Masquerade (6 page)

"I didn't know him."

Again he spoke curtly, as if he resented any mention of her late fiancé. Why? Surely he couldn't have been jealous, could he? Jealous that some other man had come first with her? Then another thought occurred to her.

"Cole, are you married?"

He shot her a quick look before answering, then abruptly dropped his glance. "No."

She was stunned by the relief she felt at his answer—and by the swift rise of possessiveness she'd felt just before it. She didn't follow him when he crossed to the desk and spoke to one of the clerks. She was too busy trying to come to terms with the discovery that the possessive feeling had been jealousy.

Then he was walking back to her. "He hasn't arrived with your passport, so I've arranged for a suite. I didn't think you'd want to wait around the lobby until he comes."

She stiffened at the hint of sarcasm in his remark, and its implication that she would regard waiting in the lobby as something beneath her. She started to challenge him on it, but the arrival of a bellman deterred her—for the time being.

In silence she went up in the elevator, down the hall, and into the suite of rooms. There she crossed to the window of the richly furnished sitting room and waited while the bellman went through the ritual of showing Cole all the suite's amenities. Finally she heard the click of the door latch signal his departure, and she swung from the spectacular view of the bay's deep-blue waters.

Without looking at her, Cole locked the door behind the bellman, then loosened the knot of his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt as he started across the room toward the telephone, which rested on an ebony secretaire. "I'm going to order up some coffee. Do you want anything?"

"Yes, I'd like to know what you meant by that remark you made downstairs. Or was that some brotherly gibe?"

"Brotherly?" he stopped, an eyebrow lifting sharply. "I'm not your brother, Remy."

Her mouth gaped open. She couldn't help it. "But... at the hospital... I thought. ..." She stopped, trying to remember exactly what had been said—and by whom.

"I am not your brother, Remy," he repeated, his mouth slanting in a hard and cynically amused line.

"Then who are you?"

"Exactly who I claim to be—the president of the Crescent Line, Cole Buchanan."

"Inspector Armand said my brother was coming to take me home," she remembered. "If you aren't my brother, then where is he?"

"Gabe should be arriving at the hotel anytime now—with your passport."

"Then who am I? What's my name? Remy what?" she demanded, confused and angry—and making no attempt to conceal it.

"Remy Jardin."

Remembering how guilty she'd felt over her attraction to him, she walked over to confront him, her temper showing. "You bastard!" She lashed out, striking at his face, but in a lightning-fast move he caught her wrist and stopped it short of its target. When she brought her other hand up, it was caught too, and held in the vice of his fingers. "Why didn't you tell me at the hospital you weren't my brother?" she demanded, straining to pull free of his hold but not deigning to struggle openly against it.

"I never said I was. If you assumed that, that's your problem. Not mine."

"You let me think it," she accused.

"I have no control over what you think or what conclusions you reach. If I did, then—" But he cut off the rest of that sentence. "I had no idea you thought I was your brother, Remy. If I had, I probably wouldn't have told you differently. Do you know why? Because amnesia or not, you have an incredibly strong sense of family. You might not have left the hospital with a stranger."

"The end justifies the means, is that it?"

His head came up sharply at that remark. "Believe what you like, Remy. You always do."

Looking at him, she became conscious of the harsh grip of his hands on her wrists and remembered the pressure of them when he'd pulled her into his arms, the way they had moved over her with accustomed ease, and the natural way he had spoken her name. More than that, she remembered the way she'd reacted to him. "Are we lovers?"

Slow to make her change of mood, he lowered her hands and absently rubbed at the insides of her wrists, where his fingers had dug in. "Yes."

"I should have guessed," she said, then wondered, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't remember. I thought it might be better that way."

"Why?" she asked, then immediately guessed, "Have we been arguing?"

"You could say that." His reply had the ring of an understatement.

"About what?" Was this the trouble she'd sensed? The reason for that feeling of urgency?

"Does it matter, considering you don't remember?" He let go of her hands and crossed to the window, massaging the back of his neck in a gesture that revealed strain and tension.

"Do I love you, Cole?"

He released a short, explosive sigh. "How the hell am I supposed to answer that, Remy?" She said nothing, letting her silence prod him. "You've told me you do," he said finally.

She walked over to him. "Cole." She waited for him to look at her. "Do you love me?"

His gaze locked with hers for an eternity of seconds. Then his arm hooked itself around her waist and pulled her to him as he lowered his mouth onto hers in a deep and loving kiss that had a hint of roughness to it. She remembered the familiar rightness of being in his arms, but she hadn't guessed at the powerful range of feelings it could evoke.

He dragged his mouth from her lips and rubbed it across her cheek. "You turn me inside out. You have from the first day we met," he murmured against her skin, his hot, moist breath fanning out to offer its own stimulating caress.

"When was that?" She closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of his mouth moving along her temple, into her hair, and behind an ear.

"Roughly a year ago—at a party Frazier gave at Antoine's after I came on board as the company's new CEO."

He still remembered vividly the first time he'd seen her. At that moment she'd been for him the only living thing in the room, her face softly lighted and softly shadowed, her shoulders straight and graceful, her presence creating its beauty and its imperative call. Frazier had introduced them, and he'd taken her hand, the fragrance of her nearness arousing all his male interest in a reaction that was both quick and reluctant. The glimmer of gold in her eyes had seemed to sparkle just for him, but he hadn't been fool enough to believe it . . . then.

"And you fell for me right off, I suppose." She raked her fingers through his hair, flexing them almost like a cat as her parted lips grazed along his jawline.

"Are you kidding? I swore I wouldn't get within ten feet of you." It was a vow that common sense told him he should have kept.

"What happened?"

"About six months ago I got within ten feet of you, and all hell broke loose." He meant that literally. Trouble had erupted almost from the moment they'd gotten together—and grown steadily in the interim. But it was moments like this, when he held her warm and cushioning body close to him and tasted the fiery flavor of her kiss, that he could almost convince himself he didn't give a damn.

"Now
that
is the first thing you've said that I believe," she murmured, seeking and finding his lips.

For her this was like the first time, because she couldn't remember the other. That he had been her lover she did not doubt. Her body knew him, and her heart knew him, even if her mind couldn't recall him. This was the man she loved.

Yet the sensations of being loved by him were all brand-new. She couldn't get enough of the feel of his hands on her back—kneading and caressing in their foray down her spine to her hips—or the taste of his tongue in her mouth, thrusting and mating with her own. His chestnut-dark hair was thick and full beneath her fingers, smooth but a little on the coarse side, slightly rough, like the rest of him.

Wanting more, she strained to get closer to him, her back arching, her hips pressing, her body aching to be absorbed by him. Frustrated, she bit at his lip, inadvertently drawing blood. She heard him stifle a faint sound of pain and rained the spot with light kisses of apology as she brought her hands down, encountering the muscular wall of his chest, rising and falling with the heaviness of his breathing. She tried to run her hands over his chest to the wide points of his shoulders, but his jacket got in the way and his shirt barred contact with the flesh beneath it.

Impatiently she tugged at the loosened knot of his tie. But Cole's hand took her place, yanking it the rest of the way loose and stripping the tie away. When she pushed at his coat, he shrugged out of it. While their lips continued to consume each other with desperate greedy kisses, she set to work on his shirt buttons. But the third one defied her efforts, a thread of the buttonhole catching it and refusing to let it go. Gripping both edges of his shirt front, she pulled them apart, and the rest of the buttons snapped off one after the other. Her hands moved freely onto his bared chest, all hard, bronzed flesh over sinewy muscle, smooth and hot to the touch, like satin over sunbaked steel. But it wasn't enough to feel it; she wanted to taste it, too. She pulled away from his kiss and brought her lips down to the pulsing vein in his neck. She felt the faint tremor that shuddered through him.

"Someday, Remy—" His low voice vibrated against her hair, husky with disturbance, as his fingers curled around the collar of her jacket. "Someday you're going to pay for all the shirts you've ruined."

Openmouthed, she ran the tip of her tongue over the ridge of his shoulder, licking the hot saltiness of his skin, then lifted her head, tilting her face to him. "Make me pay, Cole," she whispered the dare, her eyes gleaming as she gazed into the darkening smoke of his. "Make me pay now."

Accepting her bold challenge, he pulled the front of her jacket apart and dragged it off her shoulders, momentarily forcing her arms to her sides before she could slip free of the sleeves. With the same impatience she had shown toward him, he ripped her blouse open, sending buttons flying into the air. Not content with that, he pushed the blouse off her, dragging the thin straps of her lace teddy with it and exposing the golden cream of her shoulders. Her blouse had barely touched the floor when his fingers took hold of the front of her teddy, indifferent to the expensive lace, and pulled it down, his large hands immediately cupping and covering her small but highly sensitive breasts.

She gasped softly at the sudden swirl of raw pleasure that swept her up, but his mouth came down to smother the sound and steal the rest of her breath. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and forced him closer, parting her lips to invite the mating plunge of his tongue. As his hands slipped to the sides of her waist, she arched against him, flattening her breasts against the muscled wall of his chest, needing to feel the heat that came from flesh against flesh.

She wanted him. She wanted all of him, with a fierceness that staggered her completely. What kind of passion was this that erupted so violently? The desire for him had been there all along, thrumming just below the surface. Now it had burst wide open, making her feel incredibly strong and incredibly weak at the same time.

His hands tightened on her waist and effortlessly lifted her, the iron band of his arm circling below her hips to hold her tightly against him, her feet dangling inches from the floor. He carried her that way, with their mouths locked in a kiss, to one of the suite's bedrooms. Remy didn't know which one and didn't care as she kicked her shoes off along the way.

In the room he stopped short of the bed and let her body slide slowly down his chest until her feet touched the floor. Immediately his hands were at the waistband of her slacks, seeking its fastener. Catching his urgency, she hurriedly began to finish undressing him.

Within minutes their clothes were a puddle on the bedroom floor and she lay naked beside his nude male body. At last she had time to explore at her leisure. Levering herself up on one elbow, she rolled her lips off his mouth, briefly grazing them across his square chin, then turned her head to admire that expanse of bare chest and shoulders.

There was a power and a discipline inherent in his muscled form that pulled at her and challenged her to touch him. She pressed her mouth onto the solid curve of his shoulder, then let her lips follow its ridge to the strong column of his neck before wandering down to tactilely explore the hollow at the base of his throat, conscious all the while of the caressing play of his hands over her back and ribs, stroking, teasing, stimulating, and encouraging her. Moving lower, she rubbed her mouth over the square flatness of his breast, then paused to lick at the excitingly small nub of his nipple. She heard the rumble of approval come from deep inside his chest, and she smiled. She slid her hand lower, across the flatness of his stomach, its muscles tensing at her touch, and into the silken curl of hairs at the very bottom of it. When her fingers curved around him, he groaned a muffled curse.

An instant later his fingers tunneled into her hair at the sides and grabbed a handful. She gasped a protest as he hauled her up and twisted her onto her back, letting go of her hair and catching her arms, spreading them above her head and pinning her wrists to the bed, his weight holding her down.

"No," he said against her lips, catching the lower one and lightly nipping at it with his teeth. "I've been away from you too long, Remy. And I'll be damned if this is going to be over before it's begun."

He again caught her bottom lip between his teeth and tightly nipped at it. She groaned at the action that both teased and aroused. Then she felt satisfying pressure of his mouth on hers once more as he kissed her long and deep, drawing from her feelings she hadn't known existed. She was going soft inside and she knew it as he kissed his way over every inch of her face, then paused to sensually chew at an earlobe. When he nibbled his way down her neck, delicious shivers tingled over her.

His arms continued to pin hers to the bed, but she lay there a willing captive, trapped by the urgent need to absorb this myriad of sensations. When his tongue licked at a taut nipple, a curling started deep in the pit of her stomach. She moaned at the ache it produced and finally realized that he was doing to her all the things she had done to him. And it was wonderful. Wonderful.