her stomach. Wow. She hadn’t laughed this hard or this much in so long. It was...freeing. And felt so damn good. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
At twenty, she’d met Gage, and within months, they’d married. She’d gone from being a college student who worked part-time to help pay her tuition to the wife of one of Chicago’s wealthiest men. His family had disapproved of their marriage and threatened to cut him off. Initially, Gage hadn’t seemed to care. They’d lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago, and they’d been happy. Or at least she’d believed they had been.
Months into their marriage, the charming, affectionate man she’d wed had morphed into a spoiled, emotionally abusive man-child. Not until it’d been too late had she discovered that his fear of being without his family’s money and acceptance had trumped any love he’d harbored for Isobel. Her life had become a living hell.
So the last time she’d laughed like this had been those first four months of her marriage.
A failed relationship, tarnished dreams, battered self-confidence and single motherhood had stolen the carefree from her life, but here, stuck in a mansion with a faceless man, she’d found it again. Even if only for an instant.
“Hey.” Masculine fingers glanced over her knee. “You still with me?”
“Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m still here.”
“Good.” His hand dropped away, and she missed it. Insane, she knew. But she did. “It’s your turn. Because you phoned it in with the last one.”
“So, we’re really not going to talk about how you know the dialogue to The Breakfast Club?” she drawled.
“Yes, we’re going to ignore it. Your turn.”
After chuckling at the emphatic reply, she continued, “Fine. Okay, I...”
Seconds, minutes or hours had passed—she couldn’t tell in this slice of time that seemed to exist outside of reality. They could’ve been on another plane, where his delicious scent provided air, and his deep, melodic voice wrapped around her, a phantom embrace.
And his touch? His touch was gravity, anchoring him to her, and her to him. In some manner—fingers enclosing hers, a thigh pressed to hers, a palm cupping the nape of her neck—he never ceased touching her. Logic reasoned that he needed that lodestone in the blackness so he didn’t surrender to another panic attack.
Yet the heated sweetness that slid through her veins belied reason. No, he wanted to touch her...and, God, did she want to be touched.
She’d convinced herself that she didn’t need desire anymore. Didn’t need the melting pleasure, the hot press of skin to skin, of limbs tangling, bodies straining together toward that perfect tumble over the edge into the abyss.
Yes, she missed all of it.
But in the end, those moments weren’t worth the disillusionment and loneliness that inevitably followed.
Here, though, with this man she didn’t know, she basked in the return of the need, of the sweet ache that sensitized and pebbled her skin, and teased places that had lain dormant for too long. Her nipples furled into tight points, pressing against her strapless bra and gown. Sinuous flames licked at her belly...and lower.
God, she was hungry.
“You’ve gone quiet on me again, sweetheart,” he murmured, sweeping a caress over the back of her hand that he clasped in his. “Talk to me. I need to hear your beautiful voice.”
Did he touch all women this easily? Was he always this affectionate? Or was it the darkness? Did he feel freer, too? Without the accountability of propriety?
Or is it me?
As soon as the traitorous and utterly foolish thought whispered through her head, she banished it. Yes, these were extraordinary circumstances, and she was grabbing this slice in time for herself, but never could she forget who she was. Because this man might not know her identity, but he still believed her to be someone she absolutely wasn’t—wealthy, a socialite...a woman who belonged.
“Sweetheart?”
That endearment. She shivered. It ignited a curl of heat in her chest. It loosed a razor-tipped arrow at the same target. No one had ever called her “sweetheart.” Or “baby” or any of those personal endearments. Gage used to call her Belle, shortening her name and because he’d met her in her regular haunt, the University of Illinois’s library, like a modern-day version of the heroine from Beauty and the Beast. Later, the affectionate nickname had become a taunt, a criticism of her unsophisticated and naïve nature.
She hated that name now.
But every time this man called her sweetheart, she felt cherished, wanted. Even though it was also a stark reminder that he didn’t know her name. That she was lying to him by omission.
“Can I ask you a question?” she blurted out.
“Isn’t that kind of our MO?” he drawled. “Ask.”
Now that she could satisfy the curiosity that had been gnawing at her since she’d first encountered him, she hesitated. She had no right—never mind it not being her business—to probe into his history and private pain. But as hypocritical as it made her, she sought a piece of him she sensed he wouldn’t willingly offer someone else.
“Earlier, when I first bumped into you...you were having a panic attack,” she began. He stiffened, tension turning his body into a replica of the marble statue adorning the fountain outside the mansion. Sitting so close to him, she swore she could feel icy waves emanate from him. Unease trickled through her. Damn it. She should’ve left it alone. “I’m sorry...” she rasped, tugging on her hand, trying to withdraw it from his hold. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
But he didn’t release her. Her heart stuttered as his grip on her strengthened.
“Don’t,” he ordered.
Don’t what? Ask him any more questions? Pull away? How pathetic did it make her that she hoped it was the latter?
“You’re the only thing keeping me sane,” he admitted in a voice so low that, even in the blackness that magnified every sound, she barely caught the admission.
A thread of pain throbbed through his confession, and she couldn’t resist the draw of it. Scooting closer until her thigh pressed against his, she lifted the hand not clasped in his to his hard chest. The drum of his heart vibrated against her palm, running up her arm and echoing in her own chest.
She felt and heard his heavy inhale. And she parted her lips, ready to tell him to forget it. To apologize again for intruding, but his big hand covered hers, halting her words.
“My parents died when I was sixteen.”
“God,” she breathed. That hint of sadness she’d detected earlier when he’d talked about fishing with his father... She’d suspected, and now he’d confirmed it. “I’m so sorry.”
“Plane crash on their way back from a business meeting in Paris. Ordinarily my mother wouldn’t have been with my
