure her lips lingered on the side of the cup for effect. Then she let out a blissful sigh, closing her eyes for a moment, and then said with a smile, "Thanks, Sam�that was very thoughtful of you� You always did make the best coffee�"
Sam continued to stare at Lara, speechless. With her close proximity, he could tell she was wearing the perfume he'd bought for her two years ago at Christmas�the one that always drove him insane with want when she wore it. Sam could feel the familiar heaviness starting to set into his limbs and he turned away quickly under the pretense of grabbing another mug from the cupboard to pour his own coffee with a shaking hand.
With a start, Sam realized that Lara had just taken his "karmic" mug and he sighed. It just seemed that the fates were conspiring against him today. Reaching into the cupboard again, he grabbed the first thing he put his hand on and pulled it out. Looking at it as he poured his coffee, it was a ceramic mug with a picture of Shakespeare and a quotation from the play Hamlet on it: "To thine own self be true�" Stirring in his cream and sugar, he thought to the Bard, "Yeah, but how?"
Then, with a shuddering breath, he turned to face Lara once again. She was now seated at the kitchen table, with her legs crossed and off to the side where he could see (and admire) them, instead of under the table. She motioned gracefully to the seat across the table from her in invitation.
As Sam seated himself across from her, Lara knew that so far, she was winning the battle. She knew Sam well enough to know that he was very flustered and more than a little aroused by her right now�a trend she hoped would continue.
Sam cleared his throat again, took a healthy sip of his coffee and then said, "So, tell me�what's on your mind?"
Lara smiled a secretive smile and thought, 'I'd love to know what's on your mind right now, Sam�' although she felt sure she knew what the answer would be. Lara reached across the table and began to softly stroke the back of Sam's free hand with her fingers. Then she said, "I want to know what it was that I did that was so horrible that you felt that you couldn't be with me anymore� If I only knew, then I could work on it and we could be happy again�"
The lazy circles that Lara was drawing on the back of Sam's hand was really distracting him. After struggling to follow what she had said, finally, he gave up and said, "Huh? What did you say?"
Lara's grin inched even wider with amusement as she said, "I asked about what I could do to make things better for us, Sam�"
Sam gently pulled his hand away from hers to encircle the other side of his coffee mug stiffly. Sighing, he replied, "Gosh, Lara, I just don't know anymore� I just can't think. I mean, I know there were reasons why I needed to leave, why things went wrong, but I just can't seem to explain right now�" Sam let go of his coffee mug and put both hands to his head as if his headache were about to return.
Lara put her coffee mug down on the table and looked at Sam with concern. "Honey? Are you okay?" She unfolded herself from her chair and walked over to stand closely behind him. "You poor thing," she cooed at him. "I didn't mean to make this so hard on you� Here," she said, placing a hand on each of his shoulders, "why don't you let me work some of the kinks out of your neck? You look so tense�"
Sam was about to protest when Lara started kneading the tense muscles in his neck. In spite of himself, he sighed with pleasure. He rolled his head from one side to the other, letting Lara's fingers work out the kinks. It had been ages since she'd taken the time to massage his neck and it felt wonderful. Sam could feel the stress and anxiety that had built up over the past few weeks draining away under her ministrations.
Although Sam's tension started to fade, his confusion regarding his feelings for Lara was growing. She seemed so�so�caring and understanding, so much like the Lara he'd fallen in love with so many years before. And if that were true, then wasn't it possible that he could be wrong about some of the things he'd thought were amiss with their relationship?
As the tenseness in Sam's muscles diminished, Lara knew that she could stop, but instead, she leaned in a little closer and softened her touch a little, just enough to change it from an impersonal massage to a very personal, lingering caress. Lara half expected Sam to reach up and yank her hands away�but he didn't. He seemed too enthralled in the feelings to notice the subtle difference.
Almost spellbound by the soft caresses, Sam closed his eyes and sighed with bliss, tilting his head backward. He could feel the soft rush of Lara's breath against his cheek as she leaned nearer to him and could smell her perfume wrapping around him, making it completely impossible for him to think of anything else. Everything seemed to fade away and he forgot all about the fact that he was supposed to be getting rid of her�indeed he'd forgotten his purpose�and about Josie�entirely. It was almost as if the past five years had disappeared and here they were, two college sweethearts enamored with each other again.
Sensing Sam's apparent surrender, Lara slowly slid her hands down from his neck to drape around and down his front, and rested her chin in the crook of his neck. She rubbed abstract patterns over his chest as she breathed into his ear, "Sweetheart?"
In response, Sam laid a hand on each of Lara's arms, rubbing up and down the length of them in an almost impatient gesture. He responded, his eyes still closed, "Hmmm?"
Gently, carefully, Lara nuzzled lightly at Sam's ear and replied, "Oh, Sam, I've missed you so�I love you so much, darling�" Then she lowered her head to graze his sensitive spot at the base of his collarbone with her lips.
Sam's head listed over a little as the incredibly erotic sensation of Lara rubbing his chest and kissing his neck set him reeling along with the fervency of her words. A very small part of his mind was calling out in protest, trying to tell him that this shouldn't be happening, but the furious pounding of his heart drowned it out. At that moment, he felt every inch the insecure, na�ve 21 year old he'd been when he met her�when he'd loved her beyond all reason and all he'd ever wanted in life was to hear her tell him she loved him back. "Oh, God, Lara�" he breathed, his voice almost broken with emotion.
He reached up his right hand and sunk his fingers into her hair, feeling the curls slip over and through his fingers, almost as if they, too, were caressing him. In a daze, he wondered, 'How can something that feels this right be wrong?'
Lara smiled a little into Sam's neck before she continued her gentle attack. Running her tongue softly in the hollow at the base of his neck and then up to his ear again, she pleaded, "Please, Sam. Please tell me you love me, too�I don't know if I could go on if you didn't�" She said it knowing it would spark his memory, because years ago, on the night they first made love, she had said the exact same thing to him, even though then she had meant it (well, as much as she meant anything) and now she did not.
Sam was trapped�trapped between the reality of the present and the memory of that long ago night. Lara's slow seduction had made it impossible for Sam to think beyond that instant: that feeling of love, acceptance, and desire that he'd always longed for. And all those years ago, he'd wanted these things from Lara more than he'd wanted his next breath. And because he couldn't seem to separate the past and the present, he wanted them now. Sam turned enough to pull Lara by the arms into his lap on the chair. He held her head lovingly in both hands, looked deeply into her eyes, and whispered the same words he had years before, "Yes, Lara, I love you more than life itself�"
Playing the part perfectly, Lara closed her eyes and sighed, just as she had that night, and in return she was rewarded with an incredibly explosive kiss from Sam. She could feel his muscles straining, yet he held her face gently, caressing it softly with his thumbs as he slowly devoured her mouth. Sighing, she snaked her arms around his neck and buried her hands in the hair at the base of his head, holding him to her.
No matter how much belittling of his skill as a lover she had done over the years, she knew that none of it was true. In truth, he was incredible�they were incredible together. No one else had been able to excite her the way that he had; that was one of the things that kept her coming back when he obviously had little else to offer her. This had been one of the main reasons why she had kept him even after going back to her high society roots in New York. She knew that if she could only properly train him in the culture he would need to be accepted in, he would be perfect: he'd have the appearance of being one of them, while she alone would know that he was still the same Sam from the poor side of town, and still be able to derive her excitement from her feelings of "getting away with something naughty." The constant stream of comments regarding his prowess was simply a way of toying with his insecurities in this area, which was, as she'd learned from experience, one of the best ways to keep a man from straying.
Softly, as if hesitant, Lara opened her mouth and allowed Sam to delve inside, deepening their kiss even further. She knew she needed to play this just right if she was going to be able to pull this seduction off. Even so, though, she could feel her heart starting to pound and heat pouring through her veins from Sam's attentions, just as it always had. Finally finding the strength to pull away, Lara trailed a line of hot, wet kisses along Sam's jaw toward his left ear, pausing just long enough to command with a breathy voice she didn't have to fake, "Then show me, Sam� Show me how much�"
Sam shivered at the sound of Lara's voice, thick with desire. Still lulled into thinking that he was somehow reliving their first night together, he felt, as he had then, that he would die if he didn't have her. And as Lara's lips again suckled the sensitive spot on his neck, even that thought faded from him�nothing existed except for the sensations she was building inside of him. He slid his hand down to her leg, sliding it up and down the silky smooth of her stockings and gasping as he reached the top of them, where they attached to her garter belt. Suddenly his mind flashed with the sight of Lara in that incredibly sexy underwear and he was dying to see it again, up close and personal.
Stifling a groan in her hair, Sam slowly slid his hands upward to slide up and down her sides, just grazing the sides of her breasts with his fingers. In response, Lara let out a little pleased moan and scratched her fingernails lightly down Sam's back.
Knowing he couldn't take the torment of not being with her much longer, Sam pulled his left arm out from between their bodies and swung it around, intending to brace her back against it to lift her up into his arms. But instead, as he brought his arm around and over the table, he knocked over his nearly full cup of coffee, spilling it on his hand and all over the kitchen table.
"Damn!" Sam swore as the hot coffee scalded his hand. In his attempt to pull his hand away, he half stood up, which ended up sliding Lara off his lap. She pushed to a stand next to him, her thoughts echoing his expletive. She hoped that the moment was not lost entirely by his clumsiness. 'Leave it to Sam to bumble his way out of this�' she huffed silently, still burning with her own unspent desire.
As Sam also stood, shaking his hand to remove the droplets of hot coffee and turning to grab a dishtowel to mop up the remainder of the liquid that was now dripping off the edge of the table onto the floor. Using his right hand to clean up the spill on the table, he then bent to clean up the remainder of the spill on the floor. As he bent down, he closed his eyes and leaned a little on the table leg, breathing deeply to try and calm his pounding heart. In a daze, he looked down and saw that his hands were shaking, and it was definitely not from the coffee burn.
Lara crouched down beside him, kneeling one leg on the floor. She placed a soothing hand on his shoulder and said, "Sam? Honey, are you all right?" When he didn't answer, she looked over and saw an angry pink mark on the back of his other hand. She reached over and held his left hand in both of hers gingerly, not wanting to cause any more pain. "Oh, look, you burned it! Come on," she said, tugging at his right arm, pulling him to stand up with her. She dragged Sam over to the kitchen sink. "The mess can wait. Let's get that hand under some cool water." She turned on the tap and checked the temperature with her fingers until it was just on the cool side of lukewarm. Then she pulled his hand under the stream of water, saying, "There now, that should help�"
Sam looked down at their hands, still entwined underneath the running water, and then looked up into Lara's face. Sam knew he was unconsciously searching for something, but he didn't know what it was that he was searching for.
"I�I," Sam stammered, not even knowing what he was going to say. Then he looked back down at his hand again and then up to her face, so full of love and concern, and finished, "I think that maybe I should go put something on this and bandage it up�"
Lara made sure Sam held eye contact with her. She smiled slightly and said, "Do you want me to help you?"
"No, no�that's okay," he replied shakily, the gruffness of his voice giving away his unabated desire for her. He reached over and turned the faucet handles to shut off the water. "I'll just go take care of this in the bathroom. I'll be right back." He turned to go, but after a split second of hesitation, he turned back and kissed Lara on the lips as a signal that their "discussion" was not over.
As Lara watched him go, she smiled widely, pleased with herself. She'd handled that little setback perfectly, if she did say so herself, and it seemed that even hot coffee wasn't going to stop them now� Bending down to finish cleaning up the spilled coffee with the dishtowel, she found herself looking at the empty doorway where Sam had just passed through thinking, "Oh, Sam�I've got you now�"
* * *
Sam entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him, leaning his weight heavily against it. Then he looked down at his stinging left hand. It amazed him how the painful throbbing of his hand and the pleasurable throbbing of the rest of him seemed to intermingle, until he didn't know which was pain and which was pleasure. "God, Sam," he thought to himself with half a chuckle, "you really are going insane."
He pushed away from the door and walked over to the medicine cabinet, pulling open the mirror to remove some antiseptic ointment and a roll of gauze. Closing the cabinet door, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Even though his current day reflection shone back at him, what he saw was himself as a young, idealistic, innocent 21 year old young man; a young man who was about to "be" with the woman that his life revolved around.
Looking down to his task and whistling a little under his breath, he carefully ran cool water over his wound and then pulled it back, reaching over onto the counter to grab the towel resting there to pat the burn dry so that he could bandage it. But because he had to reach across himself with his right hand to get it, he ended up knocking a bunch of Lara's toiletry items from the counter onto the floor.
Sighing at what seemed to be his constant clumsiness today, he placed the towel over his forearm and crouched down to pick everything up. As he draped the towel, a piece of crumpled paper slid out from the folds and landed on top of the heap of makeup and hairspray. Thinking this also belonged to Lara, he turned it over, curious to see what it was.
In his total shock, Sam felt his knees give way and he plopped down on his behind with a graceless thump. An icy finger of panic sloshed through Sam's system, instantly cooling his desire and clearing his head, bringing him back to earth.
Because what had been right next to Lara's things and apparently hidden inside the towel was his picture of Josie and himself, covered in paint and standing in front of the prom backdrop. 'Oh, God,' he thought in despair for the second time in two days, 'What the hell have I done?'
Sam couldn't even begin to fathom the consequences of what had just happened. Resting the back of his head against the vanity cabinet under the sink, Sam closed his eyes and mentally replayed the last twenty minutes. He was horrified at his complete and total lack of control in his response to his now ex- girlfriend�all while the real love of his life was safely at work without even a worry about his fidelity to her. Because while what had actually occurred between himself and Lara was awful, he knew in his heart that if he had not burned his hand, he would have made love to Lara.
The headache that had been looming on the horizon all morning exploded, setting the room spinning with a vengeance. Closing his eyes against the vicious dizziness and pain from the light, he crawled over to the toilet, resting his forehead against the cool porcelain as a small comfort. Even as his head pounded each heartbeat into his skull like a drill, he called himself every expletive he could think of and a few he made up. He absolutely did not deserve an incredibly wonderful woman like Josie; he had more than proven that this morning. Maybe Lara was right after all and they did belong together, because Sam was sure he didn't merit anything better. And as Sam suddenly turned to pull himself up onto his knees, he was sure of something else: he knew with absolute certainty that he was about to be violently sick.
* * *