Mermaid by Judy Griffith Gill Page A

understood. “What about you?” she asked. “You said you were divorced what, nine years ago?”
    “That’s right. Lorraine was the Corville’s only child, and we grew up together. I think we married more to please our parents than to please ourselves. When we both realized how bored we were with each other, we parted with no hard feelings on either side.” Well, few hard feelings, he amended silently. Lorraine was one of those who had thought him heartless and ungrateful for failing to live up to their fathers’—and her own—expectations.
    “You said that seven years was a long time to be widowed. Nine years is even longer to be alone. Have you been?”
    He looked somewhat taken aback at the bluntness of her question, but then he smiled. “Okay, I guess I deserve that. I pried and you answered. Like you, I haven’t been alone the whole time, but there’s never been anyone special. I don’t see myself ever getting married again. I’m forty now. I think maybe I was meant to be a bachelor.”
    She shrugged. “I see.” She didn’t, but what could she say? She refilled their cups.
    “You said ‘once or twice,’” he reminded her. “You only told me about the once. What about the twice, Jillian?” He knew he had no right to probe, but, dammit, he wanted to know.
    Again she shrugged. “It was about two years after Lance died. Maybe it was too soon. The breakup was my doing not his. But it still hurt.”
    He took her hand and curled his fingers around it. “More than just a drifting apart then? More than just a little sadness.”
    “More than that,” she admitted, captured by the intense blue of his gaze.
    “But it’s over.” He wasn’t asking. She hesitated. She could lie and say that it wasn’t, use that as an excuse for not seeing him again. But they had shared that kiss last Saturday, and she had invited him in tonight, and he had to know that it was over, that she wasn’t pining for another man.
    “It’s over,” she said, her gaze all caught up in his, her voice a mere thread of sound.
    All he said was, “Good,” as he drew her into his arms and bent his head to hers.
    She welcomed his kiss even though part of her was telling her to resist this temptation. But the feel of his mouth was like a benison, a balm. And when his hands began to move over her body, she made a soft, encouraging sound and ran her hands into the thickness of his hair.
    It felt so good, their coming together. His mouth on hers was hard and hot, and as he dragged her across his lap, she could feel the hardness of his legs, the strength of the arms that held her, the gentleness of his hand as it moved to her breast. Nothing had ever felt quite as good, quite as right, and she wanted it to go on and on.
    With a soft cry, she opened her mouth to him, welcoming him into her willingly as he deepened the kiss. Her entire body reacted to his tongue’s penetration; her lower belly quivering with spasms, her nipples peaking and straining and yearning for the solidity of his chest against them. As if sensing her need, he turned her and lay down with her. Her hands found their way to the back of his shirt, discovering hard, rippling muscles under the softness of the cloth, and she stroked the taut planes of his waist, her fingers curling in sensuous pleasure, which wanted to give as well as to take.
    He tugged his shirt free of his pants, and she breathed his name. His mouth left hers and moved down her throat and across the top of her chest. He lifted himself half-off her as he quickly undid the buttons on her blouse and pushed it down her arms. She kept her eyes shut, her fingers gently raking the skin of his back. She was dizzy with wanting him, hot and trembling and vitally aware of the hardness of his need as it pressed against her lower body.
    This was happening so fast, too fast, her mind tried to tell her, but she hushed it, wrapping her arms around him as she dragged in a great gulp of Mark-scented air.
    His mouth made