“The hell we can’t.”
“Hollister…”
“The partition’s up. Hollister can’t see or hear us.” In the dark, his eyes gleamed with an almost predatory brilliance. He bent to her and kissed her until she was trembling in his arms.
“This is our own little world, Gypsy. No one can see us. No one even knows we’re here.” He kissed her again. “And you are my wife.”
His wife.
Joanna’s breath caught. The simple words were as erotic as any a man had ever whispered to a woman.
And he was right. In the night, surrounded by the anonymity of the city, she felt as if they were alone in the universe.
She sighed with pleasure as he kissed her throat, and then the delicate flesh behind her ear.
“I never forgot the taste of you,” he whispered thickly. His kisses were soft as rain, warm as sunlight against her skin. “Like honey. Like cream. Like…”
His lips closed over her silk-encased nipple and she cried out softly and her body arched toward him, a tautly strung bow of consummate sensation.
“Yes,” he said, as she whispered his name and wound her arms tightly around his neck.
He groaned softly and shifted her, positioning her over him so that she was kneeling on the leather seat, her short, full skirt draping over his legs like the downturned petals of a flower.
His hand slid under the skirt, cupping her, feeling her wetness, teasing it until finally he hooked his fingers into the fragile crotch of her silk teddy and tore it aside.
Joanna gasped and jerked her head back.
“We’re alone, Gypsy,” David whispered against her mouth. “There’s no one here but you and me. And I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman in my life.”
He kissed her, hard, and she responded with an ardor that equaled his. It was what she wanted, too. No preliminaries. No sweet words. Just this, the blinding passion, the urgent need, the coupling that their flesh demanded.
That her heart desired.
Joanna’s breath caught.
How could she have been so blind? She loved him. She had always loved him, this stranger who was her husband.
Her injury might have made her head forget him but her soul and her flesh remembered. He was a part of her, he always had been, and now her blood was throbbing his name with each beat of her heart.
“Gypsy?”
He was waiting, waiting for her to give him her answer. And she gave it, blindly, gladly, lifting her mouth to his for the sweet, possessive thrust of his tongue, clasping his face in her hands and dragging it down to hers.
He groaned softly, a primitive sound of triumph and need.
“Unzip me,” he said, and she hurried to obey, her hands shaking with the force of her desire.
Her fingertips brushed over the straining fabric of his trousers. She felt the pulsing hardness of his erection.
“Joanna,” he said urgently, and his hand moved, his fingers seeking, finding, caressing her secret, weeping flesh.
She was sobbing now, aching for him, empty without him; she had been empty for a long, long time.
“David,” she whispered, and her fingers closed on the tab of his zipper…
The Bentley lurched. A horn blared, and the big car lurched again.
Joanna blinked. She pulled back in David’s arms. “What was that?”
David cursed softly. “I don’t know.” His arms tightened around her. “And I don’t care.”
“No. No, wait…” She lay her palms against his chest. “David, stop.”
“Come back here!” His voice was rough with desire; he cupped her face in one hand and kissed her. “I’m crazy with the need to be inside you, Gypsy. I want to feel your heat around me, to hear you cry out my name as you come.”
Joanna felt as if she were awakening from a deep, drugged sleep. The Bentley had slowed to a crawl. She turned her head to the window, peered out the dark glass. They were moving through a construction zone; yellow caution lights blinked in the road.
She felt her face grow hot. No one could see in, she knew that. The tinted glass made it impossible. But that didn’t keep her from suddenly feeling as if she and David were on display.
His hand stroked over her naked shoulders.
“David,” she said, “please…”
His mouth burned at her breast.
“No. Stop it.” She began to struggle. “David,” she said sharply, “stop!”
He lifted his head. His eyes were dark, almost unfocused; his breathing was ragged. A frisson of fear tiptoed down her spine. All at once, her husband seemed more a stranger than ever.
“David.” She shoved harder against his chest and shoulders. “Let me go, please.”
“Don’t be a fool! You know you want this—need this—as badly as I do. Come back here and—”
“No!” She tried to twist away from him but he wouldn’t let her. “You don’t know the first thing about what I want.”
“I know exactly what you want. And you damned well almost got it.”
Her hand cracked against his jaw. They stared at each other and then David let go of her and she scrambled off his lap. He turned away and lay his forehead against the cool window glass.
What in hell was the matter with him?
Here he was, a grown man, sitting in the back seat of a limousine with his wife straddling his lap, the bodice of her dress down at her waist and her skirt hiked up to her hips, and if she hadn’t stopped him he’d have taken her here, on the cold leather seat, with no more finesse than a boy out on his first date.
And he was angry at Joanna?
God, what a pathetic excuse for a man he was.
She hadn’t done a thing. Not one damned thing. She’d simply appeared from out of the blue, looking the way he’d never stopped remembering her, sounding the way she’d once sounded, and against all the rules of logic and reason he’d gone crazy, first with rage and then with lust and all because the terrible truth was that he’d never stopped loving the woman he’d thought he’d married.
For all he knew he might never, ever stop loving her.
What a joke.
He’d called Joanna a fool but if she was a fool, what did you call a man who was in love with a woman who’d never really existed?
Whoever this Joanna was, once her memory returned, she’d vanish as quickly as she had the first time. And then they’d be right back where they’d been before the accident, two people with nothing in common but his status and their impending divorce.
It would have made things easier if she understood. But what could he tell her? That the loss of her memory had made her a better person? That while she prayed for the return of her memory, he dreaded it?
David drew a shuddering breath. Making love to Joanna would have been like making love to a dream.
It was a good thing she’d stopped him. A damned good thing.
It had probably taken all her courage to show up at the party and he’d repaid that courage by being a selfish bastard.
“Joanna?” He reached out his hand and she slapped it away. “Jo, listen, I know how you feel—”
She turned toward him. He’d expected to see anguish in her eyes, that her mouth—that soft, sweet mouth—would be trembling, but he was wrong.
What he saw wasn’t anguish but rage.
“You’re truly remarkable,” she said bitterly. “First you know what I want, now you know what I feel.”
“Jo, I’m trying to apologize. I should never have…”
The limousine pulled to the curb. The engine shut off and the silence of the night settled around them. Joanna glared at him in the darkness.
“If you ever touch me again,” she said, “so help me, David, I’ll—I’ll…”
Her voice broke. The door swung open. He caught a quick glimpse of Hollister’s startled face as Joanna shoved past him, ran up the steps and disappeared inside the house.
* * *
At five in the morning, David was still sitting in the darkened living room.
He’d been there for hours, ever since they’d come in. His jacket was off, his tie was gone and the top few buttons of his shirt were undone. His shoes lay beside his chair. There was an open decanter of cognac on the table beside him and a glass in his hand. He wasn’t drunk though, God knew, he’d done his best.
Footsteps sounded softly on the stairs.
He rose to his feet and ran his hand through his hair. Then he walked quietly to the door and into the pool of pale yellow light cast by the lamp in the foyer.
“Joanna?” he said softly.
She paused, midway down the stairs. She was wearing a long yellow robe, her hair was caught back in a loose braid, and if she was surprised to see him, it didn’t show on her face.
“Hello, David,” she said tonelessly.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Shadows lay like bruises below her eyes.
“I was just…” He raised his cognac snifter. “Would you like some?”
“No. No, thank you.” She lifted both hands to her face and lightly touched her fingertips to her temples. “Actually, I came down for some aspirin. I couldn’t seem to find any in my bathroom.”