by Sandra Brown
Like an industrious spider he continued to spin his web around her throughout the interminable dinner. Because six other people were seated at their table, they had to carry on a conversation, but the others were unaware of the silent communication being exchanged by covert looks and secret touches.
Megan might have planned for tonight to be the culmination of her scheme. Obviously Josh had. He rarely took his eyes off her, and his golden eyes sent a message to her heart that it couldn't fail to decipher.
Finally the house lights were dimmed and everyone's attention was drawn toward the head table, where Terry Bishop began to speak. Josh took advantage of the distraction to lean over and kiss Megan on the mouth. Her lips opened under his as the petals on her dress opened to hold her breasts. Without so much as disturbing the color that tinted her lips, his tongue slipped between them to rub against the tip of hers.
When he pulled away, his voice was rough with emotion. “I love you, Megan. Marry me.”
For a moment both of them were too spellbound to realize that they were once again the center of attention. Terry Bishop had blared Josh's name through the microphone on the podium. “Don't be shy now, Josh,” he said. “Come on up here and let me and the stockholders present you with a token of our appreciation for the fine job you've done in promoting Seascape.”
Everyone was applauding. For the first time in her life, Megan saw Josh ruffled. He looked at her bleakly, shrugged helplessly, straightened his bow tie self-consciously, and stood up. She watched him, still stunned motionless by his unexpected proposal, as he made his way to the head table.
His hand was shaken heartily by Terry and all the stockholders. Gayla kissed him soundly. Photographers snapped his picture. He was presented with a set of gold-and-diamond cuff links. He handled it all with humility and aplomb, then stepped behind the microphone and began to speak in a deep, stirring voice.
All of a sudden Megan had to get away. Without stopping to consider, she slipped out the back door of the ballroom and ran through the compound as fast as her high heels would let her. The truth had dawned on her—no, had struck her like lightning—and she had to be alone.
Indeed, lightning was striking all around her as she ran down the pathways toward the bungalow. The wind destroyed her hairdo, but she was heedless of it. Tears flooded her cheeks as she continued to run. There was a burning pain in her side from running and a pain in her soul from what she knew now to be the irrevocable truth.
She reached the quadraplex in record time and fumbled in her beaded bag for the key. Once inside, she all but ripped the black dress from her body, as though it were a cloying shroud, and peeled the panty hose down her legs. Naked, she went to the dressing table to pull out what pins were left in her hair. Punishingly, she raked a brush through it.
The need to escape pressed upon her, bringing with it irrationality and panic. She must escape from herself and from the man who would come looking for her when he discovered she was gone. He mustn't find her tonight. He mustn't. She was too weak, too susceptible. If he found her …
Where could she hide? As if in answer a bolt of lightning zigzagged from the low clouds seemingly into the heart of the turbulent sea. Josh wouldn't look for her on the beach, not in this storm. Only a fool would go near the water during an electrical storm. But then, she was a fool.
She pulled on her bikini trunks but, thinking she might be too cold with the ocean wind howling, she substituted a soft, baggy sweat shirt for the bra. Within seconds she was out the terrace door and racing down the slope toward the beach. She ran from even a hint of light. The frequent blue-white flashes of the storm were her only illumination.
Far from her bungalow she sat down in the damp sand, pulled her knees up, and lay her forehead against them. Bitter tears scalded her eyes and wet her cheeks.
I love him.
The truth filled her mind despite her efforts to deny it. She had loved him long and well. She had loved him from the first moment she'd seen him, over four years ago. She had loved him far too well to marry another man, far too well to be considered a truly faithful wife, far too well to carry out a stupid plot for revenge. Whom was she avenging? James? Herself? Everything that had once been so clear to her was now a tangle of mixed emotions, a jumble of truths, half-truths, and misinterpretations.
Engulfed by remorse, she crumpled onto her side in a heap and sobbed bitterly. It wasn't Josh who had been brought to heel, but herself. The role she'd played for the past few days was the role she'd always wanted to play with this man but had never allowed herself to assume. The startling truth was that everything she'd done, she'd done because she'd wanted to, not because she wanted to bring him down. All the while convincing herself that she was lying to him with her seductive allures and affectionate banter, she had instead been lying to herself.
“You're a fool, Megan Lambert,” she cried aloud. “Didn't it ever occur to you that you'd fall into your own trap?”
For an indeterminate length of time she lay there on the beach and wept. The wind whistled ominously around her. Lightning popped and cracked, eerily lighting up the entire horizon or ripping through the curtain of clouds to momentarily weld together sea and sky. It might have started raining or it might have been salt water spraying on her cold skin. She didn't know or care. To the elements she was impervious. She knew only of the gnawing agony deep inside her and the emptiness that lurked on the outskirts of her soul, threatening to suck her into its fathomless void.
“Megan!” Her name sounded torn from an anguished throat. She heard it only a moment before she felt the vibration of running footsteps in the wet, hard-packed sand. Then strong hands were gently turning her over. “Megan?”
She opened her eyes, and the pain-riddled eyes that gazed down at her, searching her face, squeezed tightly shut in relief. His hair was whipping around his head in the wild wind. His tuxedo coat and tie were gone. So were his shoes and the studs that buttoned his shirt. The wind tore at the fine white cloth, pulling it away from his body, whose strength championed the storm's fury.
Kneeling in the sand, he grabbed her to him, wrapping his arms around her and all but cutting off her breath. “Don't ever do that to me again. I thought. …I thought Lord …” He rocked her back and forth in his arms, warming her. His lips covered her face with frantic kisses while his hands traversed her body anxiously.
“What made you do it, Megan? Why? Why did you run away from me? From me?”
His haggard expression revealed his agony and opened up the floodgates of her love for him. “I—” No, she couldn't tell him about her stupid plan for vengeance. He thought her signs of growing love had been natural, not engineered. They had been, so there wasn't any reason for him ever to know of her plot.
“Hold me, Josh, just hold me. I love you,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck.
He lifted her and carried her up the gentle incline toward the bungalow. The wind and rain lashed out at them but only gave him reason to walk that much faster. He passed through the open glass door and rushed to ease her down on the bed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, lifting the wind-ravaged, rain-plastered hair away from her face.
“Yes, yes,” she sobbed, grabbing his hand and bringing his palm to her mouth.
He left her only long enough to lunge to the terrace door and slide it shut. Belt and trousers and underwear were discarded as he returned to the bed. She had used that time to fling the covers back and he down on the melon-colored linens.
His eyes blazed into hers as he shrugged off his shirt and came naked to the side of the bed. His sex was bold in its declaration of need and desire. The wild disarray of his hair, the fierce expression in his eyes, the harsh breathing that came through his lips, gave him a primeval bearing that set her blood racing to every erogenous zone of her body. With the most primitive of instincts she longed to satisfy the lust of her mate.
Her hands went to the bottom of the sweat shirt. Her eyes locked with his as she sl
owly and alluringly eased it over her breasts. Pausing to gauge his reaction, she pulled it over her head and stretched, her body forming one sleek, taut line of sexuality. She tossed the garment to the floor. Then, lifting her hips an inch above the mattress, she wiggled out of her bikini trunks.
A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically, and his eyes darkened. With a hand that trembled visibly, he reached down to test the texture of the auburn tuft. She purred her desire.
In an instant he was stretched out on top of her, and they fell on each other as if they were dying of thirst. His fingers plowed through her hair, capped her head, and held it possessively while his mouth ravished hers. His tongue plunged into her mouth, driven by hunger and the desperation to claim ownership at last.
Her hands opened over his back, rubbing hard the muscles that bunched and relaxed each time he moved over her, driving their bodies to a greater level of passion.
“This isn't the way I planned it,” he said, gasping.“I was going to go slow… savor… oh, Lord … touch me there again.”
“Please, Josh, now,” she pleaded as her hips arched up to meet his thrust.
He buried himself in the moist welcoming silk of her body, and their cries of ecstasy rivaled the roar of the wind outside.
“Say you always wanted this.” His choppy words matched the rhythm of his body's movement.
“I did.”
“Say you fell in love with me that first night.”
“The moment I saw you.”
“Ahhh. I love you, Megan.”
“I love you, Josh.”
The storm outside was nothing compared to the tempest that raged between them. It was wild and free and furious and quickly spent.
Deliriously languorous, they regained their breath. She smiled against his lips, and he opened his eyes, regarding her drowsily. “Something's funny?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don't remember ever being so exhilarated or so exhausted.”
He levered himself on his elbows and looked down at her. “I was rough. Did I hurt you?” His eyes touched her with loving concern.
“No,” she said, investigating the scar in his eyebrow with her fingertip. Her lips parted with surprise when, feeling him nestled deep inside her, she realized that his desire hadn't been fully quenched.
“I'm sorry,” he said commiseratingly, and made to move away.
“No!” she said, with such emphasis that he laughed softly before kissing her.
This time their voracity had been appeased and tenderness reigned. His lips moved over hers soothingly. He dragged his tongue along her lower lip, flicking lightly at the corners of her mouth until she squirmed beneath him with mounting desire.
Hands and mouths moved restlessly, never getting enough, striving for closer contact, thrilling to each blissful discovery. She lost her equilibrium when he rolled them over so that she was lying on top of him.
“I'm awkward,” she said apologetically. “It's been a long time.” And never like this, she could have added.
“You're perfect. Move up.”
She felt forlorn. “But—”
He smiled slyly and lifted her off him. “It'll keep,” he promised with words and glowing eyes. “Come up here.”
With his warm hands cupping her bottom and directing her, she inched up his torso, reveling in the feel of his hair-roughened skin. When she was braced above him, his hands adored her breasts, lifting them for the avid inspection of his eyes. He filled his hands with their full warmth and squeezed gently. He pressed them against the wall of her chest, then let them fall and smiled up at her with wicked glee. She could laugh with him, for it made her exultant to know she pleased him so.
He brushed his thumbs across the dusky crests that were swelling again with awakened need. While his thumbs performed the delicious aggravation, he studied her face. “When I do this, your eyes become the most mysterious shade, of green and your lids lower. You don't really close your eyes; you only hide them. I find it incredibly sexy.”
When his hands moved slightly, she begged him breathlessly, “Please don't stop.”
“Not even to kiss them?”
She bent her head to sigh against his lips. “Kiss them if you must.”
His mouth closed around one budding nipple and suckled sweetly. Even as his jaw flexed and relaxed, his tongue nudged and circled until she was delirious. He gave the same unselfish treatment to the other breast as she massaged his stomach with her undulating hips.
Securing her against him, he eased them to their sides. Taking her hand in his, he guided it down his body. He watched her reaction closely, but she felt no hesitancy or fear when her questing fingers found him.
“You've been a part of me for so long that I can't remember a time when you weren't.” The golden eyes closed and his breath came out in a shuddering exhalation when her fingers grew more confident. “Megan, every breath I've taken … every heartbeat for the last four years … has belonged to you.”
Shyly, lovingly she whispered, “You feel so good… here.” His throat vibrated with an animal groan. “Here.” The word barely left her lips as her fingers tenderly honored him.
“If you think it feels good to you…” With a stroking hand, he gently parted her thighs and curved his palm over the center of her pleasure. He moved it in circles of increasing pressure. Fingers delicately probing found her moist and inviting. The secrets of her body were revealed to his curiosity.
They brought each other to the peak of fulfillment time and time again, but held it back, prolonging the torment only to heighten the release. As his fingers worked their magic, he bathed her breasts with his tongue. When she did the same to him, his whole body went rigid.
“Megan?”
She lay her thigh over his, and as they looked deeply into each other's eyes, he pressed into her to the very gate of her womb. Her hips climbed slowly onto his as he rolled to his back. Though this was a first for her, she seemed trained in the art as she moved above him. He encouraged and praised her with his hands encircling her waist, his thumbs skating over the auburn down and fondling her breasts lovingly.
When the tumult came, they were smiling at each other, celebrating each other, loving each other with spirit as much as with body.
“Josh?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Are you kidding? When you're doing what you're doing? Not a chance.” His chuckle was a rumble in her ear, as it lay on his chest. Her idle ringer was circling a puckering, hair-whorled nipple. Their legs were entwined, their bodies touching everywhere they possibly could. Her hair made a coppery cape over his throat.
She stopped her provocative caress and lay her fingers flat. “I'm serious.” His hand stopped its gentle stroking of her derriere and slid upward to cover her back protectively.
“Tell me,” he demanded softly.
Drawing a deep breath, she said shakily, “I'm sorry for being so unfair to you all these years. I was wrong about you. I blamed you for the night you kissed me.”
“I was to blame. Who did I think I was, to kiss another man's bride? At least the way I kissed you. It wasn't the most noble thing I've ever done.”
“But I let you kiss me. I wanted you to.”
He smoothed her hair. “That's the only reason I let myself do it. I thought that you couldn't help what happened between us any more than I could.”
“I haven't been able to admit it to myself until now. I lashed out at you, harbored anger, made you out the villain because I wouldn't admit my own guilt.”
“You were a faithful wife to James,” he said quietly. “If I had thought there was the slightest chance you might not be, I'd have come after you. I'd have said to hell with conscience and moral conviction and friendship.”
She shuddered and snuggled closer to him. “I wasn't always faithful in my heart. If you had made an overture, I'm… I'm not sure what I would have done.”
“You'd have sent me packing, just like you did t
he night before your wedding. That's why I loved you, Megan. If you had kissed me without feeling guilty, I'd have probably forgotten you within weeks. You'd have been no different from so many other women I'd met.
“But you were different,” he went on. “So wonderfully different, with your righteous indignation following the most sexually explicit kiss I'd ever experienced. The contrast bewildered and elated me. I knew you were the woman I wanted, the woman I'd always love, whether I could have you or not.”
She raised herself up to kiss him softly on the lips. He caught a strand of her hair and looped it through his fingers, toying with it even as she lay her head down again on his chest.
“I blamed you for James's death,” she confessed in a small voice.
“I know. That was the hardest thing to take, because I had no recourse. Anything I did you would have interpreted as arrogant selfishness. I bided my time as long as I could.”
“If anyone's to blame for James's death, it's me.”
“Only James is to blame.”
“I should have seen to it that he took better care of himself.”
“He was an adult. He should have seen to it.”
“If I'd loved him the way I should have, I'd have badgered him to slow down, to stop smoking for good, not to drink so much. I should have insisted.”
“If he had loved you the way he should have, you wouldn't have needed to.” Her head came up to look at him. “Didn't you ever think of that, Megan?” He framed her face with his hand. “He had a responsibility to you. He knew he was living too hard and too fast, because you, I, everyone told him he was. But he was too cocksure to believe it. He knew his blood pressure was dangerously high. I didn't send him out on martini lunches; he went. I didn't like his late evenings with clients because I knew that meant you were alone.”
A lone tear trickled down her cheek. He captured it with his thumb and spread the dewiness across her lips. “You're no more to blame for James's death than I am. His own compulsive drive to succeed at the expense and exclusion of everything else, even his own health, is what brought on that coronary.”