Who Do You Trust? by Melissa James

know me —not someone for your kids or the family you never had.”
    If she’d dumped a bucket of ice water over him she couldn’t have killed his desire more effectively. He gawked at her. “Where the hell did you get that crazy idea from?”
    She shrugged. “It’d be a normal thing for a guy to want who grew up the way you did, Mitch. You’ve never had a family, so you want one now, and I’m convenient. You know me, and you know the kids love me. And it’s normal and healthy for you to want a mother for your kids after all they went through with Kerin.” Her sudden tension, the shuttered look in her eyes, told him her inner self screamed against the lies she uttered. She didn’t want anything to do with his so-called normal desires.
    Whatever it was she was hiding from him, he had a hell of a lot to prove to her yet; his words, his kisses hadn’t penetrated beyond the outer shell of her shattered self-esteem.
    What the hell had Tim done to her?
    “Can you doubt right now how much I want you?” He moved over her, letting his hardness speak for itself. “Does it feel like I’m playing Mike to your Carol?”
    “Prove it,” she muttered fiercely.
    The fiery sexuality in her challenge hit him hard and fast, smashing all his good intentions. He growled in her ear, “Baby, if you don’t control this, I’ll prove it all right. Because I’m about to lose control. Big-time. So either we hold this off until tonight, or I hitch up this pretty dress of yours and give you all the proof you need. And I swear to God I won’t last longer than three seconds, I’m so damn close. And not for any woman—for you. Only you, with your sweet body and mouth made for sin.”
    She leaned on his chest, breathing in high, tattered gasps. Apparently, she believed that much—at least for now. “I wish we could,” she whispered so low he could barely hear her. Then she whirled away, walking with an unsteady gait to the house.
    “Lissa?”
    She looked over her shoulder; her eyes smoldered with need so raw, heat so intense it made him ache all over again, burning alive in the fire erupting beneath the calm surface of her. “Prove it—and not just with pretty words or a few kisses.” She drew a deep, shaking breath. “I want us to be lovers—constant lovers—for six months, maybe a year, before I’ll tell you whether or not I’ll marry you. I can’t—I won’t give you any more than that. Not now. Maybe not ever.”
    He dropped the towel at the same time his jaw hit the ground. “What the hell is this—”
    But she’d already run into the house.
    Slowly, he picked up his towel, rubbing his body by reflex, though it had already been dried by the sun and Lissa’s eager hands. Hands he wanted to bear his rings. A life he wanted to share, a body he did not just want to have fun with.
    What was going on here? Why on earth did his traditional Lissa want to shack up with him? Was she trying to tell him she wanted him but didn’t need him in her life beyond sex?
    Anguish tore and clawed at his gut, hurt his very soul…all he’d ever known or thought, every certainty he had, blown away with the blasting force of a few words. An offer that probably figured as most men’s fantasies come to life left only a bitter taste in his mouth.
    There was no way he could leave it like this, or accept it.
    What Lissa demanded went against everything he’d ever wanted or dreamed of—and ran counter to her own intrinsic nature. Something had hurt her so badly—damn, he wanted to kill Tim for whatever it was he’d done to her—that she was fighting herself, all she’d once believed in, to have him prove his need for her.
    But he had a card to play—one fabulous ace. He could turn the sweet unexpectedness of Lissa’s hot sexuality back on her….
    If she wants me she’s gonna have to come get me—on my terms.
    He only hoped like crazy he could hold off his own desperate need to make love to her until he knew the secrets hiding