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."