Indeed, lightning was striking all around her as she ran down the pathways toward the bungalow. The wind destroyed her hairdo, but she was heedless of it. Tears flooded her cheeks as she continued to run. There was a burning pain in her side from running and a pain in her soul from what she knew now to be the irrevocable truth.
She reached the quadraplex in record time and fumbled in her beaded bag for the key. Once inside, she all but ripped the black dress from her body, as though it were a cloying shroud, and peeled the panty hose down her legs. Naked, she went to the dressing table to pull out what pins were left in her hair. Punishingly, she raked a brush through it.
The need to escape pressed upon her, bringing with it irrationality and panic. She must escape from herself and from the man who would come looking for her when he discovered she was gone. He mustn't find her tonight. He mustn't. She was too weak, too susceptible. If he found her …
Where could she hide? As if in answer a bolt of lightning zigzagged from the low clouds seemingly into the heart of the turbulent sea. Josh wouldn't look for her on the beach, not in this storm. Only a fool would go near the water during an electrical storm. But then, she was a fool.
She pulled on her bikini trunks but, thinking she might be too cold with the ocean wind howling, she substituted a soft, baggy sweat shirt for the bra. Within seconds she was out the terrace door and racing down the slope toward the beach. She ran from even a hint of light. The frequent blue-white flashes of the storm were her only illumination.
Far from her bungalow she sat down in the damp sand, pulled her knees up, and lay her forehead against them. Bitter tears scalded her eyes and wet her cheeks.
I love him.
The truth filled her mind despite her efforts to deny it. She had loved him long and well. She had loved him from the first moment she'd seen him, over four years ago. She had loved him far too well to marry another man, far too well to be considered a truly faithful wife, far too well to carry out a stupid plot for revenge. Whom was she avenging? James? Herself? Everything that had once been so clear to her was now a tangle of mixed emotions, a jumble of truths, half-truths, and misinterpretations.
Engulfed by remorse, she crumpled onto her side in a heap and sobbed bitterly. It wasn't Josh who had been brought to heel, but herself. The role she'd played for the past few days was the role she'd always wanted to play with this man but had never allowed herself to assume. The startling truth was that everything she'd done, she'd done because she'd wanted to, not because she wanted to bring him down. All the while convincing herself that she was lying to him with her seductive allures and affectionate banter, she had instead been lying to herself.
“You're a fool, Megan Lambert,” she cried aloud. “Didn't it ever occur to you that you'd fall into your own trap?”
For an indeterminate length of time she lay there on the beach and wept. The wind whistled ominously around her. Lightning popped and cracked, eerily lighting up the entire horizon or ripping through the curtain of clouds to momentarily weld together sea and sky. It might have started raining or it might have been salt water spraying on her cold skin. She didn't know or care. To the elements she was impervious. She knew only of the gnawing agony deep inside her and the emptiness that lurked on the outskirts of her soul, threatening to suck her into its fathomless void.
“Megan!” Her name sounded torn from an anguished throat. She heard it only a moment before she felt the vibration of running footsteps in the wet, hard-packed sand. Then strong hands were gently turning her over. “Megan?”
She opened her eyes, and the pain-riddled eyes that gazed down at her, searching her face, squeezed tightly shut in relief. His hair was whipping around his head in the wild wind. His tuxedo coat and tie were gone. So were his shoes and the studs that buttoned his shirt. The wind tore at the fine white cloth, pulling it away from his body, whose strength championed the storm's fury.
Kneeling in the sand, he grabbed her to him, wrapping his arms around her and all but cutting off her breath. “Don't ever do that to me again. I thought. …I thought Lord …” He rocked her back and forth in his arms, warming her. His lips covered her face with frantic kisses while his hands traversed her body anxiously.
“What made you do it, Megan? Why? Why did you run away from me? From me?”
His haggard expression revealed his agony and opened up the floodgates of her love for him. “I—” No, she couldn't tell him about her stupid plan for vengeance. He thought her signs of growing love had been natural, not engineered. They had been, so there wasn't any reason for him ever to know of her plot.
“Hold me, Josh, just hold me. I love you,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck.
He lifted her and carried her up the gentle incline toward the bungalow. The wind and rain lashed out at them but only gave him reason to walk that much faster. He passed through the open glass door and rushed to ease her down on the bed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, lifting the wind-ravaged, rain-plastered hair away from her face.
“Yes, yes,” she sobbed, grabbing his hand and bringing his palm to her mouth.
He left her only long enough to lunge to the terrace door and slide it shut. Belt and trousers and underwear were discarded as he returned to the bed. She had used that time to fling the covers back and he down on the melon-colored linens.
His eyes blazed into hers as he shrugged off his shirt and came naked to the side of the bed. His sex was bold in its declaration of need and desire. The wild disarray of his hair, the fierce expression in his eyes, the harsh breathing that came through his lips, gave him a primeval bearing that set her blood racing to every erogenous zone of her body. With the most primitive of instincts she longed to satisfy the lust of her mate.
Her hands went to the bottom of the sweat shirt. Her eyes locked with his as she sl
owly and alluringly eased it over her breasts. Pausing to gauge his reaction, she pulled it over her head and stretched, her body forming one sleek, taut line of sexuality. She tossed the garment to the floor. Then, lifting her hips an inch above the mattress, she wiggled out of her bikini trunks.
A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically, and his eyes darkened. With a hand that trembled visibly, he reached down to test the texture of the auburn tuft. She purred her desire.
In an instant he was stretched out on top of her, and they fell on each other as if they were dying of thirst. His fingers plowed through her hair, capped her head, and held it possessively while his mouth ravished hers. His tongue plunged into her mouth, driven by hunger and the desperation to claim ownership at last.
Her hands opened over his back, rubbing hard the muscles that bunched and relaxed each time he moved over her, driving their bodies to a greater level of passion.
“This isn't the way I planned it,” he said, gasping.“I was going to go slow… savor… oh, Lord … touch me there again.”
“Please, Josh, now,” she pleaded as her hips arched up to meet his thrust.
He buried himself in the moist welcoming silk of her body, and their cries of ecstasy rivaled the roar of the wind outside.