Love with the Proper Stranger (19 page)

John stopped moving toward her, but he didn’t retreat, either. He just gazed at her. In spite of his long, quiet sleep, he still looked weary, his chiseled features in high relief. His chin was covered with dark stubble, making him look doubly dangerous. But it was
the bright blue of his eyes that caught her and held her in place. Beneath the heat of desire that nearly always simmered there, his eyes were filled with apology and darkened with a haunting vulnerability.

“Whatever you do, don’t think that I don’t want you,” he whispered. “Because I do. I’ve wanted you right from the start—and every minute from then till now.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She laughed, but it came out sounding more like a sob. “Then why have you been kissing Serena?”

He didn’t seem surprised that she knew—and he didn’t try to deny it. “I can’t… I can’t explain that.”

“Try.”

John just shook his head.

He was blocking the only way out of the room, but Mariah couldn’t stand to be there a moment longer. She tried to push past him, but he caught her arm, his fingers locking around her wrist. “Mariah, wait—”

“Let
go
of me!”

Miller let go. No way was he going to risk hurting her again. Seeing those bruises on her arms had made him sick to his stomach. “I kissed her because I hoped it would make me stop wanting
you
.” That was only part of the truth, but he hoped it would be enough.

She turned to look back at him, her eyes filled with anger, her lips tight with disgust. “You are so full of—” Miller kissed her. He knew it wasn’t playing fair, but he didn’t give a damn. He knew kissing her would melt her anger and ignite her passion, leaving the arguments and harsh words far behind. He knew he was good at word games, but Mariah had told him point-blank that she didn’t want to play games anymore.

This kiss would eliminate everything but the most basic of truths—that he wanted her and she wanted him.

And yes, she still wanted him.

He tasted it in the fire of her kiss, in the heat of her melting embrace. He kissed her harder, sweeping his tongue deeply into her mouth, and she met him with a fierceness that took his breath away. She pulled him closer, her hands gliding up his back, her fingers on his neck, in his hair, even as his own hands explored the softness of her body, cupping the fullness of her breasts.

“Make love to me, Mariah,” he whispered, kissing her again. Her response was clear from the strength of her answering kiss.

She pulled back slightly, and he could see molten desire in her eyes. “If I do, I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” she said huskily.

“No,” he said. “This is going to be too good to regret.”

Her smile was tinged with sadness. “I just made up my mind to stay away from you, and now you go and totally mess me up. I mean, God! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick you out right here and now.”

He couldn’t. There was no reason, other than he wanted to stay, and she wanted him to stay, too. He leaned forward to kiss her again, but she stopped him with a finger against his lips.

“I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made this totally clear, but I’m emotionally involved here. Taking you into my bedroom and getting naked with you is going to be more than just great sex to me. It’s going to be making love. Love, John—do you understand what
I’m trying to say to you?” Mariah took a deep breath and let it all out in a rush. “In plain English, I’m in love with you. So if you’re going to get all freaked out and scared about that, maybe you should just run away now—
before
you tear my heart out.”

Miller couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. Mariah was in love with…
him?

He gazed down into her eyes, unable to look away, feeling an odd tightness in his chest. “That sounds like a good reason for me to stay,” he whispered.

He wanted to be loved. God, how he wanted that. He was shaken by how badly he wanted that, wanted more than just lust, more than physical gratification. He wanted to be cared for, to be cherished. In the past, he’d run away from such emotions, but as he looked into Mariah’s eyes, he only wanted to move closer. He wanted her to love him. He wanted
her
. And somehow she knew. He could see in her eyes that she knew.

Still, it wasn’t quite enough.

“I need you to promise me something,” she told him. “Mariah, I can’t promise much—”

“I’m not looking for any major commitment or anything like that,” she countered. “Just…” She had to start again. “Don’t sleep with Serena, okay?”

That was easy. “I won’t,” he said. “I promise.”

That was all she needed. Taking his hand, she led him to her bedroom.

The morning sun shone through green curtains, giving the room a greenish tint. The ocean breeze made the curtains move, and the light seemed to shift and dance across the ceiling. It was like being underwater. Or maybe up in heaven.

Mariah’s bed was in the center of the small room,
the headboard pushed against the wall. It was rumpled, unmade, the white sheets exposed beneath a green spread. Miller knew that Mariah had spent much of the night in here, unable to rest while he’d been fast asleep on the couch.

Mariah kissed him, and he knew his second assessment was right. This was definitely heaven.

She kissed him slowly, deeply, shifting her body against his in a way that made him groan. He knew from the burst of heat in her eyes that she liked the involuntary sound of his desire.

Her hands slid up underneath his T-shirt, traveling slowly up his back, and Miller closed his eyes.

This was too good, too intense, and too damn slow. But if she wanted it like this, dammit, he was going to curb his raging impulses and make love to her slowly.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d go to superhuman degrees to give her anything she wanted, anything at all.

She tugged at his T-shirt and he helped her pull it up and over his head. But when he reached for her shirt, she stopped him.

“Have you noticed that when it comes to sex, guys don’t like to get naked first?” she said, kissing his shoulders, his neck, his chest. Her fingers moved down to the waistband of his jeans, lightly brushing against his stomach as she unfastened the top button. “It’s a dominance thing,” she added, smiling up at him as she slowly unzipped his pants, “a power thing. It makes sense, doesn’t it? The person still dressed has a certain amount of power over the person who’s naked.”

“Are you, um, into that?” Miller asked.

She pushed him back onto the bed, pulling his
jeans down his thighs. “And then there’s the female thing,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard his question. “Women tend to be afraid to take the lead for fear of coming on too strong. Socially, we’re taught to lie back—let the man take off our clothes. Let him set the pace. Let him choose the time and place and position. Let him do the work. Hence the passive phrase ‘to be made love
to
.’ I much prefer ‘making love
with
.’” She tossed his jeans onto the floor. “
That’s
what I’m into.”

He reached for her, pressing her back on the bed with the force of his kiss. But then he moved away, suddenly remembering. “Your back—is it all right?”

“It’s fine.” She pulled him toward her for another kiss, molding herself against him.

The sensation of the smoothness of her legs intertwined with his nearly overwhelmed him. He pulled her T-shirt up, over her head, and this time she didn’t protest.

He gazed down at her and she smiled back at him, just letting him look. She was impossibly sexy, lying there like that. Her bra was white, covering her full breasts with some kind of stretchy lace material that allowed him tantalizing glimpses of dark pink nipples. He covered her breasts first with his hands, then with his mouth, suckling her through the lace of the bra, tugging on the desire-hardened tips with his lips, with his tongue.

She moaned, opening herself to him, cradling his swollen sex against the heat between her legs.

Miller reached for the button on her shorts, and she let him unfasten them and pull them down her legs. They soon joined his jeans on the floor.

Mariah closed her eyes. For all her liberated talk, she
was lying there, letting him undress her. And cringing because she was nearly naked—and afraid he wouldn’t like her because she didn’t have the body of a Barbie doll.

She felt John’s hands skimming her body. She knew he was looking at her.

“God, you’re incredible,” he breathed.

About to protest, she opened her eyes, but then she saw the fire in his gaze, the sheer admiration on his face. He was serious. He honestly liked what he saw.

He wasn’t one of those men who went for boyishly figured women like Serena. He wasn’t like Trevor, who had been forever trying to get her to go on a diet, to lose weight, to shrink herself down to his height.

No, John clearly liked
women
. Real women. And maybe especially women who were six feet tall, and generously—and appropriately—proportioned for their height.

As Mariah watched John’s face, her shoulders were no longer too broad. Her thighs weren’t too big, her legs too thickly muscled. Her hips weren’t too wide, or her breasts too full.

Mariah sat up and unfastened the front clasp of her bra—for the first time in her life voluntarily exposing herself to the eyes of a man without hiding in the cover of the darkness of night.

The look in John’s eyes was well worth the risk. He smiled, a short, hot smile that nearly scalded her, as he pulled her up toward him.

The sensation of the hard muscles of his chest pressed against her bare breasts and his rock-solid arousal against the softness of her stomach was dizzying as she knelt with him, there on her bed. His kiss
made her sway, and she clung to him as he slipped one hand beneath the lace of her panties, his exploring fingers touching her lightly, intimately.

She reached between them, too, finding him hard and sleek and hot.

He groaned. “Mariah…”

She opened her eyes to find herself gazing directly into his. The connection was just as physical as his touch.

“You said you had protection,” he said.

At just the same moment, she asked, “Will you put on a condom?”

They both laughed.

“I’ll get one,” Mariah said, pulling free from his grasp.

She rummaged through her bedside-table drawer, searching for the packet of condoms that her aunt had given her, complete with a note telling her to have a
very
good vacation. Mariah had rolled her eyes and tossed the box into her suitcase, hardly expecting to find call to use it. As she found the box, way down at the bottom of the drawer, John came to stand behind her, pressing himself intimately against her, covering her breasts with his hands and kissing her neck. It felt delicious—a hard promise of things to come.

And Mariah knew that she didn’t want to wait a moment longer. He’d taken off his briefs and now he slipped her panties down her legs, as well, as she turned to face him.

They were both naked, but she was more so—because she’d told him that she loved him.

This should have been strange—standing here like this, just looking at this beautiful, naked man, letting
him look at her. But it wasn’t strange at all, despite the fact that it had been years since she’d been with a man this way. She’d been attracted to John from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. She’d liked him from the first time they’d talked. And somewhere between then and now, she’d fallen deeply in love with him, too. And it was that love she felt that kept this from being strange, that instead made this moment perfect.

She knew he didn’t love her—she didn’t try to kid herself about that. But he liked her. She knew he really liked her. And on many levels, she preferred that steady, milder emotion to the short, hot, quick-burning flash of infatuation that many people mistook for love.

She pressed one of the condom packets into his hand. “Put this on,” she told him. “Then lie down and close your eyes.”

John laughed softly. “What are we doing? Pressure Cooker Release? Seabirds in Flight?”

Mariah gently pushed him onto the bed, unable to hide her smile. “You’ll see.” She was going to make this an experience he’d never forget. “I’ll be right back.”

She pulled on her robe and went quickly into the living room. She unplugged her boom box from the wall, found the CD she wanted, then carried both back into the bedroom.

John was on the bed, as she’d asked. He was gorgeous—all dark hair and sleek, hard muscles beneath his tanned skin. Lying there against the white sheets, he looked impossibly healthy. How could this physically perfect man have been in a hospital fighting for his life just a few weeks ago?

He was up on one elbow, watching her as she set the CD player on her dresser and plugged it in.

Miller’s blood was burning with anticipation. He’d barely been able to get the condom on, he was so aroused. And now Mariah was putting a CD into her portable player, her brightly colored silk robe hanging open, revealing tantalizing glimpses of her incredible body.

When he’d first seen her picture, he’d thought of her as a goddess. He’d had no idea how completely right he had been.

With a swirl of turquoise silk, she turned to face him. “One more thing,” she said, giving him a smile that put dimples of mischief and amusement in her cheeks. A small square that looked something like a speaker sat on the bedside table. She touched it, adjusted it, and the sound of flowing water filled the room. “A waterfall,” she said. She smiled at him again as she let her robe flutter to the ground. “Close your eyes.”

Miller didn’t want to. He wanted to look at her—he’d never tire of looking at her.

She moved back to the CD player and turned it on, too, adjusting the volume.

It wasn’t music that came on. Miller listened closely, trying to identify the sounds that were playing over the high-quality speakers.

Birds.

They were birdcalls. Sweetly melodic chirping and tweeting.

Mariah sat next to him on the bed, leaning forward to kiss him. “Close your eyes,” she said again.