She looked up at her new husband with love and devotion and placed a kiss to the underside of his jaw.
Anne watched them walk away. Chris pulled Karyn into his arms. They could have been alone in the room crowded with laughing, chattering people. They only had eyes for each other.
Loneliness mixed with the envy.
She was happy for her friend. Honestly, she was. But at the same time she recognized things in her world would change. Had already changed.
Once again, she was alone. She glanced away from the lovebirds, feeling as if she was invading their privacy. Her eyes unerringly found their way back to Blake.
He moved from the dark shadows surrounding the dance floor, almost as if he’d been waiting for her. All around her couples danced, laughed, touched … kissed. Candlelight was everywhere.
Tongues of light flickered across Blake as he walked toward her. A slash of brightness across the dark planes of his face. A flash of orange-red against the black of his tux. The shadows played, revealing, highlighting and then hiding again. But the fire that flickered in his eyes never wavered.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out he was heading for her. It also didn’t take a genius to know exactly what he wanted. The burning sensation low in her belly told her she wanted the same thing.
That didn’t mean she was going to get it. Or take it. Or … whatever.
Karyn had told her all about Blake, the middle child and her older brother. They’d talked about his relentless need to shoulder responsibility for things that weren’t his to bear—like the fact that he’d introduced his sister to the man who had raped her, and couldn’t seem to forgive himself.
In Anne’s other world, the one where she’d done, said and demanded anything she’d wanted, Blake being her best friend’s brother wouldn’t have mattered. Now, somehow it did. She didn’t want to use him simply because loneliness was crowding in tonight.
However, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do the right thing. Not when his eyes burned as they traveled the length of her body. A shiver of anticipation passed slowly down her spine. He weaved in and out of people, as if the crowd between them didn’t exist. In seconds he stood before her, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “May I?”
It had been a long time since she’d been tempted to sin. Staring up into his expectant eyes, she was afraid her will just wasn’t strong enough to overcome both the desire she saw reflected back and some instinct she’d thought long dead.
She nodded slowly, and his hand touched the small of her bare back, pulling her into the heat of his body. A hiss of breath surged through her teeth at the feel of his skin against her own. She’d loved the bridesmaid dress Karyn had chosen for her. Black floor-length velvet, elegant, sophisticated and perfect for the early December wedding. Very Anne. The neckline slashed from shoulder to shoulder, revealing a hint of her collarbone. The long sleeves and unadorned style hugged the curves of her body.
But the back of the gown was what she’d fallen in love with. Cut from one shoulder to the other, the curve dipped just to the bottom indent of her spine. From the front the gown was classic, from the back it was decadent. A perfect description for the two sides of her life—her past and her present merged into one.
She’d never been so grateful to be showing some skin.
Each of Blake’s fingers branded her as they spread against the small of her back. Hot tendrils snaked up her spine. The vision of him dipping a single finger beneath the edge of her dress thrust into her brain, and a spike of need shot through her body.
“Enjoying yourself?” His voice was low and rough as he leaned into her space so he could get closer to her ear. A wicked desire to tease him rolled through her, a bubble of energy inside her chest just bursting to get out. Or maybe that was the inner wild child she’d left behind ten years ago.
She leaned up onto her toes, pulling the heels of her four-inch Jimmy Choos off the floor and whispered into his ear, “Not yet,” before biting the edge of his lobe.
His body jerked in surprise. But the hands at her back flexed, pulling her tighter against him. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?”
She’d shocked him—and herself—but she’d aroused him, too. A satisfied smile played at the corners of her lips.
His eyes, the tempting color of her favorite rich chocolate fudge—an indulgence she rarely allowed—smoldered down at her. She’d met a lot of men in her life, but none of them had ever looked at her with that expression—a mix of desire, desperation, control and promise. If he hadn’t been holding her, her knees just might have given out.
Strange that. In all her past encounters, she’d been the one to wield the power. Men had come to her either because of who she was or for her stunning face. She had no idea if Blake knew her real name, or rather her full name. She wondered for a second if it mattered. Probably not.
She had a decision to make.
Sinner or saint? Which was she tonight?
“WHERE’D YOU GET THAT TATTOO?”
Blake Mitchell turned his head to look at the beautiful bombshell stretched across the bed behind him. With a long, slender finger, Anne Sobel traced the lines of the crouching tiger etched into the skin of his right shoulder. He often forgot it was even there … but that was probably for the best.
“Prison.”
He had no idea why he’d told her the truth … or part of the truth anyway. The tiger actually covered up a few crude markings. His family didn’t even know about the months he’d spent in jail for assault and battery. They’d assumed he was on another military assignment. Probably because that’s what he’d told them.
He hadn’t wanted them to know the truth—that he’d beaten the shit out of his sister’s rapist after the man had been found not guilty. They all knew the asshole had done it. But he’d been a football star, a veritable god for Mississippi State, and the jurors had been swayed by his squeaky-clean image and abundance of press.
Blake had been patient, waiting until the asshole was separated from the people and media protecting him. That patience hadn’t prevented Blake’s arrest, but at least it had kept his sister and family from knowing what he’d done. By the time the guy had come to and ID’d Blake, the press had moved on to an even bigger story and no one in California had cared that some guy had been bloodied and bruised.
Blake had done what he’d had to in order to protect his sister, and even knowing what it had cost him—his career with Special Forces—he’d make the same decision tomorrow.
Anne chuckled, pulling his attention back to where it should be—on her. The sultry sound of her laughter rushed through his body. They’d had sex once … but he wanted her again. With an urgency he didn’t understand. From the moment she’d walked down the aisle today he’d been unable to see anything but her.
“Liar. Tell me the truth.”
He should probably be grateful that she thought it was a joke. And that they were both buzzed enough on champagne and sexual satisfaction that by morning this moment would be fuzzy and far away. Maybe he’d simply needed to tell someone the truth. No one in his family could know what he’d done, and what it had cost him. He refused to add to
