Unforgettable
Page 18
Shattered
by Joan Johnston
Copyright 2010 by Joan Mertens Johnston, Inc.
Kate was expecting Jack McKinley, so she answered the knock at her door with a smile on her face. Her heart skipped a frightened beat when she saw who was standing there.
“You look surprised to see me.”
Kate felt a visceral response deep in her womb as she stared into Wyatt Shaw’s steel-gray eyes. Without wanting to, she remembered Shaw as she’d left him in the middle of the night, asleep amid tangled sheets, dark lashes lying soft on sharp cheekbones, rough beard shading the rugged planes and hollows of his face.
“May I come in?”
His raspy voice raised gooseflesh on her arms. He’d used that mesmerizing voice to murmur his approval as she caressed his powerful body, measuring the breadth of his shoulders with her palms and teasing the whorls of black hair on his chest with her fingertips.
He stood quietly at her front door, patiently awaiting her invitation to come inside. All his attention was focused on her, as it had been that long-ago night.
She tried to speak, to send him away, but her heart was caught in her throat. He’d been patient that night, too, coaxing her compliance. She’d been heartsick, feeling unloved and unlovely, a rejected woman seeking revenge against her husband.
Kate closed her eyes to shut out the too-vivid memories, but in her mind’s eye she saw the soft play of light and shadow on his face above her and the fierce look of desire in his eyes. She had never felt more cherished. She had never felt more loved.
“Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes, but it didn’t help. She’d kept the memories at bay for long years, but now that the flesh-and-blood man stood before her, they rushed back with frightening clarity.
She remembered most the urgency of his need. And how it had healed the hurt. The heady feeling as she realized this man craved her body as a dying man craves water in the desert. The soothing balm of his raspy voice as he extolled the pleasure he found in the petal softness of her skin. The laughter that tumbled from her lips as she reveled in the power of knowing he couldn’t get his fill of her. That he could never get enough. That he would always want to touch her, taste her, love her.
She would never forget the satisfied masculine sound in his throat as he’d felt how wet and ready she was for him. At his urging, she’d wrapped her long legs around his whipcord lean hips as he moved inside her. In the throes of passion, she’d gripped handfuls of his thick black hair, running her fingers through the silver wings at his temples that had made her guess his age as much older than he was.
He’d been only twenty-nine.
Which made him thirty-eight.
Her glanced skipped to his mouth. She remembered bowed lips that had been soft to the touch, his first kiss so tender it had made her throat ache with unshed tears. There were no signs of softness in him now. His lips were pressed flat and bracketed by deep grooves. His eyes, deep set and gray, reminded her of thunderous storm clouds.
Shaw hadn’t moved a muscle, hadn’t moved a hair, but she felt the threat of his presence, the threat of...his desire for her.
He was wearing a Savile Row suit that should have made him look civilized. Instead, she saw the tension beneath the masterfully tailored cloth, the power in corded sinew and bone. She felt her nipples peak as his nostrils flared, inhaling the scent of her like a stag in rut. Felt the blood fill her nether lips as she stared into heavy-lidded eyes that told her how much he wanted — needed — to be inside her.
She had to remind herself who he was. Yes, this was the stranger with whom she’d spent the most passionate night of her life. But Wyatt Shaw was also the son of mob boss Dante D’Amato. And a suspected murderer.
Her gaze skipped down to his long-fingered hands. Those hands had caressed her with infinite tenderness. Had they also strangled the woman found naked in his bed?
About the Author
Joan Johnston is the top ten New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than 50 novels and novellas with more than 15 million copies of her books in print. Joan has an eclectic background and worked as a director of theater, drama critic, newspaper editor, college professor, and attorney on her way to becoming a full-time author.
Joan has a B.A. in Theater Arts from Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida, and an M.A. in Theatre from the University of Illinois in Urbana. Joan also earned a J.D. with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. She worked as an attorney for Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Virginia, and Squire, Sanders, and Dempsey in Miami, Florida.
As an Air Force brat, Joan traveled the world from North Africa to North Dakota. She visited Marrakech and learned to ride on an Arabian stallion in Morocco, and collected cowrie shells and let an octopus play on her hand at Lingayan Gulf in the Philippines. She grew up in a family of seven kids, which influenced her to write family sagas like her Bitter Creek and Hawk’s Way series.
Joan plays tennis, hikes, and attends as many Denver Broncos games as she can in between research trips around the world. She lives in Colorado.
You can reach Joan through her website, www.joanjohnston.com, through Facebook at www.facebook.com/joanjohnstonauthor or on Twitter at twitter.com/joanjohnston.