The Right Bride? (28 page)

Besides, how could he even be thinking of making love to her now that he knew what a wasteland of fear and loneliness her marriage had been?

Karyn sank down on the bed and tugged at his sleeve. “Hold on to me, Rafe…please.”

He pulled off his shoes and socks, and tossed his tie and belt on the chair. Lying beside her, he drew her into his arms, gently pressing her face into his shoulder. She felt as tense as a cornered animal. “You’re safe,” he murmured. “No one will ever hurt you while I’m around.”

For a space of time that felt like forever to him, she lay still; he had no idea what she was thinking. Then she pulled away, gazing up at him in the darkness. “Rafe,” she said unevenly, “I want you to make love to me.”

He reared up on one elbow. He’d outfaced tycoons and
bluffed his way through cutthroat negotiations on which his whole future had depended; but a handful of words from Karyn and he was speechless.

Ducking her head, she blurted, “I shouldn’t have asked you—I’m sorry.”

“Karyn, I’m not hesitating because I don’t want you,” Rafe said forcibly. “But are you sure this is the right time? You’ve just had a horrible nightmare and you’re upset…”

“I want you, Rafe,” she said in a low voice. “Now.”

His heart overflowed with an emotion he couldn’t even name. He said huskily, “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

She looked as high-strung as a racehorse, by no means as certain as she was striving to sound. So it was up to him to bridge the gap between the terror that was Steve’s legacy and the joy that could be his own gift. Rafe reached out and drew her into his arms again, her soft curls tickling his chin as he began stroking the length of her spine, smoothly and rhythmically. “We’ve got all the time in the world,” he whispered, closing his eyes and allowing his senses to be saturated with her: her scent, her warmth, her beauty. He moved to her shoulders, rubbing the tension from them, feeling her gradually begin to relax.

She gave a tiny sigh of pleasure and lifted her face to be kissed. “I feel as though I’ve never done this before,” she said with a shaky laugh.

“We haven’t. Not with each other.” He bent to find her lips, their waiting softness sending a shaft of heat the length of his body. He stamped it down. This wasn’t about him. With exquisite control he laved her lips with his tongue, nibbling them, teasing them open, then kissing her in a surge of tenderness. A kiss he wanted to go on forever, he thought dimly.

The first flick of her tongue sent another of those heated
flashes through every nerve. He ran his hands along the yielding curve of her back, let his palms span her ribs and drift to the ripe swell of hip. The satin of her gown tantalized him with its smooth flow; frustrated him because it hid from him her nudity. Need slammed through him. But he couldn’t rush her. He mustn’t.

Then she undid three buttons on his shirt, sliding her hand beneath it. He gasped involuntarily as she tugged at his chest hair, exploring the arc of rib and the hardness of his belly. Releasing her briefly, Rafe hauled his shirt off, and in a firestorm of desire felt her press her breasts to his bare skin. He took their firm ripeness in his palms and lowered his head; pushing her gown aside, he suckled her, tasting, lingering, caressing, all the while inflamed by her small moans of pleasure. Her head was thrown back. He trailed his mouth the length of her throat, skimming the shells of her ears, nipping her lobes. Then, fighting for restraint, he kissed her again.

She said jaggedly, “Take off my gown, Rafe.”

Her eyes were like deep pools of darkness; as she rose to her knees, he slipped the gown over her head and let it fall to the bed. Her body was illumined in the pale glow of the moon, all flow and surrender. He said, scarcely trusting his voice, “You’re so beautiful, Karyn.”

Drawing her closer, he buried his face between her breasts, the rapid staccato of her heartbeat echoing in his ear. He held the whole world. All he had ever wanted or desired.

As her fingers ran through his hair, he shifted his head, tonguing the sweet rise of her flesh and flicking its tip to hardness. She was whispering his name, over and over, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her body arching backward. He slid his mouth down the tautness of her belly, grasping her by
the hips and then touching her between the thighs. She was hot and wet; he almost lost control.

With his fingertips he found her center, watched her shudder in response, her face a blur of desire. Using all the skill at his command, he played with her until she was writhing and sobbing. Beneath his fingers, the throbbing gathered and spun out of control and with the harsh cry of a falcon as it plummets from the sky, she collapsed into his arms.

Her heart was thrumming against his rib cage. Her tiny puffs of breath warmed his bare skin. Then she muttered, “Thank you, Rafe…oh, thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said, and knew, instinctively, that for Steve her pleasure would never have been paramount. He, Rafe, was more than making love to her; he was exorcising a ghost. Hadn’t he known that all along?

He held her, his heart pounding, his whole body craving its own release. Very slowly she raised her head, her breath still as rapid as if she’d been running. Then she kissed him, her teeth scraping his lips in deliberate seduction.

He couldn’t take much more. “Don’t you think we should go easy, you must be worn-out—”

She was sinking down on the bed, fumbling for the catch on his trousers. “It’s not fair,” she whispered, “I haven’t got a stitch on, and look at you.” She gave a tiny, incredulous laugh. “Just look at you,” she repeated, her eyes wandering over his body like licks of fire. “You’re beautiful, too.”

A simple compliment, yet it speared him to the heart. “Karyn,” he said helplessly, “all I want is for you to be happy…”

She was edging his zipper down, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration; suddenly impatient, he
twisted off his trousers and his boxers. Since he’d first started massaging her shoulders, he’d been hard and ready for her; and had kept his distance, not wanting to frighten her.

She smiled at him, a smile of such sweetness that his breath caught in his throat. “I want you to be happy, too.”

“I am,” said Rafe, his laugh exultant. “How could I not be? I’m in bed with the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Come off it! What about Celine?”

He didn’t want to talk about Celine; her many infidelities and the aftermath of her betrayal were past history. Over and done with. In a way, hadn’t she done him a good turn over the years by keeping him single until Karyn erupted into his life? “Her beauty was on the surface,” he said. “Yours goes all the way to your soul.”

Karyn said unsteadily, “That’s the loveliest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Hang around,” he teased.

Something flickered across her face. Then she said with an assertiveness that charmed him, “Kiss me, Rafe.”

“Anything to oblige.”

He eased her down to lie beside him, face to face, kissing her with an intensity that battered at his control. As he fought to hold fast to it, she caught his lower lip in her teeth, gently nibbling, each tiny sensual bite driving him closer to the brink. When she wrapped her arms around his waist and rubbed the whole length of her body against his, he couldn’t hold on any longer. Imploding with desire, careless of his own strength, Rafe flipped her on her back and covered her, plunging to find her mouth.

And saw, briefly but unmistakably, the flick of remembered fear on her face.

It was gone before he could say anything; before he
could even draw back. Her eyes fathoms deep, Karyn took his face in her hands and kissed him with a kind of passionate desperation.

How could she ever have doubted her own courage, he wondered. Overwhelmed by sensations utterly new to him, Rafe kissed her back, his one desire to give her a depth of pleasure that would make nonsense of the past. Their tongues danced. Their hands roamed and caressed and explored; thigh was intertwined with thigh, hip held to hip. Their breath, ever more and more heated, mingled. Yet still he held back.

It was she who drew his hand to the damp heat between her thighs, who begged him, her head thrown back, “Rafe, I need you inside me…I can’t wait any longer. Oh God, Rafe, now…”

With exquisite care he parted the wet petals of her flesh and eased inside her. His face convulsed as she tightened around him, need coursing like a jolt of electricity through his frame. “I can’t—” he began, and heard her cry out his name as the inner throbbing caught her and tossed her as though she was boneless, weightless.

It was all Rafe needed. He allowed himself to rise to the crest, heat and urgency lifting him until he could bear it no longer. His release was fast and tumultuous; his own cry hoarse in his ears.

His breath sobbing in his chest, he rolled over so she was lying on top of him, and held her tightly, his face buried in her neck. Beyond words. Beyond thought. Beyond anything but a storm of gratitude that he had found her: his mate, his beloved.

Beloved, he thought blankly, the truth hitting him between the eyes: a truth he’d been fighting for weeks. He loved Karyn, of course he did. Hadn’t every second he’d
spent with her since that first incendiary kiss in the woods been leading inevitably to this moment?

He was bound to her with a love as deep as the ocean, as wild as the fells. His soul in her keeping.

But he couldn’t tell her so. Not yet.

Then, from a long way away, he became aware of the cool slide of tears on his shoulder. “Karyn?” he said hoarsely. “Did I hurt you?”

She was crying in earnest now, her slender body shuddering in his arms. Helpless to do anything but hold her, Rafe waited until her storm of weeping subsided. He reached with one hand for a tissue from the bedside table, pressing it into her palm. “What’s wrong? If I hurt you, I’m more sorry than I can say.”

Her breath caught in a hiccup. “You didn’t hurt me—you were wonderful. More than I’d ever dreamed. I’m just so—Steve was the only man I’d ever gone to bed with, so I didn’t know—”

“You mean you were a virgin when you married him?” Rafe asked with careful restraint.

“I was brought up with strict standards, and in university I was too busy studying to fall in love. So Steve was the first and only one until tonight…it somehow never worked with him, I never felt—I don’t even know how to say it.” She scrubbed at her eyes. “He used to blame me, saying I was too uptight, and of course the more he blamed me the more uptight I got. I—I just never realized what it could be like.”

Her eyes downcast, she plucked at the hairs on Rafe’s chest. “You must think I’m an awful—”

“I think you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met, as well as the most beautiful.”

She lifted her head, tears still streaking her cheeks. “You mean it, don’t you?”

“Yes. Every word.” He longed to tell her how much he loved her; and with every vestige of his self-control, held back. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready.

“I really want to believe you. I can’t tell you how much I want to.”

“You will. Soon.”

Again her cheek fell to his chest. Her eyes drooped shut. “I’ll work on it,” she said, and within moments her breathing slowed and deepened.

Rafe lay still, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. The small hesitancies in her love-making, the dazzled smile when he’d teased her nipples to hardness, the shocked gasp when he’d first brought her to climax: they all made sense now.

He couldn’t think of a word harsh enough for the man she had, in all innocence, married.

He was going to get her away from Heddingley for more than one night, he thought. Away from the river and the Cape Cod house. Away from Donny and Donny’s parents and all her memories. To a place where he could tell her how much he loved her.

How was he going to do it, and where would he take her?

Within two minutes, a plan fell neatly into his mind.

“I’
VE NEVER
seen anything this beautiful in my life, Rafe. The blue—it’s so intense, so dazzling.”

“The color of your eyes,” Rafe said.

Karyn smiled at him uncertainly. “How did I end up here? Yesterday morning I was in Maine, and today I’m in this utterly gorgeous place—when you pull strings, you pull them hard.”

“Gets results,” he said. He’d pulled them hard because he’d been afraid that, given time to think, Karyn might not fall in with his plan. “Your boss told me he was happy to give you the time off, and I bet you’d rather be here than at the clinic.”

“I’m not that addicted to my job. But I’m still not quite sure why I agreed to this.”

“Because you wanted to. Because you haven’t traveled much. Because I was very persuasive.”

“Right on all counts…especially the last.”

She turned back to the breathtaking azure of the Saronic Gulf, Cape Sounio a gray-green blur on the horizon. Waves lapped the shore; the sky was another shade of blue, cloudless and hot. A foreign sky, she thought with a tremor of excitement. A Greek sky. Hadn’t she always wanted to come to Greece?

“You own this hotel just like you own the resort in Maine,” she said, remembering the deference with which she’d been treated half an hour ago when she’d walked through the blindingly white archway of the Attica Resort. The whole place was luxurious beyond anything she could
have dreamed. She and Rafe were staying in his personal suite, with its private outdoor swimming pool, its hedge of pines and olive trees that gave them an unassailable privacy. It boasted a patio trellised with grapevines, which overlooked the pool and the bay. All the rooms had tall windows, each opening onto a view more stupendous than the previous one, while the furnishings were modern, their hues complementing the outdoors, beckoning it within.

She had, quite simply, never seen anything like it.

She was going to enjoy every minute of her stay, she decided. No matter that Rafe had overridden all her objections to spending four days with him in a place of his choice. No matter that she’d been too excited to sleep on the overnight flight; or that her wardrobe—even including Liz’s borrowed dress—seemed hopelessly inadequate. Her clothes, inadequate or otherwise, were already hanging in the walk-in closet in the spacious, cream-painted bedroom that she was, apparently, to share with Rafe.

She would make love with him again. Her nerves tingling, she wondered if their second love-making could possibly match their first, in a moonlit bedroom thousands of miles away.

Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe that had been a fluke.

“You look very serious,” Rafe teased. “What are you thinking about?”

She blushed fierily. He looked very much at home in his white shirt and trousers, his feet bare, his black hair gleaming in the brilliant sun. Why not make love with him now and find out?

No one, other than Rafe, knew her here. The woman who’d gone underground in the months of her marriage could be allowed to surface here. To take all the risks and have all the fun that had been denied her for too long. Karyn gave a sudden ripple of laughter, kicked off her san
dals and walked over to him, the boards hot under her soles. His eyes, a darker blue than any ocean, smiled down at her. She looped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and kissed him very explicitly.

Lifting her off her feet, Rafe kissed her back, stunned by the hard, hot thrusts of her tongue. God, how he wanted her. The last twenty-four hours, until he could get her here, had felt like the longest in his whole life.

She whispered, pausing to nip at his lips, “Take me to bed, Rafe.”

His answer was to sweep one arm under her knees and pick her up as though she weighed nothing. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Her cheek against the crisp cotton of his shirt, she was carried across the dining room, through the elegant ease of the living room to the bedroom. The spread was a soft yellow; one window was shaded by a thicket of trees, the other open to the gulf and the Mediterranean sunshine. When he put her down by the bed, then stripped back the covers, she began, very slowly, to undo the row of tiny buttons that fastened the bodice of her green sundress.

Rafe stood still, watching her. Her face was flushed a delicate pink, her lips were parted and her hair was like spun gold. The dress slid from her shoulders, slipped to lie in a green pool on the floor. She was wearing nothing but silken panties, also green. Lifting one knee with a grace that cut him to the heart, she eased them down her legs. Then she leaned over and started to undo his shirt, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration.

He reached for his belt, and within moments they were both naked. She closed the distance between them, her breasts brushing his chest, and went with her intuition. “You held back last time, didn’t you?” As he nodded, she said with gathering conviction and a boldness that startled
her, “I’m glad you did. I was frightened and you were so good to me, so gentle. But now I want more. Remember our first kiss, in the woods near Willowbend? I want that again. I want you to drive me out of my mind.”

With brutal truth he said, “Just looking at you drives me out of my mind.”

So she had that power…her blood pounding in her ears, Karyn lifted her face for a kiss that swept aside any lingering doubts she might have had. He was her lover, the man who’d reawoken her to passion. This time she wouldn’t be afraid.

He pushed her back on the bed and straddled her, his body hovering over her as his mouth plummeted to find hers. Their lips fused, feverish and demanding, his teeth scraping her tongue. She locked her arms around his nape, devouring him, tasting him, savoring him. “I need to touch every inch of you,” she gasped, her body arching to meet his; his chest hair abraded her breasts, inflaming every nerve she possessed. He fell on top of her, then rolled over so she was riding him; lifting both hands, he cupped her breasts, playing with their tips until she threw her head back in ecstasy, the light molten on her skin.

Then his fingers, those wondrously sensitive fingers, were tracing the curves of her waist, the rise of her hips, drifting, always drifting, closer and closer to the juncture of her thighs. She was almost sobbing with need by the time he touched her there; sensation after sensation ripped through her body until she couldn’t hold back any longer. Shuddering, she fell into the tumult, her hands gripping his wrists as though she were drowning and they were all she could clasp.

Gradually she came back to herself; she wasn’t drowning, she was achingly and brilliantly alive, at one with the blue of the sea and the sunshine streaming in the window.
Her breasts rising and falling with the pounding of her heart, she said softly, “You’re the most generous of lovers. But now it’s your turn…lie still.”

She lowered herself to the mattress beside him, and gave herself over to a sensual haze of taste and touch. Exploring him. Learning him. Hearing, with that thrill of power, his gasps of pleasure, watching his features blur with desire. Her hands roamed lower, down the tautly muscled belly until she was circling the silken heat and hardness of that desire.

His face convulsed. With a suddenness that sent a fast jolt of excitement through her, he lifted her so that she was, again, riding him. Then he drove into her, into the wetness and slick warmth, into the welcome that was Karyn. The woman he loved.

The words, those three little words
I love you
that were so all-important, were on the very tip of his tongue. Rafe forced them back. Not yet. Not yet.

She was sliding up and down, gripping him, sharp cries of mingled pleasure and need rising in her throat. Deep within her, the drumbeat of her climax was rising, too, toward its inevitable crescendo; overwhelmed, Rafe let his own pounding rhythms meet hers and meld in simultaneous and explosive release.

Slowly Rafe came back to himself. Karyn was lying on top of him, her body damp with sweat. Against his chest he heard her say raggedly, “I’ve never in my life felt like that—I didn’t know I could. Oh, Rafe, I don’t think I can breathe. Let alone sit up.”

Holding her close, he kissed her ear; her soft, sweetly scented curls were tickling his cheek. “You don’t have to sit up. Breathing would be good, though.”

How else, other than with humor, was he to defuse a lovemaking that had taken him to a place he’d never visited
before? Every instinct was warning him against speaking his love. It was too soon; he risked frightening her off.

He had time. The next few days, to start with.

Minute by minute the days passed, each one convincing Karyn that she would never forget even a single second of this magical interlude. She and Rafe swam in the pool, lazed in the sun and ate delicious meals that appeared from nowhere and whose flavors were often new to her:
tsipoura, tzatziki, gemista.
Every day they agreed they should drive north into Athens, and see—at the very least—the Parthenon; and every day they delayed this outing once again.

On the second day, Karyn phoned Fiona. “Guess where I am,” she said.

“Somewhere with Rafe, I hope—he told me he was going to see you.”

“I’m lying by the pool at a gorgeous resort south of Athens.”

“I want all the details.”

Karyn laughed. “Not quite all—I’d be arrested.”

“Are you trying to tell me you and Rafe are an item?”

“For now,” Karyn said hastily.

“We all have to start somewhere. Karyn, I’m so glad—ever since I met you, I thought you and Rafe were made for each other.”

“You
did?
You never said so.”

“Thought it might scare you off. You’re what you might call gun-shy.”

“Fiona, I’m ready to tell you about Steve now. Not on the phone—but the next time I see you.”

“You and Rafe should get together more often.” Fiona’s voice sobered. “I’m always happy to listen to whatever you want to tell me.”

Rafe had just emerged from his office, where he spent
part of every morning working. Karyn watched him peel off his shirt and shorts and dive into the pool, as naked and beautiful as a Greek god. A thread of panic in her voice, she said, “This isn’t permanent. Rafe and me, I mean.”

“Nothing’s permanent,” Fiona said grandly. “Well, that’s not true. My wedding plans are. Did I tell you…”

Ten minutes later, Karyn said, “I’ve got to go—Rafe wants me to join him in the pool. This is such a heavenly place, Fiona, I don’t know how I’ll go back to ordinary living.”

“Perhaps you won’t. Give my love to Rafe. And Karyn, I’m so glad you’re happy.”

“I am happy,” Karyn said blankly. “You’re right.”

“Good,” said Fiona. “Love you. Bye.”

Suddenly frightened by just how happy she was, Karyn plunged into the pool and gave chase to Rafe. She spent that afternoon browsing in the hotel boutiques, driving her credit card to the limit with her purchase of a flowing pink silk nightgown; it very satisfactorily caused Rafe to abandon his computer the next morning to ravish her, once again, in their big bed.

Because, of course, that was the other thing they did. Make love. Day and night, she thought, with a secret smile of delight. The whole four days one long haze of sensuality.

Rafe said lazily, “You look like the kitchen cat when he finds fish in his bowl.”

He was stretched out beside her under the trellis, where the grapes were ripening; sun and shadow dappled his body. “Fish? No way. Caviar,” she said, letting her eyes run suggestively from his tanned shoulders to his narrow swim trunks.

“We’re going dancing tonight in the ballroom—we should save some energy for that.”

“Can’t take the pace, Rafe?”

“Try me.”

This time they made love under a screen of green leaves and blue sky; once again Rafe drove Karyn out of her mind with a desire so hot and sharp she wondered if she would survive it. When, finally, she lay back on the soft pillows, she muttered, “Dancing? Did you say dancing?”

“I did.” In a lithe movement he got up from the lounger. “Come with me—I bought you something this morning. If it doesn’t fit, it can be altered this afternoon.”

She took his hand, following him into the bedroom. He opened the cupboard and took out a long evening gown, strapless, made of delphinium-blue raw silk.

“I saw that yesterday in one of the boutiques,” she stammered. “I didn’t dare try it on because I knew I couldn’t afford it. Oh, Rafe, I adore it.”

“It’s yours.”

Her instinctive protest died on her tongue. “To wear tonight?”

“With this,” he said.

The rectangular box he was holding out was made of black leather embossed with gold. She said breathlessly, “You’ve given me so much already. These last four days…”

“Karyn, I make a lot of money. Let me enjoy spending a little of it on you.”

“If I refuse, I’ll sound ungracious.”

“That’s right…say,
Thank you, Rafe,
and try it on.”

She pried the box open. A single teardrop diamond on a delicate gold chain was nestled into the white velvet lining. “Thank you, Rafe,” she whispered and lifted it from the box with fingers that were trembling. “No one’s ever given me anything so beautiful.”

He took the chain from her, looped it around her neck and fastened it at her nape. Then he drew her over to the mirror, where she saw a naked woman still glowing from
the act of love, the diamond sparkling like fire in the valley between her breasts.

Was that woman herself? She said faintly, “I’ll be proud to be your partner tonight,” and knew she’d said just the right thing.

In the glorious ballroom, open on two sides to the gulf and a sky glittering with stars, Karyn danced until her feet hurt. At midnight the buffet was spread with a dazzling array of dishes, each like a work of art, the table decorated with pale pink orchids and ice sculptures that caught the light from the chandeliers. Rafe was punctilious about introducing her to the other guests and to some of his business associates; Karyn tried out her newly learned Greek and danced some more.

The whole evening she was aware of Rafe’s body held to hers, of the electricity that lay just below the surface, waiting until they were alone to be ignited. His body language said, more clearly than words, that she was his. Yet when she danced with other men and Rafe with other women, she sensed he was comfortable with this in a way Steve had never been. She also knew he was only waiting for her to return to his arms.