Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere

I CAN’T possibly be doing this, Salome thought as Mike laid her down on a bed in the dark. When he snapped on a bedside lamp, her eyes darted nervously around the dimly lit room, which was as exquisitely and blandly furnished as Ralph’s main bedroom, and just as impersonal. Not a photograph or a memento in sight. Her eyes returned to the man who was now sitting on the side of the king-size bed, watching her with a closed expression on his face. And it came to her that he was virtually a stranger.

What did she know of him? Only that he was in his early thirties, unmarried, lived here in this penthouse, and owned an Italian restaurant. Everything else she’d gleaned about him had been sheer gossip or speculation.

Their conversation over dinner the evening before had been desultory to say the least, betraying nothing of his background or his private life. For all she knew he could be part of that network of Italian immigrants whose businesses were merely fronts for organised crime. Drug-running and the like. His restaurant was in King’s Cross, after all—the crime centre of Sydney. She had read of such men—men who made and lived by their own rules. Powerful, ruthless men.

The image of a white-faced Charles giving Mike a sick look jumped into her mind, and her stomach turned over. Good God, surely he couldn’t be a member of the Mafia?

Much as she immediately rejected that idea as one of an over-active imagination, her thoughts had alarmed her, making her want to jump up from the bed and run for her very life. But she lay there, stiff with expectation and apprehension.

‘You’re nervous,’ he said, almost accusingly.

She gulped down the lump in her throat and turned her face away from those probing black eyes. His hand closed over her chin and turned her back, where she was astonished to see a wry smile on his lips. ‘They say women are hard to understand,’ he murmured, his thumb moving in soft, tantalising circles along her jawline. ‘But you, my lovely Salome, are the hardest of them all.’

He bent and covered her mouth with his, moving his lips back and forth across hers with slow, unhurried movements. She sucked in a startled breath as the most incredible wave of delight rippled through her. His head lifted a few inches, his eyes revealing a measure of surprise. ‘You’re amazing,’ he whispered. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was your first time...’

He kissed her again, this time teasing her mouth open and caressing the tip of her tongue with his. Desire seized Salome in its tenacious grip, making her moan deep in her throat.

Again Mike straightened to gaze frustratedly at the dazed expression on her face. ‘I can see why men go crazy for you,’ he muttered, his fingers drifting down her throat to trace the ‘V’ of the dressing-gown, making her shiver when he lingered on the valley between her breasts. ‘You are whatever they want of you at the time. In the lift, a wild wanton, here, a virgin on her wedding night, tentative and sweet, amazed yet delighted by your responses. How do you do it, Salome?’ he said, half admiringly, half derisively. ‘How many years of practice did it take to master the fine art of erotic fantasy?’

There was no time for an answer, even if her hurt mind could have thought of one. His mouth swooped to claim hers again, and this time it was hungry and demanding, his lips applying a bruising pressure, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth, pushing aside her renewed dismay, leaving room for little but the crazed leap in her senses.

‘God!’ he muttered when at last he tore his mouth away, smouldering black eyes locking on to stunned green ones. Salome gave a soft whimper when his fingertips moved across her dark, swollen lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped. ‘I’m not usually so brutal.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘I liked it.’

Liked it? What an outrageous understatement! She’d loved it, adored it, ached for it! She could think of nothing more exciting than having this man ravishing her.

Aroused eyes lifted to run up one of the strong male arms that imprisoned her, landing on his broad bare chest. The desire to touch the taut, finely honed muscles was overpowering, her right hand lifting to trail a tentative but sensuous path across his skin, her nails raking lightly over one of his male nipples.

The intensity of his shudder surprised her, as did the heat of the flesh beneath her fingers. With a rush of raw, mindless passion, she wrapped both her arms around his waist and pulled herself up till her face was pressed against his chest, opening moist lips on to his skin, sliding them across the hot, hard wall of muscle till it closed over where her nails had just been.

He shuddered again, then groaned as her tongue darted forward to tease the hard nub, encircling it slowly then nipping it with her teeth as he had done to her in the lift. Suddenly, strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away from him. ‘You must stop,’ he rasped. ‘Stop!’

She stared at him in confusion, her heart pounding madly. What had she done wrong?

‘I think you’d better revert to the shy virgin,’ he growled, letting her go to run agitated hands through his hair.

Salome cringed visibly, thinking she had just made a dreadful fool of herself.

‘God, woman, don’t look like that! Do you think I wasn’t enjoying it? Hell, I was enjoying it too much. The truth is, I haven’t had sex in bloody ages and, if you keep that up, this’ll be all over before it damned well starts!’

Salome stared at him, shocked at how much his confession of recent celibacy pleased her. But then came the cynical realisation that, for a virile man like him, a fortnight was probably ages. She glanced around at the huge bed with its cream satin sheets and myriad pillows, and she knew with absolute certainty that many women had been here before her, had lain eagerly beneath his gorgeous male body, had accepted his hungry kisses, had been thrilled by his overt sexuality.

Her jealousy was instant and savage, cutting a sharp path through her chest up into her brain. Her eyes snapped back up to him, and she wanted to tear his beautiful face apart, wanted to scream at him that he was never to make love to another woman ever again. That he was hers from this night forward. Hers and hers alone!

The intensity, the insanity of her feelings shook her. Surely this couldn’t be just normal sexual frustration she was suffering from? This was something far deeper, far more devastating.

‘What is it?’ Mike said sharply.

She expelled the breath she had been holding in a trembling gasp. ‘Nothing...nothing...’

‘Tell me,’ he urged, and drew her to him in a breathtakingly close embrace, his lips pressed feverishly to her forehead. ‘What is it that frightens you so about me? Why didn’t you want to let me finish making love to you earlier on? Why?‘

She shook her head frantically from side to side. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I can’t! It’s all too confusing.’

‘What’s confusing?’ he insisted, little knowing that the hot, stroking hands on her hair, her neck, her back, were the most confusing of all, because they kept bringing wave after wave of sensation that was slowly obliterating her capacity to reason. Surely she wouldn’t feel like this in any other man’s arms, would she? It didn’t seem possible. Yet...if it was only Michael Angellini who could do this to her, then what was it exactly she felt for him? Sexual infatuation? Obsession? Lust?

Salome refused to embrace the word ‘love’. Even if her feelings for Ralph had finally begun to die, her bruised, battered heart wasn’t ready, or capable, of loving another man yet, and certainly not a man who had nothing but contempt for her. Perhaps she was acting this way out of some sort of crazed revenge against the hurt perpetrated by her husband. Perhaps this was a rebound thing. She didn’t know any more.

‘Everything’s confusing,’ she groaned. ‘Me... this...you...’

His fingers stilled abruptly. ‘What do you mean?’

She freed herself from his frozen grip, looking up at him with bleak green eyes. ‘I don’t know! Can’t you see I don’t really know anything any more? It’s all been too much for me today. First Ralph, then Charles, now you. I’m so mixed up!’ she cried, and covered her distressed face with her hands.

‘You want me to stop,’ he said in a dead, flat voice.

Her head snapped up and her eyes flew to him, wild, wild eyes. ‘No,’ she groaned. ‘That’s the most confusing part. I don’t.’

His eyes raked over her, from her turbulent gaze to her parted, quivering lips to the way her breasts were rising and falling beneath the dressing-gown.

‘I couldn’t anyway,’ he rasped. ‘Not even if I wanted to.’

In an electric silence his hands lifted to find the pins in her hair, throwing them away before returning to spread her tumbling mass of curls out across her shoulders. Then slowly—ever so slowly—he untied the sash of the dressing-gown and parted it, peeling it back across her shoulders and down her arms to drop on to the sheet.

Salome scooped in a breath and held it. Don’t think any more, she told herself. Don’t think. Close your eyes and just feel!

She expelled a shuddering sigh as she obeyed her own instructions, closing her eyes and waiting breathlessly for the moment when he would start touching her breasts. They were infinitely ready for him. Swollen and taut, her nipples still erect and sensitised from his earlier lovemaking in the lift.

‘Oh!’ she gasped when something hard and warm grazed over both tips at once. Her lashes fluttered open to reveal outstretched palms rubbing over them in slow, sensuous circles. His eyes were on hers, watching her with a heavy-lidded, smouldering gaze. Then he was caressing her whole breasts, cupping their soft weight in his hands, kneading them, lifting them, pushing them together, bending his mouth to one after the other.

Her head fell backwards in automatic abandon, the riotous bronze curls spilling from her neck. She pressed closed fists down into the mattress, thrusting her breasts upwards into those intoxicating hands, that tormenting mouth. Soft moans of arousal floated from her throat.

He lowered her to the bed and just looked at her. She looked back in a dazed rapture. ‘You are the most beautiful, the most sensual, the most responsive woman I have ever known,’ he murmured, and resumed stroking her body, making her gasp as he ran light fingers across her aching nipples once more. ‘I could drown in your eyes when they look like that. And your mouth...’ He groaned and bent to take her parted lips in a deep, hungry kiss, one hand scooping under her neck to hold her mouth firmly captive beneath his, the other sliding over her flat stomach, down between her thighs, where he began a shockingly intimate exploration of her body.

Salome was overwhelmed by the violently pleasurable sensations and feelings that besieged her with the liberties he was taking. They frightened her. This couldn’t be how lovemaking was supposed to feel, she thought frantically. Not this crazed, escalating need, this mad desire to submit to anything!

‘No more!’ she gasped when he finally abandoned her mouth. But any relief was short-lived as he began trailing hot, moist lips down her body, bypassing her breasts in a direct route towards that part of her body that was already on fire.

A tortured moan punched from her throat when she realised what he was about to do. And while the thought of it excited her unbearably, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stand it. But there was no stopping him, his hands masterful and dominating as they parted her thighs, his mouth insistently possessive as it moved over her in the ultimate intimacy.

She was right. She couldn’t stand it, the blisteringly electric sensations making her cry out. He totally ignored her whimpering moans, her hands fluttering in feeble protest in his hair, and continued his devastating attentions with an expertise that was both telling and breathtakingly hypnotic. Here was a man who not only knew all there was to know about women, but who wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer, a man who could destroy her even more thoroughly than Ralph had.

But there was no room for regrets or future concerns at such a moment. Salome was beyond that, caught up in a journey of erotic pleasure from which there was no turning back. Tighter and tighter her body felt, faster and faster her breathing, hotter and hotter her blood. She was being swept up a previously unknown mountain, racing towards a peak from which there could be only one way down. And, even though the prospect of experiencing what she had never experienced before was intoxicatingly compulsive, suddenly Salome knew she didn’t want it this way, couldn’t bear it this way. She wanted Mike inside her, needed Mike inside her.

She moaned her frustration and frantically pushed him away, ‘No, no!’ she cried.

He staggered back off the end of the bed, getting to his feet and staring down at her with eyes both wild and incredulous. ‘You must be mad! There’s no stopping now. No changing your mind. Look at me!’ And, with a single savage yank, he stripped off his pyjama-trousers, striking her speechless with the stark evidence of his desire.

Salome had never looked quite so blatantly at an aroused man before, certainly not one as well-endowed as Mike. Colour burnt in her cheeks, her heart thudding beneath her breasts. ‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ she burst forth, then hesitated, finding it hard to find the words. ‘I was wanting you. You!’ she cried. ‘Not...anything less...’

His groan was tortured, his eyes squeezing tightly shut for a second. But then he was shaking his head and sinking back down on top of her, the anger punching from his lungs in a ragged sigh. ‘Then why didn’t you say so? Dear God, I thought—’

Again he groaned, then knelt upright to run shaking hands over her body, easing her thighs apart. Her eyes grew wide, her heart stopping as he scooped his hands under her buttocks and lifted her to meet him. She felt his flesh, hard against her softness, and then he was sinking into her, filling the aching void, taking her breath away. She moaned her pleasure as her body encompassed the entire length of him, her hands reaching up to drag him down to her waiting warmth.

This was how making love was meant to feel, she cried silently, two people as one, man and woman as nature had intended.

His mouth sought hers again as he began to move, slowly, rhythmically, deeply. Waves of pleasure—both emotional and physical—pervaded Salome’s body and senses, making her block out all thought of Mike being no more than a womaniser with no real caring for her. Right here, tonight, he was the man she wanted above all others; he was her man. He had just shown her how much he wanted her and, for now, it had to be enough.

Tomorrow she would probably despair over what she was doing now. More than probably. Yet somehow she was unable to summon any regret at this moment. All she knew was how marvellous it felt to be joined with Mike like this. Marvellous and exciting and overwhelming.

Finally he gasped away from her mouth and pressed hot lips to the smooth skin of her shoulder, the pulsating vein at the base of her throat, his hands running up and down the sides of her body. Her own hands were caressing the muscles in his back, but dug sharply inwards when he grabbed her hips, lifting them from the bed and thrusting even more deeply into her. Quite instinctively, her inner muscles squeezed tightly around his throbbing hardness, gripping and releasing him in a relentless rhythm. Any moment now...

There was a split second when she seemed to balance on a sharp edge, when her breathing stopped, and every muscle in her body strained to an aching stop. She heard him gasp for breath, felt his hands tightening around her. Then, with one final surge, he set them both free, and their mutual cries of release echoed in the night.

Salome was stunned, not only by the intensity of her physical feelings, but also by her emotional ones. She hugged Mike’s shuddering body to her till it stilled, unable to stop a crazed litany from tumbling through her mind.

I love him...I love him...I love him...

She grimaced in denial of it, knowing in her brain that it wasn’t true, and hating herself for the way her heart kept wanting to embrace the idea. This was lust, not love. Sexual satisfaction, not spiritual bonding. A one-night stand, not their wedding night.

But try as she might to dampen her joy with ruthless reasoning, she couldn’t. She felt wonderfully at peace, and very, very happy.

‘Oh, Mike,’ she sighed, raining kisses across his chest. ‘I want to stay like this forever.’

Sensual black eyes stared down at her, a languorous smile coming to his mouth. Salome wondered if her own lips looked as wonderfully ravaged as his. ‘Happy to oblige,’ he drawled. ‘When are you going to move in with me?’

She gasped her surprise. Of all things, she wasn’t expecting this. ‘You...you want me to live with you?’

‘Either that or you give me a key to your place. I certainly want to spend my nights with you.’ He leaned on both elbows either side of her. ‘I want you, Salome,’ he said with a strange undercurrent of urgency. ‘Not just for one night. I need much more of you than that.’

Her mind whirled. She could hardly think rationally, not with her body still joined to his, her senses still dazed with pleasure. ‘No, Mike, I can’t!’ she cried, before the insidious temptation to say yes overcame her.

‘Don’t put crazy arguments in the way!’ he cut in, his hands intimidating as they captured her face. ‘Your marriage to Ralph Diamond is past! Over! He doesn’t want you any more. This is here...now. I want you and you want me.’

His eyes flashed angrily, his body quivering with suppressed rage as he tried to control himself. ‘Why do you keep finding ways to deny me what you’ve given others? Hell, Salome, you’ve been driving me mad for years. I’ve thought of nothing else but having you, possessing you. I’m mad about you, woman, can’t you see that?’

His kiss was savage, yet oddly desperate. And it was the desperation that moved Salome more than the seductive skill of his lips and tongue.

‘Say you’ll be mine,’ he urged when the kiss was over and he had successfully reduced her to a panting, mindless mass.

‘Yes,’ she said, breathlessly, blindly. ‘Yes...’

‘You won’t say no to me ever again,’ he rasped, his eyes glittering with triumph. His mouth descended once more, his hands hard and exciting on her body, sweeping Salome along with his rapidly renewed passion.

His words were prophetic, at least where the next few hours were concerned. He made love to Salome in ways she had never been made love to before, demanding things she had never freely given before, each experience showing her there were sexual horizons still to be explored, plateaus of pleasure not yet reached, surrenders she had never even envisaged.

* * *

Sunlight filtered through the curtains behind the bed, landing in Salome’s eyes and stirring her to semi-consciousness. She sighed and rolled over, one limp arm encountering a wall of warm flesh. She froze, then pulled her arm back as instant memories of the night before flooded in, startling her to full awareness. Her eyes flew open.

Mike lay naked on his stomach, his face turned away from her, his legs sprawled, his breathing deep and even. She swallowed as her eyes followed the line of his spine, down between the well-honed muscles of his back, down to where she could see the red marks her nails had made on his buttocks. Horrified, she glanced down at her own nudity, green eyes widening at the beginnings of bruises on her hips and thighs. Her fingers trembled as they lifted to feel her raw, puffy lips. Her tongue darted out to moisten them, and she was certain she could still feel the taste of him.

Smothering a groan, she carefully swung her legs over the side of the bed, and levered herself up on to her feet. With a slow, silent tread, she made it across the plush white carpet into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. A hot bath beckoned, even though the tap running might wake Mike. Still, the door was locked, so he couldn’t walk in on her—a thought that made her shudder. How could she face him after all she had done and allowed? Only the most wanton women, she believed, acted as uninhibitedly as she had done.

With a disbelieving shake of her head, she found some bath gel in the well-appointed marble cabinet, then snapped on the gold taps. Soon she was lowering herself into the invitingly steaming waters. With a low moan, she lay back, and gradually the seeping heat soothed her stiffening body.

But not her troubled mind. What had she done, agreeing to be Mike’s mistress? He didn’t love her, despite the impassioned words he had rained on her during the night. And, much as she had fantasised she loved him in the throes of passion, in the cold light of day she knew she didn’t. She had loved Ralph, and it had been nothing like this. It had never frightened her. It had felt safe and secure at the time, filled with warmth and light. This feeling, though, was dark and dangerous and destructive.

It was also very strong, much stronger than common sense or even shame. Already she wanted to feel what it was like to have his hands on her again, to experience that exquisitely electric release once more.

It was just as well, Salome realised with bitter irony, that she couldn’t get pregnant. Though this was through sheer good luck rather than design, her doctor having recently put her on the Pill to regulate her periods. She did want to have children eventually, but only with a man who loved her.

A sharp knocking on the bathroom door had her jerking upright, her wet curls plastering down her back. ‘You haven’t drowned in there, have you, Salome?’

‘No,’ she called back, grateful that single words didn’t sound shaky or nervous.

‘Just checking. Don’t be too long.’

His tone of voice sounded perfectly normal. Clearly, he wasn’t bothered by the prospect of facing her this morning.

What a naïve fool you are, Salome, she berated herself, worrying about what he might think of you. Goodness, all you did was act exactly as he expected you to act, and as, no doubt, all his lovers act. Do you honestly believe you are the first woman to have surrendered herself so totally to his extraordinary sexual appetite? Of course not!

And for goodness’ sake don’t start believing all those crazy, glorious words he said to you about never having felt what he felt when he was with you. No doubt words of that ilk just fall from his mouth quite automatically whenever he makes love. What better way to make a woman come back for more, than by making her feel special and unique? The only difference between you and a host of others is that he’s had to wait for you longer than most, which is probably why he seemed so desperate on occasions last night.

He doesn’t love you. Did you notice how carefully he avoided saying that he did? Oh, yes, he wanted you, needed you, adored you, found you exciting and sexy and breathtakingly beautiful. But he never mentioned the word ‘love’. So if you do this crazy thing and become his lover—and you’re going to, aren’t you?—then don’t ever start fantasising that he does. Try to remember you are dealing with a Don Juan here!

Salome sighed and struggled out of the bath, wrapping her dripping hair in one of the huge fluffy cream towels, her body in another. She gave her teeth a thorough scrub with one of the spare toothbrushes lying in the top drawer, then straightened, turning away before she could catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She didn’t want to look at herself, didn’t want to hold in her memory the image of a woman who was about to do the most stupid, insane thing she had ever done in her entire life!

CHAPTER EIGHT

SALOME found a maroon-robed Mike in the kitchen, brewing even better-smelling coffee than she’d made the previous night. Its delicious aroma, however, ran a distant second where her senses were concerned. They were being filled with the man who was standing next to the percolator, tapping idle fingers on the marble counter-top. Obviously he had used the main bathroom to shower while she’d been in the en suite, for his hair was slicked back behind his ears in wet waves, the style giving her an unimpeded view of his very male profile with its strong, Roman nose and stubborn cleft chin. His mind seemed to be a million miles away, his furrowed brow indicating a serious train of thought.