Forbidden Stranger Read online

  The dream lover had been faceless. In the inky blackness, she could pretend her own hands were the touch of that stranger from her imagination . . . or her memory, Nina couldn’t be positive which it was. When her hand slid between her legs, she decided she did not care.

  Her center was slick and hot in the dream’s aftermath, and when she found the sweet knot of pleasure there, Nina shuddered. For a moment she paused, half-thinking she ought to somehow be embarrassed by this sudden, aching hunger, this craven need. But why? She could not imagine herself as a woman who’d ever been ashamed of sex or pleasure, and if she’d ever been that sort of woman, that was a set of memories she would be very happy to never recall.

  She concentrated, trying to recreate the feelings in the dream. Her fingers circled slowly, slowly on her clit. Arousal buzzed between her legs and in her belly, at the base of her throat where her pulse throbbed, and in her wrists. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples tingling. She lifted her hips again into her own touch and bit back a moan.

  Her head tossed on the pillow as she used both hands to manipulate and tease her body. The dream had faded rapidly, leaving nothing but the sensation of pleasure. Now she found herself no longer thinking of a faceless lover, but one who most definitely could be identified.

  Another pang of embarrassment tried to shiver through her as she thought of Ewan’s dark hair, the strong lines of his face, his lean body. Those hazel eyes that sometimes looked at her as though she were something far more precious than a clerical assistant. Another flare of burning desire curled through her, and she gave herself up to be consumed by it as thoroughly as flames will eat a piece of paper.

  Her climax swelled and surged, powerful as the tides, and swept her away with it as fiercely as a stormy sea will scourge the shore. Nina bit her tongue to keep herself from crying out too loudly. Her entire body tensed and shook and released until she sprawled, limp and sated on the bed.

  She’d kicked the covers off and as the heat of her arousal faded, a flurry of shivers tickled up and down her body. She couldn’t judge how long it would be until morning, but she couldn’t sleep any longer. Nina swung her feet onto the floor, but didn’t get out of bed right away. Her head throbbed, and although she didn’t feel dizzy, she wasn’t taking any chances about passing out. The last thing she needed was another bump on the head. She waited until she could be sure the floor wasn’t going to slip out from under her feet, and then she pushed upward.

  Standing was better than she’d expected. The dizziness disappeared abruptly. She pulled a robe from the hook behind the door and put on a pair of soft slippers. The door creaked when she opened it, and she listened carefully for any signs that she’d woken anyone else. She heard the wind outside and the patter of soft raindrops. She heard a sigh and a snuffling snore, the shift of a body against the sheets. Ewan’s room was at the far end of the hall, and his door was closed. How could she be hearing all of that?

  His body is beneath hers. She’s straddling him, her knees pressing his sides. Her fingernails dig into his bare skin, and her lover arches into the touch with a moan that she loves. She’s hurting him, but he likes it. She likes it. She loves it.

  She loves him.

  Nina’s fingernails dug into the wood of the door frame. She blinked, hard, and the hallway brightened. There were no extra lights on, but she could see everything as though it were the sort of sunny afternoon that hardly ever happened here on this island. Pain sparked in her fingertip. A splinter. She shook her head and bit back a gasp, still too aware that it was the middle of the night. Aggie and Jerome’s rooms were in the back of the house off the den, so she didn’t have to worry about them. She did not, however, want to wake Ewan. He would worry about why she was up so late.

  Also, she wasn’t sure she could face him right now. Not after that searing bout of self-gratification. The sound of her name on his lips had been in her head when she burst into orgasm; his face her focus. Even if he’d never know it, she would.

  She put her fingertip in her mouth to soothe it. The splinter jutted angrily from a red scratch, and she plucked it out with her fingernails. She heard Ewan mutter something, followed by another, louder cluster of words she could hear but not make out. She froze. Had she woken him?

  She’d been quiet, and with two closed doors and a hallway between them, he should not have been able to hear her. She ought to have been too far away to hear him. Yet, she could. Nina shook her head against a sudden low buzz. She wasn’t dizzy, but the noise reminded her of the way it felt to faint. The sounds of Ewan’s muttering faded.

  Her heart was beating too hard. She tasted copper. She swallowed hard as chills tingled up and down her spine, disturbingly reminiscent of her recent climax, but not nearly as much fun. It was the same feeling of her body being out of her control, though. A rising sense of something impending, looming, imminent, and vaguely menacing but also formless and shapeless.

  She needed to run. She had to get out of this house, into the night and dark, into the rain. She had to work her body, to force it to comply with her instead of betraying her the way her mind kept doing.

  Quickly, Nina pulled on a pair of soft leggings and a fitted, long-sleeved shirt from the bottom drawer. Like the nightgowns and everything else in the room, the clothing “belonged” to her, but she’d never worn this particular outfit before. Unlike the nightgown, this set of clothes felt familiar the moment she slipped into it. She paused in the dark, aware that she’d dressed without turning on a lamp but had been able to find her way without stumbling or fumbling, because despite the lack of light, she’d been able to see.

  Something was missing. Something she should be wearing. She ran her hands over her body, this time not to encourage arousal but in an attempt to figure out what she ought to be adding. It didn’t come to her, but she told herself it didn’t matter as she tied her running shoes and headed downstairs.

  She opened the front door and went out on the porch. The rain had eased, but she could smell the salt from the sea and imagined she felt the mist of it on her face. Nina closed her eyes and drew in breath after breath, each one calming and soothing her until she no longer felt like she needed to run off wildly into the night.

  When you’re mine, you’re mine all the way.

  Nina opened her eyes. She’d stepped off the porch and into the front yard. Soft mist settled lightly on her upturned face. It was far from the first time she’d heard that voice in her mind, but this was the first time she recognized it as her own.

  “I want to remember,” she whispered without opening her eyes. She spread out her arms, her palms facing up, fingers slightly curled. “Please, let me just remember one thing.”

  “You do need something from me,” she says to him. Her lover. “Right? And you hate it.”

  He doesn’t want to hear her. He walks away. His back to her. Leaving. She follows.

  “You wanted this. Us. Together, like last night.”

  Last night, when they made love.

  “You’re the one who said it would be a mistake,” he tells her.

  “Was it? Are you one of those men who only want something until he’s had it? Or are you the sort who doesn’t like to think about anyone else having something you’ve had? Maybe you don’t like that I’m stronger than you. Most men don’t.”

  It had only been pieces of a memory. Dialogue. A phantom face and body, the voice of a man she knew she’d . . . what. Loved? Fucked? They’d been arguing. She remembered feeling both angry and sad.

  She’d had a lover. Maybe they’d no longer been together by the time she came to work for Ewan. Maybe the man in her memory didn’t know or didn’t care what had happened to her. That would explain why she hadn’t heard from him in all the time she’d been here, but although that would make sense, it didn’t feel . . . right.

  He was dead, she thought, but that also did not feel right. Something had died, though. The love they’d had for each other, and it had not passed away, it had been murdered. That f