In a moment of passion that she would always remember, Mark moved above her, hesitated for a bare moment, then joined their bodies with a fluid grace that shimmered from one to the other and back.
“Ahhhh …” Deanna cried, unaware of the vocal sigh until it was repeated when he began to move in gentle rhythm. She clung to him as he held her closer and arched her hips to meet his thrusts, answering his need with the force of her intuitive femininity.
Later she would recall the soft words he said, the growing breathlessness, the coaxing sounds and cries. Now she was embroiled in the pleasure as it built slowly toward an apex she had never, ever known.
Mark was the consummate lover, never quite lost enough in his own passion to totally forget her greater vulnerability. With infinite care he led her upward, teasing and withholding, speeding and slowing until he felt her at the peak of her endurance. Only then did he offer her the release she blindly sought. At that mind-shattering instant she exploded with the fire of a thousand brilliant starbursts of the kind she had so secretly dreamed of long ago. Mark heard her triumphant cry and let it trigger his own as he gave in at last to that same supreme pleasure. It was a shared moment, a moment of ecstasy. Gasping raggedly, he crushed her against him until the last of the spasms subsided.
Deanna was enraptured. Her body seemed to float, held to earth only by the arms she coiled tightly around Mark’s neck. She hadn’t imagined that anything could be so perfect, so natural, so naked in its glory. For those few fleeting moments she had captured the fantasy of loving and being loved back to mindless distraction. She had discovered a primal luxury and its vivid force stunned her.
Needing to feel the reality of this man who had pleasured her so exquisitely, she stroked the dampness of his back until her fingers dropped to splay over the meeting of their hips.
“Deanna … Deanna …” Unknowingly Mark cried her name. His tone was hushed, his head buried against her neck as the beauty of passion lingered. But reason returned with a jolt when he realized that she lay suddenly still beneath him, her body incongruously tense.
3
“Deanna?” Mark raised his dark head to look at her with concern. “What is it?”
The fury of passion had left her looking windblown. Having escaped its bounds, her thick auburn hair lay in billowing sprays, dark against the white of the pillow. Her skin was damp. Even the glow of lovemaking couldn’t hide its sudden pallor. She stared at him fixedly, blinking only when he repeated his demand more urgently.
“Tell me, honey. What’s wrong?”
It seemed forever before she was able to speak. Even her shock had not overcome that lingering breathlessness. “You know who I am,” she said faintly. He had called her by name.
“Of course I know who you are.”
“I didn’t … expect that.”
“Why not? You know who I am, don’t you?” he chided her softly.
Deanna sank her teeth into her lower lip. Had she actually cried out his name too, without knowing it? She tried to think back to those last cataclysmic moments, but could hardly assimilate the overall magnificence of the fire that had consumed her so totally.
Mark nodded silently in answer to her inner question. “You spoke my name as unconsciously as I just spoke yours.” He smiled. “It was very natural.” Bending his head, he kissed tiny beads of moisture from her nose, then carefully slid to her side. Deanna seized the opportunity to turn her back and try to rise, but Mark caught her. His arm curved around her waist and gently drew her back, flattening her on the bed beside him.
“Oh, no, you don’t! Now that I’ve found you, you can’t up and leave me just like that”
Deanna avoided his gaze. “I’ve got to go.”
“Do you?” he asked, arching a brow in doubt “Is there someone expecting you? Someone waiting for you at this hour?”
Her eyes sent a message of mild rebuke as she looked toward him. “You should know the answer to that”
Undaunted, he reached to smooth a lock of damp hair from her cheek. “I know that you’re Deanna Hunt”
She eyed him fearfully. Would he destroy the entire fantasy? “What else do you know about me?”
He grinned. “You live upstairs,” he offered. As his smile continued to toy with his lips, Deanna felt herself melting all over again. In self-defense she focused on his chest, only to find it as unnerving as his smile had been.
His fingers fell from her cheek to curve lightly around her shoulder in a caress that was enough to remind Deanna of her nudity. Looking down, she groped for the sheet, but Mark caught her hand and stilled her. “Don’t …” he gasped quickly, without thinking, then forced himself to relax. “Wait … it’s all right”
She was suddenly overwhelmed by where she was and what she’d done. “It’s not!” she cried. “This shouldn’t have happened. I’ve got to leave.”
“We’ve got to talk,” he contradicted her.
“I can’t.” Pulling roughly away, she reached the far side of the bed, but a strange languor prevented her from standing up. As her confusion grew she wrapped her arms around her middle and swayed slightly back and forth. Before she could react to the dip of the mattress immediately behind her, a second pair of arms appeared to cover hers and she was drawn back into a virile cradle.
“I won’t let you go until we’ve talked.” Deanna hung her head and slowly shook it in dismay. “Please talk to me,” he repeated, near pleading.
But her thoughts remained her own. What had she done? How had she come to find herself here? How could she have allowed herself this lapse of judgment? After all, she was Mrs.—
“Then you’ll listen to me.” Mark cut firmly into her self-reproach, holding her unyieldingly yet softly enough to give whatever comfort he could impart. “I know that you’re Deanna Hunt and that you live here at the hotel. My waiter was kind enough to tell me that. The rest I figured out for myself.”
“The rest?” she asked hesitantly.
He sighed and tightened his arms a fraction. “You’re Lawrence Hunt’s widow.” She drew in her breath and tried to escape, but he refused to release her. “This hotel is yours, as is that shiny limousine outside, not to mention the corporation your husband founded.”
The voice that had been so close by her ear grew silent until Deanna could hear nothing but the guilty thud of her heart. When he spoke again she caught a touch of humor. “Did you really hope to remain anonymous?” He paused, then gently squeezed her. “Hmmm?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered at last.
With a pained moan Mark shifted her until she sat sideways in his embrace. “Would you like to know what else I’ve learned about you?” he asked in that deep tone she found so soothing.
Was there more? Were there to be no secrets from this man? But then, he had the ability to read her soul and she seemed either unable or unwilling to do anything about it “If you’re going to tell me that I’m a very wealthy widow, please don’t.”
“I wasn’t”
She glanced up skeptically. “No?”
His eyes gleamed. “No.”
Deanna waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, she grew impatient. “What have you learned about me?”
“You’re curious?” His lips twitched at their corners, but having looked back down, she missed the move.
Contrary to her better judgment, Deanna found a demure smile emerging. “I’m a woman. Isn’t that one of my prerogatives?”
“That’s what I’ve learned.”
“What?” She frowned, puzzled.
Mark grew even more tender, if that were possible, and lifted a hand to press her ear to his heart. “I’ve learned that you’re a woman. Through and through. For every bit of the poise and composure that shields Mrs. Lawrence Hunt from the world, deep down Deanna is a very passionate woman.”
She blushed, but he couldn’t see that. There was an advantage to sitting this way, she reflected. At least he couldn’t see everything!
“Well �
�� ?” he prodded.
“Well what?”
“Haven’t you got anything to say?” She remained silent, feeling almost childish and absurd in light of the very mature experience she and this man had shared. “Nothing?”
“I’m sorry,” she finally murmured. “I’m not much of a talker.”
Mark was unfazed. “So I gather. And that’s what I intend to change.”
Tilting her head away from his chest, Deanna looked up in good-humored skepticism. “Really?”
“Really.” His smile was smug.
“That’s very interesting. I’ve spent nearly thirty years as my own best friend. What makes you think you can change me now?”
He touched her lips with the tip of his finger. “You’ve been a virgin all that time … .” At her cutting glance, he amended his words. “Well … almost. Let’s say that, for all practical purposes, you were innocent in the ways of passion … and I’ve changed that.”
Deanna felt the urge to squirm, but couldn’t turn from his riveting warmth. “Was it … that obvious?” she asked haltingly.
“Only because I wanted to see it. It was in your eyes and on your lips. When you cried out to me there was an element of … I guess you’d call it astonishment”
This time she couldn’t hide her blush. “I didn’t realize,” she breathed self-consciously.
But Mark wasn’t finished. His eyes caressed her and she began to tingle with renewed awareness of the hard strength of his body against hers. “You haven’t any idea what it meant to me to see that kind of wonder on your face and to know that I’d been able to put it there.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.” She sighed, wishing she possessed even a modicum of that same self-confidence in this very new situation.
“Am I wrong? Have you felt those things before?”
“Please, Mark!” she cried on impulse, desperately needing to put a halt to his prodding. It was getting far too intimate. And despite what they’d just shared, what they continued to share sitting there naked together, she had no desire to discuss her married life. With Larry gone, there was something sacred about those years they’d had together. She wouldn’t spoil their memory by discussing very private moments with Mark.
“See, you’ve said it again. My name.” He chuckled at the uncomprehending expression that flitted across her features for a moment
Deanna took a deep breath. Her eyes broached the subject that her arms and legs weren’t quite up to. “I’ve really got to be going. I do have someone upstairs—a housekeeper. When I left for dinner I told her that I’d be back to do some reading. She’s apt to get worried. I don’t want her to start making any calls.”
“Would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never given her cause for worry, so she’s never been put to the test”
“But she keeps a close watch on you?”
“In the sense of a chaperon … no. I’m a big girl.” She smiled up at him and was rewarded by a mischievous grin.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he drawled, then put his lips to her forehead and pulled her closer for what he sensed would be the final moments of intimacy. “But this housekeeper”—he sobered—“keeps track of your comings and goings?”
“She always knows my schedule so that she can have things ready for me when I need them. It’s really very helpful. And after all,” she scoffed softly, “it’s not as though I run off in odd directions all the time. My life is pretty ordered.”
“Ordered … or programmed?” He kept his tone a hair above censure.
In its way, Deanna’s response was just as pointed, her gaze just as sharp. “Perhaps unchanging, or predictable, would be better choices. There are things to be done on particular days and I do them. I’ve set a pattern over the years and I don’t stray very far. It’s a very comfortable, secure way to live.”
Mark’s eyes didn’t leave her face, though the sight of her nudity was his for the taking. He too was preoccupied with this other, more emotional issue. “Is that how you want it?”
Deanna didn’t answer for a long time. She had asked herself that same question more than once in the course of the past week. It wasn’t a simple matter of “yes” or “no.”
“It has been …”
“Until now?” Having sensed her hesitancy, Mark probed its cause. But Deanna couldn’t confess to him what she refused to confess to herself.
“I don’t know. I Just don’t know.” She shook her head, then swung around to take in the room. “This whole thing isn’t what I’d planned.” Or was it? Was this at the root of the lemon-scented bath she’d taken? Was this behind the black silk and fine pearls? From beneath lowered lids she eyed her delicate bracelet and the matching ring. Those and the strand around her neck were all she wore. She put a hand to her throat
“I feel so foolish,” she whispered, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until Mark turned her around to face him. With only a hand’s breadth separating them, she was all too aware of his nakedness. She forced herself to keep her eyes above his waist
“Why, Deanna? Tell me.” He spoke with soft urgency.
Deanna gazed at him achingly as she groped for the words to express her overwhelming confusion. “I … everything has always been so clear to me. It’s always been so easy … .” Her voice trailed off into the silence of the room.
“Go on,” Mark coaxed her, gently stroking her arms.
Her brows drew together in a frown. “From as far back as I can remember, my role was cut out for me. I was my parents’ daughter, taken care of and protected. I was given everything I could want and more. When it was time to marry, I married. Then Larry took charge of things. The decisions were always made for me by people who knew better than I did. Everything was … so simple.”
“But there’s more to life, Deanna. You’ve discovered that, haven’t you?”
Her eyes grew glazed with a sorrow that boded ill for any future hopes he might have held. “Oh, yes. I’ve discovered that there’s more, but …” She felt his hold momentarily slacken and took instant advantage to slide off the bed. With a quick eye to the floor she knelt, gathered her underthings and dress, and stood. Mark was on his feet before her and she gasped in alarm.
If she had thought him intimidating at his full height when dressed, he was that much more so now. In his naked glory he might have been the lean, bronzed hero of every woman’s fantasy. His physique was as ideally proportioned as it was superbly conditioned. But he seemed oblivious to his nudity and his eyes refused to release hers to allow her to appreciate him fully.
“But what? Say it all,” he ordered evenly. This cooler tone was something she hadn’t heard from him before and Deanna realized abruptly how very much she didn’t know about him. Feeling an instinctive urge to run, she turned toward the bathroom, but he captured her arm and kept her in reach.
“It’s not important,” she whispered as she clasped her clothes in front of her. Fear erupted within her to join that other swarm of emotions. Could this man who had hitherto shown only gentleness be prone to violence as well? Would the pendulum swing that far?
The sight of her fear gentled him quickly. “It’s important to me, Deanna. I’ve known passion before, but I’ve never in my life experienced anything like what we had a little while ago. As a matter of fact, I’ve never experienced anything like what we’ve had with that whole damned dining room separating us! You’ve felt it I know you have. Are you going to turn tail and run from … that?”
The jolt of pain that seared her settled in her chest It took the greatest effort she had ever made to say the one word. “Yes.” When Mark looked at her in disbelief, she tried to explain. “I have to.”
“But why?”
If only he had been angry, even violent, it might have been easier for her to do what she had to do. But the total vulnerability she sensed, the raw anguish of loneliness, tore into her with a dozen spiked thorns. If this was one of the things she’d missed in life�
�the power to hurt—she’d rather remain in her cocoon.
With a deep breath she began shakily. “I am who I am, Mark. It’s as simple as that … and as final.” Turning away, she headed slowly toward the bathroom. “I’m Mrs. Lawrence Hunt. Certain things are … expected of me.” On the threshold she glanced back over her shoulder. “This isn’t one of them.” After shutting the door behind her, she leaned back against it for support, eyes closed, head back.
Mark had been astonished enough to let her go. But he soon came to life and strode across the carpet after her. With his hand on the doorknob he stopped. “But that isn’t fair! You have a right to live.”
“I do live,” she answered in muffled tones.
The door blunted the full force of his sarcasm. “Oh, sure. You go through life in very neat progression. They expect … and you do. But what about that passion, Deanna? Why do you have to deny it?”
Deanna started to dress. Her motions held apathy, a symbol of her need to detach herself from the situation. Mrs. Lawrence Hunt would never be putting on her clothes in a strange man’s bathroom. Mrs. Lawrence Hunt would never have taken them off in the first place! And as for what had taken place in between—
“Deanna! Answer me!” She heard a muffled oath as he moved away from the door and she sped up in anticipation. Sure enough, she had barely pulled her dress on when the door swung open. Mark had been insightful to the extent of pulling on his slacks, but his manner was in no other way conciliatory. “Okay, honey.” He propped his hands on his hips. “You can answer me face-to-face now. I want one good—and I mean good—reason why you can’t let yourself enjoy life like any other normal person.” His eyes glittered with determination. “And don’t tell me that you do, because I won’t believe it.”
With the donning of her clothes, Deanna had moved closer toward being that other woman again. Her poise had finally begun to return. “I’m sorry, Mark, but I can’t help that,” she apologized softly.
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