French—” His hand curved around her nape, his mouth slowly opening on hers. His tongue made a brief foray into her mouth, probing lightly, and Kate returned the intimate kiss, wrapping her arms fiercely around his neck and molding her body to the hardening contours of his. To Kate’s surprise, her response made him abruptly end that kiss. Instead, he brushed a light kiss on her forehead and whispered, also speak some German and some Greek . . .” Touching his lips to her temple, he added, “and a little Russian, and a little Japanese.” He slid his mouth across her cheekbone to her ear, and his warm breath made her shiver and lean into him as he finished playfully, almostno Dutch.”
Despite Mitchell’s lighthearted tone, her shivering response made him yearn to make her shiver again, only harder, and longer, and he had to force himself to lift his head. He could not fathom why kissing her had such a powerful physical effect on him, and he was genuinely relieved that he’d managed to name all the languages he spoke while keeping things from getting out of hand.
Kate stirred in his arms and tipped her chin up. forgot to mention English,” she said with a smile.
In the interest of conformity, Mitchell suddenly felt that the English language needed to be mentioned in the context of a kiss, just as the others had been. I?” he asked, slowly rubbing his thumb over her soft bottom lip; then he looked at what his thumb was doing. His restraint snapped. He pressed his thumb down hard, forcing her lips apart, and abruptly seized her mouth in a hungry, devouring kiss. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and the kiss went wild. She kissed him back, her fingers flexing against the muscles in his back, clasping him to her while his hands slid restlessly over the sides of her breasts, then swept behind her, cupping her hips and pulling her tightly against his rigid erection.
When Mitchell finally pulled his mouth from hers, lust was raging through his entire nerve stream, and the idea of walking toward her villa in the condition his body was in struck him as being too humorous to consider. Instead, he held her in his arms, her face pressed to his chest, her titian hair spilling over his arm in a rumpled cascade. Lifting his gaze from the top of her head, he looked out at the shifting sea, his emotions caught somewhere between excitement, amusement, and disbelief. She was leaning against him for support, her hand splayed over his pounding heart, her fingers moving slightly in a feathery caress. He liked the way she was touching him. He knew she was in much the same emotional and physical state he was in, and he liked that, too.
In fact, he likedeverything about her.
He liked her humor, her warmth, and her sensuality. He liked her courage and her candor and her pride. He liked her smile and the musical sound of her laughter. He liked her face, and her hair, and the way she’d laid her hand on his jaw earlier, when she said, have a feeling you’re a whole lot more than just another pretty face.”
He liked the way her body fit itself to his, and the way her breasts felt in his hands. Mitchell checked the direction of his thoughts and tipped his chin down, ready to relinquish his hold on her and walk back to the suite. “How many languages was that?” he asked with a grin.
She lifted her head from his chest, leaned back in his arms, and looked at him blankly for a moment; then she gave him a smile filled with charming chagrin. don’t know. I lost count after you said French.”
we’ll have to start over.”
, God—” she said on a choked laugh, and dropped her forehead weakly against his chest.
not here,” Mitchell said, amused and flattered by her reaction; then he curved his arm around her waist and directed her toward the villa. As they walked across the grass, he tried to remember the last time a woman had made him experience such strong, frequent, and repeated transitions from laughter to lust, and frustration to fascination. He couldn’t remember that ever happening to him before. The experience was surprising, challenging, and exhilarating. He didn’t want to do anything to diminish it, or the woman who affected him that way, and as he glanced at the open terrace doors, he wondered if it was a mistake to take her to bed in her boyfriend’s hotel room. Then he wondered exactly who he thought that would bother—her? Or him? Or both of them?
The possibility thathe might not like the idea of going to bed with her in another man’s hotel room seemed ludicrous, since he’d done similar things in the past and without the slightest qualm. In view of that, Mitchell decided that his concern was strictly for her sake—until they walked into the suite and they both saw his navy sport jacket hanging on the back of a chair in the living room.
Kate reacted with a surprised statement of the obvious. you left earlier, you forgot your jacket.”
might have been difficult to explain to the lawyer,” Mitchell replied without intending to say any such thing. The lawyer was an off-limits subject under the circumstances, and he couldn’t believe he’d just been foolish enough—or crass enough—to bring him up at such a time as this.
would have noticed it and . . .”
what?” Mitchell inquired, even though that completely compounded his last transgression and made him even more annoyed with himself.
Kate shot him an uneasy smile and bent down to check on the sleeping dog. Max’s nose was cool and moist, and he opened his eyes when she touched him; then he gave his tail a feeble wag and drifted back to sleep. Satisfied, she stood up and rubbed her palms on the sides of her pants. She was trying to think what she would have done with Mitchell’s jacket, and she wished the subject hadn’t come up, because it was making her feel sneaky and guilty about going to bed with him here in Evan’s suite, when moments before she’d been happy and excited. guess I could have left it at the front desk in a bag with your name on it.”
Mitchell knew that was a perfectly logical solution, but for some reason he suddenly found the notion extremely distasteful—almost as if it were he, rather than merely his jacket, that she would be pulling a bag over and hustling out to the front desk.
I guess I could have put it in the closet and waited for you to phone and tell me what to do with it.”
Mitchell restrained the idiotic urge to ask her if she thought the lawyer and he wore the same size jacket; then he glanced at the telephone and imagined the lawyer standing there, answering Mitchell’s phone call about the jacket or playing back Mitchell’s voice mail about it. As he looked at the telephone, it occurred to him that the red message light was no longer flashing, as it had been earlier. That meant Kate had already retrieved her voice mail message sometime during the evening.