Authors: Melissa James
D
amn it all.
His facial muscles ached with the forced grin for the kids’ sake. He wanted to yell, throw something, punch his fist through the wall at the back of the house—the fresh-painted wall that bore testimony tim’s ongoing care of his family.
“Hey, Dad, catch!”
Automatically Mitch dived for Luke’s tossed ball and threw it back, lifted Jenny in the air for her catch and throw, all the while his thoughts stuck on Lissa like lava to rock.
Oh, yeah, he wanted to hit something all right—but most of all he wanted to put a fist through his thick skull for letting himself get caught up in dreams again.
The price he paid for dreaming was way too high.
He knew all right. He’d been paying the price ever since Tim beat him to asking Lissa to the school formal. And then he’d asked her to every social function in Breckerville after that, until everyone in town assumed Tim and Lissa would marry. And he’d taken off to the Air Force as if the hounds of hell chased him, going after the only dream he had left.
“Piggy in the middle!”
Mitch took the part of piggy, wondering if his smile had gone into atrophy yet, it had been plastered there so long.
Damn Tim, too. Man, he’d love to ram his fist down Tim’s throat! If he’d stayed around, Mitch wouldn’t be going through this turmoil of anguish and fear and hope and sexual hunger.
Liar.
His hunger for Lissa was unending: a gnawing in his gut that hadn’t even dwindled in seventeen years, let alone died. Whether she was married or single only made a difference in his hopes for the future; the need remained unchanged.
Which was why he’d stayed away from the only real home he’d known for so long. He’d gone through hell on earth for years, watching Tim and Lissa holding hands or sharing the occasional gentle kiss. But the thought of Tim touching her body, moving inside her, gave him the most primitive of urges—to wrap his hands round his best friend’s throat, throw him bodily away from her and take up where Tim left off.
No! He still couldn’t handle that Tim ever touched her at all. Oh, how he’d
ached
to be Lissa’s first love and lover…her last love and lover. As she would be his. First, last and only.
He’d requested a base in another state when he heard of their engagement. He couldn’t tolerate constantly being near the woman for whom he felt such addictive love and powerful, forbidden lust—never touching her, never knowing her kiss. The craving he couldn’t conquer or kill off.
Lissa. Always Lissa. Forever Lissa.
He’d only come back to Breckerville for the wedding because Lissa had begged him to. He hadn’t been able to make himself let her down. Then he’d made the mistake of his life, having one or six beers too many and he’d let the whole town know, in his damn-fool speech, that he was hopelessly in love with the bride.
But Tim knew. Tim had always known how he felt about Lissa. So why had Tim thrown him out of their lives? It wasn’t as though Mitch had had the gall—or the guts—to make a move on her.
But today he couldn’t rein in his hunger for her anymore. How could he control the bounding of his heart when Lissa said she was free? How could he tell his cra
not
to hope…or keep his stupid mouth from blurting the proposal? How could he hold back from taking her in his arms, kissing her and touching her sweet honey-toned skin when she’d made it so clear, even unconsciously, that she wanted him?
She wants me.
The words thrummed through his body like a fevered pulse in the night.
She wants me.
That was such a bloody miracle to his starved body, and the need and hopes he’d kept under control too many years, that he’d all but jumped on her. He’d forgotten all his good intentions and eaten her alive like a starving man at a banquet, tearing at her clothes to touch her when he should have been giving her the tenderness and the gentle wooing she deserved.
But Lissa didn’t want restraint. She wanted heat and fire and passion. He’d only been here two hours, and with one kiss—one mad, glorious kiss—her eyes and body told him she was ready, no,
burning
to make love.
She could deny it forever, and he’d know it for the panic-stricken lie she told. When he’d shown her the physical evidence of how much he supposedly
didn’t
want her, her body spoke to him with an exquisite, fiery eloquence that negated any terrified utterance coming from her mouth, before or after.
She wants me.
Something walloped into his head. “Oooof!” He fell backward into the water, glad of the full dousing, cooling his brain and libido. He had to put this on hold or he’d tear back inside to Lissa—and the kids might end up seeing him act in a way the kids should never have to see.
The boys had had too much of seeing how badly adults can behave from their mother, and Jenny was just starting to warm to him, seeing him as a friend of the family. If he blew it now, family harmony could be ruined for the next decade—that was, if Lissa ever let her barriers down enough to show him what the hell was going on to make her back off from his proposal as if he was the devil incarnate.
“I booked the table at Bob’s for you.”
The cool, gentle voice turned the refreshing water around him to a seething cauldron, scalding him from the inside out. He turned to her, hoping the instant fire in his body from just hearing her voice didn’t show in his eyes. He had enough to do, fighting her current demons without adding more to it.
But she’d brushed her hair, falling over her shoulders in a cascade of sun-kissed honey; and the simple sundress she wore, with spaghetti-thin straps and gently molded bodice, fanned flame to bushfire as wild and unstoppable as the statewide burn he’d helped fight in ’94. Dumping fifty choppers full of water had barely touched ’em—and the coldest of showers wouldn’t douse the heat blazing through him now.
Keep it cool and friendly. You can do it. You always did before. “Thanks.” He barely managed not to croak. “What time?”
He watched Lissa’s tension fade with his prosaic remark. “Six. Jenny’s usually in bed by seven-thirty.”
“Sounds good.” He hauled himself out of the pool and reached for a towel. “C’mon, kids. Better start getting ready. I need to iron my clothes, if that’s okay
“Uh, yeah. Um, fine. I…”
Her voice had a strangled tone to it—the suffocated sound of a woman in sexual thrall. He looked up from toweling himself to find Lissa’s gaze fixed on his bare chest. Then it traveled over every part of his bare skin, slow and dazed, her lips parted, her eyes a dark, stormy gray. She seemed mesmerized by him, head to foot. The delicate flush from the line of her bodice to her cheek told him exactly where her thoughts were.
Same place his were, every time he looked at her, or even thought about her.
The pool. The bed. Hell, the floor or the paddock where they’d talked so often as kids. Cool, slippery loving, heated sex in tangled sheets…the untamed mating of mustangs in the wild. Any or all of the above, so long as it was just them: Mitch and Lissa and nothing between.
“Yeah.” He moved the towel, opening it a little wider to reveal more of his body, reveling in her fascinated stare, the rushes of air he could hear moving in and out of her sweet lips. As her eyes caressed his swim trunks—and the obvious arousal beneath—her tongue delicately moistened her mouth, slow and sensual, and he struggled to hold in the groan of painful glory. She was so aroused, so lost in wonder just looking at him, she was all but unconscious of it—and reminding her now would only send her running again. “Where should I do it?” he asked softly.
“In my room,” she whispered, then blinked, as if thinking, What am I saying? But she didn’t retract it—and hope soared inside him. He wanted her so much he was in pain.
Would she come silently to him in the night, bring him to her bed? Or take his hand and lead him out to make love in a warm summer night, in a paddock lit with a million stars?
“Silly Mummy,” Jenny giggled. “Why would he put the iron in your room? It wouldn’t fit in with the bed there!”
He watched Lissa shake herself. “Oh. Of course. Silly me.” Dull color replaced the sweet, sensual flush of moments before. She clapped her hands, reverting to the in-control mother. “Go in and get ready kids, or we’ll be late for our pizza.”
“Yeah! Pizza!” All three bolted to their rooms.
She turned to him, with the first genuine smile she’d given him all day. “We have a spare room. It’s next to mine. I’m in Mum and Dad’s old room. Yours is my old room. You remember. Take your bags and change in there. You’ll stay with us until you fix up the Taggart place, of course. It’s unlivable as it is now.”
Better and better…this couldn’t have been more perfect if he’d scripted it himself. Lissa had just said far more than her simple words. By letting him stay—by giving him her old room—she’d given him a message. She was willing to offer him a second chance to be trusted. She’d give his idea a twice-over before she threw him out.
And maybe, just maybe, she wanted him to stay near her.
“Thanks, Lissa.” He started to move past her, but paused to gently brush his mouth on her cheek.
She almost stumbled back, as she had after he kissed her—no,
mauled
her— the kitchen. “Good old reliable me.” She flashed him a wobbly grin.
He knew that look, that gorgeous, wonderful, green-light look of feminine desire and uncertainty; uncertain of what, he could also read in her eyes. Gently he lifted her chin. “You know, magazines and books say men find unpredictable women a real turn-on. Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but the woman who’s always turned me on is beautiful in her serenity. I like knowing she’s there when I need her. I love that she doesn’t put on an act to be interesting. She’s herself, and happy to be. She’s so naturally sexy I can hardly breathe when I’m around her.” He placed her hand over his thundering heart. “This is what reliable does to me, when you’re the one who’s reliable. Is that a good enough definition for you, Lissa?”
She couldn’t look up, but her fiery cheeks and trembling lashes told him all he needed to know. “Mitch, I…I need time. I can’t believe what you’re saying—that you want me,” she whispered in an almost despairing tone.
His heart soared, for the despair came from Lissa’s waging an inner battle against her demons. Within a day he was winning the fight for her body and heart against her old friends of pride and fear. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Ever.
“Thank you.” Suddenly she wrapped an arm around his neck, her gaze lifted, showing him the aching depths in her sweet gray eyes, her mouth parted, wet and glistening, matching his hunger with her own. “Mitch, I need time, not gentleness. I need to know this is
real.
” She muttered, almost to herself, “I need to feel alive again….”
He pulled her up hard against him and put them both out of their misery with another deep, hot kiss, all but exploding in the fire bursting to life between them. Hands and lips and tongues, meeting, mating, eagerly seeking more. Finding his sun-kissed wet skin, fresh and bare, she roamed with hands and mouth, making the softest of low purring growls in her throat with every touch, every taste of him. She kept pushing closer and closer, rubbing, touching, tasting, clearly reveling in his aroused state. He was too—in the tautness of her nipples, the way she caressed her most intimate self on him.
Beautiful, so beautiful. Loving Lissa was hotter, sweeter, richer than any fantasy he’d ever had—it was like discovering rum-laced mocha chocolate after a lifetime of making do with cheap instant coffee. The warm silkiness of her skin…the fire in her touch, in her eyes, in her kiss. The luscious sexuality wrapping itself all around and between them like a living entity only added to the sweet splendor of being with her, touching her.
Let this be the start of forever….
“Mitch,” she mumbled through kisses on his shoulder. “Don’t sleep in the spare room. Make love to me tonight.”
“Are you sure?” he murmured urgently, caressing one small, perfect breast—fulfilling a seventeen-year fantasy and more than halfway to exploding with the potency of one touch.
Looking up at him, her lips swollen, her delicate body all flushed, she answered, “More than sure.” She glanced down to where his hand cradled her breast, and drew a ragged breath. “I need to know you don’t have hidden agendas. I don’t want to play Carol in any Brady Bunch fantasy. I have to know
me
—not someone for your kids or the family you never had.”
If she’d dumped a bucket of ice water over him she couldn’t have killed his desire more effectively. He gawked at her. “Where the hell did you get that crazy idea from?”
She shrugged. “It’d be a normal thing for a guy to want who grew up the way you did, Mitch. You’ve never had a family, so you want one now, and I’m convenient. You know me, and you know the kids love me. And it’s normal and healthy for you to want a mother for your kids after all they went through with Kerin.” Her sudden tension, the shuttered look in her eyes, told him her inner self screamed against the lies she uttered. She didn’t want anything to do with his so-called
normal
desires.
Whatever it was she was hiding from him, he had a hell of a lot to prove to her yet; his words, his kisses hadn’t penetrated beyond the outer shell of her shattered self-esteem.
What the hell had Tim done to her?
“Can you doubt right now how much I want you?” He moved over her, letting his hardness speak for itself. “Does it feel like I’m playing Mike to your Carol?”
“Prove it,” she muttered fiercely.
The fiery sexuality in her challenge hit him hard and fast, smashing all his good intentions. He growled in her ear, “Baby, if you don’t control this, I’ll prove it all right. Because I’m about to lose control. Big-time. So either we hold this off until tonight, or I hitch up this pretty dress of yours and give you all the proof you need. And I swear to God I won’t last longer than three seconds, I’m so damn close. And not for any woman—for you. Only you, with your sweet body and mouth made for sin.”