nearly painful thrills spiraled through her. Her head fell back, exposing her neck and the underside of her chin to more caresses, but he stopped, pulling away. His long fingers hooked the straps of her nightgown and slid them over her shoulders. The loose, slippery silk fell to the floor, leaving her naked. She shivered, feeling her breasts tighten in anticipation of his touch.
He slid his palms down her arms to her elbows and farther, down to her fingers. Slipping past them, he cupped her firm bottom.
On the way back up her legs, thighs and hips, he skimmed his fingers along a path of exploration that turned every fraction of an inch of her body into an erogenous zone. Finally, when she was sure her wobbly knees wouldn’t hold her up for another second, he cupped her breasts, barely large enough to fill his palms, and caressed the soft skin with his thumbs, moving closer and closer to the areolae.
With each caress, her breaths became quicker until the moment when the pads of his thumbs slid across the taut tips of her nipples. She gasped and moaned, and he bent his head to place his mouth on one hard point. He grazed it with his teeth. She arched her back and pushed her fingers into his hair, holding his head there, until he moved to the other breast to graze it and send flames arcing through her again.
“Jack, please,” she begged, tightening her fists in his silky dark hair.
He raised his head and his dark, fathomless gaze met hers. “What?” he asked gruffly.
She knew this game. They played it often. She wanted him deeply, primally. He’d brought her to this point and he knew it. Now he wanted her to tell him what she wanted.
Only what she always said and what she really wanted were two entirely different things.
“Please, Jack, don’t make me say it,” she whispered.
He held her gaze, that little place in his jaw tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing. “Say it, Cara,” he rasped. “Say it.”
Tears burned in the back of her throat and she swallowed, hoping to keep the need to cry there and not allow it to crawl all the way into her eyes where they would fall and he would win. Her new husband, whom she did not know at all, but whose touch she craved like she craved air, would win again.
“Jack...”
His eyes left hers and moved down to her mouth. She saw his gaze slide over her face and down to her lips. She almost went over the edge just in anticipation of him kissing her. Because he rarely did.
She looked at his straight, hard mouth. Then she reached for it with hers. He stayed still and let her kiss him, but he barely reciprocated. Then, after a very few seconds, he pulled away and picked her up and tossed her onto the bed. He pushed his pajama bottoms down and off, then lay beside her and began to caress her intimately.
She gasped at the feel of his hand, his fingers, as he bent his head again to taste and tease her nipples. He lifted his head and looked at her. “Say it,” he demanded.
Cara Lynn’s throat spasmed and the tears escaped. They rushed to her eyes and gathered there, dampening her lids and seeping out to trickle across her skin and wet the pillowcase. She squeezed her lids shut, trying to wring out the last tear, then she opened them again and looked into Jack’s shadowed ones.
“I want you inside me,” she said. “I want you now.”
He rose above her, the lean muscles of his arms and chest bulging with effort, and entered her with a shuddering breath. And then, what Cara Lynn really wanted, he finally gave her. Once he was inside her and filling her with his hot hard sex, he kissed her, just as deeply and intimately as she had not dared to ask him to. It would crush her if he ever refused.
As the quest for release built until she thought she would burst, and as he thrust harder and harder until she was sure she couldn’t stand it, his kiss also deepened, until she felt close to passing out from the sheer flood of pleasure and love and lust that overwhelmed her.
Then she did burst into ecstasy and Jack burst with her. For a brief moment out of time they were two supernovas crashing in the depths of space, becoming one, a pure blue flame of energy and love, and nothing else mattered.
Afterward, Jack lay there as long as he could, holding Cara Lynn. Her head fit perfectly in the hollow of his shoulder and her quiet breaths warmed the soft skin beneath his jaw line. Her slender, supple body molded perfectly to his. He hated that.
He shifted restlessly and she made a soft sound in her throat. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” he said, as he always did, then he slid his arm out from under her and rolled up off the bed.
He pulled on his pajama bottoms and went into the living room and through the French doors out onto the balcony. The night was cool and a breeze blew in off the Mississippi River. The sky was pale with the lights from the cruise ships and the fishing boats. Jack closed his eyes and took a long breath, reminding himself why he was standing here, in this place, with the taste and scent of Cara Lynn Delancey—Cara Lynn Bush—still in his mouth and nose.
All for show. “All for show,” he said aloud, wishing he could shout it. Wishing he could tattoo it on the inside of his eyelids. And wishing, just for an instant, that he was not Jacques Broussard, grandson of the man who died in prison, falsely accused of the murder of Con Delancey, but merely a stranger.
Then, as happened when he let his guard down, he thought about what might have been, had he met Cara Lynn accidentally, if they’d had a chance to meet and learn to know each other in a world apart from reality—
The sound of the French doors opening stopped that thought cold.
“Hey.” Cara Lynn’s soft voice wrapped around his sore heart like a velvet bag that protects a fragile crystal. “Are you okay?”
“Sure,” he responded. “Just wanted some air. I got hot.”
She stepped out onto the balcony beside him. “It’s cool out here, isn’t it? Look at the river. It’s so beautiful at night.”
“Really? You like all the garish lights on the cruise ships and the bridges? They’re just light pollution.”
She slapped at his arm playfully. “No, they’re not. It’s like Christmas every night!” she cried. “They blink and twinkle just like Christmas Eve when you’re supposed to be in bed. I love it. And after it rains, the whole horizon turns into a wonderland, shining like thousands of sparklers.”
He looked at her, his mouth curving upward in a reluctant smile. “How did you get to be twenty-six years old without ever growing up?” he asked. “You’re like a child. Does nothing bad ever touch you? Do you never feel sad or angry or grief-stricken?”
To his chagrin, her smile faded and the sparks in her eyes went out. “Of course bad things happen, Jack. Of course I can be sad and angry and grief-stricken. I thought my heart would break when my best friend Kate’s little boy was kidnapped recently.” She stared out beyond him, into an unhappy distance.
After a long time, she looked back at him and her smile returned. “But he was fine, and then I met you and my world was happy again.” She threw her arms up. “And it’s a beautiful night. Want to sleep out here? I can make a pallet on the balcony floor out of quilts.”
Jack shook his head. “I need to work on some plans. You need to go to sleep. Don’t
