InformedConsent (6 page)

She shook her head. “He knew we were just friends, is all.
That’s why he sent me to talk to you. To ask if you’d consider leaving what you
have here…” She waved an arm to indicate the camp, and his perhaps ideal
working conditions. “And come back to Victoria and talk with Leo about running
the training end of the business.”

“Train others…” He shook his head in a dazed kind of way.

“So,” she said, her voice on a tightrope of neutrality, not
sure herself what she wanted him to answer, “is it something you might
consider?”

“Consider?” He stared into the fire and his voice seemed to
hold the same non-committal edge, but the light in his eyes gave him away.
“I…might think about it.”

She nodded slowly. “That would be good.”

“But what about you? I mean, you came here on Leo’s errand
with all that old baggage between us. He hadn’t a clue what he was asking you
to do.”

“Yeah, I came up here all business, determined I could just
present the proposition and keep it all on the straight and narrow. If you said
yes, and eventually joined him, I’d be thankful Leo was in good hands. I’d just
have to avoid hanging around there during business hours. Make sure I kept
distance between us.”

He was silent for a long string of moments, as a gust of
wind blew up across the water, rippling up the smooth surface and sending a
soughing through the trees and a chill over Tara’s skin.

“Strictly business, eh?” he said. “But today didn’t turn out
quite as planned.”

“Not quite. You walked out of that cabin and I knew I was
lost. Oh, I still thought I could keep it all cool between us, but you insisted
on bringing up that damned agenda and I just kept on getting weaker and softer.
I thought I could just make light of it, but, well, I guess like Jarmin, I
underestimated how far you’d go by way of response.”

“Hell. You think I didn’t fight it?”

“Didn’t seem like it.” She replayed the quickness of his
actions that had reduced her from savvy businesswoman to vulnerable sexual
supplicant in seconds. “You had me stripped and bound and powerless within five
minutes of my arrival.”

“Maybe ten. Okay, I stopped fighting my better self pretty
quick.”

“Why’d you fight it at all? You’re a guy; you had my
consent.”

“Aw, Tara, girl.” He turned, stretched out on his side and
shifted half onto her to caress her face. “Consent? When you were tied up and
helpless, despite all that big talk? No, I never had your consent until you
agreed to let me to join you in the water. I wanted you so much. I don’t know
how many times over the years I’ve fantasized about just throwing my cards on
the table and coming to find you again.”

This new knowledge heated up her memories, as his light kiss
on her breast heated her everywhere else.

“What stopped you?” she managed to gasp.

“The fact that Leo would never want me anywhere near you. Or
the business. All I could achieve would be to come between you and your dad.”

His mouth traveled away from her breast, down her stomach,
lightly exploring, nipping, kissing, driving her mildly insane.

“And of course,” he murmured from her abdomen, “there was
the charming farewell letter I’d sent. I cringed with self-recrimination every
time I thought of all the things I’d said. Even though I couldn’t remember the
precise words, I sure never forgot the spirit of it.”

“It was pretty, well, graphic,” she agreed. “Filled with
words designed to keep a wall forever between us.”

“Until now, it seems.” As he spoke, he eased back and sat
up, then rummaged among his pile of clothes until he found the letter again.
“Let’s face it. I admit I’d forgotten just how graphically I’d presented my
plans.”

“Eloquent, in fact.”

“Yeah, there’s no accounting for what a man will say when
he’s so deep in lust he can’t think straight. Clearly, I was writing with my
cock.”

“Nice imagery. Did the ink—?”

“Still the little smartass.”

Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he now trailed the
folded edge of paper across her breasts, then down her stomach, her abdomen,
her pubic hair, and caught her clit with it, teasing and scraping.

She jerked in electric reaction. How many orgasms could a
girl stand in one night?

“Seems to me from the condition of this paper you’ve read it
more than a couple or three times. Like maybe a hundred?”

“Maybe,” she conceded.

A thousand times.

The edge of the paper trailing along the rims of her already
raw and well-used labia produced the inevitable effect of getting her libido
going again. That and his closeness and his nakedness and his intent look.

“Uh-huh. And just maybe you get a kick out of reading it
over and over again at night, alone in your bed, fantasizing about me, all the
things I never did to you? That I might do to you.”

Not only at night, not only in bed. And not only alone.

“Read it to me,” she whispered.

“I don’t think so.” His voice held no uncertainty. He ceased
his stimulating activity.

“Just once?” She sat up and put a coaxing hand on his lower
abdomen. “I’d like to hear you express all those tantalizing, mind-bendingly
explicit illicit actions you promised to carry out on my innocent, helpless,
vulnerable body—”

“I already
did
half of them.” He swallowed hard. “And
they weren’t promises, Calloway. They were threats.”

He looked at her, then slowly unfolded the letter in the
shadows out of the firelight.

“My Dear Tara,

I had to go away, for reasons I can’t explain, and it
tears me apart to—”

“That’s not what you—” But his sharp glance silenced her and
she gasped. “Go on…”

“…to leave you, just when you offered me the gift of my
heart’s desire. The chance to have you all to myself, to peel back the layers
of clothes and convention and inhibitions and fear of consequences, and just
stand before you, both of us naked and honest and open, willing to give
ourselves to each other.”

Tara forced a calming breath and let the beautiful,
unfamiliar words flow into her bloodstream, circulating and warming her.

“Go on,” she repeated.

“I swear, Tara, if ever I have the joy of seeing you
again, there’s nothing that will stop me from seeking to take you, expose you
to my long-starved gaze, absorb you and possess you, explore every particle of
you, inside and out…”

Possess her. Explore her. The images shimmered in a whole new
light as he spoke them. The glitter in his eyes in the dark said he knew every
thought going on in her head.

“…worship your body with mine and everything that’s in
me. Become part of you, penetrate your body and your soul…”

He delivered each word with deep, meaningful inflection, as
though savoring each image, each intention. God, she nearly came again just
from his words. And his voice, sincere but rough and determined. To say nothing
of the fire in his eyes.

He took a long slow breath and continued.

“I’ll make love to you so sweet and true and thorough, so
completely, you’ll never again in your life want anyone but me.”

She couldn’t say a word.

He held the letter above the fire and let it drop. It blazed
up in a moment of glory and then turned to ash and was gone. Corbett leaned
over her, his mouth only millimeters from hers, and finished. “
And I’ll
never again want anyone but you.
”

His lips came down on hers, and the heat of his body
engulfed her, all flame and passion and promise, and the six years melted away
like a fading dream, the notes of a forgotten song, as love and longing flowed
through her body like rich red wine across a linen cloth, filling her, coloring
her, changing her.

“We’ll write a new agenda,” he murmured. “For now and
forever. New promises, every day.”

“Forever,” she agreed. “And ever. Amen.”

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