Meg, also look like he was avoiding commenting on what she’d said.
She sat beside Luke for the dinner, ignoring the occasional press of his thigh against hers. He kept their topics of conversation neutral, his tone and his glances warm, only a degree or two more than friendly. For all of his subtle teasing foreplay earlier, he seemed, from the time of her request, to have switched off, or at least turned down the wattage on the sensual messages.
Whereas Meg had to fight to hide her feelings, and fight to conceal the slow burning fuse of desire he’d lit and that now refused to be extinguished.
When the dinner was all but over, he sat back with his arm behind her and his hand curled around her arm, his thumb tracing lazy circles that sent heat spiraling through her. It was just a thumb. It shouldn’t be able to do that.
She waited till he was deep in conversation with the man across the table before easing her chair back. Not deep enough, apparently. He dropped a firm hand to her thigh, anchoring her to her chair and looked at her, a knowing smile glinting in his eyes and touching his lips. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not running away now.”
“I was just…” she could see him waiting for her excuse “…I’m not needed here,” was the best she could come up with.
“I need you here.”
She could almost wish that was true. He’d needed her once and married her because of it. That need had passed. He was back in his life, he was strong and healthy. His hand gentled on her thigh, but the heat of his palm burned through the silk of her dress, sizzled along her skin.
“I’m tired.” She tried again, which was also true, although she didn’t expect to sleep any more tonight than she had last night. Last night she’d been dealing mainly with the surprise of his sudden return. Tonight she’d be battling the strength of a desire that seemed to have flamed from nothing. Even though she realized now that the seeds had been sown and taken root back on the island. Then, she’d been able to ignore it, pretend it was something else. But she’d built fantasies around Luke. Fantasies she’d scarcely acknowledged.
She needed to leave. And not just this party. She needed to leave this house, break the spell she was falling under. Already she was way too close to the precipice of stupidity.
“You can’t leave,” he said quietly, “because I have plans for you, Meg. Slow, sensuous plans.” Holding her gaze, his hand inched farther up her thigh.
Lost. She was lost. The precipice rushed closer.
He wanted her and he knew she wanted him, knew what his touch was doing to her, how it heated her, and he knew she wanted more of it.
Luke pushed his chair back. Claiming jet lag, he excused them both.
In the entranceway, he shut the double doors behind them, muting the sounds of music and conversation. Illuminated only by flickering candles and fairy lights, he murmured, “Mistletoe,” and then pulled her to him and kissed her. Meg welcomed the press of his hard body against hers, reveled in the taste of him. The man she’d married. His mouth and lips and tongue teased and explored and seduced. Already, she knew the way their mouths fit together, knew the scent of him. He gripped her waist, slid his hands to cup her behind, she answered his pull with an involuntary rocking of her hips.
He shuddered in her arms and broke the kiss to rest his forehead against hers, breathing as heavily as she was. “I made you a promise, Meg. Will you let me keep it?”
Five
Meg nodded her agreement, the small movement moving both their heads. Reaching up, Luke pulled the mistletoe free, then led her past the Christmas tree slowing only enough to brush his lips across hers. Once, and then again. Light and shadows danced across his face.
They entered a hallway and he shut the door behind them, once again turning her, pressing her up against it as he kissed her, one hand holding the mistletoe above them, the other sliding up beneath her dress over nylon, encountering bare skin at the top of her thigh.
The hand stilled, the kiss stopped and the mistletoe dropped to the floor.
Luke drew back. “Stockings?” he asked, his voice hoarse but his fingers still burning against her skin.
Meg shrugged, her throat suddenly too dry for words. She hadn’t meant the stockings for him; she preferred them to pantyhose, but she also liked their risque-ness, as she liked her lacy lingerie. It was supposed to be her
“Pretty, quiet, Nurse Meg. I knew there was more to you than met the eye. Be very, very grateful I didn’t know that till now.” He took a step back from her. “Show me.”
She hesitated. She was no lingerie model.
“Show me,” he insisted again, his voice a command as though she were a siren, as though she, Meg Elliot, tempted him to danger.
“I can’t.” Shyness warred with a budding sense of power. “Not here. Someone could come this way.”
Luke grasped her hand and tugged her down the hall way and into the first door they came to, shutting it behind them. Meg took a few steps into the library with its walls of books and its two-seater couch. She turned back to see Luke leaning against the door, watching her. “Show me.”
Somewhere in the last hour she’d stopped pretending to herself that she didn’t desire him, hadn’t always recognized that something in him called to her. One night with her husband. She was entitled to that much, wasn’t she?
Slowly, her hands against her thighs, she walked her fingers to gather up the fabric of her dress, lifting it higher till the tops of her stockings were just visible, a stark line against her pale skin. She opened her hands and let the fabric fall back into place.
Luke stood utterly still. Never had she seen such naked desire in a man’s eyes. And it was all for her.
He closed the gap between them and holding her gaze ran both hands beneath her dress and up the outside of her thighs till his palms cupped the strip of skin between black nylon and red lace. His eyelids dropped lower and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath as his hands slid farther around, cupping and pulling her against him.
And then he kissed her, the way only he ever had, fitting his mouth perfectly to hers, slowly, sweetly, joining them seamlessly and with just his kiss transporting her, promising her pleasure. Heat and urgency and need that inflamed her with reciprocal need. Hooking his thumbs over the edge of her panties, he slid them down her legs and she stepped out of them-a scrap of lace on the dark wood flooring.
Large, warm hands skimmed back up her thighs, passing the tops of her stockings till they rested on bare skin.
She’d drunk only a few sips of champagne throughout the evening; the intoxication that governed her now was fueled by desire. Meg tugged the hem of his shirt free, sliding her own hands against the heat of him. She pulled his bow tie undone, and with frantic fingers worked at the buttons of his finely pleated shirt till she could push apart the sides and touch her palms, her fingers, to the strength and contours of his torso. She eased his shirt back from his shoulders. A raised scar ran across his right shoulder. The gash that had started the chain of events that led to now. She touched her lips to his shoulder, grateful for the first time for that injury.
Beneath her fingertips lay the heated silk of skin over hard, contoured muscle, the light abrasion of hair, she felt his deeply indrawn breath and the rapid beat of his heart, knew it matched her own.
He cupped his hand between her legs, slid a finger through her folds, found her wet for him. Silver eyes darkened to pewter. “Tell me what you want, Meg.”
No one had ever asked her that. And the answer was both complicated and blindingly simple. “I want you. Now.”
He led her to the couch, sat and pulled her down on top of him, her knees straddling his thighs, she pressed her center against the hardness of him. Luke kissed her lips, her throat, her shoulder. He pushed the skirt of her dress up so he could freely touch the skin that seemed to so delight him. Enthralling her in the process.
He slipped the clips from her hair so that it tumbled loose around her shoulders. Finding the zipper at the back of her dress, he slid it down, peeled the dress from her so that it was now no more than a silken red pool of fabric around her waist.
