Intimate Strangers Page 14

  She was staring at him with the same intensity—probably because she’d gotten a call from Oliver or the goon who had broken into Molly’s house. Mark wanted to turn away, but he stayed where he was, knowing he had to keep the enemy occupied so that Molly could do her work.

  “I’d say the prices in Perry’s Cove are steep, compared to other areas,” she said. For a moment he didn’t know why she had made the observation. Then he remembered that he had asked her a question and she was answering.

  “So where’s a good area to try?”

  She sighed. “Well, development is pushing north and south of town. The newer properties are always the most expensive. So I’d look for something that was built at least fifteen years ago. That will be the best value.” She ended the little essay, then asked a question of her own. “How long are you planning to stay in town?”

  “A few months.” Mark shoved his hand into his pocket. He hardly knew this woman, but his strongest impression was that he didn’t like her. He had the feeling that the animosity was mutual, and she was struggling to hide the reaction.

  “All set,” Molly said as she came back.

  “So where are you headed?” Doris asked.

  “North,” Molly said.

  “If I need to get in touch with you, where should I call?” Doris pressed.

  “I’ll check in later,” Molly said.

  Mark saw Doris shoot her a nasty look. Probably Molly caught it too, but she acted as if she didn’t notice a thing. When they exited the building, he murmured, “You handled that exactly right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “She won’t be able to go back into the files and figure out where we’re going?” he asked as they climbed into his car.

  “I don’t think so. I took a duplicate key. I didn’t record the information. And I erased the computer record of what I checked.”

  “Very thorough.”

  “I feel like a spy.”

  He started the engine and looked at her. “I take it we’re not going north?”

  She gave a small laugh. “Well, actually, we are. I was thinking that she’d figure I was lying, so I told her the truth.”

  He joined in the laughter. “Nicely convoluted.”

  “Thanks. I think.” She swallowed. “I take it you think she’s mixed up in this.”

  “Yeah, I think so. I think Oliver Garrison is mixed up in it. And the two of them were…acting pretty friendly tonight at the antique gallery.”

  Her gaze shot to him. “You’re saying you saw them?”

  “Right. They were interrupted by a phone call. It could have something to do with earlier this evening—actually, last night—when I went back to the house where we found the boxes. They were gone, but someone jumped me when I came back outside.”

  She was taking it all in. “You’re saying you went back to that house where we were yesterday and somebody attacked you?” she asked carefully, sounding genuinely shocked by the revelations. Unless she was a very good actress. He canceled that thought as soon as it surfaced. He had to stop thinking about her that way—starting now.

  He looked over and saw her watching him. “Do you need to stop by your hotel room and get your stuff?”

  “I don’t want us going anywhere we might be expected.”

  “You’re keeping your room?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “I like the expense better than the alternative.”

  “Yes,” he heard her murmur.

  “How far north are we going?” he asked.

  “About five miles.” She gave him the address.

  He nodded and kept his gaze on the road. He’d been holding out on Molly all this time, and he’d come up with one rationale after another for his behavior. Now he knew he had to level with her. But he was sure he wasn’t going to like her reaction to his duplicity, so he kept driving.

  “Do you need me to tell you where to turn?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “No.”

  At her inquisitive look, he added, “I told you I’d been in town before.”

  “Okay,” she answered, and he knew she was waiting for him to say more.

  “We’ll talk when we get there,” he muttered.

  “Okay.”

  She was keeping her responses clipped.

  He felt his stomach knot as he pictured her explosion of outrage when he delivered his bombshell. He found the street address and located the building with only a little trouble, then scanned the parking lot of the time-share complex before deciding it was safe to get out. Dawn was imminent, and he wanted to use the last bit of darkness to hide them.

  “Let’s go. Just in case someone’s up, walk fast, but don’t look like you’re hiding from anyone,” he ordered as he opened the back door and collected his mask case from the back seat.

  “I’ll try to reconcile those two goals,” she answered dryly as she picked up her own carryall.

  “This isn’t a game,” he snapped, then tried to make amends by reaching over and covering one of her hands with his. “Sorry, I’m kind of on edge.”

  “I understand,” she murmured, although he knew she didn’t really have the whole picture. Not yet. But the bombshell was going to hit her soon.

  She led the way to the second-floor apartment.

  Inside, when she started to turn on a light, he stopped her hand. “We should close the drapes first.”

  “Right.”

  They both walked around the apartment, blocking off the view, giving him another chance to stall, he thought as he surveyed their home away from home. It was a nice place, with two bedrooms, a great room and a modern kitchen. Molly had one of the cabinets open, he saw when he met up with her there. Her back to him, she was checking out basic cooking supplies and had just set a bottle of olive oil on the counter.

  He could see the tension in her shoulders. Probably she didn’t like being cooped up here with him.

  “This place comes with food?” he asked, just to have something to say.

  “I guess people buy stuff and can’t use it up. So they leave it for the next guests,” she replied without turning.

  “Right. Makes sense,” he answered, knowing how inane he sounded. All he could think was that he’d waited too long to talk to her, and now he knew that whatever he said was going to come off wrong.

  She turned, and the expression on her face made his breath still in his chest.

  “Mark,” she said.

  Somehow he managed to dredge up enough voice to say, “I have to talk to you.”

  “I think it better wait till later.”

  “There’s stuff you don’t know about me. Stuff I have to tell you.”

  She stopped short, three feet from him, and his heart began to pound.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I’ve been thinking that you have your reasons for not talking about why you came to Perry’s Cove,” Molly said.

  “Yeah,” Mark managed.

  “I made an issue of your telling me what you were doing here, but right now I don’t care. What I care about is that we’re together—alone.”

  “Maybe you should be afraid of that.”

  She raised her chin slightly, gave him a direct look. “Maybe I should be afraid of you but I’m not. I’m trying to think logically, and I think your actions speak louder than words. You saved my life last night. You probably saved my life when that bucket of shingles fell off the roof, and you risked your own life both times.”

  He couldn’t answer. All he could do was watch her close the distance between them. She stopped so close to him that he could feel her warm, moist breath fanning his neck. The warmth spread over his skin, through his body, turning to fire in his veins. For an eternity Molly didn’t move, and he felt anticipation and need well up inside him. It seemed as if he’d wanted her all his adult life, and now he simply had to reach for her. But at that moment in time he was powerless to ask for what he wanted because he knew
in his soul that he couldn’t be the one to make demands.

  Still, demands clamored inside him like a wild animal clawing its way through raw flesh.

  When she brought her lips to his, he made a low, anguished sound in his throat. He should put his hands on her shoulders and set her away from him. He should tell her who and what he was before they went any farther. But he was helpless to do anything besides wrap his arms around her and drag her to him.

  He felt an almost physical rush of blood from his brain to the lower part of his body. Gathering her to him, he kissed her with a kind of desperation that he might have meant as a warning, because that was the only warning he was capable of giving.

  He plundered her mouth, feasted on her, absorbed her sweetness. She tasted of sun and ocean breezes and all things good, all things free. All the things he had missed during the years when he had been locked away from the world. He had thought he knew what he wanted then. He realized now that his fantasies had been nothing compared to the reality of this woman’s kiss.

  When the kiss broke, he dragged in a ragged breath. Unconsciously, he had squeezed his eyes tightly closed.

  “You don’t want a man as needy as I am,” he muttered.

  “Mark Ramsey, you don’t know yourself, do you? I can tell how much you want me. But awhile ago, you stopped us from making love because you knew we had to leave my house. You keep doing the right thing. The honorable thing.”

  He made a strangled sound then, because she had spoken part of the truth—but only part. He wanted her so badly he ached, yet he was trying to do the honorable thing. She had called him by the name he’d given her—Mark Ramsey. He barely knew who that man was supposed to be. And what he did know, he didn’t like.

  He wanted to tell her about it. But the words wouldn’t come, not when he felt the gentle touch of her fingers on his face. His altered face. She traced the line of his cheekbone, the ridge of flesh below his nose, the sandpaper of his day’s growth of beard.

  He played a game with himself then. A mental game. If she felt the well-hidden scars, he would tell her who he was. But she apparently felt nothing, besides his heated flesh.

  Her finger returned to his lips, retracing territory she had claimed with her mouth.

  He felt her hand shake and knew that she wasn’t quite as confident as she appeared. She’d told him she hadn’t been with anyone since her husband’s suicide. He was sure he could stop her now with the right words, but he didn’t have the will. Not when her trembling finger slipped between his lips, playing with the sensitive inner flesh, then dragged across his teeth. He snatched her hand away, not because he didn’t like what she was doing. He liked it too much, and he wanted more.

  Yet at the same time some part of his fevered brain warned him to be careful with her. She might want to prove that she trusted him. But she was fragile—probably more fragile than she realized.

  He bent to kiss her eyebrows, the tender place where her hair met her cheek. His lips flirted with her eyelashes before coming gently back to her mouth.

  He didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to give her pleasure. He wanted to make her passion match his. But he was badly out of practice. He’d lived in his fantasies for a long time, and fantasy sex was a lot different from the real thing—easier, under his complete control. In a fantasy, there was no problem about pleasing your partner. She was there to do your bidding, to fulfill your every whim.

  Her hands were restless, stroking his back and shoulders, her touch exciting and inciting him, yet still he stood where he was because he wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

  “Bedroom,” she murmured as though she somehow knew that she had to take over the role of leader, at least for now.

  It flashed through his mind to tell her that she didn’t want to be with a man who had spent the past five years in prison. Instead, what came to his lips was, “Yes.”

  She reached for his hand, and he knit his fingers with hers, holding tight as they made their way down the darkened hallway to what was probably the master suite. He had come in here before when he’d closed the blinds, but he’d been too preoccupied to pay much attention to the room. It was like that now. He got a quick impression of a queen-size bed before the feel of her fingers on his chest burned their way through the fabric of his shirt.

  Slowly, then more quickly, she began sliding the buttons open. He heard a rush of breath in his lungs. She opened the shirt, pushing it off his shoulders as she bent to press her cheek against his chest then turned her head to give him an openmouthed kiss.

  “Oh, Molly,” he gasped.

  She pulled back a little, staring at one of the bruises on his chest from the pummeling he’d gotten the night before. “You—”

  “Just kiss it and make it well.”

  She did, gently, tenderly.

  His hands came up to clasp her with equal tenderness, as though she were the most precious thing in the world. And she was. In his dreams, he had compelled her to come to him. She had had no choice but to bend to his will. But now she had a choice, and what she chose to do was sweep his shirt off his shoulders and provoke him with her clever mouth.

  He stood there in the center of the room, naked to the waist, more needy and aroused than he had ever been in his life. When she took a step back, he groaned in protest. But she wasn’t going far, he quickly discovered. She pulled her knit top over her head, and he had only a few seconds to appreciate that view before she was reaching for the catch of her bra and sending the garment to join the shirts lying on the floor.

  He stared at her, dazed. Of course he had imagined her breasts. In his male chauvinist fantasy he had made them very generous and jutting with large coral-colored nipples. As he looked at her now, the image seemed startlingly wrong. She was much more delicately made, small and gently rounded with beautiful pink nipples that beaded toward him, proclaiming her arousal.

  Still, her face told him that she was worried about his reaction to her body, to the bold step she had just taken.

  “You are so very beautiful. Perfect for me,” he said, reaching toward her, cupping one soft mound in his hand, then gently circling her hardened nipple with his forefinger.

  “Oh, Mark.”

  He reached for her then, drawing her into his arms, desperate for the feel of her breasts against his chest. A shuddering sigh escaped from her lips as he clasped her to him.

  He felt her vulnerability, and his own. And this time when he kissed her, it was with a gentle possessiveness that was no less urgent than the whirlwind of passion he had felt before.

  His hands moved over her naked back, down her ribs, and she did the same, touching him, stroking him, sending little currents of sensation through his body even as she made small, incoherent sounds that told him how much she liked his touch.

  The only thought in his mind was that he needed to get closer to her—as close as he could get. When he eased away so that he could reach for the button at the top of her slacks, she let him do what he wanted, and followed his example, her fingers fumbling with the snap at his waistband.

  As her hand slid his zipper down, he went very still, the sensation of her palm pressing against his erection taking his breath away.

  She kicked away her slacks. He did the same.

  She laid her head against his shoulder, then turned her face so that she could brush her lips against the hot flesh just under his jaw, the gesture so unconsciously erotic that he felt his knees buckle.

  Before he lost the ability to stand, he brought her down to the surface of the bed, then caught her hand when she tried to touch him intimately.

  “I’m too close to the edge,” he muttered, gathering her in his arms, rocking her against him, then bending to press his face against her breasts.

  With her hands she cradled the back of his head as he took one taut nipple into his mouth, hungry for the taste of her and hungry to feed her arousal. When she cried out at the wet, tugging pressure, he felt a wave of gratification that staggered him.<
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  He slid his hand down her flank, stroking her hip and then pressing his palm to the springy hair at the juncture of her legs, and was rewarded with her low sound of pleasure.

  He slid his fingers lower, dipping into her moist warmth, parting her delicate folds so that he could stroke her.

  She moved against his hand, her breath accelerating before she moaned out a plea. “Mark, don’t make me wait.”

  “I want you as ready for this as I am.”

  “I am!” She opened her mouth against his shoulder, her teeth worrying his hot flesh. “Please, you’re pushing me over the edge, and I want you inside me when you do.”

  He wanted that, too. Gently he eased her to her back. Shifting above her, he moved between her legs, then took her in one sure, gratifying stroke, burying his body in the warm clasp of hers.

  She slid her arms around him, held him tightly. Moving her hips, she took him deeper inside her, silently asking for more.

  In the long years of exile, he had thought only of physical fulfillment. But the power of the moment stunned him.

  He raised his head, looking down at her, seeing the passion and the wonder on her face. When he pulled back and then came forward in a deep, claiming stroke, she touched her fingers to his lips, his face.

  He wanted this first time of loving with her to last. He wanted to create a memory that the two of them would share down their long years together. Their first time. But the need of his body was too great. Quickly the pace became more urgent, more demanding.

  Great waves of pleasure washed over him in time to the rhythm of his body surging into hers.

  “Molly.”

  “I’m…with you. I’m with you…all the way,” she gasped out between broken breaths, meeting each thrust and retreat with the motion of her hips.