And she loved him with every fiber of her being.
Which wasn't good. No, not good at all.
Before she could collect herself, the sun sank beyond the horizon, the brilliance cooled to a purplish pink, and Mitch guided the boat to the shore of the cove. The evening shadows thickened as he tied the line to a small wooden pier, hooked the strap of her suitcase over his broad shoulder and helped her disembark. She saw no house or yard—only trees, dense foliage and growing darkness.
Mitch mentioned something about mud and snakes, and Kate didn't protest when he swept her off her feet. She slid her arms around his taut shoulders, immediately aware of the tension in his body; the heat of his arms around her back and thighs; the musky, male scent of his skin and hair; the accelerated thrumming of his heart.
He was bringing her here to make love to her. She hadn't forgotten that.
He moved with silent purpose through a subtropical thicket that smelled of peat moss, muscadine and honeysuckle. Tension tightened between them with every brisk stride. Her pulse drummed; her blood roared in her ears.
She wanted him! She wanted to taste his kiss again, feel his strength, his heat. Wanted to provoke him to wildness; to ride the power of his storm.
But the storm she was about to provoke was not the kind she wanted. She wasn't the woman he believed her to be, and almost everything she'd told him had been a lie. Would he despise her?
A small cypress cabin with a pillared front porch appeared within a copse of huge, ancient trees. Lights glowed golden from a window. Mitch took the porch steps in one impatient bound, shoved open the unlocked door and carried her inside. In three thudding heartbeats, he crossed a cozy, lamp-lit room and set her on the edge of a low counter that divided the living room from the kitchen.
She released her arms from his neck, expecting him to move away.
He didn't. He dropped the suitcase from his shoulder and commandeered her gaze, while his hands coursed down the length of her thighs, his touch simmering through the thin, damp fabric of her dress. Parting her legs, he pressed his hips between them and pulled her closer, tighter, against him. "We're home," he said in a drawn-out whisper, searching her face with blood-stirring intensity. "I didn't think I'd ever get you here."
Powerful desire rose in her, and kept her silent when she knew she should speak; kept her aching for more of his hardness and heat when she knew she should back away.
With a harsh breath, he slid his hand around her nape and took her mouth in a long, lush, intricate kiss. She closed her eyes and courted the heat, wishing the kiss would never end.
Eventually it did, though. And before he led her into another, her moral sense reared up in protest. She had to put an end to this! To her deceit. To his passion. To them.
With an anguished groan, she pushed her hands against his muscled chest and staved him off. "I'm sorry, Mitch." Her heart tied itself into knots. "I'm so, so sorry. I don't know the best way to explain what I've done, and why I did it, but—" She paused to gather her words. To get her explanation exactly right, so he wouldn't immediately close his mind and heart to her.
But as he waited for her to continue, his jaw squared, his brows knitted, his masculine beauty so blazingly potent that she could barely think straight, she couldn't summon the first coherent word.
"Don't make this so hard, chèr'," he murmured in a gruff voice, his expression heated and tender as he brushed a stray blond tendril back from her face. "Just tell me, Kate. Tell me who you are."
* * *
Chapter 14
« ^ »
It took a moment for the meaning of his words to fully register. Just tell me, Kate. He'd called her Kate! Tell me who you are. She stared at him in stunned silence, unable to think beyond one incomprehensible fact. He knew.
He raised a tawny brow, silently prodding her for a reply.
"You … know?" she managed to utter. A ridiculously inane thing to ask, but those were the only two words running through her head.
"A loaded question," he said, studying her. "Let's start with the fact that I know who you're not."
Mortification weighted her down. He knew she wasn't Camryn, and that she was a liar. Those two facts couldn't have been more damning. How could he ever forgive her?
Other questions rushed at her. How long had he known? How had he found out? Why hadn't he confronted her and put an end to the deception? Why had he kissed her? The most pressing question rose above the others, though, and wedged painfully in her chest. She had no choice but to ask it, and she braced herself for his response. "Do you know, then, about … Camryn?"
Somberness shaded his face, and he nodded.
She shut her eyes, overcome by regret over what she'd done, as well as grief. "I'm sorry," she whispered, unable to say more.
"I'm sorry, too, Kate. I know you loved her. And though you might not believe it after all my ranting and raging, I cared about her, too. I was hoping she'd find her way to real happiness eventually."
She swallowed convulsively at that and struggled to tamp down her grief. She'd hoped the same for her. Slowly, then, she opened her eyes to see what she'd find in his face. She saw compassion—for her—and unmistakable warmth. Her heart slowly thudded back to life. He didn't despise her. And he wasn't devastated by Camryn's death. Amazing, how those facts allowed her to breathe again.
Her relief was too acute, his nearness too overwhelming. Sliding down from the counter, she sidestepped him and paced across the hardwood floor, past handmade throw rugs and a wide oak-and-leather chair near a stone fireplace. Her emotions were too chaotic to face him just yet. "How did you find out?"
"I started believing your amnesia story," he said, causing warm color to suffuse her face. Another lie she'd told. How could he ever trust her? "I wanted to know more about the accident, so I had the private investigator who found you do a little more digging." Through the mirror above the mantel, she saw that he was leaning casually against the countertop and watching her. "By the time he got back to me, I wasn't really all that surprised to learn you weren't Camryn. Your personalities are too different to be explained by amnesia, or anything else, for that matter."
Kate wrapped her arms around herself and kept her back to him. Remembering the time they'd spent together only made her emotions more volatile. How long had he known the truth? She struggled to keep her voice reasonably nonchalant. "When did you, um, get the news from your investigator about my … identity?"
He didn't answer, but through the mirror, she saw him stroll toward her, his hands in his pockets, his face dark and serious. "Kate." He stopped directly behind her. "Come sit down and we'll talk."
She didn't budge from where she stood. In fact, she turned her face from the mirror so she couldn't see him. She didn't want to look in his eyes. Her control was too fragile. Who knew which of her emotions might break free?
"I'll get us some wine," he said, "or whatever you'd like. Coffee, cola, water…"
"Nothing, thank you." It seemed that an emotion was indeed emerging as dominant. Anger. He'd let her carry on with the impersonation and anguish needlessly over the prospect of confessing. "Does your family know who I am?" She tried to keep the sharpness out of her tone. "Are they all in on the … game?"
"Game?" His hands closed on her shoulders and he turned her to face him. "Is that what we're doing … playing a game?"
She couldn't help glaring at him. "Do they know?"
"No. I'm the only one who knows who you are. But that's about all the information I've been given—your name. Oh, and I also learned your occupation, professor … courtesy of the ID card in your purse."
"You looked in my purse?"
"Yes. ma'am, I did. That doesn't upset you, does it? But I have a feeling you're upset, anyway. Why? Because I wasn't open and up front? Because I kept something from you?"
His point struck home, of course. She really had no room to complain. Guilt diluted her anger, but not enough to entirely douse it. She raised her chin and levele
d him cool with a glance. "Why didn't you tell me you knew?"
"I wanted to see what you intended to do."
"And have you?"
"I think so, but I'd like to hear it from you."
She compressed her lips. She didn't want to be put on the defensive quite yet. "You didn't answer my question. When did your investigator tell you about me?" When he merely gazed at her in stubborn silence, she asked, "Did you know who I was while we were sitting on the roof of your boat and I told you about my sister's death?"
"No. I believed every lie you told me." She flinched at that, and he pressed for the advantage. "Now answer a question for me, Kate. Why did you spend the past four days pretending to be my wife?"
Oh, he was good. He'd finessed his way right out of answering her real question. She wanted to know, needed to know, when he'd discovered her identity. Realizing her chances were slim of getting a reply unless she answered him first, she rested her fists on her hips and glowered. "You were barbaric when you broke into my home, and I didn't know who you were, where you lived, or where you'd sent Arianne. All my sister ever told me about Arianne's father was that he was mean."
"Mean!"
"That's right. Abusive. And I was afraid that if you knew I wasn't Camryn, you'd just disappear and I'd never find Arianne."
"You were planning to run with her if you had to, weren't you?"
"Yes."
They stared at each other with flushed, angry faces. "And what do you think now, Kate? Do you think I was abusive to your sister, or to my daughter?"
How, oh how, had he gotten her so far off the subject? She wanted her question answered, damn it. "No. I think you tried to save Camryn from herself. And I think you'd rather die than hurt Arianne. I think you'll give her the very best life you can, and that you're kind, and f-fair, and—" Her throat closed; her eyes moistened. Now she was getting off the subject. "When did you know I wasn't Camryn?" she asked in an uneven whisper.
He loomed closer, his expression losing all anger but gaining a new intensity. "That's a hard question to answer, Kate. I guess on some level, I knew you weren't Camryn when you smiled about taking that damn saltwater shower. And again when you thanked me for helping you through your seasickness. And when you refused to share my bed … and most of all, when I couldn't keep my hands off you, even in my sleep."
Heat welled up in her, and she bit her lip.
He wasn't finished, though. "I'd rather that you ask the question the way you really mean it. When did I know who you were. That's a hell of a lot more important than when I knew you weren't Camryn." He moved nearer, until his heat and his scent enveloped her. "I knew who you were, Kate, when you made mashed potatoes in the middle of the night to bandage Darryl's hand. I knew who you were when you fought to keep me from diving off the boat, and when we held each other afterward. I knew who you were when you hugged my daughter like there was nothing in the world more vital. And in case that doesn't answer your question … I knew who you were when I kissed you. Every time."
The quiet fervor of that statement trapped the breath in her lungs. "Or I wouldn't have done it, Kate."
And she was right back to where she'd been when he'd first carried her in here—thoroughly, helplessly, in love with him.
He caressed her face with both hands, swept his thumbs alongside her mouth. "I want you," he said in a husky tone. "Now, Kate. Tonight. All night."
Yes. Oh, yes. She wanted him, too. And if a little voice in her head warned her not to mistake his passion for love, she ignored it. If reason begged from some distant part of her soul to take things slower, to protect her heart, she shifted her attention elsewhere. She, the girl who had spent an eternity in a children's home watching prospective parents pass her by; she, the woman who had invested her heart in a child who would never be hers; she, the one who had lost every blessed person who had ever loved her, refused to think beyond this one night.
She answered him by weaving her hands into his thick, silky hair and kissing him, not on the mouth, but just beside it … then in a tender, lingering brush of her lips across his jaw and face; a sensual exploration of the strong, masculine planes, angles and clefts that so beguiled her. With each new sweep of her mouth, his breathing deepened, and her need for him grew.
Exhaling in a hard rush, Mitch shut his eyes and caught her body to his. She was going to make love to him. The realization awed him to his very core. And the feel of her soft, lush mouth skimming his face, her fingers sifting through his hair, her breasts pressing against his chest, sent desire shooting to his loins.
Her lips neared his, and hunger broke through his control. He splayed his hands across her back and hip and brought her down with him onto the leather sofa, where he captured her mouth in a deep, hot, sexual kiss. If life was a banquet, she was his bread, his wine, his spice … and he couldn't get enough.
Heat flared between them with awesome intensity, and their hands quested beneath clothing in needful caresses—hers, beneath his shirt, along the muscles of his back and chest; his, beneath her dress, along the silky length of her thigh, around the curve of her hip and up to the warm fullness of her cresting breasts.
His need swelled into an ache. Breaking from their kiss, he released her from his arms, rose from the sofa and briskly worked at doffing his clothes while his gaze traveled over her. Most of her hair had escaped from the French twist, looking tousled and sexy around her flushed face. Her honey-brown eyes were on him as he undressed, her lips rosy and kiss swollen, her breathing labored, her coral sundress riding low beneath her tanned shoulders. He wanted her with a desperation that shocked him.
She reached behind her to unzip the dress.
"No." His voice emerged as a rasp. "Let me."
He cast the last of his clothing aside and reached for her. His hands nearly shook as he stripped the clothes off her—the close-fitting, gauzy dress he'd been trying his damnedest to peer through all day, and the prim little cotton panties he'd probably never see again without thinking how they'd looked being tugged down her long, wicked legs.
His heart thundered; his blood rushed. His appreciation bordered on painful. She was simply too beautiful in her nakedness to casually behold. Her physical perfection came as no surprise. He'd been married to her identical twin. Yet Kate's beauty transcended any he'd ever seen. Just as the sunset had somehow glowed with unparalleled radiance, so did Kate. And her golden eyes were heated with desire and calling to him.
She would be his, he swore. Not just for now, but forever.
He set about making it so. With need throbbing through his veins, he blazed a meandering path down her body with his mouth, kissing, suckling and swirling his way into a swelter, until she lay gasping and trembling, her hips undulating between his hands. Only then did he thrust his fingers into her heat.
She would be his.
He brought her to a wild, shuddering completion. And by the time she wrapped her legs around his waist and he drove into her, hard and deep, they were both slick with sweat, feverish with passion and lost to everything but the need to possess.
His climax nearly blinded him.
And Kate finally understood what she'd been missing from her life—not only love and family and adventure, but this. The most exhilarating fire in her blood, in her loins, in every fiber of her being, and pleasure so intense her body quaked with it. She'd had orgasms before, but they'd been only pale foreshadowings of what she'd felt with him … not once, but twice, in rapid succession. She felt as if her soul had left her body to somersault through the heavens.
The intensity left them both gasping for breath, collapsed on the sofa, entwined in a tight embrace that anchored them while the world slowly drifted back into place.
She expected nothing more from the night, sexually speaking. She already felt enriched beyond her wildest dreams, and would have been content to merely hold him.
He had other things in mind. He brought her homemade elderberry wine, fragrant and full-bodied, which they shared along
with a blanket to cuddle under, dreamy candlelight and spontaneous, wine-flavored kisses. And when they finally forced themselves up from the sofa, he set their glasses aside, tugged her into the shower with him and teased her into laughter.
She'd never before associated laughter with lovemaking. Yet somehow the two blended naturally. One moment they were playing in the driving water and billowing steam, smiling into each other's eyes, lathering fragrant shampoo into each other's hair. But then he nudged her out of the direct flow of water and reached for the soap. The sight of his wet, muscled body, and the sensations coursing through her from his strong, virile, workman's hands as he sudsed her shoulders, back and hips, turned her playfulness into keen sensuality.
That sensuality soon possessed her. Transformed her. She turned into a purely sexual being, one of movement, heat and desire. While his sudsy hands rounded her breasts, cupping and kneading, tweaking her nipples into highly reactive points, her back arched, her eyes closed. Her hands flexed in compulsive rhythm through her lathery hair as her body writhed in sinuous, voluptuous gyrations.
His playfulness left him. His hands surged with new urgency, everywhere. Everywhere. His breathing turned harsh, interspersed with deep-throated groans, and he dropped to his knees before her. Running one hand around her undulating bottom, he worked the other to lather suds between her legs.
Pleasure coursed through her like lava, and a glance at his dark, rugged face filled her with an intoxicating sense of power. Through hooded eyes, he watched her hips roll and his hand glide. His jaw was tight; a pulse beat at his temple; his chest rose and fell in hard contractions.
The rhythm of her gyrations quickened. Sensation flashed through her with each slide of his hand, each delve of his fingers, building her need to a fierce intensity. With a breathless cry, she forced her movement to a halt and closed his hand between her thighs. She wouldn't relinquish the power to him just yet.
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