Mr. Imperfect

by Karina Bliss

  “No one hurt me like you did,” he whispered. Words she thought she owned. “No one loved me like you did, either.”

  She swallowed. “But it still wasn’t enough, was it, for you to trust me?”

  “I trust you now,” he said against her neck, and she knew he believed it.

  It was futile; still she gave him the chance to prove her wrong. “In that case, tell me why you haven’t visited your mother’s grave.”

  Christian froze, then slowly straightened. “That’s my business.”

  “Don’t you see? You’ll never let me get close.”

  “I don’t go to dark places, Kez. Not even for you.”

  “Even if I could help you light them?” His expression remained closed and she struck out in bitter frustration. “Life might have branded you a loner, Christian, but it’s your choice to stay that way.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Says someone who only feels safe when she’s in credit on some emotional balance sheet. I’ve never been needy enough for you and I’m not going to start now.”

  Kezia’s humorless laugh rang out across the garden. “See how easily we can still hurt each other? The prosecution rests her case.”

  For a moment there was silence, then Christian groaned. “Why the hell does everything have to be so complicated with you? Can’t it be enough right now that we still feel something for each other?”

  Miserably, Kezia shook her head and began to turn away. Christian caught her by the elbow. “You haven’t heard the case for the defense yet,” he said grimly, and loosened her hair from its chignon.

  Then she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers. There was desperation in the way he held her, yearning in his kiss, and Kezia yielded, helpless, while his tongue stoked hers into a response and common sense scattered like fireworks somewhere among the stars overhead.

  Recklessly she kissed him back, promising everything, withholding nothing, and he answered in kind. Her fingers flew to undo his shirt buttons and one soared loose as she tugged it open, craving the feel of his skin.

  Christian pushed away long enough to peel down the bodice on her dress, then hauled her back against his bare torso. Their second kiss was wild, hungry with lust, and Kezia knew from the way her nipples swelled into the lacy fabric of her strapless bra, from the way he pressed his erection against her belly, that they teetered at the point of no return.

  His hand slid under her skirt, and the night air was cool on her bare bottom as he pulled her panties down. They caught at her knees and she kicked out of them. Madness, this was madness.

  Kezia wrenched her mouth away and cupped Christian’s face in both hands, breathing hard, intensely aware of the fine scattering of hair on his chest tickling her sensitized skin. “If we do this,” she said fiercely, “it’s goodbye. Promise me.”

  Christian turned his head to kiss her palm and a sensual shiver worked its way up her arm and through her body. She dragged his head forward again. “Promise me!”

  In the moonlight, his eyes were a shadowy, unreadable gray. “If you want it to be goodbye, it will be goodbye,” he said finally.

  She nodded, knowing this was insanity yet unable to send him away with anything less than passion.

  But the mood had grown somber. In silence Christian caught her hand, led her through the garden and into the empty hotel, flicking on only enough switches to light their way and retrieve condoms. Upstairs, in her room, he released his hold and pulled back the drapes.

  So much of the time he wore a mask of lazy affability, a wry grin that said he knew he was too handsome for his own—and any woman’s—good. But the moonlight stripped all that away. She saw the strength of character evident in the set of his jaw, the shadows in those startling eyes. His victories had been hard won.

  And, she thought, tomorrow I’ll square off against reality. Tonight is a dream and who has power over their dreams?

  Christian’s face was grave as he came back to her, grave as he removed his remaining clothes, and Kezia swallowed her panic. No, don’t take us seriously. Mustering her best Mae West voice, she drawled, “I guess we’ll have our one wild night after all.”

  “One wild night it is, then.” His voice gave no hint of disappointment as he drew her down to the bed, onto the expanse of white like a fall of virgin snow in the moonlight. He rolled onto his back with Kezia on top of him and unfastened her bra with one expert hand.

  With the other he tangled his fingers in her long, silky hair, fitted his mouth to hers and let his tongue make deep, sultry promises of how he intended to love her.

  She yielded with such sweet softness that he went as hard as the teenager he’d once been with her. As close to exploding under the same rush of uncontrollable lust.

  Her hand reached down to touch him and he caught it, breaking the kiss. “If you want this to last,” he suggested in someone else’s voice, “let me do the touching.”

  Holding her unfastened bra in place, Kezia sat up and Christian groaned as her lush firm bottom, bare under the red silk dress, pressed against his erection.

  Equally distracting was the spill of ripe breasts above the white lace and the glimpse of taut nipple. Just when he thought nothing about this could get any harder, it did.

  He watched her eyes widen as she felt his intense physical reaction, then darken with an elemental need that he leaped to assuage. Kezia glided against him and he suffered her slippery readiness.

  With her lids heavy with passion, her skin lightly abraded from his stubble and her mouth swollen from his kisses, she was impossible to resist.

  “No.” He ground out the word. “Not yet.”

  Kezia leaned forward and her bra fell in a lacy heap. “We’ve wasted enough time,” she said in a husky whisper. Her hair tickled as she brushed her lips across his. “I want you now.”

  For answer, Christian caught her other wrist and pulled her up and forward until her breasts hung above his face. Then he made love to them until her breath came so fast that each nipple rose and fell against his teasing tongue.

  He freed her hands so that his could stroke and fondle. So that he could reach between her smooth legs astride him.

  Kezia spread them wider and, unable to resist the invitation, he slid farther down the bed and under her dress. Ignoring her gasp of protest, he used his mouth and fingers to pleasure her.

  She tensed, resisting the intimacy, but Christian persisted until she let him take her beyond all restraint. When at last she cried her release, he reveled in the rhythmic spasms against his finger inside her, in the wetness against his mouth.

  He turned his head and kissed the softness of her inner thigh, glorying in the scent of her woman’s heat mingled with the starched silk dress. He had always loved to corrupt Kezia, seduce her into abandoning herself to the passionate nature her conservative up-bringing would have her reject.

  This woman who was—in all the ways that mattered—incorruptible.

  Gently, Christian rolled Kezia’s languid form over to her back and began to kiss his way up her sweet curves on a voyage of rediscovery. Her hands tangled lazily in his hair, stopping him each time he reached an erogenous zone—her navel, the fourth rib, the underside of one creamy breast. He felt all the primal possessiveness of a man reclaiming his birthright.

  Except she wasn’t his to keep.

  His tongue circled her nipples, peaked and moist from his earlier attention, but it was her mouth he lingered on, losing himself in her taste and texture.

  In the aftermath of her orgasm, her response was indolent and inviting, and made Christian want her so badly he could only roll on a condom, nudge her legs apart and thrust into her swollen wetness.

  He stilled, closing his eyes against a sensation almost intolerable in its intensity. As he struggled for self-control he felt the butterfly softness of a kiss on his closed eyelids. It had the reverence of love.

  Intrigued, his lids flew open and Kezia hastily lowered hers. He moved inside her, slowly out, slowly in, stopping well
short of full penetration, forcing Kezia to lift her gaze to his. Even in the moonlight her pupils flared with a hunger so raw it fanned his white-hot.

  His jaw dropped on a groan and she took advantage, plundering his mouth as he’d so often plundered hers, until neither of them cared what happened tomorrow, only what was about to happen now. Right now.

  With a sob, Kezia lifted her hips to his and Christian bore down like a man possessed. Up she lifted again, inviting even more of him, and he drove so deep inside her he knew he was lost forever with no hope of return.

  He still loved her.

  God help him, he loved this woman who wanted him to let her go. She lifted her hips again—provocative, demanding—and Christian gave her everything he was capable of, all of his body, most of his guarded heart, none of his soul.

  Dimly he heard Kezia cry out and he exploded inside her, lost and found, emptied and renewed.

  When he came to himself again he was lying with his full weight sprawled across her, their heartbeats slamming into each other.

  Christian rolled to one side. “Did I hurt you?” She could only shake her head, but her eyes told a different story. “I did hurt you.”

  “I knew this would make it harder to let you go.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “You have as much of my heart as I can give anybody,” he said fiercely. “Why can’t that be enough?”

  “I love you.” Her whisper vibrated with intensity and he gathered her even closer, weak with relief. After a moment Kezia loosened his hold and slid up the bed until her face was level with his.

  In the moonlight her eyes were luminous and wise but the sadness in them impaled him with dread. “I love you, but I’m thirty-two years old and I know myself better than I did fourteen years ago. I need this community and this community needs me.”

  “We’ll split our time between here and Auckland.” He was suddenly in the most important negotiation of his life.

  She kissed him yearningly and he knew they could make it work. But she pulled back. Her gaze, unflinchingly honest, seemed to search his soul, and Christian fought the urge to break eye contact.

  “I would compromise a lot to keep you in my life,” she said quietly, “but I won’t compromise this. I need a man who trusts me with his weaknesses as well as his strengths. No more half measures.” Despite himself, Christian blinked first. “And I need a man who wants children as much as I do.” Kezia paused, waiting, but he couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat.

  Her voice was strained as she continued. “I’ve wasted a lot of years sabotaging relationships because I so badly wanted to be with you. I still do.”

  Her fingers touched his face. “But if you can’t be that man, then keep your promise and leave tomorrow because I’ve run out of strength to send you away.” Her next words came as a whisper but they struck Christian like a powerful blow. “Love me that much, at least.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IF ONLY SHE hadn’t said that. Love me that much, at least. The risk-taker in Christian wanted to say, “Yes, I can be that man for you.” But her honesty compelled his.

  “I want to give you what you need,” he said. “But I can’t believe in a house full of children and happy-ever-afters.” Not when his memories smelled of death and terror and dust-under-the-bed where a twelve-year-old still cowered on his belly and listened to his bereaved father scream that it was Christian’s fault that his wife had died. “Kez, I just can’t.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, though plainly it wasn’t, and Christian forced himself to say nothing. He’d never love her more than he did at this moment of letting go.

  “It’s okay,” Kezia repeated, and reached out a hand to smooth away the lines of strain on his face, to memorize its contours. He was a man who couldn’t let himself be vulnerable. She’d forgiven him the past. Now, she forgave him the future. “I knew what your answer would be.”

  Denial flashed in Christian’s eyes and was gone, replaced by a steely resolve. His hands cupped her buttocks, brought her closer. He was hard again. “Tomorrow I’ll leave as promised.” Savagely he claimed her mouth. “But tonight, by God, you’re mine.”

  Hunger, equally insatiable, rose in Kezia. He wanted to conquer her but he couldn’t because she was reckless in her willingness to surrender everything she had. And by her passionate compliance, forced him to surrender to her.

  With Christian she journeyed to places rich with erotic pleasures. He evoked needs she’d never acknowledged, needs no good girl should ever have, then absorbed them, transformed them and gifted them back to her shiny and new.

  When there wasn’t an inch of their bodies that hadn’t been sated they lay facing each other on the white bed, physically and emotionally spent. Kezia had a sense of resting in the eye of a storm. She knew the worst was still to come but the disillusion that had kept them at war with themselves and each other was gone and a fatalistic acceptance filled the vacuum.

  Her eyelids began to droop; she forced them open.

  “You need sleep.” His voice vibrated out of the dark.

  “So do you.”

  In answer, Christian began to stroke her, starting at the nape of her neck. His palm, warm and sure, slid down her back to the slope of one buttock, before skimming lightly across and up the curve of hip, waist and shoulder back to her neck. And he did it again. And again.

  He stroked her as though they’d spent every night of the intervening years together—with a tender familiarity. He stroked her as though they had years ahead of them instead of a precious few hours. Relax, his hands told her, let go. Rest in me.

  And despite her resolve to make every last second count, Kezia felt her body soften and melt into his. Her eyes closed, she fantasized that all the obstacles keeping them apart no longer existed, imagined that his arms were home. His hand swept up and down her back with slow, rhythmic caresses. Deeper and deeper she sank into the oblivion of his chest, warm and dark and safe.

  CHRISTIAN LEFT WATERVIEW BEFORE dawn, while Kezia slept. The main street looked like the movie set for a ghost town and the bleak isolation suited his mood. At the crossroads he waited while a stock freighter passed with a hiss of air brakes.

  Still Christian sat there, letting the engine idle. The last time he’d been here at this hour he’d had a thumb out for a ride and a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. Winter had crystallized the roadside grass, and it crunched underfoot as he’d jogged on the spot trying to keep warm, while the knuckles on his right hand burned and stung.

  The last time his eyes had been dry and he hadn’t looked back. This time he was braver than that.

  KEZIA WOKE UP HOT WITH THE SUN in her face. Rolling away from the glare, she felt paper crackle under her cheek. She opened her eyes, saw the note on Christian’s pillow and shut them again. Too late. Her heart had already started pumping adrenaline. She sat up and reached for it.

  I read somewhere that long goodbyes prolong the parting, not the being together. Love. Always. Christian

  Kezia refolded the note carefully, recalling that any square piece of paper could be folded in two up to seven times, and folded it again. And again. On the fourth fold tears blinded her.

  He was gone.

  Kezia blinked them back and got out of bed. She showered, dressed and ate breakfast—two pieces of buttered toast and a cup of coffee—then sat at her grandmother’s writing desk and looked at her list of things to do.

  A fly buzzed erratically, calling her attention to the window. It struggled in a web that fanned across a lower pane and as she watched, a spider materialized and began to swaddle the fly in silk with an almost military efficiency.

  With an effort, Kezia looked at her list again. Tradesmen needed to be called—the sooner the hotel was back in business, the sooner she could set up the trust. Apologies needed to be made—God knows what Suzie had made of her sudden flight from the wedding. She had to get busy.

  Another hour went by while she watched the sun creep across the c
arpet like a tide. She looked at her list again then tore it up into little pieces and flung them on the carpet. Lying across the desk with outstretched arms, she gave in to wrenching, agonized sobs.

  Tears poured down her cheeks and into her mouth, her nose began to run. Gulping and gasping she tried to stem the flow of grief with tissues, with logic—she knew it would hurt—with stern admonitions to be brave, unselfish. Nothing worked.

  In desperation she held her breath, but the giant fist holding her heart squeezed tighter and tighter until she capitulated with another sob. Slumped across the desk again, she could only wait for the grief to run dry.

  It took a long time. When the sobbing had dwindled to sporadic shudders, she lay exhausted, the mahogany cool against her cheek, the scent of lemon polish soothing her blocked nose. Her eyes felt puffy and swollen; wearily she closed them.

  Okay, it would take longer than she thought to get over him. Acceptance of that fact would be her first step toward recovery. It seemed to be the only step she could manage today.

  “Are you here, Kez?” Marion’s voice echoed up the stairs. Kezia’s eyes flew open as she jerked upright, then nearly passed out under a wave of dizziness. Carefully she rested her elbows on the desk and cradled her aching head.

  “Wait here, John Jason, and don’t touch anything, do you hear me?”

  A child’s murmur of assent, the sound of Marion’s tread on the stairs. In a panic, Kezia scrambled for the French doors, edging them shut behind her. On the deck she stepped out of view and pressed her body back against the weatherboards. She couldn’t cope with sympathy right now; she had to believe she could bear this.

  “Kezia, are you in here?” She heard her friend open the door to Muriel’s bedroom, then the creak of floorboards as she came down the hall. “Kez?” A silence suggested Marion stood at the doorway, scanning the empty office.

  Kezia’s heart jumped as her friend started talking under her breath. “Where are you? I need you!” There was a catch in Marion’s voice and Kezia stirred, pricked by her conscience.