* * *
Alex couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw John the way he had been that afternoon, with his great head bent over the steering wheel of his truck. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t forget the terrible sounds of anguish that had torn from his throat. She’d felt like an intruder, the worst kind of voyeur, peering into the secret part of his heart.
The old Alex would never have stood there with her own heart on her sleeve, fighting the urge to hold him in her arms and ease his pain. She would have turned away the instant she saw him, pushing the images of his raw pain from her mind as if she’d never seen them at all. That was what polite people did. They averted their eyes from unpleasant sights. They closed their ears to things they didn’t want to hear. They pretended the world was a perfectly wonderful place until it exploded and left them wondering what had been wrong in paradise.
She should have asked Dee about him. People asked questions about other people all the time. Is he married? Does he have kids? Who does he love? Whole industries had sprung up around the need to know the most intimate details of other people’s lives. But every time she’d tried to form the words, her throat had closed up, and she was left with the certainty that he deserved better than her curiosity.
She kicked off the covers and sat up against the headboard. Rain beat steadily against the roof, and she tried not to think about the leaks or the missing ceiling—or how much money it would cost her to repair them. She’d never thought about things like that when she was Griffin’s wife. There hadn’t been a reason to. Money—or the lack of it—had never been an issue. She spent money how and where she wanted to, and somehow the bills got paid. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask how.
Brian had zeroed in on her earrings immediately, and while she’d done a good job of deflecting attention away from them, her facile lies had left a bad taste in her mouth. She didn’t want to begin her new life on a foundation of lies and half-truths. She would be better off selling the earrings so she could resurrect her dead car and make sure what remained of her roof didn’t drop down and crush her one night while she slept.
Maybe next week she’d take the train up to New York and—
There was a knock at the front door, and her breath caught. They’d warned her about the vandalism going on at the marina next door. Did vandals knock before they trashed your house?
“Alex.” A man’s voice, smoky and dark. A familiar voice. “Alex, are you in there?”
She climbed from bed and padded to the window. Rain sluiced down the panes of glass, obscuring her vision. She could just make out a male figure by the front door.
John, she thought as heat began to build inside her body. It was John.
His voice resonated inside her chest. “If you’re in there, let me know you’re okay. I found your car and—”
She dashed from the bedroom and through the hallway, then swung open the front door a few seconds later. “I’m fine,” she said as the rain whipped her nightgown around her legs. “I stalled the engine at the stop sign. I think the battery’s dead.”
“I saw the VW in the intersection.” He wore a battered leather jacket and a look of such stunning tenderness on his face that she thought she would die of it. No one had ever looked at her that way before. “I pushed it over to the curb so you won’t get a ticket.”
“Thank you.” She wrapped her arms around her chest, suddenly aware of her body in a way she hadn’t been a few moments before. “I’m sorry I left it there. I didn’t mean to—”
“I didn’t come here for an apology, Alex. I came to see if you’re all right.”
Her mouth trembled slightly as she smiled. She was conscious of every movement of her body, each breath, every beat of her heart. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know. Go back inside. It’s cold out here.”
He turned to leave. It was the one thing she couldn’t let him do. “You’re soaked to the skin. Come in and let me make you some coffee.”
He met her eyes. “That’s not a good idea.”
She chose to misunderstand his look. “Coffee is always a good idea.”
She stepped back and ushered him into the house. Droplets of water fell from his hair and shoulders as he moved past her. One landed, like a teardrop, on her cheek.
“I hope you don’t mind waiting,” she said cheerily as he followed her into the kitchen. “I don’t have one of those coffee machines that work at the speed of light. Believe it or not, I actually have to boil water on the stove.”
“Primitive,” he remarked, lingering in the doorway. “Next you’ll tell me you don’t have a dishwasher.”
She frowned and thrust her hands behind her back. “No fair,” she said. “You saw the dishpanned evidence.”
He didn’t laugh or smile, just watched her as she filled the whistling teakettle with water from the sink, then set it on the stove. “Come on,” she murmured, holding a lighted kitchen match near the right front burner. “I know you can do it.”
His footsteps squeaked against the linoleum. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said as her entire body registered his approach. “The stove likes a little encouragement, that’s all.”
“Marge used to complain about the pilot light.” He stopped no more than two feet away from where she stood. Close enough that she could smell the rain on his leather jacket. “Why don’t you let me have a look.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“You don’t fool around with the pilot light.” He reached for the match. “Let me—”
His hand closed around hers. Her head shot up, and their eyes met as the match flared, then died.
“Let me,” he said again, his voice low and tender. “Let me, Alex.”
There was no mistaking his words. No mistaking their meaning. It was where they had been headed since they’d first met. Since the first moment. He waited. This is your choice, his look said. Your decision.
Her pulse beat wildly at the base of her throat. I barely know you, she thought. All I know is how you make me feel. Alive and wild and strangely, wondrously safe. It was so little—and yet somehow it was enough.
Nine
You’re good at exits, John told himself. He knew how to walk away with the best of them. Put one foot in front of the other and don’t look back. He’d done it before. He could do it again. What difference did it make that she was looking at him with such open need, such powerful sweetness, that he felt himself stirring in both body and soul?
Loneliness did terrible things to a man. It made him want things he shouldn’t have.
And he wanted Alex.
Her hand was cocooned in his, the match and stove forgotten. The connection between them seemed to grow stronger with each second that passed. She didn’t know what she was doing; there was no way for her to know. A better man would have warned her away, told her that she should find someone else, that he didn’t have anything to give but a few hours of pleasure, but it was too late.
She was already in his arms, and he was lost.
* * *
Alex had never been held this way before. She fit against his body as if they’d been made for each other. He held her as if he meant it, as if holding her was an end in itself. She pressed her face against the side of his neck, and the smell of his skin made her almost dizzy with longing. Her palms rested against the front of his jacket, and the silky feel of rain and leather struck her as almost unbearably erotic.
They stood in the middle of the kitchen, with the rain falling and the wind howling and their hearts pounding like thunder inside their chests.
“Is this really happening?” she whispered, looking up into his eyes. “Are you really here?”
He traced the contours of her face with his thumbs, and his touch sent a current of electricity coiling straight to the center of her being. “You can still change your mind, Alex. If you don’t want this, tell me now.”
“I don’t
want to change my mind.” She lifted her face toward his. “I don’t want promises. I don’t want a commitment.” She touched the corner of his mouth with the tip of her finger. “All I want is tonight.”
He kissed her then, a deliciously wet and sensual kiss that made her tingle from head to toe. She opened her mouth for him on a sigh of pure pleasure. Yes, she thought. Oh, God, yes! She craved his touch, a skin hunger that went soul deep.
He swept her up into his arms and cradled her against his chest. She laughed softly, equal parts delight and anticipation, as he carried her into the small bedroom at the end of the hall.
“Lights?” he asked, stopping in the doorway.
“No,” she whispered. “No lights.” She wanted nothing but his touch and the velvety blackness of night. They fell to the bed together, a tangle of arms and legs and hungry mouths and eager hands and a ferocious need that was pushing them. Close to madness and beyond. She’d never known anything like this before, never known the touch of a man’s hand could make her feel so shatteringly, wildly alive.
She tugged his jacket from his body.
He slid a hand beneath the hem of her nightgown.
She worked at the zipper on his jeans.
He found the nest of curls between her thighs.
A low moan formed in her throat as he caressed her with his fingers.
“So soft,” he murmured against the skin of her breasts. “Like wet silk.”
So hard, she thought, cupping him with her hand. Like the purest, hottest steel.
He rocked against her, and her hips arched to meet his. She could feel herself blossoming, opening for him, wanting everything he had to give and more. It had been so different with Griffin toward the end. Dry and joyless and so without tenderness that it hurt her to remember.
“Alex?” His voice curled inside her ear. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” she said, willing the past away. “This isn’t enough.”
He stripped her of her nightgown, then ripped off his own clothes. He leaned over the bed, a fierce god ready for battle. She slid to the edge of the mattress and pressed her lips against his flat belly, then traced his coarse mat of curls with the tip of her tongue. A guttural moan sounded from deep within his chest, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out in triumph. His erection was long and full, a hot and throbbing presence between them. She rubbed it against her cheek, stroking its length with curious, but not gentle, fingers. He smelled like sex, a dark and vibrant smell that made her want to mark him as her own.
She cupped his buttocks with her hands as she attempted to learn the secrets of his body. Her breasts rubbing against his bare flesh, she took him in her mouth and savored the weight and length and taste of him. It was all so new, so dangerous, so wonderful—she felt as if she had awakened from a long sleep to discover that the world was more amazing than she’d ever dreamed.
* * *
John’s muscles burned with the effort to restrain himself. He’d been with other women, but it had never been like this. She held him in her mouth as if he were a carnal sacrament, something both holy and profane, moving her lips up and down his shaft, tracing the sensitive ridge of flesh with her tongue, making him see God in the curve of a woman’s sweet naked back.
She was urging him on, begging him to come by the way she cupped his testicles in her hand, with the catlike sounds she made in the back of her throat. It would be easy to let it happen. All he had to do was lower his guard for a second and let sensation take over and he’d explode inside her mouth.
But that wouldn’t be enough. He wanted more from her, more than he’d ever wanted before... maybe more than she had to give. He gripped her by the shoulders.
“Your turn,” he said, then knelt down between her open thighs and took her hot and swollen nub into his mouth. She cried out, and for a moment he was afraid he’d hurt her; but then her hips began to move to that age-old rhythm, and he smiled as her honey flowed. He couldn’t get enough of her, piercing her with his tongue, moving against the slick, rippling walls of her sheath, imagining how it would feel when he buried himself inside her, when she wrapped her legs around his hips and drew him deeper and deeper. Until she brought him home.
* * *
She wasn’t sure when pure pleasure had stopped being enough, but again she found herself wanting more. There was an emptiness inside her, a yearning emptiness that only he could fill, and miraculously he seemed to realize that almost before she did. He kissed her thighs and her belly, her breasts and the base of her throat, then eased himself between her legs.
She trembled with wanting him, a delicious tension that hummed through her body and made her want to cry out with joy. He cradled her face between his hands and kissed her, lightly at first, his lips barely grazing hers, then more deeply, easing her lips open with his tongue, sweeping past her teeth, drawing her own tongue into battle. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he found her with his hand and then he found her again, easing himself into her body with wondrously maddening slowness, each simple move designed to take her one step closer to the edge.
* * *
She matched his rhythm, her hips bucking sweetly against him, urging him closer, deeper, harder. He felt himself climbing higher and higher, sailing across the sky like a white-hot comet. She pleased him in ways he’d never known before, ways he’d never known existed. The sweet musky woman scent of her body enflamed him, and he hungered for her, body and soul.
Something amazing was happening between them, something that went beyond physical pleasure. He wanted to know her secrets. He wanted to know what made her cry. He wanted—Jesus, he didn’t know what he wanted. All he knew was that he was so damn tired of being alone.
* * *
They made love fiercely, wildly, hearts colliding as they came together in a climax that left them dazed and grateful.
They didn’t speak when it was over. Words were a poor substitute for magic. And it was magic. They both were old enough to know that what they’d found together in that narrow bed was worth celebrating.
The second time they made love was different. They knew each other’s bodies now. Where to touch. When to stop. How to coax and urge and satisfy. Nothing was off-limits. No pleasure too forbidden to enjoy. The buildup was slow and voluptuous, the payoff cataclysmic.
Outside the cold rain splashed against the windows and beat down on the roof. Inside her home, it was warm and safe. He gathered her close and drew the covers up over them. She curled against him, burrowing her nose between his arm and chest, and drew in a long breath. His smell—was it possible to fall in love with the way a man smelled? Could a woman get drunk just by breathing in a man’s scent?
She could hear his heart beating inside his chest. It was the last sound she heard before she fell asleep in his arms.
* * *
When John dreamed, he dreamed that he wasn’t alone. He dreamed of the sweetly familiar weight of a woman’s body pressed close to his. The erotic mix of rumpled sheets and sex. A deep sense of joy where sadness used to be.
He woke up before dawn to find out he wasn’t dreaming. Alex Curry was nestled in the spoon-shaped curve of his body, her bare rump pressed up against his groin, his erection hard between them. His right arm rested across her body. His hand gently cupped her breast.
The dim gray light of morning was beginning to seep through the curtains. In another hour Sea Gate would begin to stir. Rain or shine, a group of lawyers from Atlantic County chartered a boat every Friday morning. They didn’t catch many fish, but John was damn glad for the income. One thing he didn’t want was for them—or anyone else—to see him leaving Alex’s house.
Quietly he climbed from her bed, shivering as the chill November air hit his naked body. The last thing he wanted to do was leave her, but he had no choice.
She stirred, and the blanket slipped down. Her soft dark gold hair spilled over the bare skin of her shoulder like a mantle as she opened her eyes. “You’re not leaving?” H
er voice was husky with sleep and very sexy.
“I’m leaving.” He bent over her and kissed her full on the mouth. “Sea Gate’s a small town, Alex. People talk.”
“I don’t care if they talk.”
He smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”
She sat up and tucked the covers neatly under her arms like a makeshift nightgown. “You don’t have to call,” she said, lifting her chin a fraction. “I said no strings and I meant it.”
The mattress dipped as he sat down next to her. “I know I don’t have to call,” he said. “I want to.”
She considered him for what seemed like forever. In the cover of darkness he’d felt as if he knew everything there was to know about her, but he’d been wrong. He didn’t know anything at all. She was as much a mystery to him now as she’d been when he first saw her walk into the Starlight a few days ago.
“Call if you want,” she said at last, “but I probably won’t be home.”
“Where are you going?”
“John.” Her tone was unmistakable. “What difference could that possibly make to you?”
“You’re right,” he said, pulling back. “No difference.”
She placed her hand on his forearm. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t,” he lied. He stood up and grabbed his shirt.
“John, please. You don’t understand.”
He slid his arms into the shirt. “Do I have to?”
“No, you don’t. It’s just—”
“Then save it, Alex. I have a charter group that expects to sail in an hour. I’ve got to go.”
“A charter group? You work at the marina?”
“Does it matter?” It was a cheap shot, but cheap shots were about all he could manage at the moment.
He expected her to either slap back at him or crumple under his sarcasm. He should have known she wouldn’t do either one.
“I deserved that,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for pushing you away.”
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