For Now and Forever

by Diana Palmer

  But she cried for hours as it sank in that he wasn’t coming back. She’d hoped and prayed that he’d call, or come. But three days went by, and she didn’t know if she could bear it. Twice she picked up the phone to call him, and put it right back down again. Her pride was as strong as her feeling for Nick. She couldn’t crawl to him. She couldn’t!

  Her eyes went to a letter on the coffee table, from Maureen de Vinchy-Cardin. She and Maureen had gone to college together. Jolana had graduated with a bachelor of arts degree and Maureen had majored in business administration. The young woman, daughter of an Irish mother and an aristocratic French father, was a countess, of all things, and she had a madcap brother named Phillipe who had frequently escorted Jolana when he came to see his sister. The three of them had enjoyed each other so much, and Jolana often thought that Phillipe would someday make some lucky woman a fine husband. He was such fun to be with. But there had never been the time, or the inclination, to get serious about him. Jolana’s career had always come first and still did.

  Maureen had invited her to come and spend a few weeks in Paris, and Jolana was tempted to go. She could get away from Nick and maybe forget him. Yes, it would be a good idea after the exhibit. She sat down, and with a breaking heart, she wrote and told Maureen she’d be in touch shortly about her arrangements.

  The next morning, she was just returning to her apartment after airmailing the letter to Maureen, when she saw Nick climbing out of his Jaguar at the curb.

  Part of her wanted to run. But the other part stood quietly and watched him, magnificent in his leather coat, towering above people around him, as he spotted her and walked toward her.

  She felt sick. She couldn’t go through it again, she couldn’t. Oh, Nick, go away, she prayed. Go away before we get involved, I couldn’t bear to let you go once we were involved...!

  “Hello,” he said quietly, pausing just in front of her, far too close.

  “Hello,” she said. Her hands stayed in her pockets. “Passing by?”

  He shook his dark, curly head. “I came to see if you’d go to a party with me tonight.”

  “Do you need a bodyguard again?” she asked, laughing bitterly.

  He shrugged. “I need you.”

  Her eyes closed and she bit hard on her lower lip. “It’s only physical,” she said. “It will pass.”

  “No. I don’t think so. Come with me.”

  “I’m going to Paris,” she said simply.

  “Not tonight.”

  “No, not tonight, but soon.” Her wild eyes searched his. “I don’t want...”

  He caught her shoulders and held her roughly. His eyes blazed down into hers. “I don’t want it, either, but the past few days have been hell. So I’ll stop talking about other women, all right?”

  What difference would it make, if he was still emotionally involved with Margery? she thought in anguish. But he was close to her, and she loved him, and all her resolutions melted when he bent and put his cool, hard mouth to hers.

  “Nick,” she protested.

  “Nobody’s around,” he murmured, ignoring the amused looks of passersby. “Kiss me.”

  She did, helplessly, hungrily, with her whole heart. She reached up and held him, and tears ran down her cheeks in the cold wind and she thought she might die of the joy and relief.

  “So soft,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands to study its subdued beauty. “So lovely. I look at you, and I can’t believe how beautiful you are... Amore,” he whispered.

  His mouth touched her wet, closed eyelids, and his tongue traced the thick spiky lashes. “Amore, no more arguments, please. I’ve caused one of my reporters to resign, just to get away from my temper. Much more, and I’ll have no staff left.”

  She laughed softly, through her tears. “No more arguments,” she agreed. She drew away and looked up at him with soft, loving eyes. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  “I have no time,” he sighed regretfully. He touched her lips with a warm finger. “Tonight, we talk, all right? Mama is giving a dinner party, she wants us to come. I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”

  “All right,” she agreed quietly. “Tonight.”

  He smiled. “I missed you, Jolana.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  He kissed her briefly and went back to his car with a careless wave of his hand. Jolana danced through the lobby to the elevator, feeling happier than she’d been in days.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JOLANA KNEW NO one at the party except for Margery and her husband. And although Nick’s mother and the other three couples did their best to make Jolana welcome, she was uneasy at best. Nick was attentive, as if he were trying to win her all over again. But Margery was eying him covetously, obviously. And as she expected, eventually, Margery managed to finagle a dance with him. And, minutes later, they disappeared.

  Without knowing why, Jolana found herself standing beside Margery’s thin husband, Andrew, at the punch bowl.

  “Nice party,” she murmured drily, lovely in her strapless white gown, with her hair loose.

  “Is it?” Andrew scoffed. He looked down at her with a sigh. “You’re very beautiful. Why is it that Nick can’t see it?”

  “See what?” she asked hesitantly.

  He lifted his glass to his lips. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.” He sighed heavily. “Not anymore, it doesn’t matter. How do you compete with a guy like that, when he gets thrown up to you every day, every night?” He took another swallow from the glass. “Damn Nick!”

  She knew just how he felt, but there was nothing she could do. And anything she said would only make it worse. “Does that help?” she asked quietly, nodding toward the drink in his hand.

  He stared at her. “No. It makes it worse. But I’ve fallen on hard times and bad habits,” he said ironically as his eyes wandered over her face. “Is there any chance that he’ll marry you?”

  She smiled sadly and shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t think so. He isn’t a marrying man.”

  “You couldn’t really believe that,” he asked.

  “But I do,” she replied. She poured herself a small glass of punch and sipped it. “Have you known him a long time?”

  “Since we were teenagers. I took Margery away from him.” He laughed coldly. “But although I won the battle, he won the war. He’s as cold as ice, your Nick, except where Margery is concerned. But don’t let that stop you from trying. Who knows? Maybe you’ll succeed where all the others failed. At least you’ve got some brains. That alone sets you apart.” His eyes held hers. “Don’t let him get you caught in the middle. Look what it’s done to me.”

  She started to pursue that, but Nick was suddenly back. “Hello, Andrew,” he said coldly. “Let’s dance, Jolana.”

  He tugged her onto the dance floor, and she frowned as she saw the look on his face. He seemed pale, and tense, and oddly taciturn. Nick, who usually laughed and talked incessantly. She looked around for Margery, but the woman was nowhere in sight. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps they hadn’t gone off together, she told herself, grasping at straws.

  “What were you saying to him?” he asked coldly.

  “Just party talk, Nick, that’s all.”

  Unthinking, she pressed close to Nick in conciliation and was shocked to find his body already aroused. His hand contracted around her waist, holding her to him, and his legs trembled.

  “Nick!” she whispered, shaken by the sudden force of his passion, by a need that she’d never felt in him before. She looked up, seeking his face, and found torment in it. Everything in her that was womanly reached out to him. She touched his face gently, tenderly, and his jaw tensed even at the whispery caress. “Nick, come home with me,” she whispered, so that no one could hear. “Come home with me, and I’ll give you what you need so desperately.”

  His breath shook as his chest ro
se and fell. “Jolana...”

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I know you won’t hurt me. I’ll give you my body, Nick. I’ll lie with you in my bed and...”

  “God,” he broke off, shuddering, as his arm crushed her against him. “Jolana, I can’t tell you...how I hurt!”

  “I can feel it,” she said gently. She felt full of her own power. She moved away, catching her hand in his. “Let’s go.”

  She led him past his mother, pleading a splitting headache, and looked the part until they got into the elevator. She laughed softly. “Well, I have had splitting headaches before, so it wasn’t a total lie,” she said.

  He still looked pale, and so flushed with hunger that she hardly knew him. The car was in a corner of the deserted garage, all by itself, and she remembered that the seat reclined all the way back. Her face flushed as she thought how easy it would be, at how vulnerable he was. The way he looked, the way he was trembling, he’d never make it to her apartment.

  With a sense of pure witchery, she got into the car with him, thankful for the darkly tinted windows all the way around. Not that anyone was likely to come here. There was only one parking attendant, an old man, and he never left his office. She smiled slowly.

  Nick hadn’t said a word. He got in beside her and started to put the key in the ignition.

  “No,” she breathed, touching the back of his hand lightly with hers. She reached under the long gown, easing it up around her hips, and slid out of her silky briefs while Nick watched incredulously with eyes as dark as black flames. She dropped the briefs onto the carpeted floorboard and turned to him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked unsteadily.

  “Seducing you, darling,” she whispered back. Her hands went, trembling, to his belt buckle. Seconds later, she moved over him, facing him, and her heart went as wild as his own when she eased down.

  “I don’t know how to do it this way,” she whispered against his shaking breath, “so you’ll have to help me.”

  His big hands found her hips and guided her, helped her, and his face hardened, his jaw tensed, his eyes narrowed as he sucked in a harsh breath.

  “It’s going to be too quick,” he whispered hoarsely. “I’m burning up.”

  “I don’t mind,” she whispered back, smiling. “You can make it up to me when we get home. Come on, Nick. Take me.”

  “Oh, God!” he ground out. His mouth fastened onto hers as if he’d never tasted anything so sweet, and his fingers hurt where they dug into her soft skin. She felt him against her, hot and hard and hungry, and she let him fit her body over his with a sense of awe. It had been a long time, and it hurt a little, but she didn’t make a sound. She clenched her teeth and leaned her forehead against his dark hair.

  “Does it hurt?” he whispered shakily.

  “Just...a little,” she whispered back, easing into a slow rhythm with him. “It’s been so long...you see. Nick... Nick...”

  Her voice was rising. It shouldn’t be happening for her, it shouldn’t...but it was! She moved with him, hearing her breathing become as ragged as his, feeling his hands hurting, his hips moving roughly under her, his voice groaning at her ear.

  “My God...in a car!” he burst out, and then his voice splintered, and his hands crushed her into his hips, and she felt the ferocity of movement build into a climax like nothing she’d dreamed of as they spent their urgency together and her voice echoed with his harsh groan.

  A long, shuddering minute later, he kissed her as softly as a whisper. His lips moved over her face in tiny, soft caresses while her body was still fused to his.

  “I’ll never...never be able to make this up to you,” he whispered tenderly. “You can’t know how much I needed you!”

  “I did know.” She kissed him back, tender, soft kisses, and smiled against his lips. “Are you satisfied now?”

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes in the dim light. “No, Jolana. Are you?”

  She shook her head. “All night?”

  He nodded. “All night. In a bed.” He touched her thighs lightly, smiling. “It won’t be quite as frantic as this, either. Here, honey, we’d better make ourselves decent. This is hardly the place for making love.”

  She eased away from him and tugged her briefs back on, laughing. “Artists are unconventional, didn’t you know? Besides,” she added, glancing at him wickedly, “I didn’t think you’d last until we got to my apartment.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” he agreed, something dark and violent in the way he said it. He sighed roughly, glancing at her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m very sure,” she said solemnly.

  He studied her as he finished arranging his slacks. And he smiled. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  It took only a few minutes to get to her apartment.

  He locked the door and began stripping off his clothes, and when he was through, he undressed her, slowly, tenderly. He led her, dark and gloriously naked, into the bedroom, and her eyes never left him. She was as on fire for him as he seemed to be for her. She searched his dark eyes for a long moment. Slowly she began to see how obsessively he wanted her. Perhaps, if she grabbed the opportunity, she could fight Margery. She could make him see that his obsession had no future. That he could love her, too.

  He lifted her in his big arms, his eyes warm and glittering with controlled passion. “Now,” he said, letting his gaze run over her as he tossed her gently onto the coverlet. “Now we have time to really become lovers, and enough room and comfort to do it right.”

  She trembled a little as he joined her on the bed, but his big hands smoothed over her softness and calmed her.

  He bent, biting at her mouth, his passion immediate and uncontrollable. Her body burned at the first contact with his, and her hands seemed to belong to someone else, because they were doing things to his body that she’d never dreamed of doing to a man.

  “Yes,” he laughed gruffly. “Yes, touch me like that. Bite me, claw, scream. I want a wildcat under me, not a sweet little flower, you understand? I want a woman whose passion is as hot as mine, a woman to match me... Jolana!”

  He groaned as she arched, twisting her body against his in a way that she knew would arouse him, while her searching fingers teased and tormented.

  “Witch!” he protested, his eyes shining with passion, his hands hurting as they grasped her hips and pulled her under him. “Jolana, if you don’t stop...!”

  “Take me,” she whispered, twisting, reaching up for him with trembling hands, a body racked by insatiable hungers. Her dark eyes were misty with desire, her lips parted under the force of her breath. “Yes, like that, take me, now... Come on, Nick, come on, come on, yes, yes!”

  He shuddered as his hard, heavy body invaded hers, and she welcomed him. Her body eased into the helpless urgency of his rhythm, feeling the raging need in him, wanting only to please, to satisfy that terrible hunger.

  She bit his earlobe softly. Her hands held him at the base of his spine, urging him even closer, her body moving softly, gracefully, under his weight. “Yes, darling,” she whispered as he moaned harshly. “Yes, darling!”

  “Jolana...!” He whispered her name over and over again as his body moved. His lips slid back over hers. His tongue penetrated her mouth deeply, his breath rasping as the motion of his body became suddenly cruel, his great strength unleashed in the convulsive throes of fulfillment. And his helpless groan went into her mouth and into her bloodstream, and her legs contracted to hold him as she felt the full force of his strength.

  She soothed him when, finally, he collapsed, his body slick with perspiration, shaking with the force of his heartbeat. Her hands tenderly wove in and out of his hair and she kissed his drawn face softly, all over, with exquisite tenderness.

  “You’ll have bruises,” he breathed unsteadily. “I wasn’t gentle.”

  “You needed me,” she wh
ispered. “I won’t mind a bruise or two. Satisfied?”

  He laughed softly, delightedly. “No.”

  She stretched under him. “I’m glad. Because neither am I. Yet.”

  “Give me a few minutes and you will be,” he promised. “My God, what an explosion! I never felt like that with a woman.”

  That pleased her. She brushed her mouth over his closed eyelids. “Really?”

  “Really. Except, maybe, in the car. In the car, for God’s sake!” he laughed softly, brushing the damp hair away from her face. “Twice, and still I want you!” He lifted his head and looked down at her. “You said there’d only been one man, one time, and he hurt you.”

  She touched his chiseled mouth with her fingertip, tracing it. “He wasn’t like you. Nothing like you. I love you.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that, but the look on his face was worth the temporary loss of pride.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” she said, smiling. “It wasn’t a question. Just an involuntary confession. I love you, I love everything about you, and I love the way you make love...”

  “What I’ve done to you wasn’t making love,” he said after a long moment, shadows playing in his dark eyes as he looked at her.

  “But this time, it will be. Rouse me again.”

  He rolled over onto his back, staring at her, with the hair-darkened expanse of bronzed muscles open to her, along with his formidable masculinity.

  She stared down, fascinated but hesitant.

  “Don’t you watch movies or read books?” he murmured, smiling slowly.

  “Well, of course. But I’ve never actually done it before.”

  “I’ll tell you. And show you. And teach you how.” He drew her hands down and his voice was like dark velvet as he told her, explicitly, how to arouse him, how to touch and tease his dark body. And she did, with hands that were fascinated by the textures of him, by his sudden responses to her exploration. He fascinated her as much this way as he did with the force of his personality, the exuberance with which he lived life.