And if he wasn’t at her side, he was watching her, making her think about him, about their promise. The evening became an exquisite torture.
A bejeweled woman, who’d just promised the foundation a hefty donation, turned away, her parting words See you both at the New Year’s Eve cocktail party, ringing in Meg’s ears and Luke’s gaze pinning her. He lifted two champagne flutes from the tray of a circulating waiter and passed one to Meg. He led her to a somewhat quiet corner of the room and she took a sip of the sparkling liquid.
“I was going to tell you about the cocktail party.”
“Clearly I need to take a look at our social calendar and see what’s expected of me. It’s not in my house, is it?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll deal.”
They watched the mingling crush. By then she’d be long gone. “I didn’t realize you were such a people person.”
“I’m not,” he said softly. “But I know how to play the game.” He turned his back on the room so that only she could see his face and hear his words. “The only person I’m thinking about is you and how good you look in red. And how good you’ll look out of it.”
His words, blatant and seductive, shocked her. How had they got to this point and, more importantly, how did she stop it? Because while she was certain it was all just a part of the “game” to him, if affected her differently, more deeply than he could know. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“What you’ve been doing all evening. I’m trying to concentrate, to listen to what people are saying and you’re making me think…”
“Think what, Meg?” His low voice seemed to sink through her to her core. “About the things I might like to do with you? Because I’ve been thinking about my husbandly privileges.”
She backed a little farther into the corner. “You’re not really my husband.” But he’d caught what she’d been thinking and she hated that he knew it. That she was that transparent. Because being married to someone carried connotations regardless of the reasons for the marriage.
He leaned closer. “That’s the thing, Meg, I really am your husband. And you know it. And you think about it.”
“Stop it, Luke. Please.”
Something in her tone or her words stilled him. He backed off a little, easing her need to either reach for him or run from him. “If you want me to.”
She nodded. “I do. Thank you.” She was Meg. She wasn’t allowed to want him. Not in the real world. She looked past him to see Sally approaching, glowing with the success of the evening so far.
“You two make a gorgeous couple.” Sally kissed both Meg and Luke. “I’m so pleased you finally found a good woman, Luke, and had the sense to marry her. I foresee a long and happy union.”
If only in my dreams. The line from the Christmas song popped into Meg’s head. Now clearly wasn’t the time to tell Sally that she was leaving and that Luke would be starting divorce proceedings as soon as possible.
Luke smiled and raised his glass to Sally, which could look like he was agreeing with her. It could, if you were Meg, also look like he was avoiding commenting on what she’d said.
She sat beside Luke for the dinner, ignoring the occasional press of his thigh against hers. He kept their topics of conversation neutral, his tone and his glances warm, only a degree or two more than friendly. For all of his subtle teasing foreplay earlier, he seemed, from the time of her request, to have switched off, or at least turned down the wattage on the sensual messages.
Whereas Meg had to fight to hide her feelings, and fight to conceal the slow burning fuse of desire he’d lit and that now refused to be extinguished.
When the dinner was all but over, he sat back with his arm behind her and his hand curled around her arm, his thumb tracing lazy circles that sent heat spiraling through her. It was just a thumb. It shouldn’t be able to do that.
She waited till he was deep in conversation with the man across the table before easing her chair back. Not deep enough, apparently. He dropped a firm hand to her thigh, anchoring her to her chair and looked at her, a knowing smile glinting in his eyes and touching his lips. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not running away now.”
“I was just…” she could see him waiting for her excuse “…I’m not needed here,” was the best she could come up with.
“I need you here.”
She could almost wish that was true. He’d needed her once and married her because of it. That need had passed. He was back in his life, he was strong and healthy. His hand gentled on her thigh, but the heat of his palm burned through the silk of her dress, sizzled along her skin.
“I’m tired.” She tried again, which was also true, although she didn’t expect to sleep any more tonight than she had last night. Last night she’d been dealing mainly with the surprise of his sudden return. Tonight she’d be battling the strength of a desire that seemed to have flamed from nothing. Even though she realized now that the seeds had been sown and taken root back on the island. Then, she’d been able to ignore it, pretend it was something else. But she’d built fantasies around Luke. Fantasies she’d scarcely acknowledged.
She needed to leave. And not just this party. She needed to leave this house, break the spell she was falling under. Already she was way too close to the precipice of stupidity.
“You can’t leave,” he said quietly, “because I have plans for you, Meg. Slow, sensuous plans.” Holding her gaze, his hand inched farther up her thigh.
Lost. She was lost. The precipice rushed closer.
He wanted her and he knew she wanted him, knew what his touch was doing to her, how it heated her, and he knew she wanted more of it.
Luke pushed his chair back. Claiming jet lag, he excused them both.
In the entranceway, he shut the double doors behind them, muting the sounds of music and conversation. Illuminated only by flickering candles and fairy lights, he murmured, “Mistletoe,” and then pulled her to him and kissed her. Meg welcomed the press of his hard body against hers, reveled in the taste of him. The man she’d married. His mouth and lips and tongue teased and explored and seduced. Already, she knew the way their mouths fit together, knew the scent of him. He gripped her waist, slid his hands to cup her behind, she answered his pull with an involuntary rocking of her hips.
He shuddered in her arms and broke the kiss to rest his forehead against hers, breathing as heavily as she was. “I made you a promise, Meg. Will you let me keep it?”
Five
Meg nodded her agreement, the small movement moving both their heads. Reaching up, Luke pulled the mistletoe free, then led her past the Christmas tree slowing only enough to brush his lips across hers. Once, and then again. Light and shadows danced across his face.
They entered a hallway and he shut the door behind them, once again turning her, pressing her up against it as he kissed her, one hand holding the mistletoe above them, the other sliding up beneath her dress over nylon, encountering bare skin at the top of her thigh.
The hand stilled, the kiss stopped and the mistletoe dropped to the floor.
Luke drew back. “Stockings?” he asked, his voice hoarse but his fingers still burning against her skin.
Meg shrugged, her throat suddenly too dry for words. She hadn’t meant the stockings for him; she preferred them to pantyhose, but she also liked their risqué-ness, as she liked her lacy lingerie. It was supposed to be her secret weakness.
“Pretty, quiet, Nurse Meg. I knew there was more to you than met the eye. Be very, very grateful I didn’t know that till now.” He took a step back from her. “Show me.”
She hesitated. She was no lingerie model.
“Show me,” he insisted again, his voice a command as though she were a siren, as though she, Meg Elliot, tempted him to danger.
“I can’t.” Shyness warred with a budding sense of power. “Not here. Someone could come this way.”
Luke grasped her hand and tugged her down the hall way and into the first door they ca
me to, shutting it behind them. Meg took a few steps into the library with its walls of books and its two-seater couch. She turned back to see Luke leaning against the door, watching her. “Show me.”
Somewhere in the last hour she’d stopped pretending to herself that she didn’t desire him, hadn’t always recognized that something in him called to her. One night with her husband. She was entitled to that much, wasn’t she?
Slowly, her hands against her thighs, she walked her fingers to gather up the fabric of her dress, lifting it higher till the tops of her stockings were just visible, a stark line against her pale skin. She opened her hands and let the fabric fall back into place.
Luke stood utterly still. Never had she seen such naked desire in a man’s eyes. And it was all for her.
He closed the gap between them and holding her gaze ran both hands beneath her dress and up the outside of her thighs till his palms cupped the strip of skin between black nylon and red lace. His eyelids dropped lower and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath as his hands slid farther around, cupping and pulling her against him.
And then he kissed her, the way only he ever had, fitting his mouth perfectly to hers, slowly, sweetly, joining them seamlessly and with just his kiss transporting her, promising her pleasure. Heat and urgency and need that inflamed her with reciprocal need. Hooking his thumbs over the edge of her panties, he slid them down her legs and she stepped out of them-a scrap of lace on the dark wood flooring.
Large, warm hands skimmed back up her thighs, passing the tops of her stockings till they rested on bare skin.
She’d drunk only a few sips of champagne throughout the evening; the intoxication that governed her now was fueled by desire. Meg tugged the hem of his shirt free, sliding her own hands against the heat of him. She pulled his bow tie undone, and with frantic fingers worked at the buttons of his finely pleated shirt till she could push apart the sides and touch her palms, her fingers, to the strength and contours of his torso. She eased his shirt back from his shoulders. A raised scar ran across his right shoulder. The gash that had started the chain of events that led to now. She touched her lips to his shoulder, grateful for the first time for that injury.
Beneath her fingertips lay the heated silk of skin over hard, contoured muscle, the light abrasion of hair, she felt his deeply indrawn breath and the rapid beat of his heart, knew it matched her own.
He cupped his hand between her legs, slid a finger through her folds, found her wet for him. Silver eyes darkened to pewter. “Tell me what you want, Meg.”
No one had ever asked her that. And the answer was both complicated and blindingly simple. “I want you. Now.”
He led her to the couch, sat and pulled her down on top of him, her knees straddling his thighs, she pressed her center against the hardness of him. Luke kissed her lips, her throat, her shoulder. He pushed the skirt of her dress up so he could freely touch the skin that seemed to so delight him. Enthralling her in the process.
He slipped the clips from her hair so that it tumbled loose around her shoulders. Finding the zipper at the back of her dress, he slid it down, peeled the dress from her so that it was now no more than a silken red pool of fabric around her waist.
“Show me how you like to be touched. I want to give you pleasure.”
Already he was. So much more pleasure than she’d ever known. Warm hands and warmer lips skimmed over every inch, every curve and dip of bare and lace-covered skin, caressing and teasing, adding fuel to the already-burning flames, till she writhed with need. She covered his hands with hers as he cupped her breasts and her head fell back.
For now, he was her husband. And she wanted him. Needed him. Hard and deep within her. For now.
“Condom?” Please, please let him have one because heaven knew what she’d do if he didn’t.
He nodded, pulling a foil square from his pocket as she reached for his zipper and freed the straining length of him. Waiting just long enough for him to cover himself, she slid down onto the length of him, bringing him home, shuddering with pleasure as he stretched and filled her.
His gaze locked with hers, intent and powerful, as she rocked against him, with him, over him. Passion turned his eyes storm-dark. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as his hands gripped her hips and they found a building rhythm of their own. Clamoring need and desperate desire drove them higher and faster till sensation, the effervescence of champagne bubbles, filled and overwhelmed her. She cried her arching completion moments before he drove his release home.
Meg fell forward, resting her head on the top of his and he snaked his arms around her waist and held her to him, his ear to her thudding heart. When he’d promised to make her forget her sorrows, she hadn’t realized he’d make her forget her very self. That in his arms she would forget her inhibitions and become the woman she imagined she saw in his eyes.
The silence and stillness of the room stole over them as her heartbeat slowed and her gasping breath eased.
What now? Too soon the taunting inner voice asked. What now, indeed. She had no idea, no answer. Her mind still reeled from the power and passion of their lovemaking. She pulled away from Luke, and his clasp loosened. She slipped her arms back into the sleeves of her dress. He helped ease the fabric up over her shoulders, planting a kiss between her breasts the moment before the spot was covered. She eased out of his lap and Luke stood, too.
Not meeting his gaze, she turned and searched for her panties. She bent to pick them up, but they were snatched out of her reach before she touched them. He slipped them into his pocket.
Wordlessly, they walked to the library door. She reached for the handle, but he covered her hand with his. And when she looked at him, he kissed her, gentle and lingering. They turned the handle together and stepped out into the hallway. When she would have headed the way they had come he shook his head, and with a firm grip on her hand led her farther down the hallway. He stopped at the third door. The guest room. His room.
His seeking gaze searched her face. “This time I want you naked and beneath me.”
Meg caught her bottom lip with her teeth. Apparently finding what he sought, Luke opened the door and pulled her with him into the darkened room, whispering, “Never let it be said that I didn’t utterly satisfy my wife.”
Meg woke in her husband’s bed, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, her arm draped over his chest, her legs entwined with his.
He’d kept his promise and given her so much more.
Slowly, carefully, she disentangled herself and eased from the bed. He didn’t so much as stir.
As she slipped back into her dress and gathered up her discarded stockings and shoes, she paused by the wide window. They’d slept with the curtains open and overnight a light snow had fallen, dusting the trees and boulders on the lake shore. The sight was so beautiful that it made her heart ache. Soon she’d be gone from here. She’d stepped onto a stage and played her part. But the time for her exit was drawing inexorably closer.
Feeling like an intruder, she slunk back through the still house. Bundling up against the cold, she took Caesar for his morning walk along the shore, tossing his stick repeatedly. Tempted by beauty’s promise of stillness and serenity, she walked out to the end of the jetty and looked over the lake. The mountains on the far side were still obscured by heavy cloud.
At the sound of footsteps, she turned, a leap in her pulse. Not Luke but Jason. Her heart sank and she realized she’d hoped, wanted, it to be Luke. Wanted to see the man she’d made love to last night. Wanted to see his face and at the same time was afraid to. In the light of day would there be any of last night’s tenderness and connection, or would it be regret and distance she saw there?
“I thought I saw someone down here.” Jason smiled, warmth in his voice. He looked a little like Luke. Similar build and coloring but his watery-blue eyes were always moving, scanning the surroundings.
Meg smiled back, but doubts gnawed at her. What had Jason done to cause Luke to dislike him so intens
ely? Intensely enough that he would rather marry her than have his half brother inherit from him.
“So are the rumors true? Has my brother come home?”
Half brother . Meg nearly said that out loud. Luke was always careful to draw the distinction. “Yes.”
Jason’s smile wavered and he glanced over his shoulder at the house. Was that anxiety in his question? Jason had always seemed eager for Luke’s return.
“I was just going back inside. Come in. He’s probably up by now.” Meg walked back along the jetty. Jason fell into step beside her.
“I’m on my way to meet someone and I want to go before there’s any more snow. I haven’t got time to stop. I’ll call in later.”
She shrugged. “I’ll let him know to expect you.”
“And let him know…”
She waited for him to finish.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “Just…put in a good word for me, will you?” She walked round to the front of the house with him. As he drove away, she climbed the stairs.
The front door swung open. Luke, in jeans and bare feet, pulled an olive-green T-shirt over his head. He tugged the hem of the shirt over the plane of his stomach and looked past Meg. Jason’s red Corvette disappeared around a bend in the road, leaving it empty and still. “Damn.” Luke’s gaze came back to her. “How long was he here and what did he want?”
“Not long and to know if you were home.” Meg stepped past Luke and into the house. The Christmas tree dominated the entranceway. They’d kissed here last night. Her face heated with the recollections of where that had led to.
Luke’s hand wrapped around her wrist, stopping her when she would have walked away, turning her back to face him. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him that yes, you were home.”
“What else?”
Meg tugged her hand free. “Ask him yourself. I don’t want to be a pawn in your petty squabbles.”
“They’re not petty.”
Under the Millionaire's Mistletoe Page 12