Spellbound Falls

by Janet Chapman

  Only it seemed she had no intention of letting him be gentle. The moment he slid past her entrance, the woman wrapped her legs around his thighs with a long, keening moan and arched up to seat him fully inside her. “Ohmigod, move,” she cried.

  He wasn’t sure, but Mac thought she muttered something about a baseball bat just as her fingers dug into his biceps and her heels pressed him forward. He retreated ever so slightly and thrust forward, and she clenched around him with another moan—this one ending with a whispered plea that he do it again.

  And so Mac moved, his eyes locked on Olivia’s as she met each of his slow rocking thrusts with eager anticipation. He watched in fascination and no small amount of satisfaction as her gaze followed her hands roaming over his arms and chest and torso, until she finally threw back her head with a deep, guttural groan.

  Feeling her tightening around him, Mac reared up and grasped her hips to lift her more deeply against him when she demanded he quit being so damned unrushed.

  She was unbelievably abandoned in her response, her eyes locked on his as she arched her glistening body up to meet his increasing rhythm, her sweetly panted mews growing urgent as Mac let go of one hip to press his fingers intimately between them.

  She crested again, her breathless cries finally pushing him over the edge.

  He gave a shout of pure pleasure and went perfectly still, and allowed Olivia’s contractions to pull him into the maelstrom with her, only remotely aware of the cabin filling with searing white light as the power of his own release shook him to the very core of his being. And with blinding clarity Mac knew he had just handed Olivia his fate—whether or not she wanted it or could even understand what it meant to hold that kind of power in her delicate hands.

  Not that he intended to explain to her what had just occurred between them, at least not until he came to terms with what he’d just done.

  Olivia slowly stirred beneath him, her ragged panting becoming stifled and her cheeks flushing crimson as she lifted her hands to cover her beautiful breasts. Mac watched her lids drop to hood her eyes, and she tried to turn away despite his still being embedded deeply inside her.

  Realizing she was embarrassed by her wild abandon and afraid he was losing her into the shadows again, Mac carefully eased down beside her. He then rolled her into his embrace when she tried to get up, and settled a thigh over hers as he smoothed her damp hair off her face.

  “Who made Olivia the child feel she had no value?” he asked quietly, desperate to keep her in the room with him. He threaded his fingers through her hair when she stiffened and tried to squirm out from beneath him. “Tell me where you first learned that becoming invisible was your only means of protection. Your husband may have made you all the more determined to perfect the illusion, but you learned the trick of disappearing long before you met him. Who first sent you into hiding?”

  “Life did,” she snapped, even as she gave up the fight to get free. Her eyes grew distant and Mac watched Olivia pull her defenses around herself like a cloak of thick ocean fog. “Quiet, invisible kids got to stay,” she said with complete lack of emotion. “And troublemakers didn’t last six months.”

  “They got to stay where?”

  “With their foster families.”

  Mac shielded his unease by focusing his gaze on the racing pulse in her throat. “How old were you when your parents died?”

  “Four when my mother died. And… and I don’t know when my father died because the last time I saw him I was five.”

  “And you had no relatives to take you in, and were raised by a foster family?”

  “Families, plural. I lived in four different homes over the fourteen years I was a ward of the state.” She tested his hold on her, only to take a shuddering breath when he refused to let her go. “What’s your point, Dr. Oceanus? What does analyzing my childhood have to do with our having an affair?”

  He stroked a thumb over her pale cheek. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to make love to a shadow, marita?” he whispered. “One minute you’re here with me and the next you disappear into yourself.”

  “What does ma-REE-tah mean?”

  He smiled down at her. “I promise I’ll tell you one day soon. So, you discovered that if you were an invisible little girl, you… what? You weren’t packed off to another foster home?” But then he frowned. “You said your mother died when you were four but that you last saw your father at age five. Did you live with him for that year?” He gave her a gentle squeeze when she said nothing. “You may recall my mentioning that I’m known for my patience?” he asked, stifling a smile when her eyes widened at his tone. “Well, if you wish to leave this bed sometime before Inglenook’s new season begins you might want to start talking again.”

  The look she gave him should have extinguished the fire in the hearth, until she realized he wasn’t bluffing. “My parents weren’t married to each other, and my father didn’t hear about my mother’s death for nearly a year. And when he suddenly appeared out of the blue, that was the very first time I ever remember seeing him.”

  She shrugged one delicate shoulder, apparently wanting him to think she didn’t care. “My mother told me he would come see me whenever he was in town, but I was too young to remember. Anyway,” she said dispassionately. “When he finally showed up after she died, he visited me every day at the place I was staying for a couple of weeks. But then one day he told me he had to leave.” She dropped her gaze to his chin. “He said he couldn’t take me with him because of the work he did, but that he would… he told me he’d move heaven and earth and any mountains that got in his way to come back for me,” she said in a whisper.

  “And you never saw him again?”

  Her eyes welled with tears. “Every night for almost three years I’d lie in bed waiting to feel the earthquake created by the mountains he was moving. Until I was eight and realized he… that he wasn’t ever coming for me,” she finished, her tears spilling free.

  Mac rolled onto his back, pulling her with him and tucking her against his side. He stared up at the ceiling, holding Olivia through the storm he’d brought to the surface, and recalled something Henry had said to him on Friday. His son had come back from his morning talk with Olivia about virgins—and apparently bastards—and proudly told Mac that being illegitimate was not a bad thing in this century, and that Olivia had also said she knew his father loved him so much that Mac would move heaven and earth and any mountains that got in his way to be with him.

  Unlike her own father, apparently, who had kept a little girl waiting three years to feel the earthquake that would signal he was coming for her.

  Was she still waiting? Or had the eight-year-old child, who’d learned to vanish to keep from being moved from one home to another, simply decided she wasn’t worth the trouble it would take to rearrange heaven and earth? Or could that be why she’d stayed in Spellbound Falls, to be close to the mountains if they ever did start moving?

  She’d promised Mac she wouldn’t fall in love with him when he’d told her she deserved better than he had to offer, and for that he did put some of the blame on her late husband. Had she loved Keith Baldwin only to have him also abandon her, which in turn had only added to her sense of little value?

  Sweet Prometheus, he felt as though he were still missing parts of the puzzle. What had happened six years ago, when her marriage had ended two full years before her husband’s death?

  But more important, how could he prove to Olivia that she was worth not only rearranging heaven and earth and a few paltry mountains for, but also the very fabric of life? Because whether she knew it or not, that was exactly what she’d done tonight, as the earthquake she had created had rocked Mac to his very core, and the whisper of home he’d heard out on the lake last Sunday had grown to a deafening shout.

  His only question now being how to keep the woman from disappearing completely when he finally introduced her to the real Maximilian Oceanus.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Olivia
was so flat-out proud of herself that she practically floated across the cabin and into the bathroom, where she softly closed the door and immediately did a silent little happy dance. She’d done it! She’d survived the first night of her very first affair!

  And she’d only embarrassed herself a tiny bit.

  Well, maybe a tad more than a bit, but at least she hadn’t fainted and missed the entire thing. So really, things could only head uphill from here. She covered her giggle, thinking Mac didn’t seem to care which direction anything headed—including her boobs. He just went chasing after them with either that very talented mouth of his or those big, strong hands that had done all sorts of amazing things to her.

  Oh yeah, the guy was far more experienced than she could ever hope to be.

  But she was a quick study, and she’d eventually caught up to him when it came to driving a person insane with pleasure; she knew because she’d actually made him shout a couple of times. And one time he’d even roared loud enough that she hoped Sylvia Pinkham heard it all the way to her house beyond the gate.

  Olivia quickly used the facilities, then went to the mirror, only to gape at the wild woman staring back at her. Holy hell, she looked like she’d just spent all night thrashing around in a tumble dryer!

  “Okay, get a grip on yourself,” she whispered, trying to flatten out her smile. But it kept right on coming back, completely ruining her lonely-widow look. “Stop acting so proud of yourself, young lady. Remember foster-mother-two’s warning about pride going before a fall. And besides, confident, sexy women do not go around crowing about getting laid by sexy, really talented men,” she said, trying to look aloof—only to grab her neck as she leaned closer to the mirror.

  Was that a hickey? She tilted her chin up and smoothed down the skin on her throat. Well, maybe not exactly a hickey, but it was damn close. She dropped her hands and stared straight ahead, trying to decide if it was low enough for her blouse to hide, or if she was going to have to wear a turtleneck for the next few days.

  Wow. Mac had left his mark on her.

  She started smiling again, noticing as she gazed at herself in the mirror that he’d left several marks, actually, in some rather interesting places.

  The last time she remembered getting anything resembling a hickey had been on prom night, when David Bratham had thought dinner and an orchid and a fancy limousine had bought him entrance to her panties. Keith certainly hadn’t ever given her a hickey, seeing how he’d been about as demonstrative as… well, as Eileen.

  Olivia turned to check out the bathroom with a snort. What she’d mistaken as impeccable manners and respect for her had been nothing more than an elaborate mask hiding a cold fish. So where in hell had her gut been eleven years ago?

  She took down one of the unbelievably plush bathrobes from the back of the door and pressed it to her face. Her gut must have been hiding under the silver-lined cloud she’d floated onto, she decided, when she’d dumped chowder on some jerk who’d patted her ass in the diner she’d been waitressing, and Keith had come to her rescue.

  And she’d still been floating somewhere up in the clouds when he’d returned the next day and asked her out. Only she’d finally come down to earth after one month of marriage, when Keith had abandoned her at Inglenook with a mother-in-law who blamed her for his running off to join the military.

  Olivia slipped into the bathrobe with a hum of pleasure, wondering what it would cost to outfit all her cabins with nice robes once she bought Inglenook. That is, until she remembered she was providing a family experience, not running a camp for lovers. She walked back to the mirror as she belted the robe and checked out all the fancy toiletries on the antique porcelain pedestal sink. The tiny bottles appeared to be brown apothecary glass like in the olden days, with little pinecones etched onto them.

  She set the bottle back with a sigh. These wouldn’t work, either, because of the children. And everyone brought their own toiletries anyway, because they were camping. Olivia eyed the deep, spacious claw-foot bathtub in the mirror, and sighed again as she ran her fingers through her hair to make it look less tumbled. Maybe in her next life she could have an honest-to-God antique soaking tub.

  No, she wanted a marble soaking tub, just to one-up Sylvia.

  Olivia opened the door, burying her hands in the deep plush pockets as she sauntered into the main room with all the confidence of a well-tumbled hussy—only to come to an abrupt halt. Mac was still on the feather bed, but instead of sleeping he had his head propped on his hand, watching her.

  And all of her sexy confidence went flying out the window.

  Because that wasn’t lust she saw in those deep dark eyes but determination, as if he were primed for battle. She actually looked behind her to see what had him so riled, and then turned back with an equally determined smile.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” he returned, the timbre in his voice resonating all the way down to her toes. He patted the empty space beside him. “Come here, marita, and let me show you how lovers properly greet a new day together.”

  Oh God, he wanted to do it again? She really wasn’t sure she’d survive another tumble in the dryer being driven insane with pleasure. She didn’t think they’d set any world lovemaking records last night, but they’d certainly set a record for her.

  “Olivia.”

  Hell, she hadn’t done it five times on her entire honeymoon. And really, she wasn’t all that confident she had the strength for another trip around the sun and back.

  She felt a warm breeze brush across her hair at about the same time she heard a heavy sigh, and jumped in surprise when Mac pressed his big broad talented hands to her face and lifted her gaze to his.

  “Are you tender this morning?” he asked, his thumbs caressing her scorched cheeks as his eyes searched hers.

  Well, come to think of it she was a bit sore.

  She nodded, feeling her blush kick up a notch.

  Or maybe that was just the heat of his hands. No, it was definitely her cheeks, she realized when he encircled her in his big strong arms and held her head to his chest—which was at least a couple of notches cooler than her face.

  God, he smelled good.

  Maybe she was game for another tumble.

  And just maybe she’d give him a hickey, too.

  She gasped when he swept her off her feet and carried her over to the couch, only instead of setting her down he sat down with her on his lap, her head cupped against his chest again, making her acutely aware he was totally naked.

  She sighed. Mac was so strong. And his carrying her around as if she didn’t weigh more than a feather was so romantic.

  No, wait; it wasn’t romantic, it was condescending. His sweeping her off her feet was just another way for him to get what he wanted. Like if he wanted her back in the truck he just picked her up and put her there; if he wanted her up on the kitchen counter he just plopped her on the counter; and when he wanted her sitting on his lap he picked her up and then sat down.

  The guy actually had a control issue.

  “You really need to stop picking me up and lugging me around everywhere,” she said, though she chose to say it against his chest rather than to his face.

  “Why?” he asked, his growl quite loud against her ear.

  “Because it’s condescending to the person being picked up.” She finally straightened to look him in the eye, only to see… well, he was definitely disgruntled but also curious. “You do it to Henry, too. You lug the kid around like a sack of potatoes half the time rather than simply asking him to come with you.”

  Curiosity left and disgruntled remained. “He doesn’t seem to mind.”

  “Only because he doesn’t realize what you’re doing.”

  Up went a brow. “And exactly what am I doing?”

  “You’re controlling people.”

  “No,” he said a bit too softly. “I’m being expedient. Do you want to take a bath before we head back to Inglenook? I believe there’s tim
e for you to still be home when Sophie returns from her sleepover, as I told Carolina not to let her leave before nine.”

  Apparently their discussion about sweeping people off their feet was over. Olivia looked down at her own feet, only to jackknife forward and pull the bathrobe up her leg—making Mac grab her hips with a grunt as he shifted her on his groin.

  Olivia touched the thin gold chain encircling her right ankle, then straightened—making Mac jerk again—and pointed at her foot. “When… what… did you put that on me while I was sleeping?” she whispered, feeling her cheeks fill with heat again.

  Oh God, he’d given her jewelry.

  “It’s a token of my affection, for you to remember our night together.”

  Olivia snapped her gaze to her foot; as in their first of many nights together or their only night together?