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hidden.
Tremulously she smiled and placed a kiss on his lips. "Being this happy makes me worried."
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He leaned over her, his expression utterly serious. "There's nothing to worry about."
She looked past him to the closed door. "People, events, the future . . . what if all it comes between us?
What if we're separated by something we can't control?" Nameless threats waited beyond the four walls,
threats that would test their newly forged bond. Her hand crept over his chest until she could feel the vital
pulse of his heartbeat. Ben covered her hand and pressed it more firmly against his heart.
"Believe in me," he said huskily. "Believe in my strength. I won't let anything separate us. Not even you
could drive me away now. No one in the world could fill the place in me that you do. If I'd never met you
I'd spend a lifetime waiting for you to appear. Do you believe that?"
She thought of an old man, ragged and alone, stand-ing in the rain. "Yes," she whispered, and reached
for him, needing to remove all distance between them. She struggled to free the last inner stronghold. The
words I love you were caught in her throat, begging to be released. She wanted to tell him, wanted to
show him that she, too, loved him with the same sureness he had displayed. And yet that last bit of her
heart could not be given. He didn't seem to notice her fail-ure, but Addie was all too aware, and she tried
to make up for it with the generous response of her body.
His mouth crushed hers in a kiss that sent excite-ment crashing through her, and all rational thought
dissolved in a deluge of ecstasy. He took her with de-vouring passion, allowing no respite, no relief,
thrust-ing into her as if his hunger would never be sated. His mouth played ceaselessly on hers,
smothering her gasps into barely audible sounds. She relinquished herself to his possession, finally
understanding how incomplete she was without him. Deliberately he urged her into a new plane of
sensation, where self-consciousness was stripped away and she was left un-disguised from him. With an
incoherent murmur she twined her arms around him and matched his fire with her own.
Addie stirred only a little when he left her, too ex-hausted to take notice of the last kiss, the last caress,
before she was alone again. It seemed like only a few minutes had passed before she heard voices
down-stairs. Daybreak arrived and light splashed through the windows of her room. She buried her head
underneath a pillow, groping for a few minutes of sleep, and her body went limp.
She awoke with a strange sense of dread, noticing the light in the room had changed, darker now, tinged
instead with smoky blue. Lazily she rolled back, blinking the drowsiness away, stifling a yawn. The
sounds of women's voices downstairs had disappeared, as well as the sounds of men working and dogs
barking outside. Everything was still. And then she heard the muted chug-chug of an automobile, and tires
skim-ming a paved street.
Addie scrambled out from under the sheets and sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes wide. The bedroom
was blue and white. There was an electric lamp in the corner. She stared at the poster on the wall, at
Ru-dolph Valentino's slicked-black hair and smoldering eyes. She felt as if she would suffocate.
"No. No, don't let this be happening to me."
Standing up unsteadily, Addie went to the door and tried to turn the knob. It was Iocked. "Let me out,"
she said, although there was no one to hear her, and she pulled harder at the doorknob. "Let me out!"
Her voice was shrill with panic. "Ben, where are you? Ben! Ben-"
She jerked awake with a muffled sound, her heart pounding high in her throat. Trembling, she looked
around at the pink-and-white bedroom and stumbled out of bed, going to the middle of the floor and
turning around. It was all here. Her shoulders and spine re-laxed. She went to the mirror and looked at
her own chalk-white face, at the naked fear that still lingered there. It had only been a dream.
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"I belong here," she said out loud, her voice shak-ing. "I belong here and I won't go back. I won't. "
The brown eyes that stared back at her were full of desperation and doubt.
"Ahh . . . here comes the sleepyhead," Caroline said affectionately as soon as Addie came downstairs.
Addie smiled wanly, sitting in her chair at the table. May poured her coffee and fussed over her, and a
sense of comfort and ease began to steal over her.
"You did sleep late this mornin'," May said with a smile. "Did you have a good night?"
"I . . . I . . . What do you mean?" Addie asked nervously.
"Well, we've spent the last few days at the Fanins'. It certainly is nice to be back in your own bed, isn't
it?"
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