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“No. I’m going to Africa to practice.”
He waved his glass at her. “You know what I mean. You will be out of the loop. You’ll have to start all over again.”
“So be it.” A wry smile curved her lips. “It’s done, Coburn. I’ve sold my apartment and my car. I need to find my way.”
He studied her as if she was a creature from a different species he’d come into contact with. And maybe she was. She wasn’t the same Diana who’d walked away from him, that was for sure. She’d done far too much soul-searching to be that.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit drastic to put yourself in the middle of a war-torn country to find yourself? If it’s me you’re trying to avoid, then move to another state. Move to another country, for God’s sake. Not a war zone.”
She straightened her shoulders, her lips flattening into a stubborn line. “This isn’t about you, Coburn. Things aren’t always about you, although you like to think they are. This is about me and my need to help other people with the skills I have.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “You forget you admitted to me earlier part of this is you thumbing your nose at me.”
Damn her loose mouth. She sunk her teeth into her lower lip. “That was a knee-jerk reaction to an old wound. Nothing you say or do affects me anymore.”
“Then, why do you avoid me? You’ve been systematically ensuring our paths don’t cross for the past year.” He lifted a brow. “How do I know this? Because every time I’m unable to make something, I hear afterward you were miraculously able to attend. That’s a lot of trouble to go to to avoid someone whose presence doesn’t affect you.”
She swallowed hard, studying the play of light over his achingly familiar face. She had been avoiding him, of course, but it wasn’t something she was ever going to admit.
“So I ask again,” he demanded roughly, “why show up tonight? What purpose did this serve?”
Standing this close to him, inhaling his spicy aftershave mixed with a fresh citrus lime that had always made her weak in the knees, she suffered the horrifying realization that maybe it was closure she had wanted. One more chance to see him before she signed those papers. One more chance to put this demon to rest before she put her life behind her for a future that was a complete unknown. To convince herself she was doing the right thing by walking away from him. Instead, all she could think about was his horrible, hurtful comment to Rory.
I’m not twenty-five anymore. An amazing body and a smart mouth don’t do it for me any longer.
Was that all she’d ever been to him?
She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “You didn’t mean what you said to Rory.”
His mouth compressed into a straight line. “Oh, but I did, Diana. I may still want you because you have an undeniably sweet body I could spend my life sinking myself into. But as for any emotion beyond that? History, sweetheart. You made sure of that.”
The hollow feeling that consumed her then was frightening in its intensity. She could not sign those papers tomorrow, could not step on that plane knowing that was what he thought of her. That she wasn’t any different from all of his other women. That what they had had meant nothing.
She moved closer until the tips of her breasts brushed against the fine material of his shirt and her hips were cradled in the wide breadth of his. His heat moved through her, reminding her just how good it felt to be held against him.
“What were those women to you?” she asked, tracing a finger over the groove at the side of his mouth that seemed to have grown deeper. “A salve for your embittered soul? A way to prove I meant so little to you?”
He captured her hand in his. “I just told you, Di, I’m over you. Don’t give yourself so much credit.”
But she could feel his arousal stirring to life against her. Feel the rigidness of his powerful body with every contact point it shared with hers. Sex had never just been about the physical between them—it had transcended that, branded them with a truth they couldn’t deny. And she wanted it. Now. Then she could walk away.
She ran her free hand up the hard muscles of his thigh until she found the essence of his virility. His rough intake of breath sent a surge of satisfaction through her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Maybe I came tonight for this. Maybe we should finish it like we started...”
Hot color stained his cheeks, the cords of his muscular neck standing out in stark definition. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
Her fingers traced the hard ridge of him along the zipper of his pants. His response was instantaneous, his flesh swelling beneath her touch. It set her blood on fire to prove she could still affect him like this.
He arched his hips to press himself into her hand. “This is just sex.”
She closed her fingers more firmly around him. “Whatever you say.”
“Diana.” His fingers captured her jaw, tilting her face up to his. “This means nothing. Know that if I take you now.”
But she saw the emotion raging in his eyes. Knew it from their navy blue color so dark now his pupils blended with their inky depths. He was lying.
She reached for his belt buckle. His big body tensed beneath her fingers and for a long excruciating moment, she thought he would reject her. Then he dropped his hands, his gaze sinking into hers.
“You want one more night, Di? I can do that.”
A wave of adrenaline rolled through her, so strong, so powerful she was incapable of resisting it. It was so wrong but so right to be with him like this, but the right was, oh, so much stronger. Her hands worked his belt out of the buckle and yanked it free. His zipper accommodated her downward movement with a sharp hiss that made her stomach clench. Then there was only his hard, hot flesh to rediscover. He was silk over iron power, thick and unforgiving, and he knew exactly how to use it.
His groan split the night air. “There is a party going on thirty feet away.”
She squeezed her fingers around his burgeoning flesh. “I thought you liked to walk on the wild side...”
“Not with people I pass on the street every day.”
But his protest was halfhearted. His back was to the railing, shielding him from the revelers. His body was tense, expectant beneath her fingers, his flesh responding to her touch, pulsing, growing under her caress until he lay erect against his abdomen.
If he didn’t touch her soon, she was going to scream.
A hand clamped over hers. His face when she looked up at him was full of such heated intent it stopped her heart in her chest. “You know I’m not a taker like that.”
She did. She knew what a thorough, giving, wildly erotic lover he was, and maybe that had been half the problem tonight. She wanted that—soul destroying or otherwise.
She dropped her hands to her sides as he peeled the straps of her dress from her shoulders and cupped her naked flesh. It felt so good to have his hands on her after so long, she let out a low moan and arched into him. He bent and closed his mouth over a taut peak and sucked hard, his sudden assault on her body thrilling. His lips and teeth were insistent, unrelenting, demanding a response from the very core of her. “You like that,” he muttered against her flesh. “You always liked that.”
She moaned something like a response. He worked the nipple between his fingers as he transferred his attention to the other, sucking and pulling at her until the ache in her abdomen was so acute she thought he might bring her to orgasm with this alone. Her hips moved restlessly against him, demanding more. He moved his palm to her buttock, cupped her and held her in place against his arousal. For a long moment, she was suspended in a starry corridor that promised heaven. Then he gave it to her, the rhythmic pull of his mouth on her nipple sending a sweet surge of pleasure through her limbs that pulled a cry from her lips.
This, this was why it had only ever been Coburn.
* * *
Coburn watched his wife come down from her orgasm, her delicate face flushed with pleasure. The fact that he could make her come with just his mouth and the right amount of friction satisfied him on a level he couldn’t even begin to understand. This was when his wife was his. When they were perfect together.
He ran his hands up the inside of her filmy party dress and found her thong. The thin side ripped easily, pulling away from her skin like the unwanted impediment it was. Diana’s eyes rounded.
“That’s right, wife,” he growled. “You have me in a particular kind of mood.”
She didn’t resist as he turned her around so her back was against the railing, her body shielding him from the partygoers. His mouth settled against the shell of her ear. “Spread your legs.”
She resisted for a moment at the authoritative tone behind the command. Then her muscles relaxed beneath his hands as he moved her thighs apart and found what he was looking for. Hot responsive silk that had the ability to make him forget every rational thought he’d ever had.
She went rigid beneath his touch but not to stop him. She threw her head back, exposing her irresistible long, slim neck, and reveled in it. He buried his lips in her floral scent and moved his fingers against her in a slow, languid caress.
“Oh, God.”
His wife had always been responsive, but this time he savored every sigh, every moan, every delicate whimper as he brushed his thumb against the nub at the center of her. Worked it slowly, deliberately until she was moving against his hand, his name a whispered plea that did something to his battered soul.
“You have always been mine. Always.”
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. He knew the truth, knew the power they held over each other. It pushed him forward, goaded him on as he slid a finger inside her in a caress he knew she loved. Her eyes closed; her hips worked against his hand. Her breathing was fractured, hitched in the night air, her body trembling beneath his hands as she stood poised to shatter into another release. But he wasn’t going to give it to her that way.
He withdrew his fingers from her. Her eyes flew open. “There will be no audience,” he said roughly.
He slid his arms under her knees, picked her up and strode through the apartment to his bedroom. It was a big mistake to take her there, he knew. If he did, he would never get her out of his head. It was his bed, his space he’d created when she’d left him hollow and broken. To let her violate it again was surely unwise, but he wasn’t thinking with his head—he was thinking with another body part entirely.
The play of the moonlight through the skylight was all he needed to absorb his wife’s jaw-dropping beauty as he deposited her on the bed. She was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he could no longer let himself want. Not after this.
He stripped off his pants, shirt and tie and slid on a condom. Diana was staring at him as if he was a beast on the prowl, and he liked that. Liked when she was at his mercy. He straddled her, pinning her to the bed with his heavier weight. She looked brazen with her dress half-off and her eyes full of desire. He ran a hand from her throat to the heat between her legs, pushing her dress up to her waist. Her lips parted in an unspoken message. The urge to kiss her, to take possession of her sultry full mouth, was so strong it nearly consumed him. He swallowed it back, clamped his jaw down hard on the need. If he did that, this bedroom would never be his own.
“Coburn?” Diana lifted her hand to curve around his nape. Her dark eyes were confused, questioning. He closed his against the emotion he saw there because now it was too much for him. Now it threatened to singe him beyond repair. He allowed her fingers to bring his head down toward her parted lips, but at the last minute he turned his head and buried his mouth in her throat. She went rigid beneath him. He captured her nipple in his mouth to distract her, his hand moving down her stomach to ready her silken flesh for him. The stiffness left her on a low, reluctant moan.
That was when he took her with a powerful, driving thrust. She accommodated him easily. She had been built to take him. He had to close his eyes to hang on to the moment, to focus on the pleasure drawing the act out would bring both of them, or he would have been lost, she felt that exquisitely good. Like returning to heaven.
That last thought in particular drove him forward, a mixture of anger and need behind his powerful thrusts. He slid his palms under her hips to take it deeper, until she squeezed her eyes shut and he knew it was so good for her it was almost too much. He slowed it down then, gentled his movements despite the emotion raging in his blood. When she relaxed beneath him, he angled her hips with his palms and stroked to that place inside her that gave her the deepest, most satisfying release. Her body clenched around him, reaching for it.
“Please.”
“Look at me.”
She opened her eyes. They were glazed, drunk with the promise of ecstasy. He gripped her hips more firmly with his hands and moved inside her with deliberate, pleasure-inducing strokes designed to give her release. When she came, he saw the whole thing happen in her ebony eyes.
He waited until her breathing slowed, her eyes cleared and she was fully with him before he sought his release. He wanted her to remember every minute, every second of this when she was with someone else, when some other man claimed her beautiful body and he was relegated to a footnote in her life.
He wanted it to be so good he’d ruin her for anyone else. Wanted her to know the agony of wanting something you couldn’t have.
Her eyes fluttered open to stare into his. He wrapped one of her long, elegant legs around his waist and took her with deliberate, deep insistent strokes that dismantled any last bit of composure he saw on her beautiful face. When it became too good, too exquisite to take, he arched his back and let the release consume him. His brain faded to black. Nothing but the pleasure raging through him could touch him.
He lay there, supporting part of his weight on his palms until he recovered himself. Diana’s satiny limbs were wrapped around him, her scent filling his nostrils. Long moments later, when his breath had come back, he registered her stillness beneath him. Levering himself off her, he studied her stricken face. She had expected this to change everything as it always had. She had expected to crack his shell.
He rolled off her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Fury sizzled through his blood as he stood up and stared down at her. “Was that a good enough performance for the memory book? Or should we do it again?”
Her face lost all its color. She sat up and pulled her dress down to cover her. “No,” she said slowly, “that was perfect.”
“Good.” He waved a hand at the shower. “I’m going to clean up. Feel free to join me.”
But she didn’t. He knew she wouldn’t. When he emerged from the shower ten minutes later, she was gone, just as she’d been gone the last time. He took one look at the bed, threw on some clothes and walked out into the dark, quiet night. If he’d thought it would feel good, this victory over her, it didn’t. It felt as if he’d just impaled himself on his own sword.
* * *
Diana wasn’t sure how she got to Beth’s house. Didn’t even know she was crying until she’d pulled her keys out on her friend’s doorstep and was fumbling while trying to get them into the lock, her gaze too blurred to see. Her palm pressed against the door as she jammed the key in harder. The door opened from the inside, sending her tumbling across the jamb.
“Sweetheart.” Beth caught her forearms and steadied her. “What’s wrong?”
The tears turned into a torrent, sliding down her cheeks unchecked. “I am s-so s-stupid.”
Beth pulled the door shut, retrieved her keys and guided her into the cozy little living room. “You saw him, I take it?”
She choked back a sob at that vast understatement of what had just happened. She had just had steamy, intensely uninhibited sex with her soon-to-be ex, who’d tossed her aside afterward as if she meant nothing to him.
Beth’s lips tightened. “I’m getting us some tea, then we talk.”
Diana kicked off her shoes, curled up on the sofa and grabbed the box of tissues sitting on the coffee table. Images from the night flew at her like jagged pieces of a puzzle that didn’t make any sense in her head. She hadn’t consciously gone to that party tonight to have that showdown with Coburn, but it was clear now that unconsciously she had. Her heart hadn’t mended since that night she’d walked out on him. She still wasn’t over him, and worse, she’d been holding out some hope he might still love her.
A sitcom Beth had been watching blared from the TV. She sat watching it with unseeing eyes. Had she been hoping Coburn would confess he felt the same way? That that was the real reason he hadn’t initiated a divorce?
She swallowed hard. What a stupid, blind woman she was. She had set herself up for that tonight. Set herself up for Coburn’s masterful demonstration of just how little he cared. Because after what he’d just done to her? Those flashes of emotion she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes must had been figments of her imagination. Evidence she’d used to justify the need to be in his arms again. Because being without him had been as if a part of her was missing and she couldn’t seem to get it back.
Was that a good enough performance for the memory book? Or should we do it again?
His brutal words ripped at her insides. Bile rose in her throat. She might have been sick if she’d had anything more than a couple of hors d’oeuvres in her stomach. She swallowed the nausea down, pushing it away. How had she let herself do that after a whole year of telling herself she couldn’t be anywhere near him? Where had the measured rationality she was known for in her work been when she needed it most?
Beth came back, handing her a steaming mug of her favorite peppermint tea. Her best friend since med school sat down on the other end of the sofa with her own mug of tea. “Tell me what happened.”
Diana pushed her disheveled hair out of her face and gave her nose one last swipe. “I saw him and I was so ready to be cool and composed, and then I just— I mean—” She let out a long sigh. “I’m still in love with him.”
Her friend grimaced. “And there’s a newsflash.”
She pressed her hands to her temples. “He gave this toast to Annabelle and Tony that ended up being all about us and, God, it was awful. Everyone was staring at us.”
Beth’s eyes rounded. “He did not.”
She nodded. “Then he insisted on going back to his apartment and talking.”
“What is there to talk about? You two are getting divorced tomorrow.”
“He was angry. He accused me of running away from our problems. He said I was a spoiled little rich girl who’d run back to Daddy when the going got tough.” She threw her friend a despairing look. “But honestly, how many more times could we argue about the same things? It was getting toxic.”
“You tried, Di.” Beth’s gaze softened. “I watched you try, I watched you suffer, but you are just two very different people with very different ideas of what you want out of life.”
And that was the crux of it. It was why she’d left. Her husband’s brutal summation of their marriage echoed in her ears, the matter-of-fact, cynical tone he’d uttered it in making her cringe all over again. “In his speech,” she said huskily, “he said that someone forgot to tell him that sometimes love isn’t enough. That you can love someone madly, blindly, but it still isn’t going to work if you can’t accept each other’s flaws and imperfections.”
Beth leaned forward and clasped her hands. “He’s right. Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes the passionate, intense affairs like you and he have had are the hardest to sustain. They just don’t lend themselves to ordinary life.”
A fresh wave of tears pooled at the back of her eyes. A part of her didn’t want to accept that that could be possible with her and Coburn. But the rational, self-preservative side of her said she must.
Beth squeezed her hands tighter. “I was in the room the night you and Coburn met. I remember what it was like watching you two... It was electric. But that kind of passion? It can blind you to reality.”
A reality she had to accept now. Coburn didn’t love her anymore and she had to move on. If it had been closure she’d been looking for as she walked away from everything she knew, tonight he’d given it to her. As brutal as it had been, Coburn had actually done her a favor.
“You’re right,” she said, grabbing another tissue and blowing her nose. Pushing her shoulders back, she gave her best friend a decisive look. “This was the eye-opener I needed to walk into that meeting tomorrow and do what I need to do.”
Maybe when she was thousands of miles away from Coburn she might somehow be able to banish the shame she’d felt tonight when he’d looked at her as if he’d just finished servicing another of his bimbos. Because if she didn’t, she might hate him forever.
