She shook her head, stubborn even at a moment like this. “Not without you.”
His gaze stayed on her face. “Please,” he said quietly, touching her intimately, tormenting her until control was out of question.
It was the quiet plea that did it. Spasms rocked through her, delicious, unexpected sensations that should have satisfied, but made her crave more.
His look was smug, too smug. It drove her to drastic measures.
“You don’t get to control everything,” she said, fighting a grin as she executed a move she’d learned in a self-defense class that had Richard under her, shock in his eyes. The move wasn’t quite as smooth as it had been in class, but it got the job done.
“Where the devil did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s just important that you know that I can do it.” She tried to fight a satisfied grin of her own and lost. She’d never expected those time-consuming lessons to pay off in quite this way. “Now, then, tell me what you’d like me to do.”
He reached up and captured her face with his hands, then drew her mouth down to his. “This,” he murmured against her lips. “Just this.”
“That’s all?”
“And this.”
He lifted her hips, then settled her again, filling her just the way she’d imagined. He held her steady, back in control, his gaze locked with hers. Melanie felt as if they were at war, but if this went the way she expected, they’d both win.
At last, he moved, thrusting up slowly, surely, then withdrawing until she had to bite her lip to keep from pleading with him.
Then there was no more question of control. They were both lost to sensation, slick and hot, hard and demanding, spiraling closer and closer to that elusive release.
When it came at last, it was shattering, leaving her weak and spent and filled with so much emotion she was scared to look into his eyes for fear he would see the truth—that she loved him beyond measure. She wasn’t sure it was a truth either of them could live with.
Chapter Fourteen
It was nearly midnight when Richard crept out of bed and went downstairs to turn up the heat. Even with Melanie snuggled close, the frigid air in the room was beginning to penetrate all the way through to his bones.
Tonight had been a revelation. He’d never had a woman give to him so completely, so unselfishly, so enthusiastically. There was no question in his mind that Melanie was after his money or his power. She’d had access to both and had turned them down, seemingly without a backward glance. He believed with all his heart that her feelings were personal, and that was what he’d waited a lifetime to find without even realizing how desperately he wanted it.
So why was he still holding back? Why hadn’t he told her what was in his heart, even though she hadn’t said what was in hers? Was he such a coward that he feared rejection? He hated admitting it, but that was exactly it.
He could go into an election a few months from now and face rejection by the voters without batting an eye, but he was terrified of opening his heart to Melanie, only to discover that she intended to stick by the original rules and walk away. He knew too well what that kind of devastating loss felt like. True, his parents hadn’t chosen to die and leave him and his brothers, but the effect had been traumatic just the same. If Melanie chose to go, it would be even worse. He knew that a man never completely recovered from a loss like that. His cowardice now was proof of that.
While he was downstairs, he took the food they’d brought with them from its freezer chest and put it into the refrigerator. Thankfully, it was still cold.
Then he flipped on a single light over the counter, brewed a pot of decaf coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to think. He thought about all the times Destiny had told him that he couldn’t let his parents’ deaths scare him away from love.
“Protecting your heart is self-defeating,” she told him on a dark night when he’d awakened from a childhood nightmare in which he’d relived the loss of his parents. “At the end of the day you’re just as lonely as if you’d loved and lost.”
Richard had nodded his understanding, but the truth was he hadn’t believed her. Surely nothing could be as painful as the void left when someone went away forever.
“You believe I love you, don’t you?” she’d persisted.
He had nodded again, accepting the truth of that. She had been a steady, solid presence in his life from the day she’d breezed back from France and said she intended to stay and take care of him and his brothers. He trusted her—loved her—as he did few people, but there was a part of his heart he held back, protected. Slowly but surely he’d shielded himself from feeling anything for anyone.