For an instant she was tempted to knock on his door and ask if she could help, but she resisted the urge because her dream was still too fresh in her mind. And because…She glanced down at her sheer white nightgown, telling herself that it was hardly something to wear while paying a post-midnight visit to a man one had been trying to keep at a distance.
On bare feet she slipped silently past his door and continued down the hall. She went downstairs, the house looking oddly unfamiliar, the way houses always seemed to in the darkest part of the night. The central heating was working well; even with her scanty attire and bare feet she didn’t feel at all cold. She had come down here without thought, and ended up in the conservatory. Moonlight was shining into the room, and there was something welcoming about the wicker furniture glowing palely in the center of dark, glossy plants.
She curled up on the blue and yellow cushions of the chaise, looking out at the rain-washed flagstones of the terrace without really seeing them. This was the warmest room in the house, the temperature and humidity carefully controlled because of the plants, and despite her thin nightgown she felt comfortable. In fact, within minutes she was aware of heavy eyelids and an almost irresistible urge to sink down into the cushions and recapture sleep. Common sense told her she should go back upstairs to bed, but she couldn’t find the will to move.
Without noticing the transition, she fell asleep. A ghost? No. A touch, light as a feather, warm on her lips. A sharp, clean scent like spices and rain. A sense of closeness, a connection made. She could feel herself floating upward through white mist, drawn from sleep by something she had no power, no will to resist. Something inevitable. Inside her, the waiting stillness gave way to yearning, reaching, needing. She was afraid to open her eyes. More afraid not to.
Mitch was bent over her sitting on the edge of the chaise as he looked down at her. His hard face was softened, his eye so dark it seemed bottomless. An inexpressibly tender smile was on his firm lips.
Kelly realized vaguely that it was early morning, that light filled the conservatory, and that he had kissed her.
“Good morning,” he said softly.
She couldn’t look away from his compelling gaze, feeling a quivering uncertainty deep inside herself. “Good morning. I—I didn’t mean to fall asleep down here.” Her voice was as quiet as his had been.
“You were smiling,” he said. “I should have let you sleep; you looked so peaceful.”
She didn’t feel peaceful now. The emotions that had followed her out of sleep were growing stronger, and he was too close for her to fight them. Had he kissed her, or had that been only a wistful part of her dream? She wanted him to kiss her. She had to know how it would make her feel, had to know if love would make a difference.
Desire must have shown on her face or in her eyes, because it was clear he saw it. A muscle tightened suddenly in his jaw, and his voice dropped to a low, husky note. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” She was hardly aware that her own voice was unsteady. Without thought, and for the first time, she touched him, her hand lifting to his lean cheek. She could feel a muscle flex under her fingers, feel how smoothly and tautly his tanned skin fit over his bones.
Mitch caught his breath and went briefly still as her soft hand touched his face, then his own hand lifted and held hers against him. “Kelly. I want you so much, I’m half out of my mind with it. I’ve wanted you since you were fourteen years old.” His voice was rougher now, strained. “I can’t be casual about it. Once I start loving you, I might not be able to stop. I’m not even sure I have any control left.”
He wondered if she realized just how literally he meant what he’d just said. Whatever the strength and motivations of his love for Kelly ten years earlier, his desire had been strong and focused totally on her. He had waited with what patience he could muster for her to leave childhood behind, to become the woman he needed. And then, nine long years of nothing, not even dreams he could remember, and more than another year of intense therapy to repair the ravages of the coma.
Now he was in better physical shape than ever before in his life. He had begun coping with most of his losses, had even accepted the knowledge that neither he nor Kelly were the people they had been. Emotionally, he was still struggling to come to terms with the changes.
But his desire for her, restrained for so long by patience and fate and circumstance, had changed only in growing stronger and more complex. He wanted her so badly that he was half afraid the depth of his need would frighten her.
She was looking up at him, her beautiful violet eyes darkened almost to purple, and he could see desire there as well as a faint uncertainty. She didn’t draw her hand away. “Is that another warning?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. “I don’t want to ruin things between us by rushing this. If you aren’t sure, don’t start something you might not be able to stop.”
Kelly didn’t have to debate her response to that. She knew, maybe she had always known, that this, at least, had to be resolved. They had never been lovers, and if they were to build any kind of future together, they would have to find out if they could be. And there was only one way to discover that answer. She was aware of a small, nervous anxiety deep inside her about her own ability to respond to him, but stronger than that was the unfamiliar yearning that wouldn’t let go of her.
She wanted him. Her body wanted his with a craving that had built inside her for years.
“I’m not sure of anything,” she said at last. “Except that I’ve always regretted we were never lovers. Whatever happens this time, I don’t want to regret it again.”
“You were so young then,” he murmured, his free hand lifting to cup her cheek. “And you didn’t feel what I felt.”
She was surprised. “You knew that?”
“I knew. You were like a flower opening up, shy and a little bit afraid.” His mouth tightened suddenly. “I wish—”
Kelly didn’t have to hear the rest of the broken-off sentence to know what it was he wished. She wished it too. She wished that he had been her first lover. But, in a very real sense, she thought he would be. Brad had been the first man in her bed, but he hadn’t been a lover.
“Mitch—”
“Never mind,” he said huskily, leaning down until his lips were a whisper away from hers. He had to believe he could conquer his jealousy, and he wasn’t about to let those dark feelings become a barrier between them. “You’re with me now, and that’s all that matters.”
She tensed almost instinctively at his first touch, but the instant surge of sensations and emotions was so overpowering that she forgot to be nervous. His mouth was warm and hard, the hunger in him stark and unhidden, and everything inside her responded with a blind need that held no room for memories. Her arms went up around his neck and her mouth opened for the shockingly intimate, incredibly arousing thrust of his tongue. Desire washed over her in a hot wave.
She hadn’t known. Even the long-ago shy excitement that Mitch’s desire had roused in her hadn’t prepared her for the taut pleasure his touch brought. Her entire body came fully alive for the first time, as if she’d been sleepwalking all her life, her senses muffled or blunted behind some gauzy curtain she hadn’t known was there. Her very nerve endings reacted as though to an electrical shock, blasting impulses of fiery sensation from her head to her toes.
Both his arms were around her, lifting her up from the cushions so that she was held tightly against him. The hardness of his chest pressed her breasts, and she felt them ache with a sudden throb that made her shudder helplessly. The intensity was so unexpected and unfamiliar, it was like a blow that scattered all rational thoughts, and she was aware of astonished wonder that it was possible to feel this way.
She hadn’t known.
He kissed her as if the ten long years between them could be banished by this simple act, as if the sheer force of his own longing could change time itself. And, in a sense, it did and could do just that. Kelly lost all a
wareness of time and place, all perception of herself as different from the girl Mitch had once loved. None of that mattered. There was only right now, only these incredible feelings.
“Kelly…” He lifted his head at last, staring down at her with a gaze like black fire. She could only look up at him in wonder, everything that was female in her responding wildly to the need written so vividly on his face. The very bones beneath his bronze skin seemed sharpened, drawing the flesh tight, the planes and angles of his lean face more distinct, curiously more primitive and profoundly male than ever before. The black slash of the eye patch was, for the first time, an inherent part of him.
Pirates, rakes, and heartbreakers.
Thickly, his voice so rough and strained it was barely audible, he said, “If you want me to stop…tell me now…while I still can.”
The desire for him that was pulsing through Kelly’s body with every beat of her heart was more real than uncertainty or anxiety could ever be, and her response was as unthinking as her next breath. Her arms tightened around his neck, and she pressed closer to him. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
A rough sound like a growl emanated from his throat as he bent his head and kissed her again, deeply. Then he slipped one arm beneath her knees and rose, holding her with an easy strength that made her catch her breath. She clung to him as he carried her through the house to the stairs, her eyes fixed on his face.
Chapter 6
Mitch carried her to the master bedroom, where the bed she had abandoned in the middle of the night was just as she had left it, the covers tumbled and pushed back. He bent and placed her in the middle of the wide bed and then joined her, his hard body pressed close to her side as he propped himself on an elbow and kissed her deeply.
Her senses were spinning and her body seemed filled with liquid fire, but when his mouth trailed downward to the lacy neckline of her nightgown she was again conscious of the small, cold lump of anxiety inside her. What if she couldn’t respond to him?
“Mitch? I’ve never…I don’t know if I can—” She broke off, not knowing how to explain. Even though she trusted him and wanted no shadow of Brad’s cruelty to mar this for either of them, she had to bite back an urge to beg him not to hurt her.
It was so bright in the room, leaving her nowhere to hide, prompting unwanted memories of Brad’s impatience at her shyness and modesty. She didn’t want to remember, but couldn’t help herself; the way he had taunted her and forced her to strip in full light under his narrowed, probing gaze had disturbed her deeply, especially since he had been prone to make disparaging remarks about her body.
Kelly closed her eyes tightly as she tried to push the memories away. They were a cruel intrusion, an inescapable reminder of the scars Brad had left her with, and she could feel the lump of anxiety inside her growing larger as she struggled to overcome it.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” Mitch murmured.
She opened her eyes slowly, seeing his face still stamped with that primitive male intensity, and yet the hard expression was tempered by the tender, sensual curve of his lips. The cold memories began to recede as the sheer presence of him filled her mind.
In a soft, rough voice, he said, “You know I could never hurt you.” It wasn’t a question—but it was.
After a moment the arms that had remained stiffly at her sides lifted to curve around his neck. “I know that,” she whispered. “But there were so many dreams for so long, and reality can never measure up. I’m just afraid that…that I won’t please you.”
He brushed a strand of coppery hair away from her cheek, and his voice dropped to a tauter, less controlled note. “It isn’t just that, is it? It’s him. His ghost between us. What he did to you, the fear he made you feel.”
Like her dream, but different. He wasn’t angry, not in the way that had frightened her dream self. But this was hurting him, and not just on that unreasoning level of himself where jealousy and a sense of betrayal lurked. “Mitch—”
“I can stand knowing he was a part of your life. I can even stand knowing he was the first man in your bed. But I can’t stand having him between us, Kelly.”
The intrusion. She could almost hear Brad laughing in satisfaction, and the cold echoes of that made a sudden new anger rise inside her. “I don’t want him here,” she said in a shaking voice. “But there was no one to drive him away, don’t you understand? He isn’t between us—he’s just here, inside me, cold and ugly.”
Mitch’s arm tightened across her waist, and for an instant his face looked even more primitive. Then the drawn expression eased, and he leaned down to kiss her. His lips moved over hers, warm, slowly hardening as desire built, and she barely heard him mutter against her mouth, “I’ll be inside you.”
Not a threat, but a vow, she thought dimly as heat washed over her in waves. Consciously, she closed her mind to memories and hurts and fears, feeling her senses open up again in that unfamiliar, dizzying way. Her fingers twined in his thick dark hair, her mouth responding to his hunger with an increasing fervor of her own. The slow waves of heat were changing, hotter now and faster, flooding through her body with a force that left no room for anything else.
Kelly caught her breath as his lips left hers to trail down her neck. She kept her eyes closed, only distantly aware of the soft little sounds purring in the back of her throat. His mouth left fire wherever it touched, and a strange, coiling tension was born inside her, gripping her body like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was becoming difficult to breathe, and her breasts ached intolerably, and she wanted badly to move, to twist and press herself closer to him because she had to, because it was what her body and senses craved.
She felt his mouth move down over her breastbone, over the lacy neckline of her gown, and then felt the moist heat of his touch through the sheer cotton. One of his hands slid over her rib cage and surrounded a breast, his long fingers kneading her swollen flesh gently just as his mouth found the other nipple and closed over it. She jerked as pleasure shuddered through her entire body. His mouth on her, even through the material of the gown, sent jolts of exquisite sensation along every quivering nerve.
Mitch made a rough sound deep in his throat, and reached to pull the hem of her nightgown up. She lifted her hips instinctively as the material caught under her, then felt his strong arm beneath her back as he raised her slightly. The gown was pulled up over her head, and as soon as her arms were free of the sleeves she curved them around his neck again. Only then did her eyes drift open.
Another kind of heat rose in her cheeks as she realized that she was naked—and he was still fully clothed. But before she could give in to embarrassment, she saw the way he was looking at her, and her distress vanished. If she had felt each glance from him before, it was nothing compared to this. For the first time in her life, she was totally aware of her woman’s body and all the uses nature had intended it for. Hunger burned in his gaze so intensely that she felt the stark heat of it touch her. She was hardly aware of not breathing as she stared up at the taut, absorbed expression on his face.
He was on her left so that she was looking at the right side of his face, and the thin black strap of his eye patch angling over his forehead above his eyebrow looked somehow more noticeable than the patch itself. She thought fleetingly about his offhand comment that he’d assumed the eye patch roused the maternal instinct in women, and knew that her own assessment had been far more accurate. There was nothing in him of a bird with a broken wing; he gave off too much intensity for any woman to look at him that way.
Pirates, rakes, and heartbreakers.
For the first time she couldn’t help but wonder if Mitch had been with another woman since he’d awakened. Or even during the years before the accident. How complacent teenagers were, she reflected. It had not occurred to her then that a healthy man at the peak of his sexuality was hardly likely to wait idly for his virgin bride to mature. Then his rough voice drove the thought from her mind.
“Kelly…Lord, you’re so b
eautiful…” He bent over her again, his face nuzzling between her breasts, and she gasped as the hovering tension began drawing tightly inside her again. Instinctively, needing to be close to him, her fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. He helped her, stripping off the shirt and tossing it aside, but made no effort to remove the rest of his clothes. Instead, he concentrated wholly on her. His hands and lips caressed her breasts as if the very texture of her flesh utterly fascinated him.
He watched intently as his stroking thumbs made her nipples stiffen and darken, then teased the hard points with the tip of his tongue and gently nibbling lips. Resisting the pressure of her arms as she tried to draw him closer, he continued the maddening caresses until a moan of tormented ecstasy emerged from her straining throat. Then his mouth clamped down hard over her nipple, his tongue stroking roughly, and Kelly writhed helplessly as wildfire raced through her.
Her mind whirling and senses shattering, Kelly couldn’t believe it was possible to feel these things. Her body was being tossed about by waves of pleasure so intense it was almost painful. Was painful. Tension pulled her quivering muscles taut, and there was an aching emptiness inside her that swelled moment by moment until it threatened to consume her. She dimly heard sounds—soft, wild sounds—and knew they were coming from her.
She felt his hand moving slowly down over her belly, then lower, and her legs parted of their own volition. His touch was starkly intimate, a gentle probing that found her wet, swollen flesh and then stroked lazily. Kelly gritted her teeth unconsciously as her body arched in an unthinking response, and the soft sounds welling up and escaping became desperate. His mouth was on her breasts, his fingers moving over her throbbing flesh with a mysterious, stunning rhythm that her body reacted to with a violence of sensation.
Some part of her mind not swamped by the quickening surges of pleasure reflected with an uncaring idleness that she was going to die from this. It wasn’t possible, she thought, to feel this intensely and not die. Her nerve endings were raw and her body was quivering on the edge of something that had to be death because nothing else could possibly be so shattering…and she didn’t care if it killed her. Then there was an instant that was too powerful, her entire body shrieking in a taut silence, and a wild cry tore from her throat as she went over the edge. But it wasn’t death, it was burning, throbbing ecstasy that exploded inside her with a force that seemed to melt her. For an eternal moment she was liquid, formless, pulsing.