Welcome to the real world, Lissa….
Either the sun had shifted a million miles closer or Mitch’s kiss was hot enough to burn her alive. She was plastered against him from breast to thigh. His kiss ravaged her with a hunger bordering on desperation. He plundered her mouth with lips and teeth and tongue, intense, overwhelming, insatiable. His hands glided, cupped, caressed every inch of exposed flesh, exposing what wasn’t open to his search with low impatient growls every time he found a barrier, pushing aside what he could, tearing what he could not. As if he had to know every secret inside her, right here, right now.
This fevered need to devour her—all of her—did not just come from temporary male deprivation. She knew it, could feel it: the fever, the need, was all for her. He kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of her…and she moaned, matching kiss for kiss, touch for touch, meeting his need with her own, because she couldn’t get enough, either. He was melting her from the inside out. Every flimsy barrier she’d erected against his potent magic puddled like heated rain at her feet. Her body was on fire, her breathing ragged, her breasts swollen, nipples hard. Her belly was a rippling lava pool of heat. She wanted to eat him alive, drink him inside her, suck him in through her very pores….
Drag him to bed and love him all day and night.
“Can you feel me?” he growled too soon, moving his arousal against her without shame or compromise. “I’ve been this hard all day, knowing I was finally going to see you again. I’ve been in pain since I saw you in the garden—and right now I’m ready to explode at one more touch—just one. So don’t push me, Miller, or I’ll show you here and now, where our kids could come in any moment, how much I don’t want you!”
She staggered back, groping for support. Her body was flushed with heat, her lips swollen, throbbing with a pleasure bordering on pain—the sweetness of pure feminine sexuality she’d never known. She couldn’t speak; she could only watch him, her eyes wide, her pulse pounding. Waiting for the rest of what this new, totally foreign, frighteningly male Mitch had to say.
He followed her like a stalking panther in the jungle grass, moving with sinuous grace and pulsing heat until he stood before her. Breathing. Just breathing. Hot and hard and ready to mate.
Her knees almost collapsed beneath her.
He only touched her chin, yet she felt trapped, helpless, made weak by her own wanting and the once-sure knowledge, untested until now, that Mitch, her Mitch, would never hurt her in a physical way. “So let’s get this straight,” he said softly, his heated breath caressing her face. “No woman would make my boys a better mother than you. I’m not ashamed to admit that—but I want you as my lover, no matter who else benefits from it or how much I need you for the kids. I want you. I want you in my bed as well as in my life. I want you for me. You’re like a foreign fever inside me there’s no shot for. I always did and I always will want you. Totally. Constantly. Always.”
Shooting straight from the hip. No sweet words. No half promises. No winning smile. Just Mitch.
I can’t speak pretty words. I only speak what I know.
She groped for a chair and sat before she fell down. As soon as she could stop shaking, she whispered, “If…if that’s true, why haven’t you ever told me?”
He crouched before her; she could see him trying to gauge her reaction. “When you were fourteen, your parents would have stopped our friendship, or Old Man Taggart would have sent me back to the orphanage. Then, when you were sixteen, I was going to tell you, but you started dating Tim first. Then you were engaged—then married.”
She felt tears well up. Tears for all the years lost, all the innocence forsaken. The belief in herself she’d never gotten back since she married Tim Carroll, the childhood friend she never should have married at all. “It’s too late, Mitch.” She choked on the words so badly they came out as a whisper.
“Why?” he asked, just as quiet.
How could she explain? There were only bald words—words she couldn’t utter. She swiped at her tears, wishing he’d turn away so she wouldn’t humiliate herself by having him watch her crying.
He brushed at her face, more of a caress than a wipe of her tears. “What did he do to you, Lissa-My-Lissa?”
With the nickname he used to give her in private—coined from one of her beloved Anne of Green Gables books—he melted her. She bit her lip. “Please, let’s not talk about it now,” she murmured, soft and husky. “It’s not worth it.” I just want to forget.
“It’s worth talking about if it’s stopping you from taking another chance on life,” Mitch argued quietly. “It affects my life, too. And the boys’ lives, as well.”
He had a point; but she’d kept silent so long about her marriage, she didn’t know how to speak. “Not yet.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Please. I’m thinking about it. You shocked me, saying it like that so fast, but—I’m not saying a final no. I realize how much is at stake for the boys. And…and for you.”
He pulled her hands into his, kissing each abused finger, slowly and tenderly. She trembled, watching the intimate, sensual act, as if they were already lovers. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer. Take your time. I know it’s hard for you to trust me. I’ve been away too long. I’ll go play with the kids.” He smiled at her in strong, masculine sensuality. “But you will be mine,” he said softly, getting to his feet. “And when you are, there’ll be no divorce. It’s forever this time.”
Her gaze lifted in teary challenge. “And will you be mine, or is this marriage-and-forever proposal only a one-way contract? You know, like—you owner, me slave?”
Almost at the door he wheeled back, frowning, searching into her gaze with disturbing depth. But whatever he sought, he obviously didn’t find it. “If you honestly don’t know the answer to that question, you never knew me at all.”
She gave a shuddering sigh. “Maybe I didn’t,” she conceded, hating the sharp dagger thrust of pain the admission cost her. “And that’s no basis for marriage, is it?”
In three strides he was before her, lifting her to her feet, looking into her eyes again. This time she felt as if he read past her words and straight into her soul. “Where’s my brave Lissa gone, who took on all comers that hurt me? Liss, maybe it’s yourself you don’t know. It’s what’s inside you—all the fears, all your anger—you’re afraid to let out. You’re so scared of life, even healing from whatever Tim did to you terrifies you.” He touched his lips gently to her cheek, and she felt her whole face flame—from both the kiss, and his perception. How did he know so much about her most secret self, when he’d been everywhere around the world but near her in twelve long years?
Mitch sighed at the implicit rejection, but in sadness, not impatience. “Oh, baby, whatever it was he did to destroy your self-confidence, I can fix it if you’ll only let me.”
Again she wanted to cry. After six years she thought she’d become an expert at shutting off all feeling except with the kids. Yet she’d been with Mitch less than two hours and she’d fallen apart, not once, but twice. He’d done it again, he’d woven the Merlin wand over her soul, making her think, feel, want….
She couldn’t afford to want—not Mitch. He’d only walk out again. Sooner or later everyone walked out on her.
She lowered her gaze before he could see the hunger growing, screaming inside her like a living thing, I want, I want, I want. “It wasn’t Tim’s fault.” She balled her hands into fists to stop the nervous twisting. “He didn’t want to hurt me.”
“Yeah, right. That’s what they all say. I thought you were too intelligent to fall for such a pitiful line.” His tender understanding vanished like a shimmering water hole