Charmed By You ((Destiny Bay Romances-The Islanders 5)) (13 page)

She knew she should ask him why, if he wanted her
so badly, why he’d ever left her. Why had he allowed
her to divorce him? She should ask why Dede had free access to his home. But though the questions skimmed across her consciousness, she couldn’t catch hold of and
examine them. She was whirling in the torrent of his
sensual demand, just as the pounding rain was whirling
in small rivers outside. She couldn’t seem to get her
balance.

“Stay with me, Heather.” He groaned into the hollow of her neck. His knee forced its way gently between her
legs, and he pressed her harder against the wall, letting her feel every bit of his persuasion. “You’ve got to stay
with me. I’m not going to let you go.”

Her face was buried against his chest, and it seemed
she was breathing in the heat of his blood, moving to the beat of his heart. “Mitch,” she managed to force out. “Mitch, I can’t think when you do this...”

“Don’t think,” he murmured, pulling open the front
fastenings of her dress so that her breasts could push free
for his touch. “I’ll think for both of us. You know you can’t live without this any more than I can.”

She gasped as liquid fire began to flow through her legs. “Mitch, I... What does this mean?”

His mouth covered hers and his tongue slid across her
teeth, then entered to find the dark hidden recesses of her response, exploring and caressing until she felt as though they were joined in some primeval bond of sensation that could never be severed again.

The rush had started, and she couldn’t stop it. All reality had faded, leaving behind nothing but the smell of him, the feel of him, the sound of his breathing, all encompassed in his heartbeat, in his panther-dark eyes, and in his irresistible body.

She twisted against him, reveling in the harsh scrape
of his cotton shirt against her tender nipples, wanting to wrap her legs around him, to pull him into her, and hold
him prisoner with her love.

Chapter Six

The rain was pounding on the roof with a deafening
roar, as wave after wave of water cascaded from the sky.
Heather felt something let go deep within her just as the
clouds released their torrents, something wild and prim
itive that went beyond gentle love, that surged over the crest and plunged into passionate demand.

She thought they’d dropped to the floor, but suddenly she realized they were on the bed, though they were still
fully clothed. Her shoes were gone and she pulled off
her panty hose like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Mitch reached to undo the last fastenings of her dress and
pull away the bit of lace that clung to her hips. His fingers
moved across her skin, finding places where her pulse beat wildly, soothing, caressing, inciting a riot of trembling responses. She writhed to his direction, reaching out to tear open his shirt, then unbuckle his leather belt, fumbling as she pulled impatiently at the zipper with shaking fingers.

She thought she heard a low laugh as he helped her undress him, but she was wrapped in a mist of such ardent confusion that she had no full awareness of any
thing but the essence of the man beside her. She needed
him, needed him now, and nothing was going to stand in her way. His mouth was burning across the soft swell
of her stomach, the achingly tender curve of her thighs,
and she was straining toward him, moaning softly.

“Do you want me, Heather?” His voice was low and taunting, and she blinked up at him, confused. “Do you
want me now, little missionary lady? If you do, you’re
going to have to admit it to the world.”

“Mitch...” She reached for him, but he drew back,
away from her touch.

“Admit it,” he insisted. “Say you need me. Say you need me more than food to eat, or air to breath. Say you
can’t live without me.”

“Mitch, don’t do this. Please come to me.” To her
horror, she heard herself begging, but she couldn’t stop. She needed him, just as he said she did. But how could
she tell him that?

“Say it.” His voice was like the crack of a whip. She tried to focus on his eyes, but they burned into her and
she withdrew her gaze.

“Mitch …”

“Say it.”

He was moving further away across the bed, and she felt panic rising from the depth of her loins. He couldn’t
bring her to this wild exaltation and then leave her,
could he?

It was true. She did need him more than anything else in the world. Why couldn’t she open her mouth and say
the words?

She tried. She licked her lips and breathed deeply,
but no sound would come out. She was frightened of his
withdrawal, but she was even more frightened of the vulnerability she would reveal if she told him what he
wanted to hear.

Suddenly she was angry. How dare he try to manip
ulate her this way! She rose up on one elbow, staring at
his dark face. “Come back here, Mitch,” she said softly.

A slight frown passed over his brows. “Say it,” he
repeated stubbornly.

“I’m not going to say it,” she flashed back, stretching
higher and glaring at him. “I won’t be coerced.”

A question shone in his glance, and she took advantage of his indecision to spring across the bed, taking possession of his prone body and pinning him down by
the shoulders.

“I do want you,” she told him huskily. “But I won’t
say so just because you demand it.”

He glared up at her for a moment, and she waited, knowing how easily he could throw her off if he wanted
to. But she was sitting astride him, her naked legs holding
his body, her naked breasts trembling above his face, and pure, raw desire was shimmering from his eyes.
 

His breath was coming faster and faster, but a lazy grin began to soften his face. “There’s more
than one way to say it, Heather,” he teased, “and I think
you’ve just done an admirable job of showing me that.”

He reached up and took her breasts in his hands, squeezing the nipples between his hard fingers, smiling
as she gasped. “You want me; I want you. Can’t you
see how much we need to be together?”

With one deft movement he changed their positions,
pinning her beneath his hot body, tormenting her with
his masculine weight. Her mouth received his hungrily and she opened to him, crying out against his lips as he entered her. She wrapped her legs about him and let his ardent thrusts take her ever higher, higher into the heart
of the storm that raged around them.

A flash of lightning lit their rain-sheltered haven, fol
lowed moments later by a powerful roll of thunder. But
Heather hardly noticed. She was lost in the special world
only they could inhabit. As they reached the ultimate moment, Mitch’s muffled growl joined with her cry of
triumph to celebrate the joining, and they fell back, ex
hausted, but still entwined in one another’s arms.

Heather lay with her eyes closed, savoring the wonder
of what they had shared. Her skin still tingled with the
sense of him; her thoughts still swam in a mist of love.
She listened to his harsh breathing until it slowed and
became so quiet that she could only feel it in the rise
and fall of his chest.

The rain had stopped, though there was still a rhythmic
dripping of water drops from the leaves of palm and
breadfruit trees onto the soggy ground. A freshness filled
the air and she took it deep into her lungs.

Still she kept her eyes closed. She was afraid to open
them and face what she had to do next: leave. She couldn’t
live here in this strange foreign place. She couldn’t live
the sort of life Mitch had chosen. Besides, he’d never said
he wanted to renew their marriage. He’d only said he wanted her to stay. He wanted her body. Did he want the rest of her? Could he even tolerate the rest of her? He hadn’t acted as though he even liked her any longer at the time they’d separated. How long would it before he felt that way again?

“You see?” he said at last, breathing the words into
her tumbled hair. “I didn’t lie to Lizzie. You
are
my
lady. You can’t deny it.”

She smiled and stretched luxuriously against him.
“Lizzie is a pretty little girl,” she said absently. “Is her
mother really going to be all right?”

He rose up on one elbow to watch her. “Probably.
She just has a virus. Her husband is gone a lot, and she has a hard time taking care of her four children all by herself, so she tends to get anything that’s going around.”

He sighed. “Which, of course, makes her job only that much more difficult.”

“That’s a shame.” Heather remembered Lizzie’s limp. “Is there something wrong with Lizzie? I noticed she had
some trouble walking.”

Mitch reached out to run a slow finger down the valley
between her breasts. “She was born with a congenital disability—a club foot.”

Heather met his gaze. “But can’t that be corrected? I
thought handicaps like that were corrected routinely these
days, particularly at birth.”

He nodded slowly. “Sure, in big cities, in advanced countries, but not out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Heather frowned. “Can’t you do something about it?”

His mouth twisted with brief annoyance. “No, Heather,
I can’t. I’m not an orthopedic surgeon. It takes a specialist to do that kind of work, and that sort of specialist doesn’t
make many house calls to Pacific islands.”

Heather bit her lip. “Do you mean to tell me something
could be done to help Lizzie, but it never will be because
there’s no surgeon close enough to do it?”

Mitch seemed to be taking her comments as criticisms
toward his own work, and he reacted defensively. “Until I came to this island, Heather, these people didn’t have a single doctor closer than Guam. Kevin was here, but let’s face it, nice as the guy is, he’s no doctor. Bacterial
infections and diseases were killing people every month
who would never have died if they’d lived in Flagstaff. People are living today because I’m here to care for them.”

Heather stared at him, nonplussed by the passion in
his voice. “All through the islands you’ll see people with
deformities and birth defects that you never see in the
more advanced countries. The only reason we can clean them up there is because we have the facilities and the
personnel to do the job. These people don’t have that
luxury.”

Heather shook her head. These were unpleasant real
ities she’d never really faced before. “But Lizzie...”

“Lizzie has a club foot,” he said harshly. “It’s too
bad, but she handles it bravely.”

“Handles it bravely?” Heather lay back down, staring
up at the ceiling. “What else can she do?” she said softly,
almost to herself. “Poor little thing.”

He rose above her again and kissed the hollow of her collarbone, flooding her with exquisite warmth. “Never
mind Lizzie,” he told her softly. “Just think about us, about how you’re going to stay with me, about all the
nights and days we’ll have like this one.”

She closed her eyes again and let the magic drift over her body. She loved him so. If only it were as simple as
he seemed to think it was.

“Are you talking about marriage, Mitch?” she asked, suddenly taking courage and voicing the question that
stood out starkly in her mind. “Do you want to go back
to that?”

The words trembled in the air and she waited, un
consciously holding her breath. She didn’t dare open her
eyes to see his reaction. She wanted to hear it in his
voice.

“Of course I’m not talking about marriage,” he said
at last, and the air escaped her lungs slowly, as though
from a drooping balloon. “We don’t need that. We had
something special, something priceless, and we ruined
it by getting married. We won’t make that mistake again.”

Luckily he didn’t seem to expect an answer. He was kissing her again, exploring her body tenderly, and she
lay back, eyes tightly shut against the tears that stung
them.

But wasn’t he right
, she asked herself impatiently.
Hadn’t marriage destroyed everything?
Hadn’t the need
to plan a life together been their downfall? If they forgot
about the future, about planning and saving and children,
if they allowed themselves to drift along on passion and
the joy they took in each other’s company, their rela
tionship might work better.

But even as she tried to convince herself, Heather
knew that such a relationship was not for her. She couldn’t
stay here with him, not like this. She must get those
papers signed and be on her way.

She opened her eyes and focused on something on the
wall behind the bed. What was it? It was so large, so
hairy...