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“Do I still love him?” She wanted to laugh at the bitter irony of the question. “I love a memory, don’t I? Trent is gone forever. Dead men don’t rise from the grave, do they, John? They don’t come back to the lovers who weep for them, and they don’t hold the women who dream for them. They’re just gone. Aren’t they?”
She watched as he came closer, as his hand lifted out, his palm cupping her cheek as he wiped away another tear.
“They’re just gone,” he agreed quietly. “Except in memories. He’ll always live, Bailey, because he’ll always be a part of you.”
And what the hell did he mean by that?
“That doesn’t bother you?” She swallowed back the sobs that fought to be free. “It doesn’t bother you that you’re fucking a woman whose heart belongs to another man?”
“Don’t call it that!”
Before she could evade him she was in his arms again, his hold tight, almost punishing.
“Don’t call it fucking?” she cried hoarsely. “What is it, then? You aren’t jealous that another man holds my heart? Don’t you care that I want to call out his name when I’m coming around your cock?” Fury was enveloping her. She wanted to rage, fight. She wanted to smack the anger off his face, because he had no right to be angry. He had no right to stand and discuss himself as though he had truly died.
She was dying inside. She could feel it. The suspicion that he was Trent was eating her alive, and there was no way to stop it. It was destroying her. The knowledge that the man she had loved hadn’t loved her enough to come back to her without a mission backing him was ripping her soul to pieces one small bit at a time.
“I don’t have the right to be angry, do I, Bailey?” But he was. She could see the anger building in his gaze, flushing his dark skin. “I don’t have the right to care.”
It was stated so simply. It wasn’t even an answer. It was an affirmation that he would leave when this was over, nothing more.
“No.” She tried to push away from him. “You have no rights, period.”
“I might not have the right, but I have the fucking woman.” He jerked her back to him, holding her in place as he backed her against the kitchen island counter, keeping her tight against his body despite her struggles. “Deny that, Bailey. Deny the fact that you know exactly who’s holding you in that bed. Don’t you dare lie to me and pretend you’re thinking of another man. You know exactly who’s fucking you.”
Did she? Did she know? If she knew, then why, God help her, why couldn’t she stop suspecting he was another man?
“Is it enough for you?” she asked, her voice ragged. “Of course it is. You’re not here for love, are you, John? The woman doesn’t matter, just the mission.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. He didn’t argue with her, he didn’t deny it. Instead, his fingers gripped her hair, pulled her head back, and his lips covered hers with a desperate, painful passion.
She knew that passion, that desperation. She knew the pain that drove the senses to possess, to mark what belonged to her. It was the same intensity he used to mark her as his.
His tongue drove between her lips to tangle with hers. His free hand moved beneath her sweater, her top, pressing heatedly against the bare flesh of her back as his hips pressed into hers.
It was a kiss that seared the senses. A kiss that drove all thoughts of anything else, anyone else, from her mind. When she was in his arms, she didn’t torture herself with questions, she didn’t silently beg for answers. In his arms nothing mattered but this. The kiss, the feel of him, the driving need that shattered her control and overwhelmed her senses.
Nothing else mattered but this moment in time.
Her hands moved from his arms where her nails had bitten into his flesh. Hesitantly, almost warily they stroked up his arms, to the strong column of his neck.
Her lips opened beneath his as she began to mark him as well. Her tongue fought against his, licked and dueled until they were both moaning with the driving need tearing through them.
She wanted him again, here and now. She wanted to tear the clothes from his body and feel him hard and hot against her. She wanted the thick shaft of his cock pressing inside her, stretching her, burning her with the need that neither of them could deny.
She wanted so much and so much of what she wanted wasn’t hers. It couldn’t be hers. Because if he was Trent, the risk would be too great. And if he wasn’t Trent, then the love, the instinctive need that Bailey knew she couldn’t do without, wouldn’t be there.
She loved Trent. Totally. Completely. Surely a woman couldn’t love like this twice in
one lifetime. It wasn’t possible, was it?
“That’s what fucking matters.” He jerked back from her, his breathing as rough, as heavy as her own. “Figure it out from there, damn you. And be very careful, because saying another man’s name in my fucking bed could get you a hell of a lot more than you want to deal with.”
With that, he stalked from the room, leaving her panting, aching, and almost certain. John Vincent was Trent Daylen.
CHAPTER 8
HE SHOULD HAVE KEPT HIS damned mouth shut. John wiped his hands over his face the next day as he stared out Bailey’s bedroom window. She was roaming the extensive back gardens while snow fell around her.
