by Laura Taylor
"I was in shock, but I was also afraid you’d disappear if I closed my eyes, and then I’d be back in that dress shop again. When I wouldn’t let go of your hand, you stayed with me while the doctor stitched up my leg. You didn’t leave the hospital until one of the nurses told you my family had been reached and would be arriving soon to take me home. Later, I wondered if you even knew Cyrus was my father."
"I didn’t, and it never came up."
"That sounds like Cyrus."
"He’s taken the concept of privacy to new heights."
"Or lows," she observed without malice. Cyrus was Cyrus and, short of a personality transplant, change didn’t enter into the equation.
Bliss’s smile dimmed altogether as she considered how little she’d progressed despite the passage of so many years. She loved Micah more than ever now, and she couldn’t help wondering if that meant she’d gone backward instead of forward. Arrested emotional development, she concluded.
"A lot can happen in eleven years."
"You’ve outgrown your shyness."
She shifted uncomfortably. "Not really. I’m at my best when I’m working in my studio."
"I should have remembered you."
"I wasn’t important. No more than a blip on the screen of what I gather has been a very exciting life in Naval Intelligence."
He shifted their bodies so that they wound up knee–to–knee. Bringing his hands to her face, he cupped her cheek and traced the width of her full lower lip with his thumb. She held her breath, feeling even more unsure of herself thanks to the tenderness of his touch.
"What?" she whispered.
"You’ve become very important to me, Bliss. I may not have seen your value when you were seventeen and shell–shocked in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing, but now I know your value as a woman and as an ally. Which means more to you, the past or the present?"
She studied him with the aid of the bright moonlight that splashed across his features. Although his eyes were still concealed by bandages, the angular lines of his face revealed his sincerity. Still, he posed a very real emotional threat to her. Stop acting like a coward! an inner voice exclaimed
"The present, but I’m only a temporary part of your life, Micah," she said, "just as your stay at Rowland House is temporary. You’ll get on with your life once you leave here. I know you’ll remember me this time, but I’ll just be a memory. That’s all."
"You're wrong."
"No, I don’t think… "
He placed a fingertip against her lips. "I don’t want to argue with you. Tell me about your life."
She resisted the urge to press her lips against the tip of his finger. When he lowered his hands to her shoulders, she commented, "You already know the high points. Lots of travel when I was young, good schools, interesting people coming and going, a loving mother, and an emotionally aloof father." Bliss shrugged. "My work gets most of my attention."
"You mentioned a studio? Are you a painter?"
"No. I’m a sculptor."
Oddly enough, she felt almost reassured that he hadn’t connected her to the public persona she revealed to art critics and collectors from around the world. She liked being known as Bliss Rowland, person, as opposed to Elizabeth Rowland, a sculptor of considerable international acclaim.
She finally noticed Micah’s silence, but it was the troubled expression on his face that made her ask, "Is something wrong?"
"It’s your whole world, isn’t it?"
Bliss stiffened beneath his hands. She hadn’t expected this insight, and it heightened her anxiety. "Yes, it is."
He frowned. "You sound defensive."
"It’s what I do, and I certainly don’t have to justify it."
"Does it make you happy?" he asked.
Although baffled by his motive for asking such a question, she answered, "Of course. I can’t imagine doing anything else."
"Are you hiding behind your sculpting, the same way I’ve hidden behind my career?"
"I’m not hiding," she protested. "You’re not being fair. Sculpting is a solitary endeavor."
"So is intelligence work, at least most of the time. It’s also a good way to avoid emotional involvement, especially if you do it to the exclusion of everything else."
"Isn’t that precisely what you’ve done?" she asked, determined to turn the tables on him because he was getting much too close to the truth.
"Is Cyrus the reason you wouldn’t let me make love to you?" he demanded.
She stared at him, disconcerted by his question. She felt his fingers dig into her shoulders, but she didn’t have the strength to protest his harsh grip.
"Is he, Bliss?" he asked.
"He doesn’t have a vote," she said, anger flaring inside her. "Change the subject, Micah."
"We’re both loners, aren’t we?"
She tried to shift backward, but he refused to free her. She sighed in exasperation. "Perhaps. What’s your point?"
"I tried to get you into my bed for the wrong reasons. I shouldn’t have tried to use you."
His admission surprised her. "I understood what you were doing."
"You don’t understand now, though, do you? I still want you, and even more now than I did before. That hasn’t changed. It won’t change."
She felt her heart stop beating for a couple of seconds. Loving him put her at a distinct disadvantage, and she suddenly resented him for it. "You can’t possibly know for certain what you want or need. Your life is in a state of flux. So are your emotions."
"Why did you agree to help me?" he asked.
"We’re going over old ground."
"Why, Bliss? Was it some misguided sense of obligation because of what happened in London?"
"Of course not. I’m not operating a charity here. I have a life, not to mention a demanding and rewarding career."
"Then why did you take time from your busy life for me and my problems?"
"Because… " She hesitated, unwilling to make an admission that would put her at his mercy. "… my father is your friend."
"Was it pity?"
"No!" she exclaimed, the blue of her eyes suddenly blazing with an array of emotions.
"Prove it!" He jerked her forward without warning.
Planting her open palms on his chest, Bliss stiffened her arms and caught herself before she crashed into him. He kept his hands on her shoulders, eliminating the possibility of flight.
"I don’t have to prove anything to you."
"Bliss, tell me the truth."
"What truth? Quit behaving like a jerk," she insisted, her fury with him surfacing.
"Guilty as charged."
She forced herself to try a calmer approach, even though her heart raced at a breakneck pace. "You’re an attractive man, Micah. You can have any woman you want, but I’m not on the menu and I don’t do crowds, so don’t pick me."
"I’m selective. Very selective."
"Congratulations!" she snapped.
"Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me you aren’t attracted to me any longer."
She couldn’t, so she didn’t. She glared at him instead, forgetting for a moment that he couldn’t see her facial expression. Making a last–ditch effort at the truth, Bliss humbled herself by quietly admitting, "You have the power to hurt me, Micah. I wouldn’t survive an affair with you."
He groaned, brushed aside her hands, and brought her against his muscular chest. Wrapping his arms around her, he molded her against him in such a way that she felt the force of his heartbeat against her breasts. "I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. Don’t you know that yet?"
Dazed by the currents of sensations spiraling through her body, Bliss wondered if she knew anything anymore. She felt naked, despite the silk that separated their upper bodies. Her breasts ached. She also felt emotionally flayed. And she’d never felt more shaken by her desire for a man.
"Tell me how I’m supposed to survive the need I feel every time you’re within ten feet of me," he demanded. "Convince me th
at I’m not your charity case of the month."
She struggled, twisting and turning in his arms, but to no avail. "It’s not my job to convince you of anything. I won’t be treated this way, not by you or anyone else."
"Then let me treat you the way you deserve to be treated," he coaxed.
Micah claimed her lips, his assault on her senses tender yet insistent. Stunned by his passion, she trembled in his embrace as she sampled a foretaste of his leashed hunger. Bliss knew that no man had ever wanted her with such intense desire. Neither had any man ever made her feel so on the verge of spinning completely out of control.
Her entire body pulsed and throbbed with the need to reach fruition in his arms. Even though she longed to surrender to him, she instinctively struggled against the consuming weakness that flowed through her, beckoning her, seducing her until she couldn’t think clearly.
As Bliss circled his shoulders with her arms, she sensed the inevitability of their situation. Micah, she realized, whether by design or destiny, was on the verge of becoming the architect of her emotional downfall. Even as she silently cursed his power over her, she craved him as a lover.
"Tell me, Bliss," he urged in a low voice so filled with erotic tension that she wanted to burrow beneath his skin and stay there forever. "Tell me how I’m supposed to walk away from you."
His innate sensuality and her own fragile emotions conspired against her. She reached up and grazed his cheek with her fingertips in a gentle caress. She sighed, then moaned as he lowered his head and found her lips again.
"Micah… " she whispered.
He trailed his fingers over her silk–covered nipples. She shuddered, falling silent and arching into his touch. He muttered an indistinct phrase before he kissed her once more. Bliss savored his taste as she would have the finest vintage wine. His tongue delved deeply into her mouth as he pushed aside the thin straps of her nightgown.
She felt the scarlet confection slide down her body and catch at her waist. Micah cupped her swollen breasts with such gentleness, she moaned. She held her breath until her lungs burned in protest. She willingly deepened their kiss, tangling her tongue with his in a sensual duel as he fondled her sensitive flesh.
Feeling feverish with needs too long denied, and emotions too raw and too intense to contain or even curtail, she clutched at Micah’s shoulders, the tempered strength of his body finally hers to experience, the heat of his skin hers to explore and taste at her leisure. The gloriously possessive feel of his hands curved over her breasts devastated what remained of her flagging resistance.
Awash in a tumult of sensation, Bliss whimpered softly. Micah took the sound into his mouth as he hugged her against his chest. She felt the tremors of need that ravaged his large frame and made his hands shake.
"Why me?" she asked when she could speak a few minutes later.
"Because I care about you, and I need you, and I think I’m fall—"
Panic flared inside her. "No, don’t say anything else." She didn’t want to hear him speak words he would surely regret later. She preferred the simplicity of honest need, shared need, and she half–convinced herself that such candor now would make their eventual parting easier for her.
Micah clasped her head between his hands, his long fingers tunneling into the thick black curls that capped her head and framed her face. "I’d give anything to be able to see you. I need to know what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling, and I’m certain your eyes would tell me if I could just look at you for a moment."
"This isn’t about being able to see, Micah."
"I almost believe you."
"If you trust me, and I think you do, then you can believe me."
He freed her and got to his feet, but he didn’t urge her to stand. He simply waited, one hand extended.
Bliss knew she could walk away. She realized that Micah’s sense of personal honor demanded that he give her the option, but she knew it was useless to question the wisdom of her actions. Right or wrong, and despite how she would feel once he left Rowland House, she intended to love Micah.
Bliss stood. Her nightgown slid past her hips and down her legs to pool at her feet. She slipped her hand into Micah’s, the strength of his grip as his fingers closed tightly over hers all the reassurance she needed at the moment.
"My bedroom?"
"Yes," she whispered.
Once they stood beside the bed in his dark bedroom, Micah drew her into his arms and held her. She felt him shudder when he came into contact with her bare skin.
"Tell me what you want from me, Bliss."
She circled his narrow waist with her arms, pressed her cheek to his chest, and listened to his hammering heart. The final barrier tumbled away, leaving her more emotionally exposed than she’d ever been in her life. "I just want you."
Leaning down, he trailed his lips along the fragrant curve that joined her neck and shoulder. Bliss felt a flare of desire burst inside her. A second detonation came on the heels of the first one, and then a third one rocked her. She trembled, her fingers pressing into the muscled flesh at the base of his spine as she stood in the circle of his arms. Stripped of all emotional barriers, she knew in that moment that nothing would ever be the same between them again.
7
Micah wanted to take her slowly and linger over her.
He wanted to handle her with finesse.
He wanted to be gentle and more thoughtful than he’d ever been with a woman in his entire life, but he knew in those first few seconds of holding Bliss in his arms that his need of her was too great.
He felt almost clumsy as he covered her breasts with his hands, even though she moaned beneath his encompassing touch. The richly seductive sound fueled his desire for her even more, and he sensed within himself a level of sensual volatility that threatened his control as a lover.
His sex surged against her belly, as if to mock him and all of the illusions he’d ever had about control. He kneaded her satiny breasts. Her puckering nipples nudged delicately against the centers of his palms. Micah shuddered, but he clamped down on his desire, determined to exercise restraint, to be the lover that she needed him to be.
He intended to arouse her until she was on the verge of coming apart in his arms, if only to prove to her that he deserved her passion and trust. She sabotaged his efforts almost instantly.
Pressing feverish kisses to his chest and throat, Bliss slowly trailed her fingertips over his narrow hips and then brought her hands forward. He tensed as she stroked his muscular, hair–roughened thighs with a touch that was erotic and fingernails that tantalized. Micah muttered her name, his voice husky and sensual, his body seething with sensations too diverse to name.
Bliss paused and lifted her face. He felt and heard the shaky gust of air that escaped her. It washed warmly against his throat just seconds before she laved the leading edge of his collarbone with provocative, catlike strokes of her tongue. Reaction ripped through him, splintering his nerves and coiling the muscles in his large body.
He drew her up and into his arms, mindful of his lack of vision as he carefully took the final step to his bed. Once he bumped against it, he lowered Bliss onto the center of the mattress. He heard her whisper his name as he shed his pajama bottoms and followed her down onto the bed.
As he straddled her hips, he felt her place her hands atop his thighs, but he caught them and lifted them away from his body before she touched him. He felt like a rocket about to explode, and he knew the slightest contact would set him off.
Leaning forward, he used a single fingertip to draw an invisible line from her navel to the valley between her breasts. He traced the line a second time, but with his parted lips this time, his breath hot and moist as he nipped at her fragrant skin. He felt her shivery response as he circled the undersides of each plump breast with the tip of his tongue.
Bliss murmured his name, making it sound ever so precious as it spilled past her lips. As he crouched over her, she curved her hands over his shoulders. Micah
cupped her breasts, his hands possessive as he claimed her as his own. She trembled before she went absolutely still. Despite his lack of sight, Micah recognized the tension–filled expectation that prompts a woman to hold her breath when she makes love with a man for the first time because she isn’t completely certain of his intentions.
He stroked her with tenderness, determined to alleviate her anxiousness despite the desire that raged within him and made his fingers shake. Capturing one taut nipple between his teeth, Micah flicked his tongue back and forth across it, while simultaneously kneading her other breast. He tasted her, and he gloried in the salty–sweet flavor of her skin. Drawing her deeply into his mouth, he tortured and seduced her with his erotic suckling until she cried out her pleasure and bucked restlessly beneath him.
He taunted himself with vivid images of what it would be like once he buried his aching flesh inside of her, just as he taunted her with sensation after sensation until her skin turned hot and damp. And as she murmured indecipherable words of encouragement, he managed to forget for a brief time the fact that he couldn’t see her.
Micah’s confidence soared as he savored her sounds of pleasure and the press of her fingers as she clutched at his shoulders. Shifting to her other breast, he began anew. Bliss responded as though she’d been struck by lightning. Her body quivered beneath his hands and mouth, and her back arched as she eagerly offered herself to him.
Her reaction, which seemed to embody an almost innocent sense of discovery and delight, fanned the flames of Micah’s desire. Holding her made him feel as though he’d embraced an inferno. He worshipped her body, expressing physically the complex emotions cascading through him.
She chanted his name over and over again, until it sounded like a mantra. He felt his body repeatedly tighten into itself as one violent rush of desire after another pummeled his senses. His inner tension mounted, threatening to overcome him, and his blood felt like a river of flame as it recklessly surged through his veins.
Micah finally paused. His breathing sounded labored as he dragged air into his lungs and then forced it out again. Fighting for control, he lowered his forehead to her breasts. A heartbeat later, he felt the sweep of Bliss’s fingertips as she stroked his nape.
