Interrupted Lullaby. Valerie Parv

I won’t bother you again, ever.”

      “You’ll stop investigating the foundation?”

      He shook his head. “Not until I get what I came for, but I guarantee I’ll be a model observer. You won’t even know I’m around.”

      And the sun didn’t have to rise in the morning. As long as Zeke walked the earth she would be aware of him. In the same room, she could no more ignore him than she could fly. “It won’t work,” she denied, her hair haloing around her head as she shook it. “You’d find some way to make your presence felt.”

      “You make me sound like a glory-hunter,” he said, sounding wounded. “But you’re probably right, it is a big ask. However, there’s another solution.”

      “What is it?”

      “We make love here and now, and get it out of our system.”

      His so-called solution was so typically Zeke that she almost choked. “What makes you think that will solve anything?”

      His smile was infuriatingly cocky. “Maybe it won’t, but it’s a lot more fun than standing at the door, arguing all night.”

      Too late, she remembered that Zeke thought falling into bed could solve any argument. Unfortunately, he had been right more often than she cared to remember. But not anymore. “Sorry, Zeke, I’m otherwise committed.”

      His eyes narrowed. “Committed as in another man? The same man who kept you from coming to America with me?”

      “There was no one else then and there isn’t now,” she said tiredly. “Given the complications that go with being in love, I’ve decided I’m better off celibate.”

      She saw no point in letting him know she had been since he’d left. Pregnancy had imposed its own limitations, but in truth no other man had interested her since Zeke. Whatever his failings, he was a tough act to follow.

      Evidently you weren’t, she told herself. He hadn’t waited long before rushing into another relationship. Pain blistered through her. Jealousy. Anger. Other emotions she refused to identify. All of it on a level only Zeke aroused in her. Still did, she recognized in panic. She had to get out of here.

      He read the urge to flee in her startled movements. “What’s so all-fired important you have to rush home to it?”

      “My life.”

      “Your writing and your precious foundation?”

      When she nodded dumbly, he looked skeptical. “Can they keep you warm at night, Tara? Can they enfold you in love and comfort the way my arms can? Like this?”

      Before she had time to martial her defenses, he took her in his arms. She tried to stiffen but it was useless. He knew exactly how to hold her to turn her to putty in his embrace. Almost of their own accord her arms went around him. As soon as her fingers traced the muscular contours of his back she knew she was lost. For eighteen months she had dreamed of being right here, resting her head against the hollow of his shoulder and feeling the steady drumming of his heart reverberating through her.

      Except that it wasn’t steady at all. It beat as rapid a tattoo as hers did, as his lips traced a pattern along her hairline then descended with lightning swiftness to claim her mouth. “Now tell me again how you prefer celibacy,” he insisted.

      The moan she heard escape from her throat was part passion and part despair. Why did he have to come back just when she was getting her life back on track? She didn’t blame him for the baby. The doctor said her contraception had failed during a bout of flu, so it was nobody’s fault. But she did blame Zeke for rushing off to the States without a backward glance after she refused to go with him. She hadn’t been ready to tell him about the baby then, but she would have, given a little more time. Instead, he had slammed the door shut on further communication.

      She had wanted to break the news in a way that made it clear he didn’t owe her anything. Knowing how he resisted family ties because of his own chaotic childhood, she wouldn’t have imposed them on him. Barely recovered from the flu, she hadn’t bargained on feeling so wretchedly ill in the first weeks of pregnancy, unable to deal with her own emotions, far less Zeke’s.

      By the time she was ready, he had gone without leaving a forwarding address. She could have contacted him through the newspaper but it wasn’t a message she had wanted to risk falling into the wrong hands, so she had decided against it. Thinking she would never see Zeke again, it didn’t seem to matter. Now she wasn’t so sure.

      The thought didn’t stop her body from responding of its own accord. After so long, his touch shocked her system into overdrive. Every inch of exposed skin felt alive in a way that terrified her. He was right, celibacy had nothing to compare with the way he made her feel.

      It didn’t help to remind herself that forever wasn’t in his vocabulary. He was here. Nothing mattered except the demands he made on her mouth as his hands roved over her body, exploring, pleasuring, exciting. As he eased her jacket open and slid his hand inside, her heart almost stopped. When she felt him cup her breast, she went weak. She moaned again, shifting closer to him to press his hand against the spot where he would feel her rapid heartbeat.

      He was aroused, too, she felt as their altered positions made it apparent. Seeing how quickly she had made him want her brought her senses close to overload. How could she have forgotten what they were like together?

      She hadn’t forgotten for one single moment, she understood in the instant, eye-of-the-storm moment she had for clear thinking. She had accepted his invitation knowing what would happen. Wanting it. Wanting him.

      His tongue began a sinuous dance with hers, sending spears of sensation lancing through her. She wanted to deny everything he made her feel, but the words stalled inside her, unable to compete with the way her heart pumped in erratic rhythm, hazing her mind and filling her with yearnings. As they kissed, he massaged her nipples, sending her into a spiral of desire that could end in only one way. “Oh, Zeke, it’s been so long,” she heard herself murmur.

      “Too long,” he said in a voice like broken glass. “I want to make love to you.”

      It was enough to break the spell. “No, Zeke.” She placed a hand against his chest, the gesture too ineffectual to push him away but symbolic enough that he understood her meaning. Self-preservation was the only thing urging her to refuse him. He knew every inch of her body as well as she knew it herself. He was bound to notice the changes in her and ask questions.

      Questions she was far from ready to answer.

      She found she ached to say yes more than she had wanted to do anything for a long time. To know the mind-shattering pleasure of his possession and to surrender utterly to his will, even as she commanded him, was a heaven she had dreamed of all the time they’d been apart.

      Not that she hadn’t tried to put him out of her mind. Awake, she had almost succeeded. About her dreams she could do nothing. Instead of dulling her need for him, the long months of abstinence had sharpened her desire until it registered as an exquisite pleasure-pain sensation that ached to be satisfied.

      But not tonight.

      Not ever, if she had any sense. Her breath escaped in a sigh of frustration. When had she shown any sense around Zeke? This time she had little choice, she thought as she closed her jacket with shaking fingers and took an unsteady step away from him. It was only a few inches, but it felt like a vast gulf of emptiness opening between them.

      “Am I going too fast for you?” he asked, sounding as strained as she felt.

      If you could count the months of abstinence as fast, she thought ruefully. “No, it’s just…I don’t know how I feel about us anymore.”

      His expression turned cold. “As I recall, you never did.”

      The accusation in his tone shocked her out of her remaining torpor. “I wasn’t the one who went away and found someone else.”

      Light broke across his strong features.