“Where is your mother now?” she asked in a breathless whisper when at last her mouth was freed. Marveling over the sensuous talent of his lips, she outlined them with her fingertip.
The lips beneath her gliding finger became thin and hard with bitterness. “She died two weeks before I graduated from high school.” He laughed sadly. “It was her life's ambition, to see me graduate.”
“What did you do then?” Suddenly Megan was starved for information about him. She knew nothing about his life before the night she met him. Even the years since then were a wasteland of information. Every time James had begun to tell her something about the man who employed him, she had adroitly changed the subject. Now, inexplicably, she was eager to know everything.
“I moved around, working at odd jobs until I had saved enough money to enroll in one semester of college. I talked a minister into letting me live in the basement of the church in exchange for doing janitorial and yard work. If there's a shred of decency in me, it's because of him and his wife, who fed me one meal a day and loved me in spite of my meanness. Anyway”—he sighed—“I managed to get through school, obtain a loan, and start my company.”
“You're glossing over the difficulties. It couldn't have been as easy as that,” she said gently, combing back a shock of dark hair from his forehead.
“It wasn't. I worked like hell.” His grin split the dark shadows of his face with a white slash.
“What made you interested in advertising? A creative mind? An artistic nature?”
“Hardly,” he said with a short burst of laughter. “I just learned by accident that I was a born promoter. I came up with ideas that worked, to publicize upcoming events on campus, even at the church I lived in. I'd get an idea, and describe it to an artist, who would make the signs and posters. I'd come up with the theme but delegate the busy work to someone else.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “That's what I'm still doing.”
“And it's paid off. You're very rich.”
“Wealthy? Yes, I suppose so. But money never mattered much to me. It wasn't the lack of funds that galled me. It was the indignity one has to suffer because of being poor. When I looked down into the mess I'd made of that bastard's face—the guy who was insulting my mother in the diner—I swore to him and to myself that I wasn't going to let anyone run roughshod over me and mine again.”
“There's hardly any danger of that. You're too strong.” She knew that from experience. “You're the embodiment of the American dream. You have everything you want.”
He grasped her face between his hands and raised it to his. “No, Megan. The thing I wanted most I've had to do without and only because I had no choice.”
His mouth came down on hers ravenously, twisting, bruising, until he seemed to realize that she was all too willing to accept his kiss. Her fingers tangled in his hair and drew his head down closer to hers. Their bodies came together with unleashed desire.
While their mouths sought to appease insatiable appetites, Josh's hand smoothed down the underside of her arm until he found the sides of her breasts.
She moaned his name with a beseeching sound and, having that endorsement, he waited no longer to slip his hand beneath the airy material. Closing his hand over her breast, he kneaded it gently. He weighed it in his palm, measured its fullness, tested its sensitivity by gradually working his way to the crest that strained toward his caressing fingers.
“Let me love you, Megan. I want to see what I'm touching. I want to hold it in my mouth.”
“Oh, Josh,” she groaned. Her hands groped for the buttons of his shirt and pulled them from the holes. She inhaled his intoxicating scent and granted the wish of her fingertips to touch him. His hair was springy, his skin warm, his muscles firm.
She craved him. As his hands grew bolder in their seeking caresses, her senses clamored for fulfillment of the raging desire he'd sparked to life four long years ago. His lips as they branded her neck with kisses, his hands that had aroused her nipples to aching need, the love words he poured in her ear—all threatened to defeat her purpose.
Knowing she had to retreat now or be lost forever, she backed gradually away from him. Her hands were still on his chest, but they were pushing against it.
“Josh, no more, please.”
His head thumped against the bark of the tree, and his panting breaths vied with the wind's impetus as he seemed to slowly come back to earth. His arms fell listlessly to his sides. His eyes were shuttered by thickly fringed lashes.
Suddenly Megan felt an overwhelming need to comfort him. She struggled to conquer it. He was the enemy. She had set out to defeat him the only way she knew how, by using the only weapon she possessed. Sad stories of his youth couldn't alter her determination or color her opinion. He was a responsible man. No longer the victim of unfortunate circumstances, he made his own choices. He used and abused people. He deserved a comeuppance, and she was determined to give him one.
Yet all that was hard to remember when he opened his eyes and grinned crookedly at her. “I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't try to persuade you, after what happened earlier today. Why I made such a stupid promise, I'll never know.”
The smile she gave him in return was wooden, but he seemed not to notice as he said, “You ought to be in bed. I've got a big day planned for us tomorrow.”
The big day he had planned started at 7:00 A.M., when he knocked loudly on the glass door of her terrace. “Wake up, sleepyhead. The day's getting away from us.”
“You've gotta be kiddin’,” she muttered, opening one eye to confirm what she thought—it was much too early to get up. After all, she was on vacation!
“Megan!” Josh roared from behind the sheer curtains that were the only drapes she had drawn over the wide window.
She slung off the light covers, disentangled her arms and legs, stretched, and went to the window. Pauling the curtains aside, she glowered at him. “You've got your nerve,” she mouthed through the sliding glass door.
“So do you, coming to the door dressed like that,” he said with a lazy insolence that matched his stance against the glass. His amber eyes roved over her body, pausing at places that responded as if called to attention. The batiste, thigh-length nightgown couldn't hide the pouting of her nipples, which, she realized, showed as twin dusky shadows beneath the apricot fabric. She was further appalled to see that the matching bikini panties, rather than hiding her most private parts, only lured his eyes to them. “May I come in?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
She could no more have refused him than she could have sprouted wings and taken flight. Her eyes remained locked with his as she fumbled with the latch and slid open the door. He stepped inside and, with the sea breeze circulating around them, making a sail of the curtains, they continued to stare greedily at each other.