She hadn’t told him how she felt because she had the feeling they were living in a magic bubble—and if she spoke the words, the bubble would burst and reality would crash down on her once more.
He made love to her like he couldn’t live without her, and yet he’d never spoken a word of tender feelings for her. He’d praised her body, praised her skill in bed and in the kitchen when she’d made him a pot of Mama’s gumbo, told her she was beautiful and sexy and exciting—but he’d never said a thing that made her think his heart was engaged.
For Jack, it was all about the physical. Sometimes they spent the entire day in bed, reading, talking and laughing between bouts of lovemaking. On days like that, they never dressed. They slept and ate and lost themselves in each other.
It was glorious and blissful, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted to know she wasn’t alone in this emotional need for him. She wanted his heart. If she knew she had his heart, then everything would be okay.
Keep telling yourself that, Cara.
“We’ve been invited to a cocktail party.”
Cara turned at the sound of his voice. Her heart squeezed, like it always did, whenever he entered a room. Or, in this case, the balcony. The bruising under his eye was almost completely gone now. He was without doubt the most incredibly handsome male she’d ever seen—with or without a black eye.
“That sounds nice,” she replied, smiling as best she could with her thoughts in turmoil. She searched his face for some hint of feeling, but he was carefully controlled as always.
Would she never break through his barriers? Was it a waste of time to try?
“Rupert is an old business partner of mine,” he said, picking up her glass and taking a drink of iced water. “We don’t need to stay long.”
“Fine,” she replied. She’d lost the ability to form sentences as she wrestled with her thoughts.
He set the glass down. “Is something wrong, Cara?”
She shrugged, smiled. “Of course not.”
He frowned. “We don’t have to go at all, if you don’t want.”
She sighed, wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture. “I don’t mind going, Jack.”
He looked at her a moment more, then came over and kissed her. “Good. I’ll let him know we’re coming. I have a few more things to take care of and then I’m yours for the rest of the evening.”
If only he really was hers, she thought, when he went back inside. But he wasn’t. And she didn’t really think he ever would be.
The people in Rupert Blasdell’s town house glittered. They literally glittered. Cara had never seen so many jewels in her life—and she’d seen some pretty gorgeous ones on women in the casino. Her own neck was bare. In her ears, she wore the same small silver hoops she’d been wearing when she’d first met Jack. She’d splurged on a silver bangle watch a few weeks back and she’d put that on, as well. It hadn’t been expensive, and she felt the lack of its pedigree keenly tonight.
Which wasn’t like her at all, really. She’d never cared about designer names before.
Still, she’d thought she looked pretty good in her pale pink silk sheath, sky-high designer shoes and silver jewelry. Until she’d arrived on the steps of this Mayfair home and seen the jewels pouring from the limos, Bentleys and Rolls Royces.
Jack seemed oblivious. She’d gone inside on his arm, holding her head high, but they’d ended up separated after he’d gotten her another glass of champagne. Now she stood in the middle of a packed room and sipped her champagne more out of nervousness than because she was thirsty.
He’d said it was a cocktail party, not a gala event for the richest people in all of London. She wouldn’t be surprised if the queen showed up next. Yes, she and Jack had attended a few events together over the past week, but nothing had been this, well, fancy. Even the opera, to which he’d worn a tuxedo and she’d donned a long gown, had seemed like a down-home crawfish boil compared to this.
The crowd parted and she caught sight of Jack talking to a man and a woman. She thought they were a couple until the woman put her hand on Jack’s arm. Her fingers caressed him possessively, sliding down his forearm. He pressed the back of her hand to his mouth as she leaned in and said something Cara imagined only he could hear. The man didn’t bat an eyelash at her behavior, so clearly they weren’t together.
Cara squashed the jealousy that flared to life inside her. Jack was with her. Not only that, but there were physical limits to what a man could do.
Even a man as sensual as Jack. And she was confident she kept him far too busy in bed for him to consider straying elsewhere. For now.
And that was the rub, wasn’t it? He wanted her now. He was with her now. No idea what tomorrow would bring. No idea how much longer it would last. His heart wasn’t engaged.
But hers was. Irrevocably. Painfully.
This was why she’d always been independent, why she’d been determined not to need a man. This aching in her soul was the reason why. She felt so stupid, as naive as he’d once called her. She’d wanted to believe in happy ever after, but she hadn’t wanted to risk her heart for it. How could she have been so blind? Love was all about heartbreak, whether you wanted it to be or not.
It wasn’t containable or controllable. You couldn’t orchestrate happiness.
She started to move toward him, but then she was cut off by a couple walking into her path. She stepped back, found herself near the champagne fountain. She started to move away again, but she heard Jack’s name and stopped.
Two women stood together on the other side of the fountain, sipping champagne and looking in Jack’s direction.
“Look at Sherry trying to get his attention again,” one woman said. Long pink fingernails wrapped around the slender flute she held. She was tanned, but Cara didn’t imagine it came from a salon. No, this woman had probably gotten that golden color in Saint-Tropez. On a yacht, of course.
“It won’t do any good,” the other replied. “He has a new mistress.”
The woman with the pink nails gaped at her companion. “You don’t mean that woman he came with tonight, do you? She cannot possibly be Jack Wolfe’s new mistress. She has no polish, no glamour! She’s as tall as a stick and not half as appealing!”
“Bob and I saw them at the opera. And I have it on good authority she’s staying in his apartment. She’s been there since his brother’s wedding. American.” The woman sniffed.
“I simply cannot believe Jack has gone slumming!”
Cara stiffened. She wanted to hear what else they had to say, but they moved away, heads bent together. Then they burst out laughing. Cara felt the heat of a blush—or was it anger?—prickling her skin beneath her dress. She didn’t belong here. She had a sudden urge to go outside, into the night air, and feel the coolness on her skin.
She moved in the opposite direction of the two women, seeking an exit. Surely there was a patio or a veranda—or whatever in the hell they called it around here. She felt like everyone was staring at her. People moved out of her way, cast glances at her, talked behind their hands or their glasses or whispered in each other’s ears.
Talking about her. About Jack Wolfe’s mistress.
She was no prude. She didn’t care if the whole world knew she was having sex with Jack. But that word—mistress—made it sound as if she were paid to have sex with him. It dehumanized her, took away her power in the relationship.
No, the word took away the relationship. She and Jack were no longer equals, adults who had a consenting sexual relationship built on attraction and mutual respect for each other. It took away the love she felt for him, cheapened her feelings.
She hated the word, hated the way it made her feel.
“Cara.”
She vaguely heard her name, but she didn’t stop.
“Cara!” This time, a hand closed around her arm and brought her up short.
Jack. His brows were drawn low over his eyes as he studied her. “Where were you going?”
<
br /> She couldn’t take it any longer. Couldn’t stand the idea that he was everything to her and she was nothing but a warm body to him.
“Where’s Sherry?”
His expression grew thunderous. “Where did you hear that name?”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder. Jack took a step closer, crowded her toward a screen set near an archway. Her pulse leaped as his fingers slid up her bare arm.
“The same place I heard someone say I was your new mistress,” she flung at him.
She didn’t know how he managed it, but they were soon outside, in a garden, moving away from the brightly lit house and into the darkness. Voices carried on the night air, people laughing and talking and clinking glasses.
Jack steered her between tall boxwoods, along a path, until they came to a row of stone columns. Cara jerked away and turned, leaning against the stone, thankful for the cold against her heated skin.
Jack gave her no quarter. He pressed his body against hers, trapping her between the stone and him. He gripped her hands, threaded his fingers with hers and raised them above her head.
Her breasts strained against the strapless sheath, her nipples aching with the need to be touched.
No.
“What’s gotten into you?” he asked. “Sherry is someone I dated briefly, nothing more. It’s you I need, Cara.”
His lips dipped to the hollow of her throat, skimming her heated skin. She tilted her head back, swallowed her pain and anger. Desire blossomed. Always, always the desire.
“I won’t be your mistress, Jack.”
He leaned back to look down into her face. His silver eyes glittered in the ambient light. The scent of roses surrounded them, cloying and sweet.
“You already are,” he said softly.
Pain stabbed into her, made her ache with the hot rush of it. “No,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. She would not let them fall. It was ridiculous—this was ridiculous. Semantics, she told herself. It’s only semantics.
But it wasn’t. Not to her.
“I’m not a mistress, Jack.”
His lips nuzzled her skin again, trailed kisses along her jaw, nibbled her earlobe. “Not a mistress, then. Definitely not a mistress.”
Then his hot mouth was on hers, and she was opening beneath him, kissing him with all the passion and hunger he always brought to life inside her.
And yet it felt different this time. Sadder, somehow. As if she’d been stripped of something vital to her understanding of what was between them. Because, as he kissed her in the garden of someone else’s home, with those fancy people inside that she knew looked down on her, she couldn’t summon up the idea that she belonged here with him.
That she belonged with him at all.
Jack let go of her hands, and she couldn’t stop herself from twining them around his neck. Her body arched against him as he splayed a hand over her buttock while the other cupped her breast. He flexed his hips and she felt his hardness pressing into her. Her inner core liquefied with need.
Her body wanted him, her heart wanted him and her head wanted him. But her head insisted she had to make a stand, no matter the consequences.
Jack’s hand spanned her thigh, lifted her leg to wrap it around him as his fingers slid beneath her hem.
“I want to make you come,” he said.
“Jack, I—”
Then he was beneath the lace of her panties, his long fingers finding the sweet center of her pleasure. Cara gasped as sensation rocked through her. She gripped his shoulders, her back arching against the column, her body greedy for the pleasure he could give her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I love watching you like this. Come for me, Cara.”
She wanted to tell him to stop, but she was incapable of speech. Incapable of pushing him away when she loved him so much. She felt as if she wasn’t in control of her own body, as if Jack owned it instead of her.
He slid a finger inside her, and then another. She was close, so close, her body tightening in upon itself almost painfully.
And then she shattered like a thousand stars splintering apart in the heavens. Jack caught her cries with his mouth, drank them greedily while she clung to him, shuddering from the power of her release. In that single moment when she was still suspended between bliss and reality, she prayed it would never end. That she would never have to acknowledge the truth.
But the moment didn’t last, of course. Reality came back to her in degrees. The perfume of the roses, the chirping of crickets, the sound of a car somewhere. Then there was the laughter and the sounds of forks hitting delicate china plates that drifted from the house. Closer still, a woman laughed at something a man said.
As the reality of the night set in, Cara shoved against the broad shoulders of the man she loved. He took away her reason, her sense. He made her want him, no matter the consequences to her soul.
He stepped back, his expression wary.
And she suddenly knew that he’d done this in an effort to prove his mastery over her. He hadn’t wanted to pleasure her because he loved her, because he couldn’t get enough of her. He’d wanted to divert her from any conversation about them, divert her from asking hard questions or wanting something he wasn’t ready—or willing—to give.
Fury and hurt roared through her. He’d made her into exactly what she’d sworn she was not—a woman who clung to a man who didn’t love her because she couldn’t face the alternative; because a life with him was preferable to a life without him, no matter how constrained that life may be.
Mistress.
This had not been about equality; it had been about dominance. And she despised him for it.
Cara straightened her dress. She had no idea what her hair and makeup were like now. No doubt she looked like a woman who’d been having sex in the garden during a house party. Shame filled her to the brim, threatened to bubble over and turn into angry tears.
“I want to leave now,” she said.
“We’ve only just arrived,” he replied. As if it made a difference. As if she cared. “It would be rude to leave so soon.”
Cara thrust her chin in the air. “You don’t find it rude to leave the party for a tryst in the garden, but it’s rude to go home?” She shook her head angrily. “I’m going, Jack. With or without you.”
He took another step away, ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, of course. We’ll go.” And then, because he had to be as sensitive to the currents whipping between them as she was, “I’m sorry, Cara.”
“Sorry for what?” she shot back. “For making me into your mistress or for making me care for you? Or sorry for what just happened?”
He was so remote, so untouchable. “I’m sorry for hurting you. You deserve more than this.”
“I know I do,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. The tears of rage and frustration she’d been holding back spilled over. She did deserve more, damn him! She deserved everything he had to give.
But he was too caught up in the past to let himself go. Jack Wolfe refused to let anyone inside. She’d known it and she’d stayed with him, anyway. Her fault for being so damn naive.
As much as it hurt her to realize it, she had to leave him now, before he took what was left of her soul and crushed it to powder.
“You are capable of more, Jack,” she said. “But apparently I’m not the one who can make you see it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THEY took a limo back to his apartment. The ride passed in silence, Cara sitting as far away from him as she could get. If he touched her, she feared her resolve would crumble. In spite of everything, her body still hummed with need. All she required was his touch to set spark to the tinder and she would go up in flame.
When they exited the elevator into his apartment, she found the courage to speak. Though they were alone in this space where she’d been so happy with him, there was room to maneuver. She didn’t have to be so near him, didn’t have to smell his scent and listen to his breathing. S
he could stop the need to turn her face into his chest and just ask him to hold her if she could put distance between them.
“Am I ever going to be anything more than a mistress to you?” she asked, the words biting as she said them.
He turned to her, hands in pockets. He seemed so remote, so cool. “Still looking for the happy ever after, Cara?”
She trembled with helpless fury. And sadness. Such overwhelming sadness. “I believe it’s possible to be happy with one person, yes. I believe it’s possible to love and be loved and never need or want anyone else.”
His eyes were flat. So flat and empty. “It’s a little girl’s fantasy,” he said, his voice hard. “You should know this as well as I do. Look at our parents, sweetheart. I don’t know about yours, but mine defined the word dysfunctional. And my father kept on doing it even after my mother was dead.”
“Just because our parents didn’t get it right doesn’t mean we have no chance.”
His bark of laughter was not reassuring. “You’re so naive, Cara.” He closed the distance between them and grabbed her arms. “Why do you have to want more from me? Why can’t you just be happy with what we have right now?”
Tears pressed against the backs of her eyes. “What do we have, Jack? Tell me what we have, because I want to know.”
His face twisted, but whether from rage or frustration she did not know. And then he crushed his mouth down on hers. It was a hard kiss, a kiss of domination, of fear, of desperation.
Though she didn’t mean to do it, she kissed him back. Cara infused all her hope and heartbreak into that single kiss. Anyone witnessing their kiss would know they were engaged in a battle.
There was nothing tender in this kiss. It was all-out war, a fight for domination on the field of battle.
Somehow, Cara found the strength to break away first. She was breathing hard, her emotions whipping her with bitterness as she put a steadying hand on the back of a couch.
Jack stumbled backward a step and ripped his tie loose. His chest rose and fell as rapidly as hers. It gratified her to know he wasn’t unaffected, and yet despair hovered behind the pain she felt.
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