"No," he said. "You won't need that."
She was naked in his arms, her mind emptied of all but the sensual feel of his body against hers, of his strength and warmth. She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his. The smell of his skin, the faint shadow of his beard against the strong curve of his jaw--she closed her eyes against a dizzying rush of sensation that threatened to steal away what remained of her sanity.
#
She was lighter than a dream in his arms as he carried her to the bedroom yet the power she had over him was absolute. Her body was still warm from her bath, her skin moist and fragrant. He laid her down on the bed, her mane of auburn hair fanned across the pillow like living fire. She reached for the ivory satin duvet but he swept it to the floor with one swift movement of his hand.
"Jake," she whispered, "this isn't fair...."
He kicked off his shoes then reached for the button on his fly. "I'll make it fair."
A wildfire raged inside his gut as he stripped off his clothes then joined her on the bed. It would be easy to part her thighs and bury himself inside her, taking what she offered again and again until the flames were nothing more than embers. He wanted it fast and he wanted it now, a furious mating of male and female, but there was something about the look in her wide green eyes, the rapid sound of her breathing in the quiet room, that made him reconsider.
He leaned up on one elbow and let his gaze travel the length of her body. She was as slim as he'd remembered, as firm and sweet, but there was something different. A certain lushness, a womanly roundness to her curves that reminded him she wasn't a girl any longer.
Slowly he brought his hand to rest on the curve of her hip. His palm registered her warmth, the silky feel of her skin, the way she trembled slightly at his touch. Not with fear, he knew. With need. The same need that sent heat flowing through his veins.
She reached for him but he shook his head.
"Not yet," he said, his voice gruff with desire. "Not if you want it to last."
She laughed low in her throat. He wondered how many other men had heard her laugh like that. A primitive rage battled with lust. He hated the other men who had known her body. He wanted to burn their memory from her brain, brand her with his mouth, his hands, until she regretted the day she'd walked out the door.
Swiftly he moved to the foot of the bed.
"Every part of you," he said, encircling her ankle with his hand. "Every inch...."
Her back arched and she moaned as he drew his tongue along the rise of her instep. Slow and hot and wet enough to remind her that she was a flesh-and-blood woman and that he was a hungry man.
"Turn over," he said, his hands moving toward her knees. He felt her stiffen with alarm and he pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee. "Trust me, sweetheart...."
She shouldn't. He was a stranger to her. She knew nothing about the last six years of his life and, dear God, there was so much about her that he couldn't even imagine.
But his hands were so strong and warm against the tender flesh at the tops of her thighs and it had been so long since she'd felt like a woman.
She moved as if in a dream. The percale sheets felt cool against her belly and breasts and she pressed her face into the pillow, her pulse hammering in her ears, all but drowning out her soft inarticulate cries.
He was a magic man, a conjurer of fantasies. He brought her to aching life each place he touched. Calves...the backs of her knees...the rounded swell of her buttocks.
"Lift up, Meggie," he whispered, his mouth pressed against her shoulder. "Slide this pillow under you."
She felt wickedly sensual, wild with desire, as his lips found the sensitive base of her spine.
"Oh God," she moaned, "Jake...."
He slid his hands beneath her thighs then found her with his fingertips. His touch was light at first, an insinuation. She moved restlessly against him, her blood sounding a call older than the stars.
Her heat, her smell, the sound of her cries were pushing him to the end of madness.
He rolled her onto her back. "Hang on, Meggie. This is one ride we're taking together."
But first there was something he needed to take care of. For both of them.
Moments later she opened her thighs for him. Her excitement matched his own. He lowered himself slowly, testing his self-control, until he was poised against her heat. Her fingernails raked his buttocks. "Now...." Her voice was high, her tone urgent. "Now...now...now...."
She welcomed him, drawing him more deeply into her body than he would have imagined possible. She was tight and hot, her muscles working in tiny, mind-shattering contractions around him.
He was gathering speed, climbing faster and faster, moving inexorably toward the release his body demanded.
"Open your eyes, Meggie. I want to watch you when it happens."
She knew it was wrong, that it was dangerous, that nothing would ever be the same again, but a thrill of dark pleasure rippled through her body at his words. At that moment she would have done anything he asked. He was her only reality, her only safety.
She let her hands slide along the sinewy muscles of his arms, feeling his veins, rich with blood, beneath her fingertips.
"Ride with me, Meggie," he urged. "We're almost there...."
The fire grew hotter. She could see the flames. Feel them urging her toward the inferno.
She wrapped her legs around his hips as he pinned her arms over her head. Sweet bondage...then even sweeter release.
Megan shuddered around him. He was part of her, could feel what she felt, even as his own climax exploded. Her pleasure was deep, shattering--he saw it in the startled look in her wide green eyes, the high color in her cheeks, the way her full lips parted. Nothing in his life, no experience, no fantasy, came close to the primitive thrill he found watching the woman he'd once loved find paradise in his arms.
Chapter Five
Jake was the first to break the silence. "We always were good together."
She couldn't deny it. Not with her body flushed and damp with passion, with him still inside her, and the smell of their lovemaking in the air. "Were you surprised?"
He moved against her, his laughter low. "Gratified."
"This doesn't mean anything, Jake," she warned. "It was just this once."
"For old times' sake."
"Something like that."
"Nothing more?"
"I don't still love you," she said bluntly, "if that's what you're implying."
"Love's never had much of anything to do with what happens between us."
His words stung and she found herself blinking away sudden and embarrassing tears. "Then we both understand what this is about."
"Settling old scores?"
She looked at him. I did love you once, Jake. I was just too young and selfish to know what it meant. "Putting the past behind us," she said after a moment.
"Some people might say it's the same thing."
There was something in the tone of his voice, a certain ironic spin that sent a small frisson of alarm up her spine. "I know the difference between sexual chemistry and love, Jake."
An odd smile crossed his face. "And this was--?"
"Sex," she said, her tone sharp. "Animal magnetism. Anything you want to call it."
He moved away from her until they were no longer joined then leaned back against the headboard. "Good," he said after a moment. "I'm glad we understand each other."
"Good," she repeated, tugging the sheet up under her chin. "Not that there was ever any doubt."
"Just because two people are great in the sack is no reason to pretend they can make a marriage work."
"Only a fool would think that."
"That's where we went wrong the last time. We should have had an affair."
"Marriage was a ridiculous idea," said Megan, feeling unreasonably sad. "Everyone said so."
He met her eyes. "Especially your father."
"I don't want to talk about my father."<
br />
He rubbed the cheek she'd slapped during their first encounter on deck. "I seem to remember something to that effect."
"I'm sorry," she said stiffly. "I shouldn't have hit you."
"So what's your old man up to these days?"
"I said I don't want to talk about him."
"He must hate seeing his little princess out there mingling with the commoners."
"Jake--" Her voice held a warning.
He ignored it. "Come on, Meggie. I'd be lying if I pretended I gave a damn about the man. I bet he still hates me as much as I--"
"He's dead." The words hung there in the air between them.
"I get the message," he said, not getting it at all. "I'll back off."
She forced herself to meet his eyes. "My father is dead, Jake."
His expression didn't change but she heard his slow intake of breath. "When did he--"
"Five and a half years ago."
"Heart attack?"
Dangerous territory. "He drowned."
"Darrin McLean? Your dad won a silver medal at the '56 Olympics."
Holding the sheet to her breasts, she swung her legs from the bed. "I don't want to talk about this anymore." She started for the bathroom.
He reached across the bed and grabbed her wrist. "Megan...."
She tried to pull away from him but he held her fast. "Don't tell me you're sorry because I won't believe you. You hated my father."
"And he hated me." His grip on her wrist tightened. "I am sorry, Meggie. For you. Your old man was an arrogant, selfish bastard but he had one redeeming feature: he loved you more than anything in the world."
She thought she would die from the pain that gripped her heart. There was one thing Darrin McLean had loved more than his daughter and that was his own comfort. But she would rather walk barefoot on hot coals than tell Jake the truth.
Tears burned behind her lids and she looked away.
"Meggie?" His voice was uncharacteristically gentle. "I don't want to hurt you."
She shook her head. "You didn't. It's just--" She stopped. All she could offer him was a lie because the truth was still too devastating for her to comprehend.
Clumsily he stroked her hair. "He was a tough act to live up to," he said. "I would've sold my soul to be able to take care of you the way he did."
"He was my hero," she said, voice breaking. "I thought he would live forever."
He was quiet, thinking of the despair she must have felt when McLean died. "You should've called me. You shouldn't have gone through it alone."
She said nothing but the look on her face spoke volumes. "I guess a piano player wouldn't have fit in with that crowd, would it, Meggie?"
"I didn't say that."
"No," he admitted, "you didn't. But you're not denying it." He could imagine the scene after McLean's death; his cronies must have gathered around Megan like vultures around a corpse.
She straightened her shoulders, tilted that stubborn chin. "What could you have done for me if I had called you, Jake? It's not like you'd know how to handle the situation."
Now's the time, Lockwood. The piano player owned the company and the yacht and more fabulous things than she'd ever dreamed of. If he was looking for shock value, she'd handed him the opportunity of a lifetime.
But the words wouldn't come. There was something about the look in her eyes, the oddly affecting set of her mouth that kept him from knocking her back with the truth.
She drew the sheet more tightly around her. "We were idiots to think going to bed together would make a difference."
He stroked her wrist with his thumb. "Maybe we didn't do it right."
She laughed despite herself. "It doesn't get much more right than that, Jake."
"Maybe it wasn't as good as we thought it was."
"Sleight-of-hand."
"An illusion?"
He released his grip on her wrist. She didn't move away. Rising from the bed he drew her into his arms.
Megan knew it was as crazy as it was dangerous. That this was the last place she should be.
That she couldn't turn away from him. Not for anything on earth.
"God, Meggie...." His large thumbs moved across her nipples and she bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying out as her nipples grew taut at his touch. He lowered his head. His dark hair was cool and silky against her skin, his mouth hot as he encircled her nipple.
She arched against him, fingers threaded through his hair. Before they had come together in heat. The heat was still there, and the passion, but there was something else between them now. Something she couldn't put a name to but recognized in the way her body responded to him, in the way she wished this moment never had to end.
Suddenly it struck her as a terrible waste that she knew so little about the man who had been her husband. He'd seemed dangerous to her at nineteen, as wildly powerful as a force of nature and just as unpredictable. He was filled with ideas, crazy schemes to make a million dollars. She'd never wanted for anything in her life and his ambition made her feel as if she should apologize for having the good fortune to be born rich.
What a shame it was that understanding had come too late to do them any good.
Not that it mattered. This wasn't about renewal. It was about putting the past behind her and building a new life, a life with a man who would be a husband to her--and a father to Jenny.
Two things Jake Lockwood could never be.
#
Megan opened her eyes to find herself alone in bed.
"Jake?" She raised up on one elbow and smothered a yawn.
"Don't get up." He stood near the open porthole, naked except for a pair of jeans that rode low on his hips. "It's not even dawn yet."
The sight of him, splendid and male, in the shadowy blue light of the bedroom awoke in her a hunger so sharp and intense she found it difficult to breathe. "Wh-where are you going?"
"Topside. We dock in two hours."
"A dawn piano recital?"
He slipped into his shirt. "I do more than play piano."
"A regular jack-of-all-trades," she observed sleepily.
"You do what you have to do," he said, reaching for his shirt. "You have a problem with that?"
"No," she said, meeting his eyes. "I admire it."
He sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. "I didn't think you admired much of anything about me, Meggie."
She touched his arm. "What's wrong? Last night was so--"
"Last night was last night," he said, standing up again. "We'd both be smart to keep things in perspective."
"My perspective is fine," she snapped. "We were looking for great sex and we found it"
"You know," he said, "I was wrong. You haven't changed. You're still the same sharp-tongued--"
She threw her pillow at him. "Shut up! I don't care what you think of me. Your opinion doesn't matter."
She was naked. Angry. Wild-eyed.
Naked.
He stopped in the doorway, blood heating in his veins.
"Jake...." Part warning, part invitation.
"Shut up," he said, striding toward her. "Don't say anything."
She was in his arms in a heartbeat. Passionate. Warm. Demanding. She knew what he wanted before he did. He backed her up against the wall. Her hands found the zipper on his fly. She wrapped her legs around his hips and he plunged into her aching body with an urgency that bordered on brutal. She loved every second of it.
Their lovemaking was fierce. It wasn't about tenderness. It wasn't about desire.
It was about something that shouldn't be happening, something they were powerless to stop. It was about the girl she'd been and the man he was and all the failed dreams that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
"What are we going to do?" she asked as he dressed for the second time that morning. "This is--"
"Incredible," he said, zipping his pants.
"And out of control."
"That's the point, Megan. We have two more days
to let it run its course before we're back in Miami."
"What if it hasn't run its course?" The words were out before she could stop them.
"It will have. We're wrong for each other, Meggie. Always have been. Always will be."
"I know," she whispered. "I know."
She wondered what he would say if he knew they had a child. A beautiful little girl with his eyes and his laugh and his passion for life.
They might be wrong for each other, but they had done something terribly right when they'd created Jenny.
"...meet me this afternoon in front of La Playa Real."
She blinked. "What?"
"This afternoon," he repeated. "We don't sail until eight o'clock."
"I thought you had a meeting." Ostensibly that was why he'd made his dramatic entrance through the secret panel in the hallway.
"I do, but I'll bail out early."
"I don't want you to lose your job, Jake." She wasn't being altruistic. She simply didn't want it on her conscience.
"Don't worry about my job." He bent down and kissed her thoroughly. "The clock's ticking, Megan. Let's make the most of it."
#
Megan swore she wasn't going to meet him. God knew, she had every reason not to. What had happened between them was beyond explanation. Six long years had vanished at the first intoxicating feel of skin against skin and Megan had responded like one possessed, but that was no reason to think it had to happen a second time.
She didn't want to feel this way. She'd wanted to discover that his magic had disappeared along with their marriage, discover that she could live without magic and warm kisses and dreams she no longer believed could come true.
But La Mirada was far from reality. The island was a verdant swell of land southwest of Nassau, one of those lushly beautiful places that seemed designed strictly to put people in the mood for romance.
Bougainvillea bloomed everywhere you looked. Beach roses vied with gardenias for room. The houses were pastel confections of lemon and mint and sky blue with wrought-iron grille-work and window boxes overflowing with geraniums. It was easy to forget there was a real world out there.
Back home she might be able to convince herself she was happy with the status quo, but there in that lush Caribbean paradise it was hard to imagine being satisfied with anything less than the splendor she'd found last night in his arms.
Her Bad Boy Billionaire Lover (Billionaire Lovers) Page 6