Read Online Silent Witness by Richard North Patterson - Free Book Online Page A

touch of humor, ‘I hope it doesn’t itch.’
    They were in this together, Tony suddenly knew. He felt relief course through him.
    Getting out of the car, Tony went to the passenger door and opened it for her.
    She slid from the seat, knees and legs together, graceful even in her deep preoccupation. Something about this moved Tony so much that he pulled her to him and, for the first time that night, kissed her with intensity. He felt her tremor as she joined him.
    â€˜God . . . ,’ Tony murmured.
    Hastily, he opened the back door and clambered inside after her. Kneeling on the back seat, Alison said, ‘It’s cold out there. . . .’
    Tony was suddenly aware that his hands were chill and numb, that their breath, the warmth they made, had begun to condense on the windows. Turning, he wrote on the window with the tip of one cold finger, ‘I love you.’
    Alison smiled. Beneath it, she wrote, ‘Me too,’ and added an exclamation mark. But her voice when she spoke was quiet.
    â€˜This won’t be hard for me, Tony. Not with you.’
    Tony did not know whether she said this to encourage him or herself. Unbidden, Tony remembered his first time – remembered Mary Jane Kulas lying beneath him in this same back seat, her plump thighs open beneath him, a look of nothingness on her face. The first time had hurt her, and, although this went unsaid, Mary Jane had resented him for it. But not as much as she had when – after several more months had brought relief from pain but no real joy to Mary Jane, brief release and lingering guilt to Tony – he had broken up with her and so taken on the weight of still more guilt, which he now knew to have been unavoidable. Because he now knew that her cri de coeur – ‘You’re dropping me for giving you what you wanted’ – was the opposite of the truth: that only guilt had kept him from acting earlier on the realization that he could not really talk with her and that his own desire had concealed this from him just long enough to serve its selfish purposes. So that later he could not defend himself when Mary Jane, Catholic like Tony, had reacted to his dating Alison by calling him a social climber who had taken from her what was precious for mere sport. Nor was it much consolation that Mary Jane understood him so little that she did not know that Tony was unrelieved by the confessional and filled with self-contempt.
    That had been a sin, Tony thought now. He did not wish this to be.
    â€˜Undress me,’ Alison asked softly.
    Tony hesitated, and then said with equal quiet, ‘I love you.’ Said this half for her, half to reassure himself. He felt Alison sigh as he cupped her breast.
    Distracted by his own past sins, Tony helped with her sweater, then the rest of it, until she was naked with him, gently shivering with her own desire. He closed his eyes in something strangely like prayer.
    His savior was the touch of her skin.
    Feeling the responsive stirring of his own flesh, Tony felt protective and aroused at once – for who was there to protect her from, save him? He kissed her neck, the firm tips of her breasts. The soft sounds she made were to encourage him.
    Suddenly the car was a cocoon of warmth, shielding Tony from his other, guilty self. They had come here as partners: he must help make this a moment for them both to remember, perhaps for as long as they were alive. Her body beneath his was warm.
    When he at last touched her there, she was as ready as she knew how to be.
    He stopped, resting on his elbows as he looked at her in doubt and in desire, afraid of hurting her. He saw her eyes smile back at him.
    â€˜I want you,’ she whispered. As he raised his body, she opened her legs for him. He felt a current run between the two of them.
    The slightest cry, and then Tony was inside her.
    He hesitated. Alison cradled his face to her shoulder, murmuring, ‘I love you, Tony.