“More than you can possibly know,” Michael muttered, glaring ahead and striding along at a furious pace.
She raced to keep up with him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Damned lawyers thinking they can bend the rules to suit their own ends, that’s what it means!”
“We didn’t do anything illegal, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Are you sure? Did you read the fine print before you signed the adoption papers?”
“There was no fine print. We had a straightforward agreement drawn up which we and the birth mother signed, with Todd’s two law partners acting as witness.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd that an important part of the equation was missing?”
“The natural father, you mean? He forfeited any rights he might have had when he walked out on his pregnant wife and left her to fend for herself.”
“Even if he were as delinquent as you seem to think, I suspect you needed his signed permission for the agreement to hold up in court.”
“There’s no ‘even if’ about it, Michael,” she snapped. “The man was a louse and there isn’t a court in this land who’d uphold his bid to contest the adoption, especially not after all this time.”
“There might be,” he countered. “Given the fact that your husband opted out of the parental responsibilities he voluntarily undertook and then abandoned, a court might look very favorably on the natural father’s claim to his blood child.”
“He’d have to get by me first and if you think I’d hand Jeremy over without a fight, you greatly underestimate the power of a mother’s love! And whose side are you on, anyway?”
“I wasn’t aware I was being asked to take anyone’s side but if I had to choose, I’d say Jeremy’s. Shouldn’t the best interests of a child always take precedence over everything else?”
“Of course they should! Do you think I’m not aware, with every passing day, that Jeremy deserves two parents, that he needs a father? Don’t you think, if I could, I’d give him one?” She didn’t know she’d begun to cry until her words choked on a sob. “But what do you expect me to do, Michael? Run out and shanghai the first man who slows down long enough for me to catch him, and force him to be a daddy to my boy?”
“No.” He caught her hands and tried to pull her into his arms. “And I didn’t mean to make you cry, either.”
“Don’t you touch me!” she cried, slapping his hands away. “You’ve left it a bit too late to play the sympathetic friend. I must have been mad to think I could confide in you or expect that you’d understand.”
“Hey,” he said urgently, pinioning her wrists against his chest, “I’m not the enemy here, Camille.”
But the reassurance came too late. His questions had raised specters she couldn’t ignore.
How do we know the father won’t show up one day, Todd? What if he decides he wants his baby, after all?
He won’t.
How can you be sure?
Because I know what I’m doing. That agreement is watertight.
But you’re the one who’s always said there’s no such thing as a contract which can’t be broken.
I’m the legal expert, Camille, not you, so instead of harping on about things you know nothing about, why don’t you stick to what you do best and look after the kid?
She’d let herself be convinced, in part because she had bigger things to worry about. Her husband’s growing indifference toward their new son suggested that acquiring a baby had mattered more to Todd than being a father. Then the drinking started again, and with it the rages and the accusations.
What the natural father might or might not do had paled beside the very real risk to which she was exposing her son by remaining in such a marriage, and by the time she’d finally put her house in order again, her other fears lay so far in the past that she’d grown complacent.
Until Michael D’Alessandro came on the scene, that was, and unearthed them again!
“You might not be my enemy, but you’re not my friend, either,” she said, too overwrought to care that she was thrashing around in his arms like a wild thing. “If you were, you wouldn’t be trying to undermine my confidence like this. I’m a good mother and I love my son.”
“I know, I know! For Pete’s sake, Camille, no one who’s seen you with Jeremy could ever doubt that and I never meant to suggest otherwise. Please stop crying, sweetheart.”
“I really don’t know why I started.” She leaned her head against his chest, all the fight suddenly seeping out of her. “It’s just that I sometimes feel I let Rita down and if she knew, she’d regret having trusted me with her baby. I promised her we’d give Jeremy what she couldn’t give him—two parents and a loving, stable home. Yet within months of his birth, I’d filed for divorce and Todd had walked out of our lives for good.”
“You did what any mother would have done in the same situation. You protected your child the only way you could. Don’t beat yourself up because Todd didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. That was his choice, not yours.”
His voice flowed over her, deep and smoky, blunting all the rough edges of her distress. His arms closed around her, warm and strong. She had never felt so safe and protected.
“If I’d been married to a man like you to begin with,” she said, lifting her face to his, “things would have turned out differently.”
“Oh, yes,” he said thickly. “That much I can safely guarantee.”
She thought, from the way he spoke, that there might be a hidden message in his words. She thought, from the way he looked at her, that something was troubling him. She opened her mouth to ask him. But before she could voice the question, he bent his head and kissed her. And once again, everything fled her mind but the sheer magic of his lips on hers.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE TASTED of grass and the wildflowers that grew along the side of the road; of the river-scented air and the cool star-filled night. A dizzy, intoxicating mixture that left her so light-headed she sank against him with a whimper.
She wound her arms around his waist. Pressed herself so close that his belt buckle gouged the thin fabric of her dress. Driven by a raging hunger to know him ever more intimately, she let her hand slip down to caress his buttocks. Tilted her hips to meet the thrust of his.
He tore his mouth free and shoved her away so abruptly she’d have stumbled if he hadn’t caught her. “This is madness! Get back in your car and go home.”
“Why?” she asked him. “What are you afraid of?”
“Me,” he said unsteadily.
“I’m not.” She dared to touch him again, tracking the thin line of his scar with her forefinger. “I trust you.”
“Never trust a stranger, Camille. You’re asking for trouble if you do.”
“Then let me rephrase it. I trust myself, and my instincts tell me you’re a good and decent man.”
“We both know your instincts aren’t always on target. If they were, you’d never have married Todd.”
She let her hand skim to the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat. “What’s happening between us has nothing to do with Todd, Michael, and we both know it.”
“It has nothing to do with anything!” he said savagely. “That’s why, if you’re a tenth as smart as you like to think you are, you’ll get the hell out of here as fast as you can.”
“I’ll do that just as soon as you tell me you don’t want to kiss me again.”
“I don’t want to kiss you again.”
“Really?” She moved close enough that their bodies brushed against each other, and lifted her face to his. And waited.
The air whistled past his lips. “Damn you!”
The curse caressed her like a benediction, fraught with pent-up longing. It was all the encouragement she needed to continue along a course already so far beyond her usual diffidence that she wondered where she’d found the courage to set out on it in the first place. “Yes,” she whispered, her lips feathering over his. “Damn m
e.”
He hauled her into his arms. His body slammed against hers, powerful, unyielding, primitive. But his mouth…oh, his mouth wooed her with refined genius! She dissolved beneath its seduction. The moon could have fallen into the river and she wouldn’t have cared. He held her spellbound.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he rumbled, the tip of his tongue teasing the outer shell of her ear, then plunging deep into the tightly furled inner coil—in and out, in and out, in bold imitation of sexual intimacy.
“Me, too,” she said on a dying breath.
He threaded his fingers through her hair and cradled the back of her head in the palm of his hand. “The first time we kissed,” he said, his gaze devouring her face, “I promised myself it would be the last.”
“Why, when we do it so well?”
“Because I knew it would never be enough. And I was right. I want to make love to you, Camille.” He slid his hand down her spine and splayed his fingers over the curve of her hip. His thumb stole into the crease of her groin, teasing, tantalizing. Swept a fleeting caress across the top of her thigh and circled that part of her already weeping for his touch, marking it his to possess.
A spasm of pleasure, so acute and unexpected that she gasped aloud, quivered through her. Shamelessly, she imprisoned his hand between her thighs. “I wish you would!”
“No, you don’t, not if you stop to think about it,” he said hoarsely. “We’re neither of us the one-night-stand type. Allowing ourselves to get carried away only serves to make everything more complicated between us.”
He might be refuting her assertion verbally, but the sinuous pressure of his hand against her susceptible flesh conveyed quite a different message. He could easily have broken the contact and left her wilting with disappointment, but he didn’t.
“You’re making all the right noises, Michael,” she said, “but if you really believed what you’re saying, you’d push me away, just as you did the other night. You’d belittle me, tell me I’m a tramp….”
His fingers curved to fit the shape of her more snugly. “If I were to say that, would you make me stop what I’m doing?”
He was stealing her soul, her mind, her sensibility. “No…! Please, Michael…make love to me….”
He lifted his head and scanned the area, his breathing as tortured as hers. “Not here. There’s a place farther along the river….” He stopped and pinned her in one last searching gaze. His mouth skimmed the planes of her face. “If you’re going to change your mind, Camille, now’s the time to say so.”
Without hesitation, she placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers, strong and dependable. He led the way down the embankment and along the grassy strip running beside the water to a stretch of sand half hidden by an overhanging willow. A shaft of moonlight pierced the branches, just enough to show his heaving chest. Just enough to reveal the pale line of his scar against the darker shadow of his jaw. Just enough that she could see the swollen profile of his virility straining against the fly of his jeans.
She placed her hand flat against his waist, then drew it down in provocative slow motion until her palm covered him. He smothered a moan, but apart from the slow droop of his eyelashes, he remained perfectly still.
She slid her hand again to his waist, tugged free the hem of his T-shirt, and lifted it to bare his midriff. Although ridged with underlying muscle, his skin felt smooth; warm and pulsing with hidden energy.
She raised the hem higher. Moonlight played over the contours of his chest, creating a subtle patchwork of copper and bronze and mahogany. Too mesmerized by the symmetrical beauty of him to care what he might think of her daring, she leaned forward and swirled her tongue first over one flat nipple, and then the other.
Another strangled moan escaped him. Yet still, he didn’t move.
She stroked her hands down the line of his ribs. Dropped to her knees and dipped her tongue into the hollow of his navel.
She had gone too far. The sky tilted, the willow tree swung at a crazy angle. With a soft thump, the ground tumbled up to meet her. Cool grainy sand clung to the back of her legs and speckled her hair. His body covered hers. The tough, male weight of him flattened the breath from her lungs. The feel of him, hard and pulsing with life, left her body aching and her mind spinning.
“Enough!” he muttered roughly.
But the hand pinning her wrists above her head was gentle; the knee inching her legs apart questing rather than encroaching.
For the space of a heartbeat or two, he scrutinized her, feature by feature. Then reining in a breath, he said, “Don’t push me to the brink too soon, Camille. If we’re going to do this, let me show you at leisure what loving’s all about.”
She squirmed beneath him, her blood churning at the promise she heard in his voice. Todd had never spoken to her in words charged with such impassioned restraint; never made her tremble with a single telling glance. From the earliest days of their marriage, their coming together had been all about reproduction. A matter of timing and technique.
“Your dress is lovely,” Michael said, releasing her hands and pulling himself up to kneel astride her. “Fine, just like you.” He slipped the top button loose, then the next and the next, until only the gauzy half-cups of her bra covered her breasts. “Fine and feminine,” he said, pushing the dress down her arms and sliding the bra straps from her shoulders, “just like you.”
A breath of river air drafted over her exposed skin and left goose bumps in its wake. He seared them into oblivion with his tongue, then fastened his mouth over the aching bud of her nipple.
A live wire of electricity raced from the point of contact to her pelvis, swift, sharp and exquisitely painful. She clutched at him, her nails gouging the smooth muscle of his shoulders. Her legs jerked spasmodically. “Michael….” she whimpered.
He reared back, peeled off his T-shirt, and tossed it behind him. It floated in the night, a white ghostly object drifting aimlessly a moment before dropping with a sigh into the long sweet grass at the foot of the willow.
Rising up to meet him, she fumbled with his belt. He caught her hand and drew her to her feet. “No,” he said, stepping back the better to watch her as she stood there, half undressed, with grains of sand sliding over her skin and trickling from the ends of her hair. “Get rid of the dress and the underwear, instead.”
Hypnotized by his dark unblinking stare, she obeyed, moving as if she were in a trance. She kicked off her shoes and he, her partner in the surrealistic mating ritual, did the same with his. He shed his jeans at the exact moment that her dress puddled around her ankles; shucked off his briefs as she shed her panties.
Realizing she was staring, she half turned away. “If you can’t even bring yourself to look at me,” he said, “then you’re not ready to have me make love to you, either.”
Shyly, she ventured a glance at him. He stood naked before her, carved in moonlight and dusted with shadow; powerful and magnificent in his masculinity.
She had no recollection of how they came to be standing only a few inches apart. Did he move first? Did she? Or did involuntary strands of magnetism draw them together until his breathing mingled with hers and she could taste him deep in her lungs?
He touched his forefinger to her chin. Traced a thin line down her throat. Wove a tormenting figure eight around her breasts without actually touching them. Paused and said, “I knew you would be beautiful,” then meandered down to draw a convoluted pattern from her ribs to her waist.
The shivering anticipation he left behind puckered her skin in a thousand places, tightening each pore until it shrieked for relief. “Ahh!” she cried helplessly, struggling to tame his elusive seduction, to halt his slow destruction of her soul.
He framed her hips in his hands. Steered her an inch closer, just enough that the heated tip of him nudged at her belly. She teetered toward him, felt his kiss feather along her cheek and over her mouth, teasing, tempting. Felt his palm drift to the small of her back, and
over the slope of her hip. His finger slipped between her thighs and pressed against her once. Just once.
A tiny scream tore loose from her throat. A tiny flood pooled where he’d touched. And a need measureless as the universe took hold of her, driving away whatever timidity she had left. She looped a frantic arm around his neck and reached down to touch him; to delight in the virile satin-smooth dimensions that made him a man.
He inhaled sharply and bore her to the sand once again. Covered her breasts with his big powerful hands. Left the damp imprint of his kisses down her rib cage and kept on going…lower and lower still.
A sliver of doubt clouded her mind. Nice girls don’t do this!
But she’d left girlhood behind years before, and her thighs had a mind of their own. They parted willingly to accept him because they knew what she was only just coming to understand: that there was no reason to refuse him when all he wanted was to give her pleasure.
And give he did, with dedicated, exquisite finesse, inciting her to such delirium that she thought she’d splinter apart.
Finally, though, even his formidable self-discipline reached breaking point. Aligning his body with hers, he slipped his hands beneath her hips to forge an intimacy of flesh which allowed for no secrets between them, and with one masterful stroke invaded her. Driven by a pagan hunger, he rocked within her, awakening a deep, dark center that nothing and no one had touched before.
Caught in the ever more urgent rhythm of his loving, she relinquished herself to its cadence. She heard him call out her name on an agonized breath, a warning in itself that he was losing his grip on sanity. His heart hammered next to hers, fierce and frantic. Obedient to every nuance of his loving, the tension spring coiling through her blood tightened in response. For one eternal second, every last inch of her—from her toes, to the backs of her knees, to her scalp—hung in the balance.
Then, with one last mighty thrust, he let his seed run free inside her, hot and robust. At that the earth dropped away, a sneaky trapdoor hurling her into a primeval free fall which would surely have destroyed her had his arms not held her safe. Battered by wave upon wave of sensation, she clung to him, the passion sweeping over her with a vengeance so completely foreign that she cried aloud in shock, a reedy, needy wailing that hung in the night like a banshee’s call.
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