Kathleen Creighton - Undercover Mistress

Again he jerked, irritably, as if she’d poked him with a stick. “Come on.”

“No, it’s true-I told you.”

“For God’s sake, Celia, that was an accident!” Clumsily, he polished off the rest of the champagne and set the glass on the floor. “That’s pretty melodramatic,” he muttered angrily, “even for you.”

“Maybe…” She exhaled softly and once again her gaze slid away. This time, when she brought it back to him, there was something in her eyes that tugged at his heart in new and uncomfortable ways. His anger with her drained away like waves in the sand.

“Do you believe in fate? Destiny, I mean.”

“Jeez, Celia…” He ran a hand over his hair as he sat back against the seat, then let out a hissing breath. “I don’t know…I guess so…maybe. Tell you the truth, I never thought about it.”

“Think about it.” She sat forward, hunched and intense, the champagne forgotten, one hand resting on his knee. “Two women…driving alone along a highway…one crosses over the line-never mind whose fault it is-and the two cars collide head-on. One woman lives, one dies.”

She looked down at the glass in her hand but found it empty. She said softly, “She had a husband and three grown children, do you know that? The woman who died. She was about to become a grandmother for the first time.” Her voice broke, and she cleared her throat.

She lifted the gaze once again, and Roy’s heart stumbled. Her eyes…dammit…they reminded him of a lost dog confronting a possible rescuer…full of confusion and fear, and maybe a glimmer of hope. He tried to think of something to say to her that might help, but he was no healer. Her pain was beyond him. He felt helpless, frustrated, useless-ways no man wants to feel.

After a moment, she cleared her throat again and, in a low, husky voice, went on. “I used to wonder about it…why I lived and she didn’t. I felt so awful…”

“Survivors’ guilt,” said Roy, nodding, pleased with himself now, like a kid in school who finally gets a question he knows the answer to. “I guess that’s normal.”

She nodded. “That’s what I was told. I don’t know that it helped much.” She drew a deep breath. A smile flickered, then grew brave. “Then…I found you. And I thought, That’s why! I thought, it’s all a matter of destiny. I lived because I was needed to be there, on that particular beach, on that particular night, so I could save your life. You see? But then-” she held up a hand as if to keep him from interrupting her, though he couldn’t have spoken if his life had depended on it “-later on, when I heard you talking, and I knew what was at stake, and I figured out it was Abby’s boat you were investigating… Then I thought, This is why I lived! Because anybody walking on that beach that night could have saved your life, right? But only I could get you onto Abby’s yacht.”

When she finished, her voice was hoarse with emotion, her eyes fierce-a heroic effect that was spoiled an instant later when a tear tumbled swiftly, like an escapee, down her cheek. She sniffed and wiped at it, then continued thickly, “So, you see why this was so important to me. Why I-” she hiccuped loudly “-had to do it. Have-” she hiccuped again, then muttered a small, “Oh dear-have to do it. Don’t you?”

She gazed at him, waiting, and he stared back, unable to think of a single thing to say. And at that moment, with timing worthy of the best of Hollywood directors, the limo, with a polite jerk and a discreet squeal of brakes, came to a halt in Celia’s driveway.

His eyes flicked to the windows and he blinked, momentarily disoriented by the half-lit shapes of houses and cypress trees he saw beyond them. His lips moved and sounds came from them, but rusty and viscous, as if they’d been kept in the heat too long.

“We’re home,” he said.

She flinched and threw a look randomly into the night, like a startled animal uncertain which way to run. She caught a breath and said with desperate lightness, “Yes, I suppose we are.” Even without touching her, he knew she was trembling, her body’s vibrations stirring the air in some strange way that he felt in his soul rather than his senses.

The door opened and the limo driver stood there. Celia leaned forward to take his hand, and stepped from the car with the easy grace of someone who must have done such a thing a hundred times before. Roy followed somewhat less nimbly, his attention distracted, as he dealt with the driver, by Celia, who had gone ahead of him down the curving path. He could see her floating there in the near darkness, arms extended to each side as if she danced to music only she could hear, the distant surf a muted drumbeat. He paid, tipped and thanked the driver, then hurried after her, swearing under his breath. Behind him, he heard the limo growl quietly away.

Just as he caught up with her, she pivoted tipsily toward him-and stumbled. She gasped and lurched sideways as one of her high-heeled shoes twisted and collapsed under her, and even though he remembered all too well the way she’d worked that particular trick on the prince earlier tonight, Roy did the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. He caught her and swept her up into his arms.

And miraculously, didn’t drop her a second later; he’d forgotten about his half-healed ribs. Fortunately, his hiss of pain was lost completely in Celia’s gasp as she hooked her arms around his neck and stared up at him with wide, shocked eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered in a slow, wondering way.

“No problem.” His voice was tight and air-starved, but she didn’t seem to notice.

She licked her lips and said thoughtfully, as he tottered with her the few remaining steps to the front door, “I think…maybe I’ve had a wee bit too much champagne.”

“Ya think?” On the steps he halted and croaked, “Keys.”

Her lips curved, catlike. “You have them, remember?”

“Oh, yeah…” Because Celia didn’t like pocketbooks, he’d taken to carrying her essential feminine odds and ends in his pockets. He thought about it now, frowning over the logistics of it because he was going to have to put her down in order to get to the keys. He was frowning, too, because the pain in his side suddenly didn’t seem so bad-either that, or sexual arousal trumped pain-and as a result, putting her down had become the last thing he wanted to do.

“I’ve had too much champagne,” she said, gazing into his eyes with a curious intensity, “but I am not drunk.”

“Okay…” He barely heard her. His head was swimming…all at once he felt as if he were drowning in her scent, her heat, her energy. The shape and weight and warmth of her in his arms crowded every other thought from his mind. Desire for her pounded like thunder in his temples. Wanting zapped across his skin like heat lightning.

It seemed almost an inevitability when she kissed him…a consequence of natural laws. She seemed to flow upward in his arms, like warm air rising, and her lips came to his as if gravity itself compelled them. He closed his eyes, and night spun into day. Heat engulfed him. He opened his mouth to hers…and flew headlong into the sun.

A long time later, he felt her body slide along the front of his, but molded to him still as if the heat from the kiss had melted them into one.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?” she whispered brokenly, her breath flowing over his lips and making them tingle, like warm champagne.

“How long?” His hands, helpless and awed, stroked her back.

How long? All my life. All my lives before this one. Maybe even forever.

She was numb with wanting. Dazed with wanting. Nothing else mattered, not even pride. “Since the first time. I’ve wanted so much…for you to kiss me again. But you didn’t. I thought…you didn’t want to.”

He stared fiercely over her head. His voice was guttural. “I wanted to.”

Her fingers curled against his shirt front. She wanted to pound on it and scream at him, and her jaws ached with fighting that impulse as she whispered, “Then why didn’t you?”

He laughed the way people do when something hurts. “Do you really want to get into that now?”

She was silent, listening to opposing wants colliding inside her head like bumper cars. Oh, she did very much want to get into this with him. She needed desperately to understand him. But right now…oh, right now, she simply wanted him.

Needed him.

She drew a shuddering breath. “No. I want you to kiss me…again. Please.” Her voice caught. Her smile flickered-pure reflex. “I don’t normally have to ask.”

Frowning, he held her face between his hands, stroked her cheeks with his thumbs and looked deep into her eyes. “Not now,” he said harshly. “Not here.”

Fear and anguish coiled around her throat. I want you so much. Why don’t you want me? Don’t make me wait again…please. In that constricted voice she managed to ask, “Why?”

His warm lips touched her forehead. “Because,” he said with a rasping sigh, “I’m not gonna make love to you on your front doorstep. What would the neighbors think?”

A single joyous note, one bright bubble of laughter burst from her, beginning the unraveling of the tangle of doubt and frustration and confusion and despair that had been inside her for so long. Laughing, she stood on tiptoes and held his face between her hands. She heard, “Wait-” but it was muffled and far away, and lost completely when she kissed him.

He leaned into the kiss, gasped and pulled away, then groaned and plunged back into it, all the way this time. His hands roamed frantically over her body, then abandoned the struggle and folded around her.

And suddenly warmth and strength surrounded her. She felt euphoric and giddy and frightened, like a baby on a swing…and at the same time, grounded in that lovely warmth and strength, she felt entirely safe. Because, though she knew it was only for that moment, for that moment, at least, she felt…loved.

“Celia…”

“I know…”

“We can’t…”

“I know…the key…”

Somehow…gasping and trembling, overcoming obstacles like clumsy fingers and randomly placed kisses, they managed to remove the key from his pocket and open the door, tumbling into the shadowy quiet like puppies, oblivious and uncaring what parts of them touched where. That they did touch each other was all that mattered. For Celia, separating from him, even for a moment, even for such necessities as walking and undressing, seemed intolerable.

Articles of discarded clothing marked their progress through the house: her shoes and his jacket just inside the door; his cuff links and cravat on the kitchen counter; his shirt on the back of the couch. Even the silky tickle of his hair on her skin and the hot promise of his mouth couldn’t hold off the cold jangle of alarm she felt when he found the abbreviated zipper in the back of her dress and pulled it down, when she felt the fabric relax around her waist and the thin straps slither over her shoulders.

She gave a laughing gasp and caught the dress with her arm as it slipped below her breasts, before it could fall all the way to the floor. Roy, preoccupied with what had been uncovered, seemed not to notice. By that time, they were in the hallway where the light was dimmer, then in the bedroom where there was almost no light at all, and Celia relaxed and let herself become wanton again…

Thought spiraled away into joyous light and heat and giddy, shivering excitement. His shirt hung open and her hands found the tight, hard muscle of his torso and she laughed with delight at the answering heat she could feel rising inside him…feel it burning through his skin and scalding her fingers. Daring in the darkness, she let the dress fall to the floor and leaned into him, pressing her palms against his ribs and her soft breasts against his hardness.

And felt him flinch. Heard him utter a sharp hissing sound, quickly silenced.

She jerked back, heart knocking sickeningly with frustrated wanting. “Oh God-your ribs-I’m so sorry-”

“Ssh…it’s okay…” His fingers rubbed their gentle and uniquely masculine abrasion over her back, from the base of her spine to her shoulder blades, sanding her from scalp to toes with goose bumps.

“But…your wound-I forgot-” She was shivering…bereft.

“Celia.” His hands lay heavy and comforting on her shoulders. He exhaled as he rested his forehead gently against hers. “Say g’night, Nurse Suzanne…”

Her suspended breath erupted in a single bubble of laughter, like uncorked champagne. “G’night,” she whispered, but still trembled as she eased back against him and tilted her face to find his mouth.