Authors: Melissa James
“You want it, you got it,” he ground out, sweat pouring down his face and the exquisite pain killing him. “Baby, please, I have to be inside you. Now.” He reached into the drawer beside the bed, handing her a packet. “Use…this,” he muttered through gritted teeth as she moved on him again, feeling as if he could die of this anguished bliss.
“I’ve never done this before, either.” Her face filled with new wonder, she opened it and rolled the condom over his length, hand over hand, sweet and tight—almost causing him to lose it then and there. “Thank you,” she said softly, and eased him inside her.
But he couldn’t wait; he was dying by slow degrees. He thrust up, hard and fast, desperate to be inside her sweet warmth, and she gasped and bucked instinctively, in the most glorious friction ever known to man and woman.
He couldn’t be slow. Control had deserted him with her whispered fantasies of him, with her hands and perfect mouth fulfilling each one. He was gone, beyond thought of anything but the pleasure gripping him. Lissa, his beautiful, beloved Lissa was riding him, flying on him, her face filled with that same burning ecstasy searing him alive. Her hands braced on his chest, she bucked and rocked with his every thrust, meeting him, flying with him all the way, crying out with each new sensation, moving faster, higher, harder, hotter. Moaning his name, making the guttural sounds of a woman in the grip of the pleasure-pain just before climaxing.
He was gonna lose it now— He thrust up into her again, lifted her and brought her down in a fast hard jolting hit of white-hot—the rush roared through him like a midnight express and, oh, man, his heart was gonna explode, he couldn’t stop it—
Lissa cried out his name and fell onto him, her soft wetness clenching all around him.
“I love you, Lissa. I love you,” he gasped and poured himself into her, in the sweetest relief and most joyous giving he’d ever known.
Silence—broken only by quiet gasps of breath and muted rat-tat-tats in the distance.
Eventually he found the strength to kiss her hair softly. “You all right?”
She buried her face against his chest. “I’m fine. Wonderful.”
But she wasn’t. Though she stroked and caressed him, she’d withdrawn somehow. She’d been with him all the way—beyond any imaginings of her he’d ever had, until—
Oh, no. He’d told her he loved her. She knew now—and she wasn’t talking.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly, knowing his voice sounded strangled.
Liar,
he mocked himself. “It doesn’t have to change things for us.”
“Okay,” she said, just as quietly.
Liar.
No! No!
his mind screamed.
Not now.
To have come so far with her and lose her—
But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t retract the words. She wouldn’t believe him, anyway. She knew he couldn’t lie to her, never had lied. “Lissa, I don’t want anything back.”
Damn it, I am lying to her! I do want something back. I want everything, I want it all—and if she doesn’t love me, and one day she finds another man—
This was insane. He was still inside her and thinking of her finding someone else?
As if she read his mind, she gently rolled off him. “It’s so hot tonight.”
“We just made love and you want to talk about the weather? Don’t be so bloody inane,” he growled. “Okay, so you don’t want me to love you. Forget I said it!”
She didn’t flinch as he’d half expected. “I think that’s the best thing to do for now.” Her eyes met his. For once he couldn’t read her expression. “Let’s do what we came here for—”
“And be lovers,” he finished, the anguish filling his voice with savage mockery. “Constant lovers. I get it. So we take these few days and see. Then we take six months and see, a year and see—if I’m lucky. Excuse me a minute.” He stalked to the bathroom with dark thunder filling him, heart and soul.
In a minute he was back, and finding her covered with the sheet infuriated him. “What’s the point of modesty now? I’ve touched and kissed every inch of you, and you’ve crawled over every inch of me. Don’t worry, I’m not exactly in the mood for a bit more of the horizontal tango right now.” He snatched the sheet off her. She gasped and jerked up to a sitting position, her hands out as if to ward him off—but he didn’t touch her, barely even looked at her as he tossed off words at her like scraps of unimportant information, instead of their being the hardest words he’d ever had to say.
“So let me get this straight. Your idea of living was confined to this. Your big risk taking was having sex with me. You used me to get past what happened in your marriage with Tim—to feel like a woman again, but only for tonight. After being my friend for seventeen years, making me think you were one of the few people on earth who cared about me, you’ve turned me into a cheap one-night stand. You still want to become a Nighthawk and live the excitement you need to make your life complete, while Matt, Luke, Jenny and I stay home, wondering when we’ll ever become a family, while you wander the world!”
She didn’t answer; she didn’t have to. Her dark, resentful eyes, thinned mouth and flared nostrils spoke for her.
“And I’m supposed to just handle the long separations and become the full-time child carer, am I?”
“Like I did the past five months while you wandered the world and became a hero, you mean?” she flipped at him casually.
“I told you I was giving it up—for you. But that’s not enough for you, is it? It will never be enough, because you don’t want it to be. What
do
you want? Are you going to keep punishing me for Tim’s sins the rest of our lives?”
“Punishing you for Tim’s sins? Isn’t that what
you
did to
me?
” Her eyes flashed; her whole body quivered. “You left me because Tim told you to. You never came back because of Tim. You never called, never wrote—you didn’t even keep up a simple appearance of friendship, no ‘thanks, Lissa, for all those years of love you gave me.’ You think
I
cheapened
you?
You used me, took my love and then disappeared! You went off and wandered the world and had your action and excitement in the Air Force and the Nighthawks—things I wanted. But did you ever ask me to come? I would have loved to fly, to learn combat training, but I just got left at home to work in a grocery store! I wanted to get out of Breckerville for a while, but no, Tim had his gym, so of course I worked a menial job for six years so
he
could have
his
dream! Even after he left me, I got the child and the mortgage while he got his dreams again! And now you’re doing the same to me!”
“Me?” he asked quietly. He had to hear this. She’d reached her limits and was finally going to tell him the real truth.
“Yes, you!” she snapped. “Did you ever
think
about me while I was wondering what I’d done for you to hate me so badly you left me all alone for twelve miserable years? I was so blind in love with you I’d have done anything to be with you—
anything
—but you just walked away. You didn’t care enough to even call and see how I was. You didn’t think I’d be the one person who cared enough about you to share your burdens and your life when Kerin took off with the boys? No—but you can turn to me for free mothering while you wander the world, using me because I was in safe little Breckerville, just where you want me to be!”
She came to a halt, panting with fury, but he found nothing to say. “You’ve
had
enough action and excitement. You’re
ready
to come home after a dozen years of wandering, so I’m supposed to go home, stay down on the family farm, dying on the porch rockers my grandparents sat on. Nice fantasy, Mitch, but
I don’t want it!
Did you bother to think of that, or am I just the convenient woman to fulfil your final dreams for you and your kids? Do you honestly think after twelve years of neglecting me, I can smile and say, yes, please, Mitch, I still love you? It doesn’t work that way! I
won’t
take another chance on a man using me for his convenience while he forgets I have wants and needs of my own!”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Put that way, it appalled him—his total blindness and selfishness where she was concerned. Damn it, she was right. Because it was his dream, he’d never thought she’d want a life beyond Breckerville, him and the kids. He’d never thought about it at all, never considered her needs or hopes or dreams. He’d taken for granted his plans for them would make her happy—and he’d never been more wrong.
“So don’t tell me you love me. I don’t believe it.” Her voice was quieter now, but no less deadly. “Don’t give me pretty words; I had that with Tim. He told me he loved me every day, and it didn’t mean a damn thing, beyond a way to keep me at home growing vegetables and working at the convenience store to pay the bills while he poured all our money into his dream of running a gym. Pretty words are cheap, sweet nothings a man says to keep a woman where he wants her. Dad kept Mum on the farm forty years until
he
was ready to retire, then he took her somewhere he could fish and enjoy himself, and she goes along with it because he
loves
her! ‘No, Margaret, you can’t have a new dress’ or ‘We can’t go to the wedding’ but he took her to the Formula One in Europe, because he loves her. Yeah, right. Tim did the same to me, all the time. ‘Sorry, Lissa, I can’t do anything or take you anywhere because all our money goes into my gym…but I love you.’ I won’t settle for that again! So if you love me,
prove it!
I won’t feed your down-home-on-the-farm-girl fantasy while you fly off into the sunrise, sunset or the next war zone. I won’t have a marriage based on the past or even on great sex. I won’t marry another friend who
says
he loves me but refuses to let me into his life!”
Panting, they sat naked on the bed in the aftermath of the loving of his life, facing each other like enemies in a combat zone—a battlefield he hadn’t realized existed until this moment.
Unnerved by the force of truth in her words, he took a few moments to think, to turn his brain back around. “All right,” was all he could think to say.
It was her turn to look wary, but she nodded. “Two days,” she said quietly.
Taken aback, he swore under his breath. Two days? What insanity ever made him think he could prove
anything
to her in two days? He had twelve years of unintentional neglect to make up for. Two days to change everything he’d ever thought or known about her. Two days to change his intensely private, protective nature. Two days to prove that his love for her was not Tim’s asexual, brotherly love, not like her father’s love—true and lasting love, yes, but unthinking and selfish, expecting her to sacrifice her dreams for their needs.
Making love had barely scraped at the dents of the depth of unconscious damage Tim’s sexuality and choices in their marriage had done to her battered self-esteem, barely lit the darkness of her dad’s loving blindness. As his had been until now.
She wanted it all or he’d get
“Okay. No words. No promises. You want to be a Nighthawk?” he snapped, more furious with himself than with her. “Fine. You got it. And I won’t protect you any more than I would Songbird or Heidi, the two female operatives I’ve worked with. But it’s not going to be pretty—far from it—and the memories will be bloody ugly. They could take years to go away, if ever. Are you prepared for that? Do you have any idea what you’ll have to face?”
“Of course not. I’ve only ever lived in Breckerville.” Her chin lifted in bravado. “But I’ve seen current affairs shows, and I’ve been beaten up and kicked by a punk on ecstasy. I’ve lived through those nightmares. Does that count for anything?”
He laughed with less humor than he’d ever felt, thinking this had to be the strangest after-sex talk any man had been through. “Baby, I doubt anything in your life will count for what you’ll see out there. But just remember, you wanted this.”
She shrugged. “No blame, is that it? I can handle that.”
“Not from what I’ve seen so far,” he shot back dryly, knowing he was blowing any chance of further loving tonight. But he was fighting for forever here, and he had to take the risk.
Her sudden gurgle of laughter took him by surprise. “You’re right. I don’t let go easily, do I? And as for blame—” she smiled at him, her eyes twinkling “—blame Tim again. He’s taken my crap ever since he left me. I guess he figures he deserves it.”
“For what? Staying faithful until he left? For telling you the truth about himself?” His eyes held hers. “Did you ever think how hard that must have been for Tim? To admit he asked you out, even married you, because he was in denial of his sexuality? To admit he wanted me instead of you? To say he’d been selfish enough to ruin our lives for years? To love you like he does but leave? You called it the marriage from hell, so why are you blaming him for what he did? Liss, he never left you. He’s still a big part of your life. What he did was set you free to find real happiness. Don’t you think it’s time you thanked him for that?”
All her pretty color drained; her eyes turned dark. “You don’t get it. You’ll never get it. I was always glad he left me. It was living with me at all I can’t forgive!”
“Who can’t you forgive for that?” he asked in soft meaning. “You seem fine with Tim. It’s me, isn’t it? You blame me for your marriage. I didn’t tell you I loved you when you needed it. I didn’t stop the wedding. I didn’t take you away from Breckerville and fly you into the sunset. He’d never have touched you at all if I’d asked you to the formal first. You think I should have known how you felt. I should have fought for you. That’s why you don’t want my love now. You think it’s too late.”
Her eyes darkened even more, like storm clouds at night—dark with fury and loss and devastation so complete it shattered his argument. “Yes.” She turned away, taking the sheet with her. “I can’t sleep with you tonight. I’ll be out with Hana.”