“Remember it.” She gave his hand back to him. “At least I’ve never driven anyone to jump off a bridge.”
He blinked. “Is that what they say?” He was silent. Then he said, “It’s in no way true. That woman was a very fine swimmer, is all, and relished diving from a great height. What are you doing after this is over?”
She gazed at him. His sexy mouth was edging up at the corners in such wicked, smiling temptation she felt a rush of moisture between her legs.
At the same time, she couldn’t help thinking heartbreaker.
The party had reached an intimate, reminiscent mood, with Vance Tyler among others dragging up funny stories from Brent’s and Honey’s pasts that made everyone laugh. Eve’s own name came up once or twice, and folks turned to look around at her and grin.
Love was in the air. Honey didn’t look quite so anxious with Brent’s arm wrapped firmly around her. If only she knew she had no need to worry about Eve Fortescue. That horse had been scratched.
The band launched into Minna’s favorite old song, “Blue Bayou.” Seemed everyone knew the words and joined in. Even Rainer sang along, smiling quizzically at Eve when her eyes misted up in the chorus.
The rehearsal dinner was coming to a close. Though not the evening.
Rainer looked at Eve, desire in his smoky gaze. “Can I be the one to take you home?”
Chapter Five
Rainer in a car was even more deeply affecting than Rainer in a small private room. Luckily he’d parked in the shadow of a tall hedge away from the parking area, so witnesses were unlikely. Before he started the engine he turned to Eve, so courteous and civilized, though the heat in his eyes betrayed his wolfish soul.
“Minna lives on Lilac Crescent. Is that right?”
“Yep.” Strangely for Eve, a hungry beast was inhabiting her body and stalking her blood like a tigress. The sort that wants to eat its seducer alive. Through her lashes she scrutinized the man who’d manipulated her body into a state of helpless delirium a couple of hours earlier. Now it was her turn, though it was a pity he was so delicious.
She’d need all her feminine will to walk away and leave Rainer wanting. To show him that a woman’s feelings were to be powerfully respected. That her body was not a plaything. “So what happened with Brent? Did you take him to a secluded little rendezvous?” His hungry gaze flickered to her breasts.
“No, I did not.”
His brows lifted. “You didn’t? After I went to all that trouble?”
She wanted to slap him. She wanted to kiss him. Instead, she smiled.
“I know. You tried your darndest. But all I could think about was kissing you.” She reached to trace the outline of his lips, then drew a sultry finger over the rough skin of his jaw, down the strong column of his throat to the opening in his shirt.
A shiver passed through his big, lean frame. “Eve. This isn’t the place.”
She gazed into his eyes, the devil in her veins. “I wouldn’t be too concerned. Not many folks are coming this way. You’re not nervous, are you, Rainer?”
His eyes flickered, but he made no move to end her little tease, and she knew she had him.
Breathing rather hard with the seething of emotion in her blood, she drew a light finger over his Adam’s apple, then, letting him feel her knuckles brush the skin at the base of his throat, slipped the topmost button. He kept very still, eyes burning in the shadowy light. Then she released the next one, and the next, all the way to his belt.
The moonlight caught a faint shimmer on his upper lip. Despite his surface calm, she could sense the deepening tension in him. Hear his quickened breathing. Feel his raw, vibrant chest rise and fall beneath her fingers.
She guessed he’d have liked her to travel farther below his belt. Was no doubt craving it. It felt cruel to disappoint him, but her tongue watered with a desire to taste the sliver of skin she’d laid bare. She bent forward and licked his flat, tight little nipple, feeling a gratifying leap in his flesh.
Placing her hands on his belt buckle, she felt the thrill of anticipation in him, the yearning need for her to touch him down there, but then, damn, her eye was caught by a pulse in his neck, flicking to an excited little rhythm.
She put her mouth to the hot, salty place and sucked, at the same time running a tormenting finger across that promising bulge beneath his belt.
Kaboom.
Rainer Delacroix shuddered like a guy with a fever, then grabbed her and kissed her hot and hard, his mouth hungry and possessive.
Despite herself, Eve’s entire being lit up like New Year’s. She opened her mouth to him and their tongues danced a sexy tango, at first flicking and tickling the sensitive mouth tissues and setting off incendiary bursts of erotic delight, then growing fiercer, more passionate.
While her hands. They had minds of their own, wanting to touch him and grab him, own him and caress him in hot greedy handfuls everywhere.
Convulsively exploring his chest, his silky hair, the satin skin riding his ribs, she couldn’t deny her pleasure in feeling Rainer’s urgent touch on her breasts. Squeezing, kneading, making her so hot.
With a growl in her throat, she sank her teeth into his lower lip and tasted blood on her tongue. Delacroix blood. He pulled back, searching her face in the shadowy light, a question in his smoldering eyes.
“Is there something you want to say, Eve?”
“I want to say yes, and I want to say no. I want to say stop and I want to say go. I want to say… Fuck me… Fuck you, Rainer.”
He snaked a hand down into her bra, lifted a breast free, and took her straining nipple in his mouth. The blaze in her blood flared to an inferno.
He tasted her other breast, and his hand slipped under her skirt. Even in her state of delirious lust, she seized his wandering hand and held it still.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Not at all, in fact.
He drew back from her and she surveyed him, panting, revenge in her heart and a fever between her legs, though she was keeping them jammed tightly together. This seduction scenario was a two-way street. She could see how he might have become a little carried away in the room behind the blue door.
Leaning toward him, she passed languid fingers over his pants zipper, then slid her hand down inside his belt and gripped him tight where it mattered most.
Appreciating the flattering response hardening to her touch, she smiled at him through her lashes. “Oh, damn. That’s not Opaline Dixon walking by out there, is it?”
His eyes glinted. He seized her wrists and held them still. “Enough teasing, Miss Fortescue. We need to talk.”
He set her firmly back in her seat, started the car, and eased it into the street. But he didn’t drive her to Lilac Crescent. He headed for the handsome old house he’d inherited from his granddaddy on Cherry Avenue.
She could have gotten out and walked home, left him dangling, so to speak, as had been her original intention, but something in her, or maybe in him, made her decide to see what he had to say.
“I haven’t been here in a while,” he said, unlocking the front door. “My work keeps me away for months at a time, so things have become a little basic. But there’s running water and electricity, and the beds are soft.” His eyes didn’t match the neutrality of his words. Having gotten her this far, she could see that his hopes were blazing hot.
And with his shirt unbuttoned, he looked darkly, criminally seductive.
“Softer than they are in Djibouti?”
“There are some fine beds in Djibouti. I’ll take you there sometime and you might be surprised. Would you care for coffee?”
“Coffee?”
She could have fallen over with surprise. Coffee was the last thing she expected him to offer. She was dangerously aroused and emotional. Heaven only knew what she was to do with herself in such a state. How she should act. But to end it all with coffee?
She followed him into the big old-fashioned kitchen and watched him grind beans and pour them in
to the machine, a frown between his eyes. Desire was an explosive thing. Even though she felt angry, the sight of a big, hard Delacroix man performing a trivial domestic action was highly arousing.
“You’re mad at me,” he said, a minute or two later, glancing up and handing her her coffee. “Because of the deal we made.”
A pang cut through her and she clasped her hands. “Yes. Yes.” She dropped her eyes . “You made a fool of me.”
“How did I? You wanted to kiss me.” His gaze drifted to her mouth, then to her treacherously willing breasts.
“Only because I—I—.”
His shirt was open to his waist, revealing a slice of bronzed, muscled chest. A hint of rippling six-pack. As her trembly words petered out, she felt her mouth dry and the silence grow tense and vibrant.
His eyelids were heavy, a knowing, sexual gleam beneath them, as if he could read the temptation raging in her veins. He said again softly, “You wanted to kiss me. You still want to kiss me. But you don’t want to admit it.”
She clenched her hands. It would be so easy not to defend herself, just give in to the fire in her blood. If he took her in his arms now…
But even in extreme circumstances, a woman had a duty to herself.
“All right, I admit it. I wanted to. But you only kissed me because…” She was breathing so hard it hurt to wring the words out. “You did it to divert me. But you didn’t know anything about Brent and me. You know, if Brent truly loved me and not Honey, and if I truly loved him… Even though it would have hurt some people, stopping the wedding would have been the right thing. This is what I mean, you see? You manipulated me. You made a mockery of my sincere feelings, and you seduced me.”
She waited for him to laugh at her again, mock her words, but instead he looked faintly rueful. Guilty even. A stain tinged his bronzed cheek. “That’s how it might seem, but it’s not really how it was. Not entirely. I—I’m sorry if I hurt you. The—the truth is I went further than I intended with the kiss. I guess I was enchanted. ”
“Oh, enchanted. That’s no excuse.”
He set down his coffee and took her shoulders. “I know. But if I could take it back…”
“It’s too late, though, now. You knew how susceptible I was to a kiss, or you wouldn’t have suggested that I go into that little room with you and kiss you. Among other things.”
He started stroking her hair, circling her ears with his fingers until her entire scalp tingled. Her insides trembled. Even with all her resentment, desire was affecting her limbs and she didn’t have the strength to push him away.
He put his gorgeous lips to her temple, her cheek, her throat. “I admit it. I deliberately kissed you, though I didn’t plan the other things. They just happened. But I frankly admit I wanted you to forget about him.”
“To save the wedding?”
“Because I saw a beautiful girl in pain and I wanted to comfort you. Distract you a little. And I—God, I yearned”—he came close to groaning the word—“to have you.”
Her blood surged. He was holding so hard against his angular body she could feel the friction of his chest against her breasts, his powerful thighs rubbing hers.
She murmured into his neck, “All you succeeded in doing was in confusing my emotions. And my feminine responses. All my instincts. My desires… ”
He stilled, then held her away from him to search her face. “So, you’re in love with him still?”
She gazed helplessly at him. “I don’t think I am. You’ll probably laugh, but I realize now it was all an illusion. Even the egret. I feel like such a fool. The sad thing is I gave him my best, the real me, my most sincere self, but he just didn’t see it.”
She didn’t want to cry right at this moment, so she laughed instead, though her chin wobbled.
He drew her to him and kissed her lips. “I’m not laughing. I know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t see who you really are. I loved someone once who only ever saw me as a stud. A deep and thoughtful guy like me.”
“No.”
“Yeah. It happened.”
He took her to his bedroom after that. And she let him.
She was shivering in her need. But when he stood naked before her, so strong and virile and beautiful, her blood thundered with an anticipation that was really quite anxious. What if she disappointed him?
She needn’t have worried. Once he removed her clothes and enveloped her in the furnace of his desire, there was no more thinking, only feeling. His hands and lips, the rough skin of his jaw, the hair of his chest on her bare breasts, the passion storming her veins.
He pushed her to the bed and sheathed himself for her protection, then stretched his big frame beside her, tracing her jawline with his fingers, his eyes glowing with a warm and slumberous intent. “I can see who you are.”
She kissed him then with all the fervor in her soul. He wrapped his arms around her, his passion so fierce and immediate the pure flame of lust rose in her and consumed her. She arched under him, locking her legs around him and inviting him in for the sensual ride to rapture.
He thrust himself deep inside her and rocked her until stars exploded in the night sky and light filled every nook and cranny of her being.
Chapter Six
Though the night was long, steamy, and satisfying, when the first rays of dawn penetrated the drapes at Rainer’s bedroom window, Eve wasn’t allowing herself to dream of a future. This was a fling confined to a weekend. People flirted, made love, and moved on. Once the wedding was over, the marriage knot tied, and the husband and wife flown away on their honeymoon, she’d be packing her suitcase, kissing darling Minna ,and taking the flight back to her empty life in New York.
As for Rainer, heaven knew where his work would take him next.
These were the things she was thinking when she was lying in bed with Rainer’s arms around her, blissfully battered in all the best places, sated beyond her wildest imaginings.
“I’ll have to go home,” she groaned, reluctant to move. “There’s a wedding to prepare for. But it was so good.”
“Fantastic,” he murmured, nuzzling her ear with a bristly jaw. “The sweetest woman I ever knew. Thank you, ma’am.”
She smiled. “I should be thanking you.”
He said casually, “Will you and Minna be ready if I drop over to collect you at three?”
“Sure.” She hugged herself with sheerest relish. How the Dixons would hiss when she and Auntie sashayed in with Rainer. “You know that woman who tried to drown herself over you?”
He sighed. “That woman. Well, you do know she was twenty-five years older. I was all of eighteen.”
She sat up. “Honestly? Twenty-five years? Oh my God. Were you in love?”
He laughed. “Thought I was. Young fool. But my folks were scandalized. They wouldn’t agree to the wedding.”
“But twenty-five years.” She stared incredulously at him, shaking her head.
“I was a precocious lad,” he said modestly.
“And is it true she fled to a Buddhist nunnery?”
“Doubt it. Though she may well have taken a vacation in Thailand until the scandal died down. ” He was silent for a minute, then he said, “Truth is, she’s doing well now and lives right here in Bellefleur.”
“What?” Eve opened her eyes wide. “No. Who? Who is she?”
He wouldn’t answer, no matter how hard she begged and cajoled. In the end he capitulated part of the way and Eve had to be satisfied.
“All right, all right. I promise I’ll tell you tonight. But only if it stays right here in this bed.”
“Right here?” Such a beautiful promise. Eve settled back on her pillow, glowing so warmly she felt as if smiles were bursting out all over her.
Another night with Rainer. One more beautiful, heavenly night.
She snuggled up to his chest. “Will she be at the wedding?”
He chuckled. “Try keeping her away. I might even dance with her, for old times’ sake.” He gazed teasin
gly down at her.
Eve wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or sorry about that, when he murmured, “What are you doing Tuesday?”
She glanced at him in surprise. “I’ll be in New York.”
He sounded offhand. “Yeah, I’ll be in New York. I’ve been attached to the UN there for six months or so. Maybe a year. ” His gray eyes gleamed. “How about we do dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“At least dinner.” His stirringly sexy mouth edged into a grin.
Eve was filled with a warm and wondrous joy.
About the Author
Anna Cleary loves to shuffle off the humdrum realities of the workaday world and escape into exotic realms where romance, passion, and excitement reign supreme.
Like many escape artists, Anna was absent for much of her childhood, often tucked in a shady corner engrossed in a fairy tale, either someone else’s or her own. As an adult she was lucky enough to indulge her pleasure in fantasy by becoming a teacher, and considers her successes in teaching young children to read and write wonderful stories of their own to be among her finest achievements to date.
Anna now writes romantic escapes for grown-ups, and laces them with pleasure, excitement, and more than a soupçon of passion.
Readers are welcome to visit her at www.annacleary.com
Nina Tempted the Lord
Kelly Hunter
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Kelly Hunter. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Shannon Godwin
When Honey Got Married Page 10
