by Lynne, Donya
This was it. No more hiding. No more secrets. No more going back.
It was time for him to take his rightful place by Karma’s side.
Chapter 31
Karma groaned from sleep as the ringer on her phone cut off. Who the hell would be calling her at…she checked the clock…almost one in the morning. Most likely a wrong number. She got wrong-number-drunk-dialed in the wee hours of night once in a while.
She rolled back over and closed her eyes.
Knock-knock-knock!
Her eyes fluttered open. Was someone knocking on her door?
Knock-knock!
She sat up, suddenly on high alert, and clicked on her bedside lamp. She’d heard horror stories about women who answered their doors at night only to be raped or mugged…or murdered.
Climbing out of bed, wearing nothing but a pair of flannel pajamas, she tiptoed into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and then darted quietly to the door just as another insistent knock startled her.
Then her phone began ringing again from the bedroom.
What the hell was going on?
She stuck her eye up to the peephole and caught her breath. It was Mark. He had his phone to his ear, and his hair was sticking out in all directions like he’d spent the last twelve hours running his fingers through it.
“Come on. Pick up.”
She could just make out what he said from behind the door.
Taking a step back, she set the knife on the window ledge and unlatched the deadbolt.
When she opened the door, he lowered his phone.
He looked a mess. His hair was trying to imitate Einstein’s up-do on a bad day, his eyes were bloodshot, and his tuxedo was a wrinkled nightmare. His tie hung limply around an open collar. What the hell had Mark gone through to get there? A stampede of elephants?
She crossed her arms, not about to give in. “What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?” His voice sounded worse for wear, hoarse and gravelly.
Barely holding her emotions in check, she stepped aside and warily waved him inside.
He set his suitcase next to the couch as she closed the door. Then he turned and disappeared into her kitchen. Okay, that was odd. What the heck was he doing? The light flicked on as she remained in the living room. She heard a quiet rustle.
“There it is,” he said softly.
A moment later, the light turned off. He reappeared and crossed the room toward her. He held a small slip of paper in his extended hand.
“What’s this?” She took it and read.
Karma,
I didn’t want to wake you.
Thank you for tonight.
Have to go. Will call you.
M
When she looked back up at him, he glanced down at the note and gestured. “I didn’t want you to think I left Friday night without saying good-bye.”
“Oh.” She nibbled the inside of her bottom lip.
How had he known she had thought he’d walked out on her? She felt like she was watching a TV show that was part of a series and she hadn’t seen one of the earlier episodes.
Despite her wariness, an expectant excitement hummed down her spine, but she didn’t dare hope his arrival at such an insane hour meant anything important, but she couldn’t deny the bubble of hope that it did. Had he gotten the personnel report and, in a panic, returned to Indianapolis? If that was the case, what exactly did that mean? That he loved her? That she’d been wrong about him?
Clearing her throat and squaring her shoulders, she set the note aside and crossed her arms again. She couldn’t let him affect her like this. She needed to show him she no longer needed him.
“It’s late, Mark. Why are you here?”
He frowned and dropped his gaze to the floor before closing his eyes. He seemed to be wrestling with something she couldn’t see. His inner demons, maybe. Then he lifted his head and opened his eyes again. When he did, raw anguish burned into her.
“Don’t leave me.” The heartbreak in his whispered words nearly crushed her. “Please don’t leave me.”
She took a step backward as if his words had nudged her. In a way, they had, because he had it backward. She hadn’t left him. He’d left her. He’d done it twice. Once over a year ago then again Friday night.
“Mark, you left me.” Quiet agony laced her whispered words.
He took a step toward her, and she backed away another fraction of a step. His gaze beseeched hers, pleading an unspoken yearning. “Please don’t go. I can’t lose you again.”
Her retreat came to a sudden halt as her brow screwed into a knot. What was he saying? He wasn’t making sense. “Mark…I—”
“I love you.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “I’ve always loved you. I just never knew how to say it.” His gaze devoured her face as he took another small step toward her and pressed his palm to her cheek. “I can’t live without you. I can’t, Karma. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. You’re everything.” Turmoil and primal honesty shone from his dark eyes. “That’s why I came to Indianapolis. That’s why I took the job at Solar. It was the sign I’d been asking for. For almost ten months, all I’d wanted was a sign that we were meant to be together, and when Don offered me that job, I knew that was it. That’s why you can’t go to St. Louis. Because I came here to be with you. You. Don’t you understand?”
Karma couldn’t think. She couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. Mark’s staggering declarations flooded her senses, making it impossible for her to digest any of it. Was he saying that all this time he’d been in love with her and hadn’t told her? That he’d let her suffer for months when all along he’d wanted nothing more than to be with her again? Why would he make her endure that? Why would he leave her to bear the weight of his absence alone? He hadn’t even called. Just hearing his voice would have helped, but he hadn’t even given her that.
Tears stung her eyes, but she wasn’t sure if they were tears of joy or anger. Maybe both.
“Did you hear me?” Mark’s hand pressed more firmly against her cheek, his fingers pushing into her hair. “I love you. I want you.” His eyebrows dug inward toward the bridge of his nose as he gazed heavily into her eyes. “I need you.”
A year of heartache, frustration, sadness, confusion, anger, and so much more pushed its way up Karma’s spine like rising lava. “All this time…?” Tears dropped from her eyes. “All this time you’ve loved me and didn’t tell me?” She pushed against his chest. “You left me here all alone thinking I meant nothing to you?” Her voice rose, and she pushed him again, harder this time. Like a brick wall, he didn’t budge, and that just made her angrier. “How do you think I felt after you left, Mark?” Tears gushed down her face, but she didn’t care. “How do you think I feel now?” She wasn’t sure if the ache in her chest was because her heart was breaking all over again or mending together with such ferocity that it created physical pain.
“I love you.”
“Stop saying that.” She swatted his chest again, but he wrapped his arms around her and refused to let go.
“I…love…you.” His tear-filled gaze drilled into hers.
“Damn you!” She beat his chest with weak fists. “Damn you, Mark!” She thrashed, trying to worm out of his embrace, sobbing.
He pulled her more securely against him. “I love you,” he whispered against her ear.
The fight drained out of her, and she wilted and hung her head, her hair spilling over the sides of her face. Surrendering, she leaned into him, pressed her face against his solid, warm chest, and bawled heavy, ugly sobs. The tears came hard and fast, and she clung desperately to his tuxedo jacket, gripping the fabric inside her fists.
A year’s worth of emotional cleansing flooded her system for several gut-wrenching minutes as she tried to process what had just happened. Mark stood solid, holding her, caressing her back, kissing her hair, letting her expend herself. When the tears stopped coming, and only the aftershocks of her tumultuous emotions remained, he loosened hi
s embrace and brushed his hand over her hair.
“I love you,” he said again, speaking against the top of her head. His breath warmed her scalp.
Feeling lighter than she had in over a year, Karma lifted her head, sniffled, and stared into his eyes. The last vestiges of resistance swept away like mist on the wind. “I love you, too.”
For a heartbeat, their gazes locked, and pure love flowed unabashedly between them. Then his lips crashed down on hers, and she sobbed against his mouth as naked honesty ripped her open and stripped her bare.
“Don’t leave me.” She sounded like she was begging. “Please don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t.” He lifted her off the floor and cradled her against his body as he carried her down the hall to the bedroom.
All she could do was press her face against his chest and wrap her arms around his neck. Everything was different now. This was a side of Mark she’d never seen. He was a changed man. No longer the master of control, he seemed to have given in to something larger than himself. He seemed like a man fighting for what he wanted, ready to expose his heart and soul.
He placed her on the bed and shrugged out of his jacket, determination making him regal, his shoulders squared, his chin high. No longer did he look like a mad scientist, but a man lost to passion, driven to claim what he knew rightfully belonged to him.
And she did belong to him. For months she’d tried to deny it, but truth had found her, and it was good to be found.
Without tearing his gaze from hers, he tugged the tie from around his neck and tossed it aside, removed his shimmering Jacquard vest, then began unfastening the buttons of his shirt.
His intent was clear. Tonight, he would make love to her. Truly make love to her. Heart open, soul bared, nothing but honesty and devotion between them. There were no more lies. She wasn’t hiding from him or the truth, and neither was he. That much was clear.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she gazed up at the powerful, masculine body that now belonged to her. The enormity of that realization made tears spring to her eyes again.
“Is this really happening?” she whispered.
He knelt in front of her, lifted her hands from her lap, and placed them on his chest. Her right palm lay against his circular tattoo, the meaning of which she still didn’t know.
With a subtle nod, he grinned. “Yes, it’s really happening. Feel me. Feel my heart beat.”
She pressed her hand more firmly against his warm, solid chest. The strong pounding of his heart thumped against her palm.
“That’s for you,” he said. “Every beat of my heart from this day forward is for you.”
She stroked her fingers through the soft waves of hair that arced toward his sternum. “When did you get so romantic?”
His fingers pushed up the sides of her thighs. “Since the moment I realized what an idiot I was to return to Chicago without you.” He pushed her knees apart and situated himself between them.
“You were an idiot.” She ran the backs of her fingers down the stubble on his chin.
The corners of his mouth lifted. “You’ve no idea.” He pushed forward and locked his lips to hers at the same time he pushed his hands under her pajama top.
* * *
Idiot didn’t begin to cover his blundering behavior over the last fourteen months. But he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Lifting her top over her head, Mark’s gaze dropped to her fair-skinned breasts. At one time, she’d been self-conscious about letting him see her naked, but, to him, she was perfect and beautiful. She moaned as he took one pale-pink nipple into his mouth and rolled it against his tongue. It instantly hardened into a tiny pebble, and she leaned back on one arm, her other hand driving into the hair on the back of his head as if she wanted to hold him in place. She needn’t worry. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was where he wanted to be.
He trailed his tongue across her flesh to her other breast, swirled it around her nipple, and then closed his lips to feast once more. She sighed, and he looked up through his lashes as her head fell back, opening her neck to him.
Not one to refuse such an offering, he rose on his knees and left a trail of kisses from her ear, down the side of her neck, and between her breasts to her stomach as he eased her down to the mattress. Her legs encircled his back.
There were so many things he wanted to tell her. So many admissions about what he’d gone through since he’d left, all the unsent text messages he’d written and deleted. But right now, all he wanted was to love her. Really love her.
Admiring the vision of her naked torso and pert breasts, he tugged on the waist of her pajama bottoms, dragging them down her legs, leaving her in nothing more than an innocent-looking pair of white cotton panties. He loved seeing her in white. So pure. Angelic. Just like her.
But even purity had to go, and he hooked his thumbs around the elastic waistband and peeled them from her body.
Still kneeling on the floor, her legs on either side of his shoulders, he leaned forward and brushed his lips up the inside of her thigh, all the way to the apex of her body. Her reaction was instantaneous. She rolled her hips, shifted on the bed, and let out an airy breath from between her heart-shaped lips.
The first time he saw her—in Chicago at the charity benefit a year-and-a-half ago—she’d reminded him of a princess at her debut. Statuesque yet timid. She was a woman worthy of worship, and as he knelt before her, spread her with his thumbs, and slowly ran the length of his tongue over her clitoris, that’s exactly what he was doing. Paying fealty to the woman who’d quietly—almost stealthily—burrowed her way into his heart.
Her hips rotated against his face. She moaned and dug her blunt nails into his scalp, begged him with her body not to stop until she cried out, back arched, and clamped her thighs against the sides of his head, his tongue pressed hard against her pulsating core.
His. All his.
After several long, delicious moments, her legs relaxed, and he leaned back and rose to his feet, unfastening his belt as he did.
She reached into the nightstand, pulled out a condom, and sat up as she ripped open the packet.
When he was fully naked, she rolled the condom on as he watched, then slid back on the bed to make room for him.
And then he was inside her, her bent leg supported by his arm.
She was tight, her core still contracted from her previous orgasm, and the snugness felt good as he thrust into her.
Her gaze locked to his, and he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. He fed off the awe and devotion shining back at him. Tonight clearly held as much meaning for her as it did for him, if not more.
She licked her lips, and the sight of her glistening tongue sent a shock into his libido, making the base of his spine tingle. He remembered what she could do with her tongue, and the knowledge that from this point forward no one but him would benefit from her oral talents licked his erection and bolstered his ego in a way nothing ever had.
Her breath hitched, and her body shuddered. She was going to come again.
And this time, he was going to come with her.
“Don’t stop.” She moaned and gripped his back.
Eye to eye and mouth to mouth, he wouldn’t have stopped even if there’d been an earthquake. This was their moment. Finally, they were one. Truly, honestly, one.
His orgasm rushed up like an attacking lion, and he grunted as pleasure gripped him by the balls.
“I love you.” As the words left his lips and he buried himself inside her, the intensity of his orgasm doubled. “God, I love you.”
Beneath him, she fell into vicious, rapturous contractions, her arms locking hard around his back, holding him against her. “I love you, too.”
Peace. He was finally at peace.
And he didn’t need a sign to tell him he was exactly where he belonged.
Chapter 32
Karma stirred awake, lying on her stomach, her arm hanging off the side of the bed. God, the things Mark had
done to her. He’d made her feel things she’d never felt, but then, she’d never been this in love.She lifted herself and turned toward the other side of the bed. Mark wasn’t there.
Oh no. Not again.
“Mark?” She sprang upright. “Mark?”
“In here,” he called from the living room.
She relaxed and pulled herself out of bed. It was five o’clock, still dark, except…not as dark as it should be. She peered out the window as she pulled her robe around her. The ground was covered with snow. The first real snow of the season.
Barefoot and salaciously tousled, she pattered into the hallway to find Mark sitting on the couch, shirtless, wearing a pair of grey sweats. In the middle of the living room floor, his suitcase was open. His laptop sat in his lap and his bare feet rested on the coffee table.
She crossed the living room to the couch. That’s when she heard the music playing through the speakers. It was a slow acoustical number, full of lyrical guitar, and sounding like a warm spring day after a rain shower. Soft sounds of ocean surf filled in the background. “That’s nice. What is it?”
He clicked and pulled up his player as she sat down. “A song called ‘Sweet Inspirations’ by Eric Bernard.” He turned up the volume then leaned over and kissed her. “It’s kind of a perfect song for right now, isn’t it?”
Everything about the song spoke of the peaceful tranquility between them. And the love. “Yes.” She tucked her feet under her and rested her head on his shoulder. “Did you sleep?”
“A little.”
“What woke you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Excitement maybe. I just felt like I didn’t want to miss anything.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
“Why’d you come out here?”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
She sat up. “So what are you doing? Besides listening to music.”
He clicked again and brought up her blog. “Reading your blog.”
