Heartless Rebel

by Lynn Raye Harris

  But hers was. Irrevocably. Painfully.

  This was why she’d always been independent, why she’d been determined not to need a man. This aching in her soul was the reason why. She felt so stupid, as naive as he’d once called her. She’d wanted to believe in happy ever after, but she hadn’t wanted to risk her heart for it. How could she have been so blind? Love was all about heartbreak, whether you wanted it to be or not.

  It wasn’t containable or controllable. You couldn’t orchestrate happiness.

  She started to move toward him, but then she was cut off by a couple walking into her path. She stepped back, found herself near the champagne fountain. She started to move away again, but she heard Jack’s name and stopped.

  Two women stood together on the other side of the fountain, sipping champagne and looking in Jack’s direction.

  “Look at Sherry trying to get his attention again,” one woman said. Long pink fingernails wrapped around the slender flute she held. She was tanned, but Cara didn’t imagine it came from a salon. No, this woman had probably gotten that golden color in Saint-Tropez. On a yacht, of course.

  “It won’t do any good,” the other replied. “He has a new mistress.”

  The woman with the pink nails gaped at her companion. “You don’t mean that woman he came with tonight, do you? She cannot possibly be Jack Wolfe’s new mistress. She has no polish, no glamour! She’s as tall as a stick and not half as appealing!”

  “Bob and I saw them at the opera. And I have it on good authority she’s staying in his apartment. She’s been there since his brother’s wedding. American.” The woman sniffed.

  “I simply cannot believe Jack has gone slumming!”

  Cara stiffened. She wanted to hear what else they had to say, but they moved away, heads bent together. Then they burst out laughing. Cara felt the heat of a blush—or was it anger?—prickling her skin beneath her dress. She didn’t belong here. She had a sudden urge to go outside, into the night air, and feel the coolness on her skin.

  She moved in the opposite direction of the two women, seeking an exit. Surely there was a patio or a veranda—or whatever in the hell they called it around here. She felt like everyone was staring at her. People moved out of her way, cast glances at her, talked behind their hands or their glasses or whispered in each other’s ears.

  Talking about her. About Jack Wolfe’s mistress.

  She was no prude. She didn’t care if the whole world knew she was having sex with Jack. But that word—mistress—made it sound as if she were paid to have sex with him. It dehumanized her, took away her power in the relationship.

  No, the word took away the relationship. She and Jack were no longer equals, adults who had a consenting sexual relationship built on attraction and mutual respect for each other. It took away the love she felt for him, cheapened her feelings.

  She hated the word, hated the way it made her feel.

  “Cara.”

  She vaguely heard her name, but she didn’t stop.

  “Cara!” This time, a hand closed around her arm and brought her up short.

  Jack. His brows were drawn low over his eyes as he studied her. “Where were you going?”

  She couldn’t take it any longer. Couldn’t stand the idea that he was everything to her and she was nothing but a warm body to him.

  “Where’s Sherry?”

  His expression grew thunderous. “Where did you hear that name?”

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder. Jack took a step closer, crowded her toward a screen set near an archway. Her pulse leaped as his fingers slid up her bare arm.

  “The same place I heard someone say I was your new mistress,” she flung at him.

  She didn’t know how he managed it, but they were soon outside, in a garden, moving away from the brightly lit house and into the darkness. Voices carried on the night air, people laughing and talking and clinking glasses.

  Jack steered her between tall boxwoods, along a path, until they came to a row of stone columns. Cara jerked away and turned, leaning against the stone, thankful for the cold against her heated skin.

  Jack gave her no quarter. He pressed his body against hers, trapping her between the stone and him. He gripped her hands, threaded his fingers with hers and raised them above her head.

  Her breasts strained against the strapless sheath, her nipples aching with the need to be touched.

  No.

  “What’s gotten into you?” he asked. “Sherry is someone I dated briefly, nothing more. It’s you I need, Cara.”

  His lips dipped to the hollow of her throat, skimming her heated skin. She tilted her head back, swallowed her pain and anger. Desire blossomed. Always, always the desire.

  “I won’t be your mistress, Jack.”

  He leaned back to look down into her face. His silver eyes glittered in the ambient light. The scent of roses surrounded them, cloying and sweet.

  “You already are,” he said softly.

  Pain stabbed into her, made her ache with the hot rush of it. “No,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. She would not let them fall. It was ridiculous—this was ridiculous. Semantics, she told herself. It’s only semantics.

  But it wasn’t. Not to her.

  “I’m not a mistress, Jack.”

  His lips nuzzled her skin again, trailed kisses along her jaw, nibbled her earlobe. “Not a mistress, then. Definitely not a mistress.”

  Then his hot mouth was on hers, and she was opening beneath him, kissing him with all the passion and hunger he always brought to life inside her.

  And yet it felt different this time. Sadder, somehow. As if she’d been stripped of something vital to her understanding of what was between them. Because, as he kissed her in the garden of someone else’s home, with those fancy people inside that she knew looked down on her, she couldn’t summon up the idea that she belonged here with him.

  That she belonged with him at all.

  Jack let go of her hands, and she couldn’t stop herself from twining them around his neck. Her body arched against him as he splayed a hand over her buttock while the other cupped her breast. He flexed his hips and she felt his hardness pressing into her. Her inner core liquefied with need.

  Her body wanted him, her heart wanted him and her head wanted him. But her head insisted she had to make a stand, no matter the consequences.

  Jack’s hand spanned her thigh, lifted her leg to wrap it around him as his fingers slid beneath her hem.

  “I want to make you come,” he said.

  “Jack, I—”

  Then he was beneath the lace of her panties, his long fingers finding the sweet center of her pleasure. Cara gasped as sensation rocked through her. She gripped his shoulders, her back arching against the column, her body greedy for the pleasure he could give her.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I love watching you like this. Come for me, Cara.”

  She wanted to tell him to stop, but she was incapable of speech. Incapable of pushing him away when she loved him so much. She felt as if she wasn’t in control of her own body, as if Jack owned it instead of her.

  He slid a finger inside her, and then another. She was close, so close, her body tightening in upon itself almost painfully.

  And then she shattered like a thousand stars splintering apart in the heavens. Jack caught her cries with his mouth, drank them greedily while she clung to him, shuddering from the power of her release. In that single moment when she was still suspended between bliss and reality, she prayed it would never end. That she would never have to acknowledge the truth.

  But the moment didn’t last, of course. Reality came back to her in degrees. The perfume of the roses, the chirping of crickets, the sound of a car somewhere. Then there was the laughter and the sounds of forks hitting delicate china plates that drifted from the house. Closer still, a woman laughed at something a man said.

  As the reality of the night set in, Cara shoved against the broad shoulders of the man she loved. He took
away her reason, her sense. He made her want him, no matter the consequences to her soul.

  He stepped back, his expression wary.

  And she suddenly knew that he’d done this in an effort to prove his mastery over her. He hadn’t wanted to pleasure her because he loved her, because he couldn’t get enough of her. He’d wanted to divert her from any conversation about them, divert her from asking hard questions or wanting something he wasn’t ready—or willing—to give.

  Fury and hurt roared through her. He’d made her into exactly what she’d sworn she was not—a woman who clung to a man who didn’t love her because she couldn’t face the alternative; because a life with him was preferable to a life without him, no matter how constrained that life may be.

  Mistress.

  This had not been about equality; it had been about dominance. And she despised him for it.

  Cara straightened her dress. She had no idea what her hair and makeup were like now. No doubt she looked like a woman who’d been having sex in the garden during a house party. Shame filled her to the brim, threatened to bubble over and turn into angry tears.

  “I want to leave now,” she said.

  “We’ve only just arrived,” he replied. As if it made a difference. As if she cared. “It would be rude to leave so soon.”

  Cara thrust her chin in the air. “You don’t find it rude to leave the party for a tryst in the garden, but it’s rude to go home?” She shook her head angrily. “I’m going, Jack. With or without you.”

  He took another step away, ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, of course. We’ll go.” And then, because he had to be as sensitive to the currents whipping between them as she was, “I’m sorry, Cara.”

  “Sorry for what?” she shot back. “For making me into your mistress or for making me care for you? Or sorry for what just happened?”

  He was so remote, so untouchable. “I’m sorry for hurting you. You deserve more than this.”

  “I know I do,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. The tears of rage and frustration she’d been holding back spilled over. She did deserve more, damn him! She deserved everything he had to give.

  But he was too caught up in the past to let himself go. Jack Wolfe refused to let anyone inside. She’d known it and she’d stayed with him, anyway. Her fault for being so damn naive.

  As much as it hurt her to realize it, she had to leave him now, before he took what was left of her soul and crushed it to powder.

  “You are capable of more, Jack,” she said. “But apparently I’m not the one who can make you see it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THEY took a limo back to his apartment. The ride passed in silence, Cara sitting as far away from him as she could get. If he touched her, she feared her resolve would crumble. In spite of everything, her body still hummed with need. All she required was his touch to set spark to the tinder and she would go up in flame.

  When they exited the elevator into his apartment, she found the courage to speak. Though they were alone in this space where she’d been so happy with him, there was room to maneuver. She didn’t have to be so near him, didn’t have to smell his scent and listen to his breathing. She could stop the need to turn her face into his chest and just ask him to hold her if she could put distance between them.

  “Am I ever going to be anything more than a mistress to you?” she asked, the words biting as she said them.

  He turned to her, hands in pockets. He seemed so remote, so cool. “Still looking for the happy ever after, Cara?”

  She trembled with helpless fury. And sadness. Such overwhelming sadness. “I believe it’s possible to be happy with one person, yes. I believe it’s possible to love and be loved and never need or want anyone else.”

  His eyes were flat. So flat and empty. “It’s a little girl’s fantasy,” he said, his voice hard. “You should know this as well as I do. Look at our parents, sweetheart. I don’t know about yours, but mine defined the word dysfunctional. And my father kept on doing it even after my mother was dead.”

  “Just because our parents didn’t get it right doesn’t mean we have no chance.”

  His bark of laughter was not reassuring. “You’re so naive, Cara.” He closed the distance between them and grabbed her arms. “Why do you have to want more from me? Why can’t you just be happy with what we have right now?”

  Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. “What do we have, Jack? Tell me what we have, because I want to know.”

  His face twisted, but whether from rage or frustration she did not know. And then he crushed his mouth down on hers. It was a hard kiss, a kiss of domination, of fear, of desperation.

  Though she didn’t mean to do it, she kissed him back. Cara infused all her hope and heartbreak into that single kiss. Anyone witnessing their kiss would know they were engaged in a battle.

  There was nothing tender in this kiss. It was all-out war, a fight for domination on the field of battle.

  Somehow, Cara found the strength to break away first. She was breathing hard, her emotions whipping her with bitterness as she put a steadying hand on the back of a couch.

  Jack stumbled backward a step and ripped his tie loose. His chest rose and fell as rapidly as hers. It gratified her to know he wasn’t unaffected, and yet despair hovered behind the pain she felt.

  Would he really let it end this way? Was he so determined not to let anyone in that he would throw away a chance at happiness?

  Or maybe, Cara thought, he was right. Maybe he was giving all he was capable of giving. Maybe she was being unfair in asking for more. Why couldn’t she be happy with what they had now? Why did she want more?

  Because I deserve it.

  Leaving Jack was the right thing to do. She knew it in her heart, no matter how her heart seemed to be splitting in two at the thought. How could she ever rely on him if she didn’t trust that he felt the way she did? Would she turn out like Mama, loving a man who deceived her and left her brokenhearted, if she were to settle for anything less than the love she deserved?

  “I care about you,” he said, breaking into her tormented thoughts. “I want you.”

  Cara sucked in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, Jack, but that’s not good enough for me. Because I do want the fantasy. I want love and marriage, even though it terrifies me, and I want to be someone’s life and soul. I want to be with a man who can’t live without me just as I can’t live without him.”

  His laugh was bitter. “You just said love terrifies you. Because you know it doesn’t last, Cara. You have your parents’ example, just as I have mine. People leave when you need them most.”

  She shook her head. A tear slipped down her cheek. “I can’t be like you, Jack. As much as it scares me to ever rely on another human being, I want that chance. I want to try, at least. I want to share my life with the man I love, and I want him to share his with me.”

  His eyes were so full of pain and frustration. She wanted to go to him, wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him everything would be all right. But she wasn’t really sure if it would ever be all right. She watched him, waiting for his response. Waiting for him to acknowledge what she’d just told him.

  But if he understood that she’d confessed her love for him, he didn’t show it.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I think you know.”

  “This has been good between us, Cara. It doesn’t need to end.”

  She pulled in a deep breath. “It has been good, you’re right. But it’s not enough. I want more. I don’t want to go to parties and have people whisper behind my back that I’m just another mistress. I want people to know we’re together, that I’ve chosen you every bit as much as you’ve chosen me. I don’t want to be just another bought and paid-for companion.”

  And she was, wasn’t she? Ever since she’d accepted his offer to come to London for the wedding, the balance of power had been thrown off. As much as she’d tried to convince herself it was a legitimate job, t
he truth was far different. Because she’d been fated to fall into bed with him from the moment he’d arrived at her table in Nice.

  “You can’t listen to gossip, Cara. People will try to hurt you if you let them.”

  “They wouldn’t try if they didn’t think it was true.”

  His jaw was hard, his eyes glittering. He swore vehemently.

  “Fine, we’ll get married if that’s what it takes to make you happy.”

  Cara’s heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t imagine what it had cost him to say that. She would have laughed if her heart weren’t breaking.

  “Oh, Jack. You just don’t get it, do you? It’s not about marriage.” She walked over to him, placed a hand on his chest. Felt the thundering pulse of his heart. “It’s about what’s in here. I want to know you. I want you to let me inside. And I’m not sure you ever will.”

  He gripped her hand where it lay against his heart. He looked so serious and so tortured at once.

  “You do know me. As well as anyone.”

  She shook her head sadly. “But for how long, Jack?”

  “As long as it lasts,” he said.

  “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I should have gone sooner, but—”

  “What?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.

  Cara shrugged. “I didn’t want to. I fell for you, Jack. And I kept hoping you’d love me, too.”

  “I care for you.” His voice sounded as if it had been scraped over sandpaper.

  Poor Jack. It was such a hard admission for him. And it was all she’d ever get.

  She took a step back, wrapped her arms around her body. “It’s time I went home. I need to find another job, need to move forward with my life….”

  He swore. “Go, then,” he bit out.

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I still need my passport—”

  “It’s here.”

  Cara blinked. “You have it? Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It came two days ago.”

  Two days? He’d had her passport for two days and he’d not told her about it? Was this why? Had he wanted to avoid exactly the conversation they were having now?