Forgotten Father Page 13
And she wanted, needed this moment so badly.
His mouth ravaging hers, Mitchell slid his hand round, brushing aside her vest to cup her breast through her shirt. The heat in her body spiked to fever-pitch and she arched into his touch, her mouth wide beneath his, her nipples tight and begging for his touch. She felt the tingle of need, the aching in her lower body.
His hands were large and deft, cupping and kneading her through her shirt. She longed to be bare to his touch, to feel his hands against her skin, his mouth on her.
Still perched on the tub’s rolled edge next to him, she brushed her hand down his shirt, wanting him naked to her touch. Needing him naked.
In a rapid movement, he rose to his feet, taking her with him. His mouth still on hers, he loosened the buttons of her shirt, his hands rough and impatient. Standing there kissing him, her shirt opened to the cool air, she moaned when he flicked open her front-clasp bra and took her breasts in his hands.
Kneading and cupping, he tugged gently at her peaked nipples as he nipped at the corner of her mouth. Delanie ached for him. Ached to draw him into her, to feel him buried to the hilt.
He lifted his mouth from hers then and bent to lick one turgid nipple. Clinging to his broad shoulders, she shuddered beneath the desire ripping through her.
Around them, the stark bathroom tiles echoed back the harshness of their breathing, her soft whimpering moans.
Her hands fumbling, she dragged at his pants, awkwardly loosening his belt while he lapped at her breasts and rose to nip at a spot at the base of her neck.
Standing still in the middle of the bathroom, debris from the hole in the wall filling the tub, they clutched at each other, desperately lost in their passion.
Delanie conquered his belt buckle and tugged at his trouser zipper, her fingers grazing through his briefs the hard length of him with a shiver of anticipation. He went still as she freed him.
With a thrill of feminine curiosity, she skated her hand along his erection, blind passion driving her boldness. His whole body jerked at the contact.
In a matter of seconds, he’d found the zipper on her skirt and peeled the garment from her. Her panties followed. Before she knew it, she found herself scooped up and deposited on the broad old pedestal sink, the enameled surface a cold shock against her skin.
But then he was there, pressing between her legs. Hot and hard to her soft dampness, raging and eager for her.
He hesitated a moment, then gripped her hips and thrust forward, entering her slick tightness in one smooth movement. Pleasure scattered over her. Clutching his shoulders for balance, she curled her legs around his waist and gave herself over to the driving hot sensation between her legs.
This was Mitchell in her arms. Mitchell who saw her, really saw her and who forgave her for things she hadn’t yet forgiven herself.
Mitchell heard her gasping moans of pleasure. Nearly blinded by his own passion, he made himself open his eyes to gaze at her. Her shirt and bra hanging open to reveal her cherry-tipped breasts, her head thrown back in complete abandon.
She clung to him, her strong legs locked at his waist, her body hot and wet and welcoming.
Over and over, he thrust, lost to the haze of sensation, the throbbing, overwhelming ecstasy of his body locked with hers.
It was better than before. Better even than the first time they’d made love and that time had been the best of his life. He never wanted to stop, sensing himself closer and closer to the brink. She felt so damn good, so gloriously, completely good in his arms, enclosing him, drawing him into herself over and over.
He felt then the beginnings of her climax, heard the sudden catch of joy in her throat. With his own completion so pressing, so imminent, he struggled to watch her but couldn’t.
Thrusting into her with full long strokes, he pitched forward over the edge, cradling her in his arms.
******
“It’s getting late,” Delanie said, not moving from her snuggled position in the quilt on the chaise lounge in front of the fire.
Never had she felt more contentment, more at peace with the world, than sitting here naked with Mitchell, wrapped together in a musty old quilt in front of an inadequate fire. The old house was silent around them. She knew she should go home, but she didn’t want to leave just yet.
He’d scrounged the wood from the terrace behind the big house. Only a few small pieces, all covered in snow, but he’d found some old newspaper and matches and set it all ablaze in the bedroom’s fireplace.
It was their golden moment together, basking in the newness of this fragile coming together.
“So,” she said, tipping her head back against his bare shoulder to look up into his face. “You must know this old house really well.”
“Yes,” he agreed, slowly stroking her bare arm as they sat cuddled together under the quilt.
“It’s a beautiful place,” she said, glancing over at a ormolu clock on the mantel. “But I can’t see a small boy running through this place with all these beautiful antiques. You must have had to tiptoe a lot as a child.”
His face looked pensive in the firelight. “My grandmother loved old things, but she never made me feel that being here was like living in a museum. If something got broken, she just said ‘Things can be replaced, but people can’t’.”
“She must have been wonderful,” Delanie murmured, turning her head to press a kiss against his throat.
Mitchell’s arm tightened around her, his hand lifting to fleetingly cup her bare breast. “Yes, she was wonderful. After my mother left, I spent most of my holidays here with my grandparents.”
She looked at him curiously, trying to imagine his childhood without a mother. Her own father had been an emotionally distant man, but he’d been there. He’d come home every night and that meant everything to a child.
“Were you close to your father?” she asked after a moment.
Still staring into the fire, Mitchell shrugged. “He was a busy man, but he made sure I got what I needed. The right schools, the right kind of care.”
Delanie wondered if Mitch knew how lonely that sounded. How disconnected. She, at least, had had her mother’s devoted love and she could no more imagine delegating Jenna’s “care” to someone else than she could jump over the moon.
“Did your father marry again?”
Mitchell looked down at her, brushing a strand of hair off her cheek. “No.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged again. “My father grew up in a fortunate situation, financially. Privileged was the word they used then. He’s always been aware of the contamination factor present when one marital partner has a certain amount of worldly goods.”
“Money,” Delanie said, summing up what he seemed to be having difficulty saying. “Your father thought every woman who might want to marry him would be after his money?”
“Something like that.”
“How sad,” she mused. “He lived his life without being able to really love.”
“He didn’t spend his life alone,” Mitchell said, his voice dry. “Companionship was never a problem.”
She looked at him, wondering if he really thought having a woman to decorate his arm and give him sex was enough. “But didn’t he ever fall in love? Ever find a woman who he knew would stick with him through thick and thin?”
Mitchell glanced down, his gaze suddenly shuttered. “That’s a tall order for any man, to find a woman like that.”
She shook her head. “Not really. Relationships are complicated, but if your father was convinced that they all just wanted his money, how would he know it if a woman really loved him? Maybe he created a self-fulfilling prophecy with his distrust.”
“To be absolutely fair,” Mitchell said slowly, “my mother’s behavior gave him reason to believe she’d married him for his money. That she valued the fortune over the man.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes,” he said, his tone just as easy as if they were discussing the weath
er. “My mother sold me to him when they divorced. For one million dollars, she signed over her parental rights and disappeared from my life.”
“My God,” Delanie said, straightening to look up at him in concern. “How awful. Are you sure that’s what really happened? Divorce can be messy and confusing. Kids can get their facts mixed up.”
“My facts are very accurate,” he told her with a faint smile. “I’ve read the divorce papers.”
“And they said that? That she was selling you?”
“Of course not,” he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “But the inference was clear. She was to receive the money, above and beyond her settlement amount, and my father received full parental rights.”
“She actually signed her parental rights away? You never saw her again?”
“I saw her several times,” he admitted. “When I was fifteen or sixteen, we sailed through the Aegean sea on her yacht. I was curious about her.”
“That’s only natural.”
The quirk of his lips held no humor. “Yes. I needed confirmation of the things my father had told me. He knew that and let me go.”
“And was she really a money-grubbing, heartless witch?”
“Not really heartless,” he said, looking at her in surprise. “She was very pleasant. She introduced me to her current lover and his children. She asked how my life was going. It was a pleasant holiday, but it didn’t change my view of things.”
“How painful that must have been for you,” Delanie said, leaning into his body to offer comfort.
Mitchell was silent.
“How casual and indifferent!” She pressed her head against his chest. “You must have walked away feeling completely unimportant to her.”
“I did,” he admitted, the words abrupt, as if he were realizing the truth of his feelings for the first time.
“But surely you and your father must have known that not all women are like that,” Delanie said insistently. “Most would pay a million dollars to keep their child, rather than the other way around.”
Mitchell glanced down at her, a frown between his brows. “Maybe so, but most women don’t have husbands with the kind of resources like the men in our family. Money does…cloud things.”
“It doesn’t have to,” she said absolutely, her fingers absently sifting through the sprinkling of dark hair on his chest. “But I can see how something like that could make it hard to know who to trust.”
“Can you?” he said, still in that musing tone.
“Of course. Particularly if you saw your dad struggling with the divorce.”
She glanced up at him and saw him staring into the dwindling fire.
No wonder he’d met her with such hostility that day at the attorney’s office. She must have seemed like another scheming woman, out for what she could get. A woman like his mother.
Did Mitchell suspect every woman who was attracted to him of just wanting his money? Didn’t he know how special he was? What a loving, desirable man he was apart from his bank account?
Yes, he could be annoyingly retentive about some things and he had a problem opening up to people. But there was something strong and reliable about Mitchell. Something threatening to her equilibrium while, at the same time, making her feel tremendously safe.
It hit her then as she looked up at him. She’d fallen in love with Mitchell Riese. Throughout the skirmishes and the conflict over The Cedars, she’d come to see the man behind the toughness. Hadn’t he held her just now and decried her hyper-responsibility in a way no one else had ever done. Most people were happy to let her handle the crises, never thinking about her feelings. Most people who knew her just expected her to save the day. But not Mitchell.
She loved him.
Why else would she have had passionate wanton sex with him? Since the birth of her daughter, she’d vowed to enter into any future relationship with her eyes wide open. No more tripping and stumbling into anything. No more forgotten episodes.
No more men who came and went without a trace.
Once was enough.
Despite the fact that she felt compelled to take birth control pills to prevent another surprise pregnancy, there’d been no one in her life since she woke in the hospital, her memory like a piece of aged Swiss cheese.
And here she was—eyes wide open—in love with Mitchell the millionaire. A man who she’d have to convince that he meant more to her than all the money in the world.
She hadn’t a clue how to begin. He was complicated and basic, at the same time, and this magic between them was so new. He’d been hurt before, wounded by life, as she had been, but they had to grab this enchantment between them.
If she could convince him it was real.
All she could think to do at this moment was to reach up and draw him down for her kiss. She’d love him into believing.
******
The next day, Mitchell walked up the path to the cottage with the white picket fence, conscious of a strange sense of well-being.
The sex had been great. Beyond terrific.
Just the thought of her wild, hungry moans as he’d driven into her, her red-gold head thrown back in ecstasy, made him quicken.
He wanted to believe that was all he was in this for, the sex. But when he woke with a smile on his face this morning he’d decided not to examine his own motives too closely. For once, he was going with the feelings, trusting that little-used part of himself.
If she were really a golddigger would she have insisted on paying for the repairs to the Villa?
He’d never known a woman like Delanie before. Maybe this was insanity, but it felt too good to dispute. Maybe their past was murky, yet he couldn’t shake the sense that she wasn’t at all who he’d thought she was originally.
The morning sun cascaded over the little cottage like a downpour of goodwill. It seemed perfect for her house to be covered in sunlight. She was like sunlight with her glimmering hair and her laughing eyes.
Clutching the bakery bag of bagels and the bouquet of spring flowers he’d bought for her, he bounded up the steps.
They’d had no chance to make plans the night before.
Delanie had jumped up and left in a hurry after they’d made love again on the chaise lounge. Saying Connie was waiting on her, she’d thrown on her clothes, kissed him and run out.
He’d woke alone in his bed this morning and wanted her. Not just to make love with, but to talk to, to eat breakfast with. So he’d come here on an impulse and now just the anticipation of seeing her had his blood jumping in his veins.
Mitchell knocked on the front door, whistling softly.
The door opened immediately to reveal not Delanie, but her assistant, Connie, dressed in a thick bathrobe, blinking at him through heavy glasses.
“Good morning,” Mitchell offered, silently cursing himself for the bouquet of flowers. It could only be uncomfortable to be caught in the act of pursuing a romantic encounter by an employee, even if the employee wasn’t technically his own.
But he didn’t try to hide the bouquet, knowing it would only make him look sillier.
“Good morning,” the other woman said, staring at him.
“I…thought Delanie lived here,” he said, hating the gawky, teenager awkwardness flooding him.
“She does,” Connie said, glancing quickly at his floral tribute. “Did you want to see her about something?”
“Yes. Is she up yet?” he asked, brazening the situation out as cheerfully as he could.
“Sure,” Connie said awkwardly, stepping back to let him in. “Come in and make yourself comfortable. Just step over the baby toys.”
Mitchell halted inside the door, looking down at the golden-haired, blue-eyed baby who sat on the floor surrounded by brightly-colored plastic rings.
Squatting down, he smiled at the infant, holding out his hand. “Hi, little one.”
The baby stared at him a moment, her gaze considering. Then, rolling forward onto her hands and knees, she crawled toward him,
a wide smile on her face.
Delanie’s assistant pushed the door closed and locked it. Turning to the baby, she cooed. “Jenna’s having a lovely morning, isn’t she? Are you hungry yet, sweeting? Time for your bottle.”
“Jenna?” he said. “That’s a beautiful name. Hello, Jenna.”
The baby stopped in front of him, reaching out to clasp a small starfish-hand around his finger. Pulling herself up, she wavered at his knee.
“You’re very beautiful,” Mitchell told her before glancing up at Connie. “I didn’t know you had a child.”
Connie looked at him curiously. “I don’t. Jenna is Delanie’s baby.”
“Delanie’s!” Shock rolled through Mitchell as he stared at the tiny bit of humanity in front of him, her blue eyes questioning, a ready smile on her cherubic face.
Delanie had never mentioned a child, he thought stupidly. Surely there was a mistake. Wouldn’t she have told him something this important. Sometime just before or just after they’d made passionate love?
“I didn’t know Delanie had a baby,” he said numbly, his breath frozen in his chest as he stared at the child, blood thundering suddenly in his head.
She had a child? Why hadn’t she said something? Why hadn’t he heard about it? She’d told him she wasn’t married.
“I didn’t realize Delanie was married,” he said, his voice sounding oddly normal to his own ears as he tried to pump Delanie’s assistant for information. “Are she and her husband separated?”
Connie glanced up swiftly, a hint of caution descending over her already unreadable face. “She’s not married.”
“Oh.” He glanced at the child, unable to sort through all the thoughts running through his head. “It’s hard on kids when their parents divorce.”
Mitchell looked at the woman, not sure if he wanted her to agree with him and confirm his inference or not.
She shook her head reluctantly. “Delanie’s not divorced, either.”
Damn. He found himself smiling at the baby while a sick robotic part of his brain grappled with the information, trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out how old the child was.