I can take a lot of weight.”
“Not right now. Right now I want you right here. With me. No responsibilities. No interruptions. Just the two of us.”
Didn’t she understand? “There’s nowhere else for me to be.” And he’d find a way to prove it.
He painted a series of kisses along the lacy edge of her nightgown where it dipped low over her breasts, and nudged the flimsy barrier from his path. He nearly groaned at the feel of satiny skin against his mouth and cheek. Her breasts were glorious, small, firm, and beautifully shaped, but then so was she. He caught her nipple between his teeth and tugged ever so gently, watching the wash of color that blossomed across her skin and turned her face a delicate shade of rose.
“Your eyes have gone dark,” he told her. “Like antique gold.”
“They haven’t gone dark.” Her breath escaped in a wispy groan. “They’ve gone blind.”
“You don’t need to see. Just feel.”
More than anything, he wanted to make this perfect for her. To heal some of what had gone before. As much as he wanted to take her, to bury himself in her warmth and create that ultimate joining, this first time would be for her. He’d give her slow. He’d give her gentle. And he’d give her the healing she so desperately craved.
He danced with her, danced with mouth and hands and quiet caresses, driving her ever higher toward that elusive pinnacle. The air grew thick and heavy with need, tightening around them until all that existed was man and woman and the desire that bound two into one. He drove her, ever upward, knowing just how to touch, just where to stroke until her muscles clenched and she hovered on the crest.
And then he mated their bodies, kissing away the helpless tears that clung to her lashes like a dusting of diamonds. Slow and easy he moved, sliding her up and up and up, before tipping her over and tumbling down the other side with her. For a long time afterward they clung to each other, wrapped together in a slick tangle of limp arms and legs.
“I can’t remember how to breathe,” he managed to say.
“Funny. I can’t remember how to move.” She opened a single eye.“ If I breathe for you, can you move for me?”
“I’ll get right on that.” He groaned. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
“Okay.” She fell silent for so long he thought she’d gone back to sleep. Then she asked, “Why, Gabe?”
“Why, what?” he asked lazily.
She opened her eyes, eyes clear and bright and glittering like the sun. “You were always a generous lover. But this morning…This morning was a gift.”
He grinned. “Then just accept it and say thank you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It makes me wonder, though…” A small frown creased her brow, like a thundercloud creeping over the horizon. “Where do we go from here? What do you want from me?”
He answered honestly. “Whatever you’re willing to give.”
She absorbed that, turned it over in her mind, before nodding. “That’s easy enough. I can’t give you permanent, but I can give you temporary. We can enjoy each other these next few months. I don’t have a problem with that.”
His jaw tightened. “And then?”
Something about her easy smile rang false. “Then we go our separate ways, of course. We tried living together once. It didn’t work, remember?”
How could she lie beneath him and act as though what they felt was transient? Didn’t she feel the connection, the way their bodies fused one to the other? The way their minds and spirits were so evenly matched? “What if a couple months isn’t enough?” he argued. “It wasn’t last time.”
He watched her pick and choose her words and his suspicion grew. She was hiding something, keeping a part of herself locked carefully away. “We were different people then. We had different goals in life. You wanted a woman who would take care of the social end of your life. Someone who would nurture you and your home. At the time, I thought that would be enough to satisfy me, too.”
“Is this about your career?” Relief swept through him and he almost laughed. “You think I object to you running your own business?”
“No…at least, not yet. But I have a feeling the time will come when you’d expect me to set it aside in order to fulfill more pressing obligations.”
“More pressing obligations,” he repeated. His eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about children?”
She refused to meet his eyes. “I don’t want children, Gabe. I want a career. You made it crystal clear to me before I left that you were planning on a large family, just like the one you had growing up.”
He sat up and thrust a hand through his hair. “Is that why you left?” he demanded in disbelief. “Because you didn’t want to have a baby?”
“You were pressing for one.”
“Damn it, I asked you to marry me.”
“I remember,” she retorted. “It was a beautiful proposal…right up until work reared its ugly head. Roxanne’s call cut me off midsentence, do you even remember that?”
He fought to recall. She’d been crying. They’d been tears of joy, of that he was certain. She’d been shaking and laughing while those tears had slid down her face. And she’d said something…Hell. What had it been? “You had something you wanted to tell me.” He shrugged. “I assume it was, ‘Yes, darling, I’ll marry you.’ Or did I get even that wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter, anymore, does it? Because you left.” She spoke carefully, as though holding those long-ago emotions at a cautious distance. “You left me there with the beautiful flowers and an uneaten dinner congealing on the plate. You left me with your gorgeous ring and empty promises echoing in my ear. Because when it came right down to it, your top priority was and always will be Piretti’s. So you left, explaining without saying a word where our relationship rated in the grand scheme of things, and you didn’t come home again. Not that day. And not the next.”
“Hell, Catherine. You may not have known about the attempted takeover two years ago, but I explained all this to you yesterday at your apartment. What was I supposed to do? Let Piretti’s go under? Let those bastards take my business from me?” He stood and yanked on his clothes. “And I did come home. I came home to find a stilted little note from you and the ring you’d cried such pretty tears over sitting on my damned dresser.”
If nothing else, their lovemaking had opened a wide crack in her defenses, allowing him to see all she’d kept buried before. And what he saw was pain and fear and vulnerability. “Why would you expect anything else, Gabe? Do you think I’m some sort of plaything that you can pick up and discard when it suits you? Did you ever wonder what I did while you were off running your empire? Or did you simply stick me on a shelf and forget about me until it was time to come home and pick me up again? I don’t go into hibernation like one of your damn computers.”
“I never
