“Amanda.” He spoke her name into a vacuum, enjoying the dull echo. She stirred and rolled onto her side, lifting a hand as if to push away the intruding sound.
“Dane?” Her voice was clear and free of the inflection of sleep, but he paid no attention.
“Get up, Amanda.” It felt good to focus on his anger and it felt good to know that he was still capable of feeling an honest, unhesitating anger toward her. “Get up,” he repeated. “We’re going to talk.”
She sat at the edge of the berth for a minute, eyeing him before she stood and clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m listening,” she said quietly, as if she expected him to chat amiably about some mundane triviality.
Her composure only increased his frustration and he took a calculating step forward, watching to see her reaction. When none came he took another step and then another. “That’s the trouble with you, Amanda. You say you’re listening, but you never are.”
She reached to snap on the light and he saw caution flicker in her eyes before she masked it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m listening to you now.”
“Are you?” His gaze tackled her composure with determination. “And were you listening to me when you announced that we were getting a divorce? You never once
asked if it was what I wanted. You never even asked for my opinion.”
“But I knew—”
“How, Amanda? How in hell could you know? You stopped listening to me long before then. About the time you decided we should have a baby.”
“We.
We
decided, Dane.” Her breasts rose and fell with her agitated breathing and then she turned her back to him. “I don’t want to discuss this.”
His hand closed over her arm and forced her to turn again. “Whether you want to or not, we’re going to discuss this and anything else that comes to mind. You’ve shut me out long enough and I want some answers. Listen to me, Amanda, and listen well. I’ve given you time to think; I’ve played the game by your rules. You’ve had every opportunity to come to terms with your emotions. Now it’s time to face the truth. I want you, Amanda. I have never wanted any woman but you. I do not now and never have wanted a divorce, and before we leave here today, you’re going to tell me why you insist on getting one.”
He saw the confusion in her eyes and watched it change to a distant uncertainty.
Her head bent slightly to guard her from his probing stare. “I thought—I
think
it’s for the best.”
“Best for you? Or me? Because they’re not the same, Amanda. You can’t arbitrarily decide something like that.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand and I never will understand unless you talk to me.”
Her lips formed a tight line of indecision and pain. “I tried. But I can’t. I just can’t.”
The silence twisted inside him and he wondered what
to do next. She seemed to block him at every turn and his anger was subsiding in the face of her genuine distress.
He swore softly and laid his palm against her cheek, keeping it there even when she would have moved away from his touch. “How can I get you to listen to me, Amanda, when I don’t even know what I should say? Is there something I can apologize for? Something I can do to understand what has torn you from me?”
“No,” she whispered. “Nothing.”
His hand slid to cup her chin with a demanding pressure. “Then tell me what happened to us. Tell me why having a baby changed everything in our lives.”
The veil of composure descended between them again and Dane fought the impulse to shake her now as he had done before. And in the same instant he recognized the tension that was building inside him. The feel of her skin against his palm was eroding rational arguments in favor of more tangible persuasion. His free hand moved unprompted to her shoulder.
“There’s no point in talking about this. You could never understand.” Her breathiness registered in his mind and his eyes sought the gentle fullness of her lips.
“But I do understand this....” His mouth found hers and the die was cast. If Amanda wouldn’t respond to his questions, perhaps her body would give him the answers.
But as the sweet taste of her permeated his senses, he knew the reasons really didn’t matter.
She was going to belong to him again. Physically, if in no other way. She was going to remember what they’d shared and she was going to admit that some things never changed. Beyond that, he couldn’t think and didn’t care.
His arms went around her, drawing her against him and ignoring her resistance, as if it weren’t there.
Amanda felt her tension ebb with the insistent, rough satin texture of Dane’s kiss. Of its own accord, her body melded to his, conforming to his symmetry like the last piece of a puzzle fitted into place to complete some predestined design. Her hands followed a once well-known path across his chest and over his shoulders. The nylon jacket was slippery beneath her fingers but couldn’t conceal the sensual warmth she’d always found in his arms.
She was weak, logic insisted in a continuous repetition through her mind. Weak to allow herself these few stolen moments of forgetfulness. Weak to listen to the forbidden yearnings of her heart. But his lips—oh, the seductive feel of his lips—how could she fight such an enticement? Why would she even try?
His kisses clung to her mouth even when he lowered his head and breathed a sigh into the hollow of her shoulder. Holding her close, his hands made small circles along her back. She muffled the throaty whimper that almost escaped her so that he wouldn’t recognize the sound of her desire, wouldn’t know how much she wanted his lovemaking.
“Don’t do this to me.” It was a protest of sorts, although her body flatly refused to move even a fraction away from his. Physically content to be in his embrace, she sent her thoughts spinning crazily in search of a viable argument. “It—it isn’t right.”
His soft, humorless laugh stirred the dark hair at her nape and feathered her neck with longing. “It feels right to me. In fact, this is the first thing that’s felt right in a very long time.” His arms tightened as he leaned back to look into her eyes. “And what’s more, Amanda, it feels damned right to you too. Admit it.”
Her eyelids closed, covering the truth of his words. But the evidence was there. Every part of her ached for him, and she knew there was no disguising the rapid unevenness of her breathing and the hard thrust of her breasts against him. She hungered for him like a poet in search of a rhyme, but with the knowledge that easing that hunger could only complicate matters between them. Moving her hands to rest on his upper arms, Amanda pushed against him. “No, Dane. It isn’t right. You can’t honestly expect me to just fall into bed with you.”
“But I do expect it. You owe me this, Amanda. At the very least, you owe me this.” His voice brought her eyes up to meet his as he enfolded her more securely in his embrace. “For months now I’ve tiptoed my way around your feelings, tried to consider how you felt, what you wanted, but tonight ... tonight belongs to me.”
Making a fleeting grab at resistance, she tried to ease out of his hold, but he held her fast without half-trying. Finally, with a low sigh, she stood still once again. “Why?”
“Because I want you and, at the moment, nothing else matters, not even how you might feel about it.” He bent his head and captured her lips in a devastating challenge. Soft, sensuous, and evocative, the movement of his tongue against her own robbed her of the will to deny him—or herself.
“But the nice thing is,” he murmured. “You feel the same way, Amanda. You can make any excuse you like; tell yourself it’s hard to break old habits or that the storm forced us to spend the night together, but in the morning I’ll know and you’ll know that neither of us had any other choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” she said in a voice that was neither strong nor confident.
The tilt of his lips was leisurely, as was the light stroke of his fingers through her hair. Leisurely and mesmerizing. “Remember the first night we spent on the boat, Amanda? Our wedding night. You wore something black and deliciously wicked and I wore nothing at all. I held you for hours, wondering how someone as ordinary as me could be married to someone as extraordinary as you.”
Amanda leaned against him and let her forehead rest on his chest. An illogical tear pushed at her lashes as she savored his confession, knowing that at the time it would have made her laugh, but now it tugged bittersweetly at her heart.
Her wedding night, a memory separate and apart from so many other special nights with Dane. She had been shy and so incredibly happy that she’d felt almost guilty. And she’d lain in his arms, silently thankful that out of a world of choices he had somehow chosen her.
Her fingers moved to the zipper pull of his jacket. Dane was right, she thought. Nothing mattered except the deep ache to hold him and touch him. But she was right too. There was a choice. The devil’s choice, perhaps, but still her decision to make.
Her hand slipped inside the nylon Windbreaker and nestled along the bend of his waist. Tingly pinpoints of anticipation flowed through her nerve-endings and quickened the rhythm of her breathing. She wanted to make love to Dane, she wanted to exhaust herself in his embrace and she wanted to drown in the sensations so long denied.
Curving her free hand around his neck and braiding her fingertips into his hair, Amanda lifted her head and met his eyes purposefully before she raised herself on tiptoe to reach his mouth. She kissed him lingeringly, moving
against him with a control that surprised her. Heart pounding, desire pulsing madly through her veins, she separated their lips and then cradled his face in her palms for an endless moment before stepping out of his relaxed hold.
“Amanda?” His voice was thick as she took another step back and then another.
She stopped and arched one brow as she reached to unfasten the zipper closing of her jacket. The question in his eyes sharpened as he watched her shrug free of the lightweight coat, but the question vanished into dusky comprehension when she pulled the knit shirt she wore up and over her head. Her hair drifted into a provocative shadow about her shoulders as she bent to slip off first one shoe and then the other.
Amanda felt his gaze on her bare shoulders and on the lacy fabric that covered her breasts. Whispery thrills of pleasure skimmed down her spine and she trembled with the effort of maintaining a pretense at composure.
Dane. Dane.
His name traced a path through her mind; a path that led straight to her heart as surely as her body would soon lead her into his arms. She unfastened her jeans, slipped them from her hips and pushed them to her ankles. Pulling one foot free, she kicked with her other foot and sent the denim skating across the floor.
A husky sound measured the silence and Amanda straightened, wondering if it had escaped his throat or her own? Her thumbs hooked under the elastic of her panties and the silk slid smoothly down her thighs and lay in a forlorn scrap at her feet.
His gaze followed, then made an unhurried retreat upward until it locked on the movement of her fingers at the front hook of her bra. Amanda held the flimsy covering
together, feeling her breath hover uselessly in her lungs and then, in the same instant, she released both breath and bra. The straps wandered down her shoulders and arms until the garment fell to the floor.
She stood, naked and vulnerable, allowing her courage to catch up to her actions. In the taut stillness of the cabin Amanda wanted to shiver with sudden nervousness, but Dane’s steady, almost skeptical regard held the impulse in check.
She had made her choice. She would give Dane all and more than he’d asked for, and in the process she would satiate her senses and finally be free of him.
Dane drank liberally of her beauty and dampened plaguing doubt with the stern admonition to leave him alone. He didn’t want to know why Amanda had suddenly yielded. He didn’t care. All he cared about was the determined craving of his body to possess hers.
But even as he caressed her with his gaze, he knew that was a lie. He cared. Her pliant acceptance could mean everything—or nothing. He was trapped by the myriad possibilities that faced him and his helplessness to choose any, save one. Amanda. The beginning and ending of his dreams.
Without a wasted motion he stripped the jacket from his shoulders and worked loose the buttons of his shirt. He watched her carefully as the material parted and he slipped it off. Her gaze settled on the tawny curls that clustered on his chest and he remembered how she had once told him that he had one hundred and thirty-one chest hairs because she had counted them while he slept. Just enough, she’d said, adding that one hundred and thirty-two would have been gaudy.
Silly thing to think of now, he thought as he kicked off his shoes and fumbled with the snap on his jeans. But at least the distracting memory kept his hands from shaking
visibly. There were memories everywhere on the boat, but he felt uncomfortable with them. Reminiscing should be kept for another place and time. This rendezvous with Amanda was different because, for the first time, there was no solid commitment, no promise of forever. He couldn’t count on having more than what she offered to him right now. And whatever happened, he intended to take all that she would give.
After what seemed an unconscionably long while, he stepped out of his jeans and briefs. He felt awkward standing before her, as if he were unaccustomed to her intimate gaze. It had just been too long, too damned long. Deliberately, he approached her, putting his hands on her shoulders and rubbing the length of her arm to wrap her small fingers in his palm.
Hesitancy blended with eagerness in her piquant face and Dane noticed the soft quiver of her lower lip. It pleased him to recognize the signs of her own uncertainty. He wanted to whisper love words, but whether to reassure her or himself he didn’t know. And he sensed that Amanda would turn away from spoken promises. What happened between them now had to be silent and more irrevocable than evanescent words.
He walked backward to the berth, pulling her with him. Sitting on the edge, he drew her down to his lap and pressed his lips to the pulse at the base of her throat. His hands explored her, reacquainting himself with her shape. He found the tip of her breast hard and tantalizing to the rough circling of his tongue. Long-suppressed passions swelled and throbbed inside him and he increased the pressure of his massaging kiss.