by Lucy Monroe
"Okay," she said when she had it open.
He lifted up until he was kneeling above her and she gently rolled the condom in place.
His head fell back at the touch and he groaned. "Aw, honey. That feels so good. It's been so long. Too damn long."
"How long?"
His head snapped back up at the question and he met her eyes, her gaze wary. She was scared of his answer. He could see it in her eyes.
He smiled with as much reassurance as he could muster with his flesh ready to explode. "Eighteen long, lonely months, baby."
She gasped in shock, but he wasn't up to discussing his celibacy at the moment. Moving his body back over her, he took her just the way he'd been longing to do, with one smooth thrust. She gasped again and he tensed.
"Did I hurt you?" It cost a lot just to ask the question.
"No. It's just a little tight, that's all. You're a big man, Marcus."
He would have laughed at that boost to his masculine ego, but he didn't have the breath. He lowered his mouth and took hungry possession of her lips while he thrust his body into hers in one pounding drive after another. When she came again, her body contracting boa constrictor fashion around him, he exploded inside her with mind-blowing intensity. Then, he collapsed on top of her, his muscles no longer able to bear the weight of his body.
He vaguely thought he was probably crushing her, but she didn't seem to mind. Not if the stranglehold she had around his neck was any indication.
Tears ran wet and warm down her temples and into her hair, as Veronica lay crushed under Marcus's welcome weight. Common sense made a bid to reassert itself and tell her what a stupid thing she had just done, but her emotions and her body weren't listening. They felt sated for the first time in so long that she didn't want to think what she'd just experienced could have been anything less than the best choice she could have made.
He lifted his head and wiped at his own cheek, then touched her temple. The light from the doorway cast his face in shadow and she could not read its expression.
"You said I didn't hurt you." His voice washed over her with masculine concern.
She shook her head against the pillow, unable to speak at first. She blinked, stemming the flow of tears. "You didn't."
"Then why are you crying?"
"I missed you."' The words were bald, but the truth.
She had spent eighteen months away from him, and not one day of that had gone by that she hadn't physically ached for his presence.
"You left me." He didn't sound accusatory. He didn't even sound angry. He sounded bewildered. "Why?"
"I didn't think I had a choice."
"You didn't trust me."
"I didn't know you." How could you trust a man you didn't know, particularly a man who had told you that all he had to give you was sex?
He shifted and she could feel his still semierect flesh move inside of her. "How can you say that? You knew me more intimately than any woman ever had."
She stared at him, bemused. Did he truly believe that? "Marcus, I don't even know your parents' names, if they are alive or dead, if you have siblings. You hide all the intimate details of yourself behind your atrocious sense of humor and overwhelming sensuality."
A sensuality that had given her the courage to strip naked and wait for him in bed although he'd taken long enough "saving the steaks" that she would have been excused for believing he'd had second thoughts.
He kissed the corner of her mouth and moved his hips again, and the semi state of his erection altered to a much more solid reality. She murmured in protest when he withdrew from her body, but the sound died in her throat when he opened the nightstand drawer again and went about changing condoms with swift efficiency.
He came back to her, pushing her thighs apart to enter her once again, this time inch by leisurely inch.
He smiled with sensual promise into her eyes. "My mother's name is Sharon and my father's name is Lionel Marcus Danvers the fourth."
She sucked in her breath and ground her hips in a circular motion against him. 'Tell me later…"
Then she was lost once again in the whirlwind that always carried her away when he touched her. His thrusts were agonizingly slow and overwhelmingly deep. He kissed and caressed her until she panted with her need for fulfillment and then he gave it to her in a series of hard, body-jarring thrusts until her mind splintered and her body convulsed in wave after wave of sensual release.
She dozed after that. She didn't know how long, but when she woke up, the bedside lamp was on. Marcus sat next to where she lay on the bed, wearing a pair of black knit boxers and nothing else. She scooted into a sitting position, dragging the sheet with her, so that it covered her chest.
He helped by pulling the pillows into place behind her to support her back and then smiled and winked, giving the sheet a significant look. "Good idea. If you don't keep yourself covered, I think we'll miss dinner again."
He picked up a tray from the nightstand and put it between them on the bed. Dinner. The smell of grilled steak and the tangy odor of Italian dressing made her stomach rumble with hunger pangs.
His brow rose mockingly. "Worked up an appetite, did you?"
She blushed and nodded just before he fed her a bite of her salad. Dressing clung to her lips and she flicked her tongue out to lick it off. His eyes dilated with remembered desire and she felt warmth unfurl inside her.
It didn't matter how many times they made love; she would always want more. Her love and need for this man were insatiable. She would have pushed aside the dinner if the experience of being fed weren't so enjoyable in its own right.
She was chewing a bite of well-done steak when he said, "I have a half brother and a half sister, neither of whom are particularly fond of me."
Swallowing hastily, she asked, "What?"
Still disoriented from sleep and the drugging desire he sparked in her, she didn't understand what he was telling her at first and then it clicked. His family. "What are their names?"
"Lionel Marcus Danvers the fifth and Patricia."
"Your brother must be older than you."
"Yes, by several years."
"And your sister?" She still couldn't quite grasp that he was telling her about his family.
He'd always been so closemouthed on the subject, acting as if talking about his family ties was tantamount to sharing state secrets.
"She's older as well."
"So, you're the baby. Is that why they don't like you? Did your parents spoil you rotten?" She smiled when she asked the question, reaching out to caress the line of his jaw.
His eyes did not reflect her gentle amusement. "No."
She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. He seemed to be waiting for her to ask him more questions, so she did. "Isn't it awfully confusing to have so many males in your family with similar names? I mean, I assume your father goes by Lionel. What do they call your brother? Junior?"
He did laugh at that, a deep, rich chuckle. "Lionel would have a fit if anyone called him by such an undignified title."
"Lionel?"
"My father is called Mark."
So, his mother, clearly the second wife because his siblings were only half relations, had claimed a place on the family tree for Marcus by giving him his father's middle name. "I still think it must get confusing."
"Since I'm rarely there, it isn't a problem."
"You told Sandy that you had been home to see them recently. Some kind of family emergency," she probed.
"Mark had a heart attack. My mother needed my support."
"Mark?" Now she was confused. She thoughtMark was his dad.
"My father."
"You call your father by his first name?"
"Actually, I address him as little as possible."
Dinner forgotten, she stared at the stark lines of his face. "But why?"
He didn't answer and after several seconds of complete silence, she convinced herself he wasn't going to.
She turned her h
ead away, hurt and yet not surprised. "None of my business. I know. A casual bed partner doesn't rate discussion of the intricate relationships within your family."
Marcus grabbed her shoulders. "You're more than a casual bed partner, damn it. You always were."
"Is that why you told me not to get sex and love confused the first time we were together?"
She couldn't fathom why he wanted to rewrite their history, maybe to make their separation all her fault, but she wasn't having it. She carried enough guilt without taking responsibility for their lack of true intimacy as well.
"That's all it was—at first."
She knew that. She reallyknew that, but it still hurt to hear him say it.
"But everything changed. I started wanting you to spend the night, but you never would. I was thinking about asking you to move in with me and then you left. Without saying good-bye."
The pain and confusion in his voice so closely matched her own, and she turned her head to meet his gaze. His eyes were dark with emotion and fixed on her in almost desperate intensity.
"I'm sorry I didn't say good-bye."
"I'm sorrier you left."
"I explained why I had to go."
He nodded. "Now, I guess it's my turn to explain, huh?"
"Only if you want to."
"My mother was Mark's mistress for fifteen years. They'd been together a little over a year when she got pregnant. I think she believed he would leave his society wife and make their relationship permanent. It didn't happen that way. He moved her to another small town nearby and provided for us financially, but he refused to divorce his wife. He didn't believe in divorce and then there was the social stigma attached to it as well. He wasn't willing to put his other two children through it."
She felt her insides tighten in response to the pain Marcus must have experienced as a child and the bitterness she could still hear in his voice. "Did he ever come to see you?"
"Twice a week."
Then she remembered him saying that his mother had been his father's mistress for fifteen years. "They had an affair forfifteen years?"
She couldn't fathom something like that. It sounded so sordid, so pointless. She wondered if living it had felt the same way for Marcus.
"Yes," he said, in answer to her question. "When I was little, I didn't understand why my dad only lived with us two evenings a week. Why he never stayed over. My mom left him once, when I was about five. I remember begging her to take us back to my daddy and how she cried."
"She took you back?"
"Yes. She left again when I was ten. By then, I understood that I wasn't legitimate, that my dad belonged to a couple of other kids first."
"She went back again?" Veronica was trying to understand.
"Mark hired a private investigator to find us. He showed up one day and took us back. I didn't want to go. In my new school, I wasn't somebody's bastard son; I was just me. Mom had moved us to
Seattle and things were different. No one cared about our past."
"But your parents are married now."
"Mark's wife died when I was twelve. He waited a year for decency's sake after her death and then he married my mom. My older brother and sister were already away at college. He thought the three of us could play happy family."
"It didn't work?" But then, how could it?
A man with Marcus's immense sense of compassion would despise the man who had hurt his mother so much and his pride would be unwilling to forgive the stigma of being the slighted son, the one who only had his father two nights a week.
"No."
Cold dread poured through her at the prospect of telling Marcus about his own son. After hearing his parents' background, she didn't think he was going to take too well to discovering that she had given birth to his son without the benefit of marriage or even telling him about it.
She took a deep breath. "Marcus, there's something I need to tell you."
Chapter Twelve
Marcus felt every muscle in his body tense at Ronnie's words. She'd told him she had something she needed to tell him yesterday morning, but he had refused to listen.
Out of fear.
He might as well admit it. He didn't want to know she was guilty of selling company secrets again. And he couldn't fool himself anymore into believing her confidences had anything to do with his attempt to blackmail her into his bed.
They'd dealt with that.
But now, he realized he'd rather hear the truth and get it over with. Somehow he had to protect her from the consequences of her actions. He didn't know how he would succeed completely, but he had a suspicion that if they took it straight to Kline and she confessed her guilt, the older man would be reasonable.
Particularly if Ronnie told him about what she'd been through with Jenny since their parents' deaths. It would take a rock to remain condemning in the face of the choices she'd had.
He moved the tray with dinner onto the floor and then met her gaze squarely. She looked wary, but determined.
He bit back a sigh. Hell. He wanted to build a future with a woman who sold her loyalty to the highest bidder. It didn't make him feel like the brightest spark at the bonfire.
"Okay, Ronnie. Let's hear it." If his voice sounded resigned and slightly bitter, he could be excused.
She jerked back, her gaze veiling, her mouth thinning.
She took a deep breath and let her eyes focus somewhere to the left of his shoulder. "This isn't easy. I'm not sure where to begin or how to say it."
'The truth would be nice, though I realize that might be a tough one for you." He hadn't meant to let his bitterness spill over into his speech.
He felt like cursing at the way her face drained of color.
"Yes. Well, it's not really a matter of having lied to youper se . It's more a matter of not having told you something. Something pretty important."
Her rambling explanation wasn't making him feel any more charitable. He had damn well figured out that part. It wasn't as if he'd come right out and asked her if she was guilty of espionage again. No. She hadn't lied. To him.
"Spit it out," he ordered, his voice harsh.
He just wanted this part over so they could start picking up the pieces.
She swung her gaze back to him and glared.
"You don't have to be so impatient. This isn't easy for me."
He glared right back, doubly irritated because her look of censure was turning him on for some inexplicable reason—maybe just the male chromosome's natural inclination to solve a dispute between him and his woman with physical pleasure and intimacy. It was a primitive response and he'd heard women didn't think it worked. He wasn't so sure. He was more than willing to give it a try… after she told him the truth.
He waited, trying to be patient, feeling more frustrated as every second of silence ticked by, and he came close to blurting out the truth for her, just to get it over with.
"Marcus, I—"
The phone rang. Shrill and unwelcome. She stopped speaking.
He frowned. "Ignore it. Finish what you were saying."
She shook her head. "No. Please. I gave Jenny your number in case she needed anything."
Unwilling understanding of her concern for her once very ill sister warred with his irritation at the interruption. "I doubt very sincerely your sister is going to call."
The phone rang a third time.
Ronnie's eyes turned pleading. "Please, Marcus."
He picked up the white receiver from beside the bed, his movements jerky with tension. "Marcus here."
"Hello, Mr. Danvers. This is Jenny Richards. Is my sister still there?"
Looking at the naked woman who seemed to be shrinking against the pillows propped behind her, he sighed incredulously. "Yes."
He shoved the phone toward Ronnie. "Your sister."
Her eyes widened in panic for a fleeting second before she masked her expression. "Jen?"
Her sister said something.
"No. It's all right. Don't worry abo
ut it. He doesn't mind." She shot Marcus another pleading glance and he took the hint.
Picking up the dinner tray, he left the room.
Veronica felt a twinge of shame at the relief she felt at both the interruption of the phone and Marcus's willingness to leave the room. He wouldn't have had to go anywhere if she'd told him about Aaron immediately upon arrival, as she'd planned. She would have been able to speak freely in front of him, but somehow the words simply would not come. She didn't know an easy way to tell her ex-lover that they had a child together.
