She shivered slightly and perhaps she inhaled a gust of air because she sensed his sudden stillness beside the bed. “Does the dark bother you?”
“Only if you can’t find me,” she said softly.
The mattress dipped under his weight and he was there, causing her heart to skip and her temperature to spike. With one hot hand on her hip, he turned her onto her side, facing him on the big bed.
“I found you.”
The simple statement deserved a teasing answer, but Susannah had nothing to offer. He was here, naked, hers, and the enormity of that knowledge seeped into every part of her body until she quavered with the intensity of wanting. All she could do was show him, touch him. She skimmed her hands slowly up his arms, over his shoulders, down the long contours of his back.
When she slipped lower, he trapped one of her legs between his and held her firmly in place. Their eyes sought and held despite the darkness, their bodies so close she felt the surge of his response against her belly. Their thighs slid together in a restless dance, and in the beat of a second, the mood had changed, sliced by the edgy hunger in his eyes, in her body, by the growl of his voice.
“I need to be inside you.”
Darkness and desire had robbed Susannah of any shyness, and she watched him take care of protection with steady eyes and very unsteady emotions. Then his hand was on her face, touching her lips, asking for her guidance as he settled between her thighs. Their gazes linked as he nudged the entrance to her body, as he started to slide inside, and Susannah forgot everything as longing and loving overlapped in a wave of yearning that claimed her body, mind and her soul.
She welcomed him, hard and strong and vital. There had only been this man; there could be no other who fit her body, who matched her desire.
His nostrils flared, his gaze gleamed with satisfaction as he filled her to the hilt. He went still and a long, low, pleasured groan escaped his lips and suffused her with the purest bliss. This is what I lost, she thought, as they kissed with their eyes open and their bodies joined. They kissed in a rhythm that mimicked the rolling give-and-take of their lower bodies, they kissed until their lungs required sustenance and the sounds of their choppy breathing filled the air.
And just when she thought the exquisite pleasure of his touch could take her no higher, he caught her lower lip between his teeth and stilled. Held rigid over her body, poised on the brink of release, he looked into her eyes and she knew he recognised something in the moment.
She lifted a trembling hand and touched his face, stroked his jaw, and he began to move again, thrusting deep and strong. Susannah hovered, not wanting this over, greedily wanting him there in her body, soaring in this perfect moment forever.
After there would be words, guilt, confessions, and everything would change again.
She wrapped her legs more tightly around him, and that new angle broke both their control. The climax came quickly, catching her in its sweet, savage grip and flinging her high and wild. As she spun out, she chanted his name, a low breathless ache that resounded in her blood and her mind and her heart.
He drove deep one last time and held himself rigid, straining with the intensity of his own release. With arms and legs and thundering heart, she clung to him, stroking the slick heat of his back and nuzzling her face into his neck, dragging the masculine scent of his body into her lungs and her senses.
Afterward, too, their sated bodies fit together in a perfect melding of hard lines and giving curves. Donovon’s arm held her close to his side. His elevated breath on her temple lifted a fine frizz of hair into her vision.
If she had the energy Susannah would have brushed it aside. But she was happily spent, unable to move anything beyond the fingers that traced an indolent pattern across his chest. “Did that trigger your memory?” she asked softly, remembering what she’d seen in his face, what she’d felt in his intensity.
“No.”
He sounded relaxed, completely unperturbed, and Susannah’s hand stilled. “Doesn’t that bug you?”
“Not anymore.”
She didn’t know what to make of that. Back at Stranger’s Bay the frustration of not knowing had reverberated around him like a force field. Beneath her hand she felt the ridged edge of one of the scars that crisscrossed his abdomen. Earlier he’d warned her off asking, but now he was at ease. Now she could ask. “And the attack…does it bother you not remembering how that happened?”
“It bugs me that I was caught out and the bastards got the better of me.” The arm at her waist tightened momentarily and Susannah held her breath until he relaxed again. “At least now I see why I might have been distracted.”
“By me?”
“By a whole weekend of you. Yeah.”
The low rumble of his answer rippled through her, a sweet antithesis to her chilling thoughts about his injuries. “I like the idea that you were thinking of me in your hometown, but I hate what happened because of it.”
“The scars?”
“The wounds that caused the scars,” she corrected. “What you went through because of them, and everything that happened afterward.”
“We can fix that,” he said after a moment.
“Can we?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And now?”
She felt a change in the mood. The hand at her waist applied a different pressure, a renewed heat, as his fingers splayed wide over her belly. The weight of his legs shifted, pinning her to the bed. “Now—” his voice deepened to a thick growl as he nuzzled her hair from her throat “—I have more memories to replace.”
Ten
V an had never been a big sleeper, but for once he welcomed his insomnia. In the pale light of dawn he watched Susannah sleep with a deep-seated satisfaction he’d never felt before…or that he didn’t recall feeling before.
And he didn’t remember being with her. He hadn’t lied about that. All he’d suffered these past days were fleeting impressions, and if anything was capable of blowing those glimpses of the past into fully realised memories then those explosive hours in his bed should have been it.
For once the lack of memory didn’t bother him. Now that he’d had her, all he cared about was making sure she stayed. In his bed, in his home, in his life. The permanency of that thought should have scared the hell out of him, but it didn’t.
Impatient to move on from the past to a shared future, he left her sleeping and dressed quickly. In the wake of last night’s storm, The Palisades’ management would send a craft for them. Their seclusion would soon be at an end and he might not get another chance to seek the answers he needed.
He’d walked the island assessing the damage. Seeing the size of the branch that had crashed through the upstairs windows, his gut churned sickly with what might have been. He came in through the back door, and immediately noted the open doors to his bedroom and onto the veranda. She was up. Good.
He crossed the room, finally catching sight of her on the deck. Morning light traced the lines of her body through her shirt and when she lifted a hand to hold her hair back from her face, her striking beauty hit him anew.
His gut tightened with more than morning lust, with more than appreciation of the picture she made. There was something in her body language, in the taut stretch of her neck and the way her hand gripped the balcony rail that spoke of her inner tension and hot-wired straight into his.
In the clear light of morning she wouldn’t like what they’d done in the dark of night. He figured she would lay the blame at his feet, but he had no intention of dwelling on culpability. What was done, was done.
He’d brought her here to seduce her, to give her cause to end her marriage plans. That goal had been the farthest thing from his mind last night, but he couldn’t pretend to be sorry.
He wondered if Carlisle would be at the resort, awaiting their return. He couldn’t believe the man wouldn’t be. Or that he wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to keep Susannah.
She looked around then, as if the surge of h
is possessiveness had growled her name. When he approached, she smiled, but the gesture looked as strained and fragile as the shadows of regret in her eyes.
“I saw you out walking,” she said, her gaze skating away over the storm-ravaged vista. “There looks to be a lot of trees down. Is there much damage down at the cottage?”
It was a tossup which Van hated more—the recrimination in her eyes, the false cheerfulness in her voice or the fact she’d resorted to small talk. “Are you going to pretend last night didn’t happen?” he asked.
She let go of her hair, let the breeze pick it up and screen her face, but that didn’t hide the stiffening of her spine. Or the ache of a plea in her response. “For now, yes. I’m not—”
“It has to be now.”
She scooped back her hair to reveal wide and wary eyes. “Why?”
“There are boats out on the bay. I imagine one of them is heading our way.”
“Oh.” Her gaze flickered over him—fully dressed—and then down at her revealing attire. “Then I had better shower and dress.”
“After we’ve talked, Susannah.”
He blocked her attempted exit, forced his attention away from the distraction of her nakedness beneath the shirt and waited for her to meet his eyes. The annoyance he saw there was aimed internally, not at him, and the knowledge caused a subtle relenting in his stance.
“Hey,” he said softly, “don’t beat yourself up.” With a gentle hand he threaded her hair behind one ear and held it there, his thumb tracing the tense line of her jaw before touching the pearl in her earlobe. A hot memory of his mouth, right there, rocketed through him and coloured his voice when he added, “It was inevitable.”
“No.” Shaking her head, she stepped back from his touch and his hand fell away. “You gave me the choice last night. I didn’t take it.”
“You’re here on this island because of me.”
“I’m here because I chose to be,” she said, her voice choked with the same emotion that darkened her eyes. “I shouldn’t have been anywhere near you. I should have stayed in Melbourne. I should have been on my honeymoon.”
For several seconds, Van stared at her, unsure if he’d heard correctly. When he realised that the steadily escalating thrum wasn’t his heartbeat, he turned and looked out over the bay and saw a helicopter zeroing in on the island. His attention zapped back to Susannah’s face. “You’re not marrying Carlisle.”
“After last night?” Her soft words was barely audible above the thwap-thwap-thwap of the helicopter’s rotors as it circled overhead, and her eyes swam with the same self-castigation as earlier. “No, I guess I’m probably not.”
Donovan had intimated on the deck at Charlotte Island that they wouldn’t be able to talk once the rescue craft arrived. He’d been right. Once back at the resort, solicitous staff hovered over them. A shuttle whisked them to the airport to catch a late-morning flight to Melbourne. It was all so quick and efficient, there’d been little chance for talk until they were seated on the plane. Then his focussed gaze settled on her face and she knew the question of what-now couldn’t be avoided any longer.
Tilting her face, she turned to meet his eyes. “What happens when we get back to Melbourne?”
“We sort out the contract on The Palisades. Then we talk—” he leaned closer, tapped the back of her hand with his finger “—about us.”
Susannah’s heart kicked up a beat and she had to caution herself not to leap into the promise of those words. First she needed to sort out her agreement with Alex. Then there was her business, which could choke and die without an urgent injection of funds.
“I’m meeting with Armitage this afternoon,” he said.
Wow. He hadn’t wasted any time getting back to business. She didn’t even know when he’d found time to make the phone call to Horton’s CEO. The pleasurable ripple he’d started in her veins with his talk of us braked to a sudden halt. “So soon?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you at least wait until I’ve spoken to Alex?”
“I need to set things in motion before I leave.”
She straightened, her gaze springing up to meet his. “You’re leaving? When?”
“That depends on this meeting, but as soon as possible?”
“Because of Mac?” she guessed.
The attendant interrupted with a polite admonishment, drawing their attention to the pre-flight safety instruction. Staring blindly at the video screen, Susannah digested this news. She hadn’t considered that he might be leaving so swiftly. She hadn’t allowed herself to think beyond—
“Come with me.”
His voice, low and intense, was close to her ear. Had she heard him correctly? Startled, she looked around and found those eyes—silver, sharp, determined—focussed on hers. Her heart gave an excited bump. “I can’t. I have to talk to Alex, and there’s my business. I can’t just drop everything and leave.”
“You weren’t going to do that for this honeymoon you mentioned?”
“Yes, but…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze slid back to the screen. A honeymoon was two weeks. He was asking her to…She didn’t know what come with me implied. “Can we talk about this after I’ve talked to Alex?”
“When?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I can.”
He fell silent, leaving her to spend the rest of the flight worrying over that upcoming conversation. Donovan had told her not to beat herself up, but how could she not? She’d acted dishonourably, without willpower, and she took ownership of that choice. She refused to blame it on fear or adrenaline or the need to affirm life. Now she had to tell Alex that the temporary delay on their wedding plans was permanent.
She couldn’t marry him, not when another man lay claim to her heart.
Her mother met the flight, her reception for Donovan a chilling contrast to her effusive embrace of Susannah. Out of politeness Miriam offered him a lift to the city, which he declined with a pointed, “I prefer to make my own plans.”
“Call me,” he told Susannah, and she read the unsaid rest in his eyes. After you’ve talked to Carlisle. Watching him walk away without once looking back, his stride long and purposeful, she felt a panicky sense of loss. That fear—that emotion—must have been written all over her face because her mother tsked her disapproval. “Oh, Susannah, didn’t you learn the last time?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can try to fool me, darling, but please don’t fool yourself.” Her mother spoke briskly, but the look she turned on Susannah brimmed in castigation. “He used you the first time and he’s used you again.”
Susannah’s stride faltered. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, hurrying to catch up.
“Do you know he’s meeting with Horton’s this afternoon? He called the minute he got off the island, wanting to talk deals. According to Judd, he’s very confident that Carlisles won’t go ahead with the purchase of The Palisades. Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about marrying Alex?”
Susannah nodded and although her mother frowned, she didn’t break stride until they reached her Mercedes. “Aren’t you going to try and talk me out of this rash and foolish decision?” Susannah asked across the roof of the car.
“Unfortunately I agree with you. You can’t marry him.”
Susannah blinked in surprise. “I thought you were set on having a Carlisle for a son-in-law.”
“I was, but…” She made a dismissive gesture, her expression tight. “Never mind.”
But Susannah did mind, and once they were cruising south on the freeway, she turned toward her mother. “What aren’t you telling me? What shouldn’t I mind?”
“Some things are better left unknown.”
“I am twenty-eight years old. Please, don’t keep anything from me for my own good.”
“Very well,” Miriam said stiffly after a moment’s consideration. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but I suppose it may come out anyway. Lord knows why this hasn’t been splashed around the gossip shee
ts already.”
“Do you mean Donovan and me? I don’t think—”
“No, not you. Alex Carlisle. He spent the weekend with another woman.”
Susannah’s mouth opened but no sound came out. She shut it. Shook her head. Tried again. “No. Not Alex. He wouldn’t.”
“I saw them, outside the Carlisle Grande on Sunday afternoon. The woman was blond, tall, very distinctive in a common sort of way. She was riding a motorcycle.” Miriam all but sniffed with disdain. “He kissed her, right there under the hotel porte cochere. In broad daylight, for anyone to see, and I am not talking a sisterly peck. This was a long and indiscreet embrace. I’m sorry, darling, but can you see why I wasn’t going to tell you?”
Struggling to digest the information, Susannah didn’t answer. Alex and Zara? No, not possible. Although she had sent her sister to deliver her message to the hotel. And it would explain why Alex hadn’t called or tried to track her down. If this were true, then backing out of her marriage agreement might not be as difficult as she’d imagined.
“Are you sure it was Alex?” she asked slowly.
“It was Alex. Now,” Miriam continued briskly, “about this Donovan Keane. Do you love him?”
What was the point in prevaricating? Her mother had read the truth in her face at the airport, when she’d watched him walk away. “I wouldn’t have gone to Tasmania if I didn’t.”
“That’s what I feared.”
Susannah sat up straight. “Don’t pass judgment, Mother. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s been through or how badly he wants The Palisades.”
“Oh, I think I do.” There was something in her mother’s frown, in the dark look she slid Susannah’s way, that stopped Susannah’s heart for a second. “The question is, how badly do you want him?”
Coming to Donovan’s hotel was not the smartest thing Susannah had ever done. She should have taken time to think, to let the dust settle, to gain a better perspective than her gut reaction to what her mother had revealed.
Tycoon's One-Night Revenge Page 11