When Night Falls (15 page)

Ease into the woman, feel her close around him, heat him as he’d never been before…
“I’m having a little problem, Uma. You’re it, and you know it.”

“Your memo this morning wasn’t exactly a friendly invitation. And your technique is certainly to the point,” she whispered huskily.

He thought of the floor and of the couch and of the upstairs beds and Uma beneath him. “Not exactly. There are detours I hadn’t expected.”

He wanted her to want him just as badly. Why? Or did it really matter?

“I’m damn fragile, Uma,” he admitted huskily. She could wind softly inside him, making him uncertain. He hadn’t been uncertain since he’d been the older brother, in a parental role, trying to manage a rebellious younger one.

And he’d never had trouble with women, that is, wondering what they were thinking—because they hadn’t mattered. “I suppose this intimacy thing is going to be a big deal and this just might be my first time in that neighborhood.”

Her eyes widened at that, and pricks of electricity skittered between them. She cleared her throat and shook her head, and he felt that quiver run the length of her body. All his sensual antennae leaped in response.

The moment hovered tantalizingly between them, then
Uma said softly, “How nice of you to bring dinner. Please excuse me while I change into something more appropriate.”

That wasn’t what Mitchell had hoped for, that cool, ladylike withdrawal, but Uma was setting her own terms and he wasn’t forcing her. He nodded and lifted his hands away. “Yes, of course.”

She hadn’t moved away from him, and he understood that she was considering—what? Intimacy? Sex? If there were negotiations to be made, conditions set, he would rather take on a boardroom of difficult stockholders.

“If you don’t mind, we’ll have dinner here, on the coffee table,” Uma said. “This is an old house, and there is a slight draft in the kitchen and dining room. Candles do best here when the electricity is out. I’ve never liked kerosene lamps. I’ll be right back.”

“Yes. Your shirt…is all wet…from me.” He allowed himself a long, slow look down her body, to the breasts he ached to taste, and lower to the dark V between her legs.

Her breath caught again and that little quiver almost tipped him over the edge, his body aching to hold hers, to slide within the warmth—

She looked down and then up to meet his eyes. “I think your blush just hit your forehead and is rising to your hairline,” he couldn’t help saying.

“And you’re enjoying yourself. You’re smirking. Please excuse me.” The dismissal was there, with just a touch of anger, wrapped in the invitation of a perfect hostess.

When Uma turned, Mitchell enjoyed the view of her hips moving beneath the light cloth, the shadows making his mouth dry and his body harden. The night wasn’t turning out at all and Mitchell frowned as he walked to the couch and grabbed a towel from the laundry basket. He swiped it around his face and hair and tossed it back—the edge tipped a small pad and it toppled to the carpeting. He picked it up and
“Charis Notes,” written in Uma’s handwriting, caught him.

Click. Well, well. Uma was just chock-full of surprises, wasn’t she? Mitchell replaced the pad where it was and began unpacking the dinner he had prepared. All he had to do was to study the book she had written, treating her as she suggested. Okay, so he had one basic priority—sex. But good sex. The kind that both of them would enjoy slowly, thoroughly and—Mitchell didn’t turn when he sensed her returning to the room. He continued laying out the dinnerware. Now that he knew her game, he could play it back to her.

“Mitchell?”

“Umm?” He’d study intimacy; he’d—

“One who wishes more conversation should come upstairs to bed.”

He froze and slowly placed the fork he had been holding onto the plate. Or he tried to put it there. The fork fell from his fingers onto the floor. When he straightened, he noted the candlelight moving up the stairs—with Uma.
One who wishes more conversation should come upstairs to bed
.

Uma
. Every molecule of his body locked onto that feminine scent, hardening, tensing. Mitchell sucked in the air he’d forgotten to breathe and rubbed his trembling hands against his damp jeans. He wasn’t prepared; he hadn’t read
The Smooth Moves List
. Trust Uma to waylay him, ruin his plans—

With the certainty that she could interfere with anything he planned, Mitchell slowly began up the stairs.

“Your father isn’t going to like this. For starters, he didn’t want me in the house, much less in your bed,” Mitchell said as Uma lay naked beneath the sheets. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She wanted that heat and passion and the primitive instincts that drove Mitchell to her, and her to him. It was no impulse of the moment, rather, she had selected the man she wanted to share her bed and body—for the night.

She trusted him. She’d known him all her life and Mitchell had always tried to do the right thing.

He was her torment, and he would be her lover. She’d known that when he’d come through the storm to her.
Did you really think a little bad weather would keep me from you?

“I’ll tell Dad and protect you.”

A man who had made his own way in a tough life, Mitchell snorted at the suggestion he couldn’t defend himself. He moved into the room, studying it in the flashes of light from the storm outside. He noted the sturdy Amish furniture, the clean lines of wood, and placed a hand on the chaise lounge she’d bought, just the thing to read by the window. “I expected something more feminine—ruffles, that sort of thing.”

“I’ve had that all my life. I wasn’t certain what I wanted when I moved back here to take care of Dad. But I wanted something uncluttered, so that I could make up my mind exactly who I was as a woman, and what I wanted. It just seemed to stay that way. My office has more of the rest of the house. I wanted the comfort of having my mother and grandmother near. They taught me so much.”

“Some people called your mother ‘the Keeper’ because she knew almost everything about their lives. Now you’re the Keeper, right? You know and you don’t talk.”

She ached for him. He wasn’t ready to accept the truth, but she would offer that gift—“If a person comes to me and asks about their private family matters, I would tell what I knew. I would tell you about your family, if you wanted. How it was between Fred and Grace—”

He cut her off with a curt “No.”

She knew what he was thinking, a male uncertain of his position in her life. Lovemaking with Mitchell would change their lives forever, yet Everett would always be there. “No one has been in this bed but me, and Dani, when she stayed overnight. She was frightened of storms just like this and Shelly was sick and needing rest. I enjoyed playing auntie.”

“You would.” Mitchell’s dark eyes found her body, locking onto her body, heating it. “Do you know how badly I want you?” he asked in a low, rough tone.

That was the glorious part—she
did
. Whatever ran between them was primitive and raw and real, her senses pulsing with it. Did he really want her, to consume her as his expression said he did?

“You’re on your own, buddy,” she whispered into the shadows between them.

“Am I? We’ll see, won’t we, unless you change your mind—and you can. I’ll understand,” he said, challenging her with a slow, seductive smile as he began to undress.

There was the sensual impact, the desire, the heat and the hunger—and the endearing uncertainty. Mitchell wasn’t certain he was in control of the situation or himself and that would bother him.

She realized that he would always challenge her, and that she would always rise to it. Whatever ran in him, the wildness and the strength, the sweetness and the tenderness, she wanted to ride on that river with him, trusting him as her body told her to. “I’m not changing my mind,” she stated huskily.

Uma held her breath as Mitchell tossed away his shirt and unbuttoned his slacks, letting them slide to the floor with his shorts and stepping out of them. The flash of lightning hit him—all angles and strength, the desire hardening his face.

Truth. It rode in the moment like the rising beat of the sensuality, pounding at her. Whatever happened after Mitchell’s lovemaking, she would remember that she wanted him as well.

Mitchell sat on the bed, his back to her. Drawn by the flowing muscles of his body, she smoothed his skin and felt the quiver of flesh and heat and desire beneath her fingertips, the tension held there. He wasn’t certain of her yet, only the desire between them.

Then suddenly, he turned, pinning her down full length with his heavy body, framing her face with his hands. “Is this what you really want? Just this?”

She’d traveled through life step by step on the path that had been set for her. She didn’t resent her life, but tonight Mitchell was her choice, just for her, without expectations or commitments. Perhaps she was a rebel, after all. Perhaps she hadn’t known what lurked inside her until Mitchell came back to Madrid. Perhaps tonight would prove the circle fully joined. She reveled in the freedom and the storm and the passion racing through her—passion he could cause by one sultry look, the pulses racing, heating in her body. “Just this.”

He tensed and closed his eyes, then opened them again as he slowly eased aside to draw away the sheet over her body. Lightning flashed again and the hard ridges and planes of his face caught the light and the intensity that darkened and grew as his open hand moved slowly over her body, following the softness, gently trapping her breasts in his hand before moving lower.

“You quiver,” he whispered raggedly. “When I touch you, you tremble and heat.”

She tried to breathe and couldn’t, excitement dancing inside her. She felt like an adventuress about to make her life’s biggest discovery; she was both drawn to it, and afraid, and yet she couldn’t resist. “I know. I can’t help it. I would, if I could.”

“No, you wouldn’t like revealing that much about the woman, would you? You like control as much as I do, only this is something else, isn’t it?” He cupped her intimately, stroking the dampness there slowly.

She arched upward, responding shockingly to that light touch, wanting more. The quickening drew her hands to his arms, her fingers locked to that so-warm flesh, the muscles flowing beneath it. “Mitchell, are you going to play games?”

“No,” he stated honestly, bending to place his lips against
hers, to take that first hot, deep kiss that left her breathless and aching.

He meant to claim her, she knew, taking and possessing, but she had plans of her own, circling his shoulders with her arms, turning to him, arching as his mouth moved lower, open and skimming her throat until he found her breast, sweetly tormenting her.

When she cried out, Mitchell moved over her, his face locked in passion, in the truth she wanted between them.

She hadn’t expected him to ease so slowly into her, to be so careful, the trembling of his body telling her of his effort. Then deep inside, rich and fully lodged, he pressed deeper until she held her breath, the exquisite tightening of her body telling her it had been too long…too long.

“Say my name,” he whispered roughly against her throat, nipping gently at her, as his body began to flow with hers.

“Mitchell…” But she was already climbing, burning, crying out, locking him to her.

“Say it again,” he demanded with an arrogance she’d expected.

“No,” she whispered, pushing, testing.

He smiled against her throat and eased slightly away. “I can make you.”

Despite the driving need within her, Uma knew the cost of his control, his body shaking with it, and when he lifted to torment her with those mind-drugging kisses, she gently bit his lip. “Do it, then.”

Minutes later, Mitchell lay heavily upon her, and she stroked his hair, his skin damp and warm and fragrant against hers. He eased slowly aside, those dark eyes slitted, watching her, seeing too deeply. “Well, that was interesting.”

Interesting? Interesting? Her body was still trembling, still remembering his, the pounding fever between them, take and take and give and the pleasure—she’d been tossed into a
burning hungry furnace of sexual pleasure, all systems flowing, pulsing, beating…. Interesting?

“So now I know, don’t I?”

“You know how to ruin a moment,” she said tightly.

He toyed with her hair and grinned when she looked away. “Well, then,” he said as his hands began to wander and caress and find just the right places to send her quivering and heating and aching. “Let’s see if I can’t do better this time.”

Who would want to hurt Shelly?
That bullet graze at her temple said someone did. Roman had seen enough wounds like that to recognize the scar.

And Mitchell had called, identifying the bullets lodged beneath Shelly’s ivy, and the bullets that had battered the old windmill. So Pete’s likely killer had had Shelly in mind. Why?

From the window in the garage’s upstairs office, Roman looked out into the night, the lightning bolts spearing almost straight into the ground, the thunder rattling the windows he had just replaced. He rubbed his bare chest and the ache in it, then shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.

I had a daughter—have a daughter
, he corrected, and he hadn’t been around; he didn’t know anything about what he’d missed or how to be a father. A wash of leaves swished across the glass and he thought of the color of Shelly’s hair, like fiery autumn, golds and reds overlaying rich browns. It moved silkily, freely, just as her body did.

Shelly had the long, clean lines of the Lamborghini he’d just sold, and she was just as classy.

The laundry she’d done for him, hung pressed and neat on a standing rack, his underclothing folded neatly on a chair. She’d survived by cleaning and hard work and ironing until she couldn’t move.

Every time he saw her drag herself to the ironing board, he wanted to pick her up in his arms and rock her. But he
couldn’t. He couldn’t touch her; he’d ruined her. She deserved better than a life of hardship, a daughter who had her father’s rebellious blood and a mother who had disowned her.