Mark of a Good Man (4 page)

Mark apparently took her dumbfounded behavior as an invitation, and lowed his dark head.

Amber closed her eyes and moaned as the smooth moist flesh of his lips brushed hers, causing a tingling sensation to course down her body. She had no idea if her moan was one of protest or acquiescence. Mark obviously took it as the latter. He tightened his arms about her and bent his knees slightly, aligning their sexes so perfectly together, the shock of his arousal pressing into her feminine softness elicited a hard gasp from Amber’s throat.

Mark’s tongue took the opportunity to slide its way into the sweet cavern of her mouth. Her tongue met his, intending to stop the invasion, but like a palm branch in a tropical breeze, it wavered and bowed to the will and strength of its pursuer. As Mark deepened the kiss, Amber could do nothing but give herself freely to the moment. He was sucking the fight right out of her.

She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him with a hunger that belied the outward calm she’d been displaying since she’d met him. Forgotten were her inhibitions, her vow not to become involved with any man, much less a pilot, her oath not to wear her heart on her sleeve anymore as their tongues danced around each other—capturing, releasing, fluttering, and teasing until the muffled sounds coming from their throats seemed to become one with Marley’s
One Love, One Heart
…

Yes, she wanted to get together with him tonight, and feel alright.

“Amber…”

A delicious shudder skittered through her body as he spoke her name. No one had ever said her name with such passion, such eroticism.

“So delicious,” Mark whispered as his lips left her mouth to trail across her cheek, over her chin, and down to the softness of her neck where he nibbled at her pulsing flesh with an aching urgency. His large hands were restless as they caressed the sensitive skin of her back and shoulders, left bare by her low-cut spaghetti-strap dress.

Amber was on fire. Her skin sizzled wherever Mark touched her, and the dampness gathering in her panties attested to the fact that she desired him. Had desired him from the moment she saw him, and for the first time in years, Amber allowed her mind to accept the fact that she was in a man’s arms, and enjoying it immensely.

When Mark’s wandering lips skirted the valley between her breasts and the tip of his tongue lapped salaciously against the side of one pulsing mound, a wave of electrical shocks zapped down Amber’s body and settled between her legs. She squeezed her thighs together to stop the uncontrollable quivering of her feminine muscles as Mark thrust gently against her, increasing the intensity of her need. She was on the verge of something explosive, monumental.

She’d never experienced such wantonness, such yearning, not even during her most intense moment of intercourse with Josh. Their sex life was never anything to shout about, but they had two darling girls to raise and protect, and for them, she’d been willing to put up with the lack of passion she knew she should have been experiencing when making love with her husband. She’d been willing to go without it until she found out Josh was cheating on her.

Cheating
!

“No!” With one powerful thrust, Amber hurled herself out of Mark’s arms and fled to the other side of the veranda. She pressed her hands to her chest and inhaled deep gulps of air, trying desperately to bring her senses back under control.

“Amber, did I do something to upset you? Was I too forward? I though this… what we just shared was mutual, but if I’ve offended you, please forgive me. It wasn’t my intentions. I just wanted to kiss you, have wanted to kiss you ever since I saw you standing in the gazebo meshed against the golden sunset.”

Amber heard the perplexity in Mark’s voice. He’d asked if he could kiss her. She hadn’t told him he couldn’t, and when he took her silence as a ‘yes’, she hadn’t protested. In fact, she’d melted into him, urged him on, given him permission to relish her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, turning around. “It’s not you.”

He walked over to her and leaned against the railing, watching her with keenly observant eyes. “It’s not you. Such a pathetic overused phrase. If it’s not me, then what is it?”

Amber stared straight ahead into the wide expanse of the black ocean, glittering with shards of silvery moonlight. She felt so small, so vulnerable, and helpless against the magic of the moonlit night, the magnetism of the irresistible man in whose arms she’d almost experienced her first orgasm—well her first while someone else was present.

“I haven’t been with a man since my divorce,” she said, shaking off the embarrassing thought. “It has been two years since I’ve even allowed a man to hold my hand, much less kiss me.”

“Did what we just did scare you then?”

She nodded. “We just met a few hours ago. I don’t know you. I shouldn’t be….”

She allowed her voice to trail off. She’d almost said she shouldn’t be having feelings for him. It couldn’t be. She was not the ‘fall in love at first sight’ kind of woman anymore. She’d fallen in love with Josh at first sight and had married him in four months—before she really got to know him. She was young and foolish then. She was a mother now, and she had to exercise control over her mind and heart, and especially her body.

“You shouldn’t be what?” Mark asked.

She looked up at him. She would love nothing more than to take him by the hand and lead him into one of Colby’s guest rooms and let him remind her of what it felt like to be a woman. The passion in his sexy brown eyes told her that he wanted the same thing, but logic won out again. She supposed she owed him an explanation for leading him on, then shutting him down. “My husband used to cheat on me,” she said.

“From the moment you turned around and looked into my eyes this afternoon. I thought, here is a woman who doesn’t want to like me, even though her body and perhaps her heart is telling her something different.”

“What are you, some kind of mind reader?” Amber tightened her fingers around the wooden railing of the veranda. She detested his ability to read her.

“It’s what I know. It’s what I’ve lived. Pilots cheat because it’s easy to hide their affairs. But you—you’re not married, so your lay-overs must be filled with lots of uncommitted sex with a long list of women, most of whose names you probably don’t even remember.”

“You don’t strike me as the hypercritical type. I think you’re using the hurt your husband caused you to keep all men at bay, pilots or not. Am I right?”

Amber said nothing. Of course he was right. Josie had accused her of the same offense earlier.

“I want to tell you something,” Mark said, placing a finger under her chin and raising her face upward. “But you have to promise not to laugh, or judge.”

She swallowed on a nod.

He brought his mouth close to her ears. “I’m a virgin,” he whispered, as if he were afraid the breeze would pick up his confession and transport it to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Amber clasped her hand over her mouth, but it wasn’t fast enough to catch the chuckle that burst involuntary from her throat.

“You promised not to laugh,” he said in a mockingly defensive tone.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… Well, I didn’t expect that. But you’re kidding me, right?” She looked him up and down, wondering what was wrong with the women he’d encountered over the years. Were they blind? Stupid?

He shook his head. “No, Amber, I’m not kidding you. I’m a thirty-three year old man who’s never been with a woman.”

“Well,” Amber said, her mind still reeling with the information, “after the way you just kissed me, I know two things. You’re definitely not gay, and you’re more than capable of satisfying a woman. So what is it, religion?”

“I just haven’t found a woman who I think is worthy of my body, my love, and all that I have to offer, Amber.” He glanced out into the night briefly, then back at her. “My father once told me that the moment he looked into my mother’s eyes, he knew she was the woman he wanted by his bedside, holding his hand when he took his last breath on this earth.”

“It was love at first sight. I’ve experienced that, but it didn’t last.”

“No, Amber,” Mark said, adamantly. “This is beyond love. People fall in and out of love at the drop of a coconut. What my father spoke about is an innate knowing, a profound recognition of two souls of each other. You see your past, your present, and your future the instant you look into that person’s eyes for the very first time.”

Warning spasms of alarm erupted inside Amber. Mark had just described exactly how she felt when she looked into his eyes for the first time this afternoon. That bursting sensation inside her was her soul shouting with elation at meeting its counterpart. She took a sideward step away from Mark as if physical distance could stop the spinning wheel of fate.

“That’s why I’m still a virgin,” Mark continued. “I want my first time to be with
that
woman—the one who will become my wife and bear my children. I though I’d never find her until—”

Bob Marley was cut off right in the middle of
No Woman No Cry
then the brief silence was interposed by Josie’s “Hey, you two.”

Mark swore under his breath.

Amber sent up a silent
Hallelujah
.

She did a three-eighty and dropped a big smile on her best friend. “Are we leaving anytime soon?” she asked, mentally refusing to acknowledge the fact that Josie was wearing a robe and slippers. Her hair was disheveled as if she’d just rolled out of bed. Well she had, but Amber didn’t want to think of that either.

Josie rubbed her eyes as she stepped out onto the veranda. “Actually, I came out to tell you that I’m spending the night with Colby.”

“So how am I to get back to your house?”

Josie glanced at Mark. “Why don’t you stay? We have enough bedrooms. And you and Mark seemed liked you were deep in conversation when I came out. It’d be a shame to cut your getting-to-know-each-other session short.”

Amber’s heart sank to her stomach. She needed to get away from virgin Mark and any notion he had that he’d found the right woman today. She wasn’t right for him. She wasn’t right for any man. “I’ll just take your car and pick you up tomorrow.”

“Uh-uh, girl. You’re not driving my car. You’ve been drinking. Not safe.”

Amber glanced at Mark. She would rather suffer fifteen minutes alone with him in a car than the rest of the night. Best to nip whatever was happening between them in the bud. “Maybe Mark can drive me back,” she said.

“I’ve been drinking, too. And as you know, these roads are dark and terribly winding.” He spread his big hands in apology. “Seems you’re stuck here for the night, Amber.”

The wistful, yet passionate light in his eyes told Amber he was hoping they could continue the conversation Josie interrupted, and even further back than that, the hot kiss they’d shared. The man was dangerous. “I’ll just call a cab,” she stated in a dismissive tone.

“This isn’t New York, Amber. There are no cabs to call,” Josie said with a salient smile.

“Josie, what’s holding you up?”

Josie threw her hands up in frustration. “You two figure it out. My man’s calling me back to his bed.” She marched back inside.

Amber grabbed a carafe of Killer Bee from the table, and without even one glance in Mark’s direction, she ran into the house and headed in the direction of the guest room she’d used that afternoon. The fact that Mark was occupying the room next to hers didn’t help at all.

* * *

Something was pounding against Amber’s forehead. She turned over on her back and opened her eyes. She quickly shut them again as the piercing sunlight streaming through the open window hit her in the face. She clutched the sides of her head, but the pounding just got louder. Lifting the lid of one eye, she peeked at the clock on the nightstand. It was nine o’clock.
Nine o’clock
? She hadn’t slept until nine o’clock since her Sunday mornings college days. And gosh, the pounding against her head felt dreadfully familiar.

She swung her feet over the side of the bed and her toes banged against something cold, smooth, and glassy. Holding her head so it wouldn’t fall off, she glanced down at the floor. So that’s why her head hurt. She’d downed the whole carafe of Killer Bee to forget about Mark, and help get her through the night.

The room swayed as Amber tried to stand up. She collapsed on her back unto the mattress, a weak moan escaping her lips.

“Amber?”

Amber stiffened. Her eyes darted to the door and the sound of Mark’s voice coming from the other side. Had he been standing outside waiting for the slightest sound from within to alert him of her wakeful state? Maybe if she remained quite, he’d go away. She froze. Was the door locked? She didn’t remember locking it last night. She didn’t remember much of last night after she swiped the carafe from the table.

“Amber, are you awake?”

At that precise moment, Amber’s stomach decided to rid itself of the contents of the previous night. She heard the rumble and felt the load speeding northward. She flew off the bed and raced to the bathroom. She reached the toilet just in the nick of time.

Some time later, with her cheek pressed against the toilet seat, she felt warm fingers brushing her hair from her face, and a cool rag pressed against her forehead. He’d held her hair like a college roommate while she retched uncontrollably. Amber opened her eyes and peeked up into Mark’s. They brimmed with tenderness and concern as he crouched beside her.