Read Never Leave Me for Free Online Page B

Elaine. Her face. It was a picture out of a dream I once had. All the beauty I ever looked for in a woman, all the beauty I never thought was real.
    I could hear her voice echoing in my mind, soft and low and warm. She was lonely, the way I had been when I was young and the world was a terrible place in which to be alone. She was afraid, the way I had been once. Afraid of the things life can do to you, with the fear that can only come from knowledge of what it has done.
    I knew she liked me. I could tell that right away. People either went for me quick—or they didn’t at all. Elaine went for me. I knew that the first day in the office when I had kept her from leaving. I was sure of it when she’d acted the way she did in the office to-day. And the clincher came when I kissed her.
    Not the first time. The second. She kissed me then. And she wanted me, the way I wanted her.
    There was a hunger in her mouth that threatened to drain all my strength, a passion I had thought lost a long time ago had come up in-me. I had been surprised at its intensity, and a little frightened, too. That was why I had stopped. It made me realize suddenly that I was no different from any other man I knew. I didn’t know whether I liked that or not.
    “Hello, you.” Marge’s voice came softly from behind me. “What’re you doing?”
    I felt her hand press reassuringly down on my shoulder. Without turning around, I reached up and touched her hand. “Thinking.” I said.
    I heard a rustle of her clothing. “Got a problem, Brad?” she asked sympathetically, sitting down on the step next to me. “Tell Mamma. Maybe she can help.”
    I looked at her. Her hair framed her face in a gentle oval, her mouth curved sweetly. That was something I liked about her. She could listen, she was willing to listen. But this was nothing I could tell her. This was something I would have to work out myself.
    “No problem, baby,” I said slowly. “I was just sitting here, thinking how good it is to get out of the city.”
    Her eyes crinkled into a smile. She got to her feet, pulling me after her. “In that case, nature boy,” she laughed, “don’t forget summer is over and you can catch cold sitting like this. Better come inside
    and while I fix coffee, you can tell me all about your dinner with Paul and Edith.”
    I followed her through the living-room. “Mrs. Schuyler was with us too,” I said. “I drove them out to the airport and then took her back to the hotel.”
    She cast a mischievous look at me. “Look out for these Washington widows, my boy,” she teased. “They eat young men like you.”
    “I feel sorry for her,” I said defending myself against nothing.
    She was still in a teasing mood. “Don’t feel too sorry.” She turned the switch on under the coffee. “Don’t forget you have a wife and two children to take care of.”
    “I won’t forget,” I said seriously.
    Something in my voice made her look up at me and the laughter faded from her eyes. She came over to me and looked up into my face. “I know you won’t, Brad,” she said quietly. Her lips brushed my cheek quickly. “That’s why I love you.”

    The bright morning sun flooding into the bedroom woke me up. I stared vaguely at the ceiling. The room seemed somehow wrong to me, as if it were subtly out of place. Then I knew what it was. I was in Marge’s bed.
    I turned my head slowly. Her face was on the pillow next to me, her eyes open, looking into mine.
    She smiled.
    I smiled back at her.
    She whispered something.
    I didn’t hear her. “What?” I asked, my voice shattering the morning quiet in the room. “Young lover,” she whispered. “I’d almost forgotten.”
    I began to remember the night.
    She put her arm up around my neck and drew my head down. “You’re a wonderful man, Brad,” she breathed into my ear. “Do you know that?”
    A pain began to choke my throat. I couldn’t speak. How many men have made love to their wives because of the fires started