Читать книгу Modern Romance October 2015 Books 5-8 - Дженнифер Хейворд - Страница 19
ОглавлениеCOBURN WAS TRUE to his word. For three days and three nights he did not touch her, goad her or push her to discuss anything more pertinent than the weather and what they were going to do that day. They interacted like polite acquaintances who happened to have an intimate knowledge of every inch of each other they kept tightly in check as they explored the island by boat and foot.
When they’d had enough of the ever-present baking heat, they headed for the crystal clear water and the coral reefs that surrounded the island. Diana could have spent days there swimming with the schools of brightly colored fish, avoiding her problems. And yet, funnily enough, by letting her mind go and relaxing, clarity came instead.
Her life had been irrevocably changed when she and Coburn had conceived this baby. She had to give them a second chance. A chance to forgive each other their transgressions, as Coburn had said, and perhaps find some level of happiness.
A clammy feeling attacked her appendages as she sat lounging by the pool with a book on yet another stunning Caribbean day while her husband worked in the office. She was terrified. A powerful voice inside her couldn’t help pointing out the parallels with her mother and father’s relationship. It would only ever be Coburn for her. Did her weakness for a womanizer like her husband make her as much a victim of the cult of Coburn as her mother was for her father?
The realist in her knew she was risking her heart. The optimist was sure her husband felt more for her than he was willing to admit and they could build on that.
Coburn finally made an appearance as the late-afternoon shadows chased each other across the surface of the pool. He wore the same distracted, aloof look he’d sported for days now, this new foreign version of her husband that eluded her attempts to reach him. Always with Coburn there had been emotion, whether positive or negative throughout their roller-coaster highs and lows. He was an extrovert, a man who needed to express himself as much as she needed to crawl inside herself at times.
She swam toward the edge of the pool and clutched the side, studying the tension etched in his face.
“I thought you were going to be in there all day.”
“I’m sorry. There’s a lot going on.” His gaze singed her skin as it moved over her curves in the coral bikini. “You’re burning.”
She looked down at her shoulders. They were a bit pink. Coburn offered her a hand and pulled her out of the pool. She bit her lip as he wrapped a towel around her. “You could share, you know.”
“I won’t distract you from the choices you need to make.”
She lifted her chin to look up at him. “I’m willing to give this a shot, Coburn. I’m willing for us to give this a shot. But this is it. We make it work this time or we walk away. I grew up in a war zone between my father and mother, and I won’t put a child through that.”
The tense line of his mouth slackened. “And you are going to let me in? Trust me?”
She nodded. “I am committed to making this work. But I won’t give up my job. A huge issue in our relationship was not being able to give for the other person’s needs. I want to be there for my child, but I’m not prepared to put my career on hold until they’re in school. My skills would never recover from it.”
A war went on in that dark blue gaze of his. “Nonnegotiable,” she underscored.
“You don’t trust me. You don’t trust us.”
“It’s not about trust. It’s about my identity, what I love doing. I need to practice.”
He tucked the towel tight around her and let go. “All right. We compromise.” His gaze held hers. “We’ve screwed up a lot of things, Diana, but I promise you we will not screw this up. It’s too important.”
Their marriage had been important, too. She forced herself to nod before the panic rising up in her throat enveloped her. “I know.”
He inclined his head. “Arthur is back. He’s invited us to dinner tonight with some friends. Are you up for it?”
Her mouth curved. “So you’ll let me loose now that I’ve fallen into line?”
He moved his gaze over her. “I’d prefer to indulge myself on a whole other level and forget the socializing entirely. But since Arthur is a good friend, it will have to wait.”
* * *
Her insides were still vibrating from her husband’s clear indication of exactly where their relationship was going in short order as Diana dressed for dinner with the Kents. She didn’t know why she was so nervous to embark on a physical relationship with Coburn again. She’d done it that night at his apartment when they’d conceived their child. But this time it was about walking into it with her heart open. Fully invested. She felt as if she was twenty miles out in that sea sparkling outside her window and being told to swim for her life.
She pressed clammy palms to the soft, clingy fabric of her dress. Its sea-blue color reminded her of her husband’s eyes—rich and endlessly fascinating.
Coburn was waiting for her on the terrace when she arrived, ridiculously handsome in a white shirt and dark trousers. His eyes as they ate her up suggested her nerves were highly warranted. Measuring, calculating, they swept over every curve of her body in the sexy dress, lingering on the swell of her newfound cleavage with an uncensored appreciation that made her knees wobbly.
Her steps slowed as she approached him, hesitation written in every line of her body.
His gaze moved back up to her face. Cataloged what he found there. “You look...devastating.”
She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “Thank you.”
The polite response her mother had taught her to issue upon receiving a compliment rather than stammering out a quick denial as many of her teenage friends had came out stiff and unnatural. Coburn’s brow rose. He took the last couple of steps toward her, his fingers curving around her jaw as his other hand settled on her waist and pulled her close.
“I’m getting the feeling my ever-poised wife is nervous.”
“Hardly,” she denied, her reply coming out a bit too breathless for her liking.
His fingers slid to the hollow of her nape. “I thought we were going for honesty here. If I was being honest I’d say that blowing off dinner to make love to my very beautiful wife is highly tempting.”
Her insides dissolved into a pool of molten heat. “Coburn—”
He dropped his mouth to her ear. “The only question would be how and where I would do that. I’d be willing to explore more than one option.”
She put a hand to his chest and leaned away from him, her head and heart full of way too much everything. “But we are going to dinner. It would be rude not to.”
His gaze studied her face. “Yes we are. But first I’m going to kiss my wife.”
Her heart sped up in her chest. The hand she had pressed against his torso couldn’t decide whether it wanted to keep him at a distance or allow him closer. He took the decision out of her hands, splaying both palms across her jaw to hold her in place while he brought his mouth down to nudge hers apart. She froze, her lips immobile against his. It was like walking into a tsunami with your eyes wide-open. She wasn’t sure she could do it.
His fingers tightened around her jaw. “Open your mouth,” he demanded. “Let me in.”
The war went on in her head, the battle between her two selves loud and chaotic. And then she couldn’t fight it anymore. Her lips softened beneath his. He took them in a deep, drugging kiss that swept away all conscious thought except for the intoxicating, deliciously male scent of him, the tall, strong length of his body that brushed hers tantalizingly close, but not nearly close enough. His taste, his touch was achingly familiar and yet different somehow. As if the exceedingly tough, driven man he’d become had seeped into every part of him, and even his kiss couldn’t help but be affected by it.
She drank him in, relearned every contour of his sensual, beautiful mouth.
He murmured her name, his voice a velvety caress that slid across her sun-warmed skin. His hands shifted lower to her hips to drag her against him. She moved into him, luxuriating in the press of his strong, muscular thighs against her. Only with Coburn could a kiss be this soulful.
His hands moved over her buttocks, shaping her against him. Froze. “You have nothing on underneath this dress?”
Heat flared in her already warm skin. “It’s impossible with it.”
He brought her chin up with the tips of his fingers, the heated shimmer in his eyes making her insides quiver. “It wasn’t a complaint,” he drawled softly. “Knowledge is power. Or pleasure, in your case...”
She bit down hard on her lip. How could she forget what he did with such knowledge? A dinner party on a steamy night in Manhattan filled her head. Coburn had just been back from a business trip to Germany. He’d touched down, driven home and changed, just in time to walk out the door with her to a cocktail party. Intensely sexual in nature, her husband had spent the evening trying to keep his hands off her, but a week away from each other had taken its toll. She had excused herself to use the powder room when Coburn had discreetly followed her, slipped in after her and locked the door. He had taken her against the wall, swift and hard, his raspy voice in her ear telling her how much he’d missed her. How he had pleasured himself thinking about her in his big, lonely hotel room.
“Hot, wasn’t it?” Her husband’s husky taunt returned her focus to his face. He was studying the heat staining her body a bright red. “It was the most uninhibited I’ve ever seen you.”
She pulled in a breath. “Behave.”
“For now,” he agreed, a pirate-like smile curving his lips. “This time I want you very verbal, sweetheart, so I know I’m satisfying your frustration to a suitable level.”
Her stomach contracted. Skipping the party suddenly sounded like a good idea to her, too, because his blunt seduction was going to have her in tatters after an entire evening of it.
“But first,” her husband drawled, nixing that idea as he stepped back and reached into his pocket, “you need to put this on.”
She stared at the shiny object sitting in his palm. The symbol of so much happiness and angst housed in a plain, shiny gold band gleamed back at her like a point of no return. Her wedding ring. Actually, her second wedding ring if you were to be technical about it. The first she’d lost scrubbing for surgery, something Coburn had never forgiven her for.
“You kept it.”
He picked up her left hand and slid the ring on her finger. She had never seen the practicality of a large diamond with the job that she had, so it had only ever been this simple band that had declared her his.
Their gazes met and held as she looked up. “This time it stays, Diana. Through the good and the bad.”
She wondered which would prevail for them. Coburn bent his head to her ear. “Stop thinking and enjoy the evening.”
She gave it her best shot as he guided her to the car and drove up the hillside to the fabulous Kent villa perched on the cliff. Her speculation from that day in the sea was confirmed. The view from the low-lying, Italian-inspired structure was outrageously stunning. Sheer rock face plunged down to pristine, glittering stretches of golden-sand beach, where white-foamed waves crashed up onto the shore in a testament to the power of nature.
Coburn had told her Arthur had purchased the island for ten million dollars five years ago. A ten-million-dollar view it certainly was.
A butler directed them to the terrace that overlooked the sea. Torches burned brightly, illuminating a crowd of perhaps a dozen guests with champagne glasses in their hands. The wealthy elite of Arthur’s world, Diana pegged them, the perfectly coiffed hairstyles of the women and the exquisite cocktail dresses they wore as casually as if they’d stuck a hand in the closet and thrown on the first thing they came up with, telling. As were the jewels that sparkled from their well-tanned skin.
A tall, thin man with an elegant stature broke away from the group and came toward them, a smile on his face. His features were expressive rather than handsome, a crooked nose highlighting his sharply drawn, aristocratic features. Arthur Kent, she surmised, from the warm greeting he gave her husband.
Inquisitive hazel eyes turned to her. She had the sensation of being thoroughly analyzed before Arthur bent and pressed a kiss to both her cheeks. “So I finally get to meet the lovely Diana.”
“You have a very beautiful home,” she said smoothly. “Thank you for allowing us to visit.”
He lifted a hand. “You are welcome anytime. I keep telling Coburn that, but he is too caught up in the rush of being a big-time CEO now to take me up on it.”
“Not too busy to pick your brain tonight,” Coburn responded, a wry smile curving his lips. “I would like to if you don’t mind.”
She wondered if her husband wanted to ask Arthur for his advice on whatever was happening at Grant that was making him so distracted. She wasn’t to find out as Arthur’s wife, Dana, joined them along with their two young boys. Nine and seven, Maciah and James were utterly charming miniature versions of their dark-haired British mother, who was easily twenty years younger than the airline magnate. A trophy wife, she wondered, because surely she was stunning, but Diana quickly saw it was much more than that. The Kents were a vivacious, happy clan who had moved to the island upon Arthur’s early retirement to escape the pressures of their former life. It was clear they had learned the secret of living, and it was not based on how much money they had in the bank.
When Arthur told the sports-obsessed boys Coburn had played competitive soccer in school, they pleaded with her husband to kick a ball around the yard. Never one to resist a sporting activity of any ilk, Coburn passed his drink to her and good-naturedly trailed after the two rambunctious boys.
“You don’t have a drink,” Dana commented. “Shall I get you a glass of champagne?”
“Actually, orange juice and soda would be lovely.”
A speculative glimmer entered her hostess’s eyes but she was too polite to comment. She went off to retrieve the drink from the bartender while Diana and Arthur watched the boys chase Coburn around the yard. Her husband expertly faked and deked, keeping the ball out of their possession with tricks that made them laugh and chase harder. The tension faded from his face for the first time in days as he laughed along with them.
“He’s good with children.” Arthur rested his forearms on the railing and watched the game. “He told me once he wasn’t sure he wanted any. I thought that strange given his love of life. He jumps into everything with his head and heart fully immersed, damn the consequences. It’s a great example for a child. Fear kills so many dreams.”
How true. It had stifled hers until she’d identified what she truly wanted out of life, and that was to work with kids. To do something exceptional with her skills in Africa, where too many were denied basic health care. And perhaps, she thought, it had killed her marriage the first time around because Coburn was right. His ability to see through her made her feel naked and vulnerable. His ability to make her feel terrifying. It was why she’d run away. She knew that now.
Her husband let out a roar of laughter as the two boys pulled on his pant leg to try to bring him to the ground, fierce determination on their young faces. He would be a good father. With Coburn, life was an adventure waiting to happen. His joie de vivre when she’d met him had been so opposite to her own careful, controlled nature that she had been blown away by it. Amazed someone could live in the present like that when she’d known as a teenager what her next two decades would look like.
But somewhere along the way their separate agendas had collided and her husband’s lust for life had gone from being charming to infuriating. Now with more pressure on him than ever before and saddled with a baby he hadn’t even wanted, how would he react? Would it be too much for them?
She swallowed past the knot in her throat. She couldn’t think like that. She had to be positive about this if it was ever going to work.
* * *
“They tire you out?”
Arthur joined Coburn on the lawn as he held his hands up, declaring himself done with the impromptu soccer game.
“They’re fast little devils,” Coburn conceded, taking the cold beer Arthur handed him. “I haven’t been to the gym nearly enough since I took over Grant.”
Arthur tipped his glass at him. “It’s all consuming, isn’t it? Why do you think I got out when I did? The secret is balance, my friend, and it’s not easy to find.”
Coburn took a long sip of his beer and stared out at the jaw-dropping view of the vast blue horizon. “Ever handle a recall?”
His mentor nodded. “More than I would have liked. You up against one?”
He nodded. It was highly confidential, early days yet, but he knew with Arthur it would go no further. “It could be a big one. Any advice?”
“Get out in front of it. Get the facts, make your assessment, and if you have blame to take, carry it with big shoulders. These can make or break a company’s reputation.”
He knew it. He wasn’t sleeping because of it.
He picked Arthur’s brain on his experiences until the internet billionaire from the neighboring island stole Arthur away for a discussion on boats. His wife was standing with their hostess and two other women on the far side of the patio. He joined them just in time to catch the tail end of a discussion of Caribbean real estate as the wives of the internet baron and a software CEO debated their favorite islands.
“Do you have a preference, Diana?” the diminutive, very beautiful internet baron’s wife asked.
Diana smiled. “I love the Turks and Caicos. My parents have a place there. Unfortunately it would be difficult to live in the Caribbean with my profession.”
“Oh. You work?”
His wife stiffened under the hand he held to her back. “I do. I’m a surgeon in New York.”
“A surgeon?” The CEO’s wife wrinkled her brow. “You mean a ‘cut people open with a knife’ kind of surgeon?”
“Exactly that,” his wife confirmed. “With a purpose in mind, of course.”
The other woman didn’t seem to get his wife’s dry sense of humor. “That’s very...impressive. I bet Coburn is wowed by you.”
“That’s one way of describing it.”
He slid his hand down to her waist and pulled her into his side with a reprimanding squeeze of his fingers. “I most certainly am. Beauty and brains are a definite turn-on for me.”
“I’ll bet they are.” The blond girlfriend of another neighboring millionaire who looked young enough to be her fiancé’s daughter gave him an appreciative once-over. She had been throwing him sideways looks since he’d arrived, making him wonder if her man needed to pop a few pills to satisfy her. “My husband tells me you run one of the world’s largest automotive companies, but I wouldn’t understand what it is really because it’s all that stuff inside a car.”
He smiled. “Very well put.”
“Do you work?” his wife piped up. She hadn’t gotten any less stiff beneath his hand. The urge to drag her off somewhere to loosen her up was an idea.
“Oh, no,” the blonde pooh-poohed. “We have two children. I don’t get these women who work when they should be home. Parenting is the most important job in the world. You can’t bring back those years.”
His wife went ramrod straight. “No, you can’t,” she agreed. “But if there were no female surgeons we’d have a serious shortage of doctors to take care of your children. And then where would we be?”
The blonde shrugged a shoulder. “It worked just fine when women were at home.”
The other woman must have read the antagonism painted on his wife’s face because she swiftly backtracked. “Oh, I wasn’t talking about you,” she demurred. “I’m sure you’re fabulously talented. I just think women take it a bit far sometimes...forget their priorities.”
Diana’s fingernails bit into his side. Sensing an imminent explosion, he gave the other two women a smile. “Would you mind if I steal my wife away for a moment? I wanted to show her something before dinner.”
Without waiting for a response, he nudged his wife forward. “Don’t let her get to you,” he murmured. “What is she going to say? She doesn’t have your skills.”
“You’d rather I be like her,” she muttered. “I should be at home lying on the bed eating bonbons waiting for you to come home.”
“Don’t give me ideas.” He slid his hand lower to cover her bottom. “If I thought I could have you spread out and waiting for me when I walked in the door I would, but I think the world is better off with your surgical skills.”
She looked up at him, a fierce glitter in her beautiful brown eyes. “Don’t flatter me to get me to cool down. I am not a button to be pressed.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” he countered silkily, his palm shaping her bottom. “And I intend to press every last one before I’m done with you tonight.”
Her eyes widened before her long lashes fanned down over her cheeks to cover them. “Why don’t you go press the young blonde’s buttons? She’ll be more than willing I’m sure.”
Temper rose in him, swift and sure. He stopped at the railing that overlooked the sea and stepped close enough to cage her in. “This is the last time I’m going to say this, Diana, so hear me when I tell you I have no interest in any other women. Nor will I in the future, even when you are round with my child. You are the only woman who can turn me inside out. You are the only woman I want warming my bed. That’s always been the way.”
Her breathing fractured as he stood with arms on each side of her on the railing, his heated gaze holding her in place. The darkening of her eyes to almost black said he might finally have gotten his message through.
“Say it once more,” he promised, electing to hammer his message home while he had her attention, “and I will find a room, a corridor to convince you of it.”
His wife’s body went slack against the railing. The glitter in her eyes said she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. That corridor wasn’t a half-bad idea.
“Dinner is served.” Arthur walked past them on his way to alert the other guests, an amused expression on his face. “Unless you have another type of sustenance in mind.”
Diana’s face went beet red. He stepped back and guided her to the table set under the stars. His wife was primed and ready for him. Good thing, too, because his own very primed and ready body had had enough.
* * *
Diana was seated to the right of her husband at one end of the long, rectangular table laid with ornate silver place settings and tall candelabras. Dana sat at the head of the table to her right, thankfully keeping her across the table from the blond temptress. If she’d had to sit beside that lipstick-encrusted wolf in sheep’s clothing she might have burst a blood vessel.
As it was, she was having difficulty relaxing with her smoldering, very sexy husband by her side. He seemed determined to take every opportunity he could to touch her as he passed the butter and filled her water glass. His threats had made her stomach churn with a sexual awareness of him that was getting worse with every minute that passed.
She focused desperately on her hostess, who it turned out was a very talented artist who painted scenes from the islands sold for high price tags in a London gallery. The surgeon in her loved hearing about the creative process and how she worked with her hands to achieve certain effects.
At some point after their salad plates were cleared and before the main course was laid down, Coburn’s hand landed on her thigh. She stiffened as his warm fingers curved into her heated flesh, staking a firm ownership. She might have kept her composure had he not moved his hand down to her knee during the main course and gradually worked her dress up her thigh. She flashed him a look full of daggers, but he went innocently on talking to Dana as if he wasn’t seducing her at a table of twelve diners.
And really? Did she want him to stop? She swallowed hard as he slid his palm between her thighs and worked them apart. Her muscles gave way of their own volition, trembling in low-grade anticipation as his calloused fingers scraped against her skin. It seemed difficult to pull air into her lungs, to maintain even the simplest of conversations with heat descending over her in waves.
She put her silverware down on her plate, laying it neatly across the china as if to signify the discipline to stop. “Coburn,” she murmured in his ear. “No.”
“Sound more convincing,” he rasped back, “and I will.”
She couldn’t do it. His thumb dipped into the heat at the core of her, his swift intake of breath telling her he’d discovered just how aroused she was.
Oh. My. God. She attempted to coherently answer Dana’s question about a jewelry boutique in New York her hostess couldn’t remember the name of while Coburn’s thumb found the honeyed, delicate nub at her center and rocked against it. Her breath seized in her throat, her hand fisting on the table.
Somehow the name of the store popped into her head. She told Dana, who pulled out her smartphone to make a note of it. Coburn’s caress deepened, quickened. She clenched her thighs around his hand, her mind warring with her body. She could not let him do this here. She could not.
She slipped her hand under the table, closed her fingers around his and squeezed. His fiery blue gaze met hers, and for a moment she was lost. He was as gone as she was.
His hand slipped away from her skin. Her constricted chest eased, oxygen making its way back into her lungs. Coburn tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear and leaned in close. “You are so ready for me, baby,” he murmured. “Do not expect me to hold back.”
Her nervous system short-circuited. She ignored the unabashedly curious looks the blonde threw in her direction and focused on breathing. She took absolutely nothing in as their dinner plates were removed and dessert and coffee were served. The anticipation simmering in her veins was of the all-consuming variety.
Arthur had just asked the table if anyone would like a refill on the nightcap when a bundle of small boy appeared on the terrace in his pajamas and threw himself at his father. Maciah, Arthur’s nine-year-old son, babbled some incoherent words to Arthur, bringing the entire table to a halt.
She thought it was a night terror at first. The little boy’s eyes were wide and he was hyperventilating, trying to pull air in. His father pulled him onto his lap, smoothed his hair and told him to take deep breaths.
Maciah’s small chest inhaled and exhaled. “James is hurt,” he sobbed.
His father frowned. “He’s in bed.”
The little boy took another deep breath, his voice shaky as it tumbled out. “We wanted to have some fun, too, so we decided to build a fort on the cliff. Only James fell and hurt himself.”
The internet CEO’s wife gasped. Diana sat up in her chair. Arthur took his son’s face in his hands. “James is on the cliff?”
“Y-yes. Daddy, there’s all sorts of blood.”
Diana was on her feet. “Call an air ambulance,” she instructed Dana. She flicked her gaze to Maciah. “Can you show Daddy and I where James is?”
He nodded and slipped off his father’s lap. They raced outside and over to the edge of the cliff in front of the house, which was bounded by a tall fence. Maciah slipped through an opening she hadn’t seen. Diana followed, Arthur and Coburn behind her. Her heart lurched as Maciah pointed to a jagged ledge about five feet down from the edge, the sheer face of rock beneath it terrifyingly steep. James was lying on the ledge, barely visible in the darkness, his ragged sobs piercing the night air.
“We need light,” she said tersely. Someone ran up to the villa and came back with a flashlight. She shone it down on the ledge, her pulse accelerating at the awkward angle the boy’s leg lay at, but more so because of the amount of blood spurting from it. He had ruptured an artery.
“Is the ledge steady?” she asked Maciah.
He nodded. Coburn cursed. “You don’t know if it will take your weight.”
“We’re about to find out.”
He caught her hand in his. “I’m going down first. If it’s stable you can come down.”
“Coburn—”
“Nonnegotiable.”
She held her breath as her husband levered himself over the edge of the cliff and down onto the ledge with the stealth of a man who had climbed some of the world’s biggest peaks. Arthur looked as if he was in shock, his face white as Coburn stood up gingerly, testing the steadiness of the rock.
“It’ll take both of us.”
She sat on the edge of the cliff, turned and eased herself down, Coburn spotting her with a hand to her back. She knelt beside the gray-faced little boy, forcing herself to ignore how high they were over the rocky shore. Using her fingertips, she found the source of the bleed and pressed down hard to stem the flow. It was the femoral artery. A major one. Not good.
“Take off your shirt,” she ordered Coburn. “I need to bind the wound.”
When he didn’t respond immediately, she flicked her gaze up to him. He was staring at all the blood. “Coburn,” she bit out under her breath, “I need binding material now.”
Her husband emerged from his trance, tearing his shirt down the front. He shrugged it off and started ripping it in strips. She grabbed the first one and bound it around the little boy’s thigh to stop the bleed. An agonized cry escaped James. “More,” she ordered Coburn. “Give me as many as you’ve got.”
She glanced at the little boy’s chalk-white face, worried he was going to go into shock. “James,” she said softly, “did you know I’m a doctor? That I put people back together again?”
His lips trembled but he didn’t acknowledge her. “So you’ve hurt your leg,” she told him gently. “It isn’t anything we can’t fix. We just need to get you to a hospital so we can do that. You’ll get to ride in a helicopter. Won’t that be fun?”
His weak nod was a good sign. She reached for the strips Coburn handed her. “I’m going to tie your two legs together to stop them from hurting so much. Can you be brave for me?”
He nodded on a little sob. She set her jaw, knowing it was going to be painful for him, and went to work. It was her job to be immune to the little boy’s tears, but his terrified wails as she stabilized his broken leg against the other tore at her heart. They were hundreds of yards above a rocky shore. His leg had been spouting a waterfall of blood. She got it.
She secured James’s legs. Coburn climbed up on the cliff so Arthur could come down and talk to James with her until they heard the whir of the helicopter blades. She climbed up on the cliff then, so the ambulance crew could get the little boy on a stretcher and pass him up onto solid ground.
It wasn’t until everyone was securely on firm ground and James was being loaded into the ambulance that her knees buckled. Coburn caught her, sliding an arm around her waist.
“I’m terrified of heights.”
“I know.”
The raw emotion in his gaze brought tears dangerously close to the surface.
“You are insanely brave, Diana Grant.”
She didn’t feel brave. She felt very close to the edge, too much emotion attacking her from every direction.
The ambulance crew secured James. Arthur stepped into the back to go with them. Coburn bundled her into the car and drove down the mountain. Diana looked out the window and thought about what could have happened. That little boy could have taken a wrong step and...
“It didn’t happen.” Coburn flicked her a sideways glance. “You can’t live your life in what-ifs.”
“Is that what you think I do?” she asked quietly.
“Until you decided to drop yourself into war-torn Africa, yes. That was a departure.”
It had been. She sat in the car when they pulled into the driveway of the cottage, in a complete state of inertia. Coburn opened the door and reached down to scoop her out of the seat. She didn’t argue, merely rested her head on his chest as he let them into the cottage, carried her upstairs and deposited her on the floor of his suite’s bathroom while he turned on the steam shower. She looked down at her dress. It was so stained with blood it might as well have been red, not blue.
She reached around to unzip her dress, but her hands were shaking too hard to accomplish the task. Coburn moved behind her and brushed her hands out of the way. The whisper-soft touch of his lips against the sensitive skin between her neck and shoulder sent a shiver down her spine. “You were a goddamned superhero tonight.”
She shook her head. “It’s my job.”
The rasp of her zipper raked across her heightened senses. “It’s not your job to walk out on ledges when you’re terrified of heights to save a little boy. You didn’t even blink.”
Another shudder vibrated through her. “I was so terrified something would happen and we would plunge into the water.”
“But it didn’t stop you.” He pushed her dress off her shoulders, his hands coming up to cup her breasts while his mouth returned to that spot that drove her crazy. “I have never been so proud of anything or anyone than I was of you tonight.”
Her heart squeezed. “I have skills, Coburn. I need to be using them.”
“I know that.” He pressed his fingers into her shoulders and turned her around. “I have continually underplayed your job. I’ve never fully understood until tonight when I saw you with James how amazing what you do is.”
Something that felt a lot like hope sprang to life inside her. Maybe this could work between them. Maybe they could change. Maybe she just needed to stop thinking, stop analyzing as she always did and follow her heart. Give them a chance.
Coburn unhooked her bra and tossed it to the floor. His heated gaze roamed over her swollen flesh, the greedy edge to it making her insides quiver.
“I swear to God that scene at the dinner table nearly set me off,” he muttered, sliding his thumbs over the partially puckered peaks of her breasts to bring them to aching erectness. “You should have let me finish it.”
Fire raced through her veins. “That was not happening.”
“Now it is,” he murmured in her ear. “Get in the shower, Diana.”
She stepped into the shower, her jellylike legs barely holding her in the wake of his softly issued promise. The hot, heavenly spray poured down over her as Coburn stripped off his bloody clothes. She turned into the jets, letting the hot steam take her, washing away the nightmare of the past two hours.
Coburn stepped in behind her, the huge steam shower more than large enough for both of them. In fact she thought it might have been designed with half a dozen people in mind. But her husband wasn’t keeping his distance. He washed himself quickly, then picked up the lemon-scented soap and started working on her. His hands built a lather down her back, over the curve of her buttocks, which he lavished with an inordinate amount of attention, and then the length of her legs.
He stayed kneeling at her feet as he nudged her to turn around. Then he ran the bar of soap over her calf, up her thigh and repeated the pattern on her other leg. When he cupped her between the legs, ostensibly to spread the lather there, his big palm squeezing her sensitized flesh, she moaned and leaned back against the wall. He stood and tossed the soap on the ledge, his muscular, powerful body pressing her harder into the tiles. His fingers wound themselves in her wet hair, his mouth claiming hers as he brought his hand between her thighs again, this time to claim her with the slick invasion of his fingers. She moved her hips against his hand, reveling in the pleasure he gave her with every smooth slide of his powerful fingers. The pressure built, and soon she was begging, pleading for release in incoherent little sentences. His mouth stilled on hers, his breathing rough against the hiss of the spray.
“I need to taste you, baby.” His sexy rasp stoked the fire inside her, his eyes spearing hers as he drew back to look at her, a barely restrained hunger in his gaze. “Your sweetness...how I make you feel. It was all I could think about tonight touching you.”
Her legs threatened to buckle. Coburn reached past her, shut the shower off and found a towel to wrap her in. She gave her wet hair a quick rub before he lifted her up, walked through to the bedroom and deposited her on the huge king-size bed. She felt like the prey of some large jungle animal as he joined her, intent written in his midnight blue eyes. Her stomach curled in on itself as he curved his palms under her thighs, bent her knees back and exposed her to the heat of his gaze.
She closed her eyes. It was too intense, all of it, to bear. She wasn’t sure what was more erotic, how much she loved it when he did this to her or how much he enjoyed doing it.
The first slide of his tongue against her most sensitive flesh shattered any remnants of numbness, her body a desperate instrument for him to play. She arched against him, seeking, wanting more. He gave it to her with hot strokes of his tongue that laved her, devoured her, until every nerve ending in her body was centered between her legs, focused on what he was doing to her.
He wrapped her legs over his shoulders and delved deeper. She screamed; she couldn’t help herself. His fingers bit tighter into her hips to hold her where he wanted her. “That’s it, sweetheart. Give yourself to me. You taste so insanely good.”
She buried her fingers in his wet hair to anchor herself as he shifted his focus to the delicate little nub at the heart of her. He slid fingers back inside her at the same time his tongue lashed over her clitoris with deadly intent. She arched into him, focusing on the release he could give her. When he pressed his fingers into her stomach and took her over the edge, her hoarse cry reverberated in her ears. The white-hot pleasure that radiated from her center to every nerve ending licked her up like an all-consuming flame.
“Oh, God,” she murmured as the aftershocks of her orgasm racked her core, her hands fisting the comforter.
Coburn crawled up her body, his arms caging her on each side, a wicked grin on his face. “At your service...”
Her cheeks fired. “As if.”
He brought his mouth down on hers, his erotic kiss exploring every inch of her mouth, blending the taste of her, of him, of the passion they shared. Her heart stuttered in her chest. The intimacy of it was blinding.
He lifted his mouth from hers and rolled onto his side. “Touch me,” he told her harshly, his gaze locking with hers. “Feel how badly you make me want you.”
She turned and focused on the fully erect length of him, brushing against the hard muscles of his abdomen. He made her mouth dry with anticipation as she curled her fingers around him, his silk-over-steel texture reminding her how good he felt inside her. And this time she got to enjoy him without a condom for the first time ever, no barrier at all between her and his magnificent virility.
The barely leashed impatience written across the hard bones of his face dissolved on a low growl as he pulled her hand away. He pushed her onto her back, then dragged her against him so his powerful body spooned hers. Her heart stuttered in her chest. He loved this position. Loved to talk to her as he made her crazy.
She relaxed her limbs, allowing him to push her top leg forward to give him the access he needed. The crown of his thick shaft pressed against her slick flesh, promising extreme pleasure.
“Tell me,” he rasped in her ear. “Tell me you want me...”
She did because all week she’d been fighting this. Fighting the forces inside her that knew only Coburn could make her feel whole.
His fingers tightened on her buttocks as he sank into her, one glorious inch at a time, allowing her body to adjust to his size, his girth. She wished she could see him, see his eyes as he took her, but he was in complete control, capturing the delicate flesh of her earlobe between sharp incisors as he stroked his way inside her until he was buried to the hilt.
“I love the way you take me,” he murmured huskily as she gasped with the fullness of his invasion. “So tight, baby. So perfectly made for me. Nothing was ever so perfect.”
His words soothed her battered psyche. She reached back to touch his face. “I want to see you.”
He ignored the request, withdrawing from her and entering again with a deep, hard stroke. His breath at her ear came quicker now, a roughness to it that said he was fast losing his grip on that ironclad control. She felt him everywhere in this position, touching every nerve ending, firing every synapse she had until her body clenched around his, begging in silent invitation.
“Coburn...I need to see you.”
He pulled out of her and rolled onto his back, tugging her astride him. His eyes were the darkest blue she’d ever seen them as he looked up at her, inviting her to consume him as he had consumed her.
She took him in her hand and guided him inside her, sinking down on the rigid column of flesh. Her breath whooshed from her lungs as she absorbed all of him. He was sinewy, beautiful muscle beneath her, hers for the taking. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted his soul. She wanted to know he was hers.
She ran a thumb across his beautiful mouth. “You wouldn’t kiss me that night.”
“It was your punishment.”
She lowered her mouth to his. “Do it now.”
He curved his palm around the back of her head and took her mouth in a scorching kiss that penetrated every layer she had until she was his and he was hers and nothing existed except the two of them and what they created together. Magic. Endless, sublime magic.
She lifted her mouth from his to circle her hips around his pulsing flesh, indulging herself with every hard inch of him. His flesh throbbed and swelled inside her, even larger if that was possible. She leaned forward and let the friction of her body rubbing against his take her close to orgasm. And then there was only Coburn and the pleasure he gave her. How treasured he made her feel when they were together like this.
Her eyes latched on to his luminous blue ones. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted raggedly. “I’ve missed this.”
He reached up to brush his thumb across her cheek, his fingers sliding down to cup her jaw. “Climb into me, baby. I’ve got you.”
It was hypnotic, the glitter in his eyes as he unleashed himself and drove up inside her, his hands on her buttocks holding her steady. She couldn’t take her eyes off his as she drank in the harsh edge to his breath, the ripple of muscle in his biceps as he held her above him. She let herself fall completely then, because in her heart she knew he had her.
When she was so close to a second orgasm but frustratingly not able to attain it, he moved his thumb between her legs to find her clitoris, his slick rubs across the tiny peak making her whimper.
She moaned her approval, squeezing her eyes shut as he methodically took her apart. The clench of her body around his ripped an oath from his throat as he throbbed inside her, then joined her, spilling his mark of ownership deep within her.
It was so different, so vastly intimate to have a piece of him inside her like this; it sent a sated, liquid warmth through her entire body. She snuggled into him when he turned off the light and curved her against his side. But her glow faded when he dropped off to sleep almost immediately. No low murmurs of love as he’d once whispered in her ear to put her to sleep, just the furnace-like warmth of his body to comfort her.
It was a vivid reminder they were together only because of this baby. That this was what living with only half of him would be like. She’d had a taste of it now, and it was even worse than she’d thought it would be.
