For Their Baby

Her father had a French phrase for someone like this, too. Âme perdue. A lost soul.

She hadn’t ever been able to master French, though she’d tried ever since her father’s death, hoping it would bring his memory closer. She wished her accent weren’t so awful. She might say that to David Gerard now.

Deux âmes perdues. Two lost souls.

Did it have to be more complicated than that? Just this once, couldn’t something be simple and sweet? He wanted her, and she wanted him, too. She wanted to make love to him. Right now. Tonight.

He was leaving tomorrow, she remembered suddenly.

A man who was leaving tomorrow was perfect. A night in his bed wouldn’t complicate anything, really. She would break this cycle of loneliness by sleeping with this lovely man, and maybe she’d wake up tomorrow lighter, easier in her own skin.

She felt the anger and bewilderment lift from her, like the sky lifting as the sun came up. Maybe her subconscious mind had guided her feet tonight, as she ran away from the bar. Maybe destiny had directed her here. Maybe it was fate.

The word startled her. Ordinarily, she didn’t believe in fate. Her mother did, and used that convenient imaginary entity to rationalize all kinds of self-destructive behavior. But, even though Kitty was a committed cynic, she couldn’t ignore this powerful feeling.

Look at the two of them, sitting on the sofa with sparks of lust going off like invisible fireworks. Two lonely people, two sets of painful memories that had reached an unbearable climax today. Each facing a long, miserable night of trying to forget.

She touched his upturned palm with her fingertips. His eyes darkened slightly, and a flash of electricity shimmered under her fingers, but otherwise he didn’t react.

“I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I didn’t mean to whine on about my problems. I must sound like an idiot.”

“No, you don’t.” She held his gaze and kept her fingers against his palm. “You sound like someone who doesn’t want to be alone tonight.”

He started to say something, then stopped. He closed his fingers around hers and shook his head. “No, don’t. This isn’t right. I didn’t… I promise you, I wasn’t looking for this. I didn’t follow you onto the beach hoping that—”

“I know you didn’t.” With her other hand, she reached out and touched his cheek. She had to lean over to do it. “Does that mean you don’t want it? Because I do. A lot.”

“I—” He frowned. “Wanting is…I don’t want to take advantage… It would be—”

“It would be lovely,” she said.

“Yes.” He closed his eyes, still frowning. “But—”

“Isn’t that enough? It doesn’t have to be complicated. You’re just a man, and I’m just a woman, and we’re hurting. But we can help each other tonight.”

“Listen.” His eyes fell to her name tag. “Kitty. You’re right. It’s a bad time for me, and I came to the Bahamas thinking maybe I could just—” He broke off and ran his free hand through his hair. “But now, with the way you’re feeling tonight, if I take—”

“You’re not taking from me any more than I would be taking from you. I want you, and I think you want me. There’s…something. You feel it, don’t you?” She took his hand and guided it to her breast, where her heart thudded with hunger. “Don’t you?”

She felt the heat of his palm through the cheap polyester of her uniform. He scanned her face with somber eyes. He took a long breath that seemed to catch on something as it entered his lungs.

“Of course I do,” he said. He grazed her cheek with one knuckle, and then, slowly, he bent his head down and whispered against her neck, “Yes. Of course I do.”

His breath was warm and sweet, and went through her like a honeyed summer breeze. She began to shiver as he dragged his mouth up her throat, and goose bumps cascaded down her body, all the way to her toes.

She had wondered whether, in the end, she would change her mind and back away, as she had done so often, but his sudden human warmth was blissful. Easy and, at the same time, thrilling. She groaned in hungry relief, and pressed her body closer, as close as she could get.

Take that, Jim Oliphant. She wasn’t ruined. She was still a woman, and she could still catch fire from a man’s touch. It just had to be the right man. The right touch.

David seemed to understand that she didn’t want him to waste time with a gentle seduction. She didn’t want to change her mind. He lowered his mouth over hers and took her parted lips. His kiss was fierce, and the inside of his mouth was hot and sweet.

She heard herself moan, and for just a flash she wondered…what was he going to think of her? They’d just met, and—

But she didn’t care. Tomorrow he’d disappear back into his real life, and she’d never see him again. He wasn’t David Gerard, and she wasn’t Kitty Hemmings. They were simply bodies, doing what healthy, hungry men and women did.

His hands slid across her back, down to her hips and up again, into her hair, and everything he touched tingled—her scalp, her ears, her spine, her arms.

She felt a sudden wetness under her eyes, but it wasn’t tears this time. She’d been frozen, and now she was melting. The ice water was seeping out, overflowing. She felt it around her heart, too, and between her legs.

She reached between their bodies and touched him, hoping she could urge him to hurry. She was ready. She’d been ready for years.

He was ready, too—she could feel how ready. But though she stroked that exciting, swollen warmth and traced the strong contours with her fingertips until she could hardly breathe, he never lost his focus.

His lips were still doing fiery things to her collarbone, even while his fingers found the metal pull to the zipper that ran down the front of her dress. Her stupid, too-tight, too-short bartender’s costume.

As the fabric peeled open, David bent his head further, kissing each new inch of exposed skin. The moonlight glistened on his dark blond hair, as if he’d been dusted with glitter.

She threaded her fingers through his hair and arched toward him. Oh, she wanted this so much. It might be midnight outside, but as he slipped the dress from her shoulders she felt suddenly full of sunshine. Her nerve endings sizzled, just like the ocean on a bright summer afternoon.

She reached out, tugging at his button, and he smiled. He shed his clothes quickly, without a trace of self-consciousness.

And why should he be self-conscious? He was amazing. She shut her eyes against the overwhelming beauty of him, and the power. He made every other man on the island look like a child.

Gently, he eased her back against the cool leather. They both knew that his bed was too far away, but it didn’t matter. Only the moon watched through the picture window, and the palms shifted in the breeze, throwing shadows across their bodies.

He got up long enough to find a condom, and soon, so soon, the moment had arrived. She tried not to think about it. She tried just to feel, and to let it flow through her.

His body was hard, intimidating in its primitive strength, but he was sensitive and gentle, and besides, in spite of the fear, her body ached for him. Those silver flashes exploded everywhere now, and her core was tugging toward him.

She felt him, so wondrously rigid and velvety at the same time, pressing against that tingling spot between her legs. Her lungs tightened. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. She tried to find enough air to breathe.

He kissed her again, his tongue driving that spiced sweetness into her mouth, and she inhaled sharply. And then she let her knees fall apart to welcome him.

After that, for a very long time, nothing seemed quite linear or logical. She was all body, all sensation, with no brain to interfere. She was all aching and pushing, panting and exploring.

Finally, even the body was unnecessary. He had, with his amazing hands and his clever lips, unwound the spiraled fortress of that outer shell and found the vulnerable truth inside. She was sunshine and starlight and invisible currents that were ready to carry her to places she’d never been.

But at the very end, in that point-of-no-return moment before the currents took her away, like a fool she opened her eyes.

And David Gerard’s strong face was above her, gleaming with the sweat of their lovemaking. And so, as she twisted away into the most shattering climax she’d ever experienced, she was looking into his eyes. And God help her, he wasn’t just a man. He was this man. Âme perdue.

She wasn’t going to be able to forget him now.

DAVID WOKE in the purple hour before dawn, and he sensed immediately that he was alone.

He lifted up just enough to squint toward where her clothes had fallen. Nothing. The carpet was bare. His sweet, mysterious lover—he knew only that the name on her badge had been Kitty—was gone.

He fell back onto the couch, irrationally disappointed. Had he really expected her to stay all night? What, in fact, had he expected from any of this?