Every Breath You Take Read online

  Mitchell tried to scowl, but a lock of her soft hair was brushing his cheek, her finger was brushing his mouth, and her smile was irresistible. “Anastasia was Stavros’s youngest child and only daughter,” he explained in defeat. “He kept her under his thumb and in his sight by preventing her from having any money of her own to spend.”

  “I thought Greek heiresses ran wild.”

  “So did Stavros,” Mitchell replied drily. “By the time she was twenty-one, she was so desperate to have some freedom and to ‘experience life’ that it was almost pitiful. Marriage was her only ticket out of bondage, but Stavros wouldn’t let men near her—except for a couple of them who suited him but not Anastasia.

  “We’d known each other since we were kids and we understood each other. We also liked each other. So we made a deal. We got married and I allowed her to accumulate all the life experiences she wanted.”

  “What went wrong?” Kate asked, searching his features.

  “Anastasia decided she wanted one life experience that I refused to allow, one that she’d expressly agreed to forgo before we ever got married.”

  “What was it?”

  “Motherhood.”

  “You divorced her because she wanted to have your children?”

  “No, I let her divorce me.”

  Warned by his tone that the topic was now closed, Kate dropped her gaze, wondering whether she ought to try to get more information. She decided she wasn’t likely to succeed right now, and she didn’t want their mood spoiled any more than it had been already.

  She sought for an innocuous question to ask and after a moment decided to ask about the tiny scar on his right arm. “Where did you get this scar?” she asked, touching it with her fingers.

  He looked down to see what she was talking about, and his tone lost its edge. “When I was fifteen, I bumped into a rapier.”

  “That would have been my first guess.”

  His blue eyes warmed with laughter and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Lifting his hand to her face, he brushed his thumb over what he thought was a cleft in her chin and teasingly asked, “Where did you get this cute little dent in your chin?”

  “When I was thirteen, I bumped into a U.S. mailbox.”

  Mitchell laughed at the joke and started to kiss her chin, but she shook her head and said, “I’m serious.”

  He pulled back in amused surprise. “How in the hell did that happen?”

  “Just before my fourteenth birthday, I decided to make an unauthorized trip to Cleveland to visit someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. I persuaded a fifteen-year-old boy I knew to give me a ride, so Travis borrowed his brother’s car in the morning, and we cut school at lunchtime and took off. Three miles away, Travis lost control of the car, ran over a curb, and hit a U.S. mailbox. I banged my chin on the dashboard.”

  “Are fifteen-year-olds allowed to drive?”

  “Not legally. Which was one of the reasons we got busted when the police arrived on the scene.”

  “What were the other reasons?”

  “Possession of a stolen vehicle, truancy, possession of marijuana, and destruction of government property.”

  Mitchell’s guffaw lifted his shoulders clear off the pillows.

  “It was a bum rap,” Kate protested, rearing up on her elbows, and he guffawed again. “Well, it was. Travis simply ‘forgot’ to tell his brother he was taking his car, so his brother reported it stolen. And the marijuana wasn’t ours; it was his.”

  “My choir-girl image of you is undergoing a radical change.”

  “Those were my wild-child days. Anyway, they came to an end that same day.”

  “Why?”

  “I had to be taken to the hospital for stitches in my chin, and naturally, the hospital called my father. He was so scared and so furious that he ranted at me all the way back to the restaurant. When we got there, he sent me upstairs and told me I was grounded for two months. He said he was going to cancel my surprise party for my fourteenth birthday that week, and that there would be more punishment to come when he was calm enough to think straight. Then he walked into his office and slammed the door so hard that it popped back open.”

  “Poor little wild child,” Mitchell teased, his thumb touching the dent in her chin. “Grounded for two whole months.”

  “I didn’t intend to be grounded for two whole hours. I was just as furious with him for grounding me and yelling at me when I’d just had stitches. I hung around upstairs for a few minutes, and then I snuck downstairs, intending to go to a girlfriend’s house for a little while. As I tiptoed around the stairwell toward the back door, I heard a sound coming from his office, a sound that froze me in my tracks.”

  “What was it?”

  “Sobbing,” she said. “I could see his reflection in a wall mirror outside his office. He was sitting at his desk with his hands over his face, crying his heart out. He was such a strong, indomitable man that it never occurred to me that anything could make him cry. It was the most wrenching moment of my life.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went back upstairs and grounded myself for two months. I never cut school again, and I stayed out of trouble—at least big trouble—from that day forward.”

  Mitchell fell silent, assimilating what she’d told him, trying to get a three-dimensional picture of her life, but he’d never known anyone from a background even remotely like hers.

  “You never mention your mother,” he said finally.

  Lifting her brows, Kate said, “You never mention your mother either.”

  “Is she alive?” Mitchell persisted.

  “I refuse to tell you, unless you tell me about yours first.”

  “I think you’ll tell me anyway.”

  “You couldn’t pry it out of me with a crowbar.”

  “I can pry it out of you with two fingers,” he promised with absolute certainty, sliding his hand under the sheet.

  “Don’t you dare—” Kate warned, clamping her legs together. Suddenly it was important that he not be able to keep his secrets while manipulating her so easily into divulging hers.

  His fingers slid through the triangle at her thighs. “Open your legs, Kate.”

  “No.” It hit her then that her logic was totally wrong and that she was silly to resist. She relaxed the tension in her legs, gasping when he slid one finger deep inside of her and rubbed his thumb against the curly hair above it; then she relaxed and let him spread pleasure and warmth through her.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked, slowly increasing the pressure and altering the movements of his fingers.

  “Not yet,” Kate whispered faintly, putting her arms around his shoulders and closing her eyes. He was getting her so close she could barely stop herself from moving with him.

  “Isn’t there something you want to tell me now?”

  She was clinging to him, her heart racing, her nails digging into his back.

  “No,” she gasped, but her body was on the verge of convulsing.

  He stopped. “How about now?”

  She was hanging on a cliff, desperate, and he knew it; he’d intended to deprive her of a climax just when she was on the verge and withhold it from her until she yielded. Somehow she’d mistakenly thought he believed he could get an answer out of her by giving her pleasure, while he intended to do it by depriving her of pleasure.

  Her body was begging her to give in; her heart wouldn’t let her. She let go of his shoulders and dropped back onto the pillows, looking up at him with wounded eyes, silent and disappointed.

  He stared back at her, his blue eyes heavy-lidded, his expression unreadable. Suddenly, he scooped her into his arms, his fingers seeking the same places he’d touched and left, driving her all the way to the climax he’d deprived her of before.

  Kate clung to him while shudders shook through her, and when they passed, she lay back on the pillows and lifted her hand, sliding it across his hard jaw, tenderly smoothing back his thick black hai