Best of Temptation Bundle Read online

  Eva sighed softly. “Anyway, what you said back there, the story you made up about how we met, it’s better than reality. It almost makes me wish….”

  Wish what, Eva? he silently demanded. Say it.

  The silence stretched and he gently tugged on her hand to halt their steps. “Wish that it was the truth?” he murmured.

  She tilted her chin toward the ground. “Yes.”

  She said the word so quietly it was almost lost in the untamed sounds of the bayou. But Adam heard it. And the sensations that expanded within him were coming to surpass what he felt for this woman sexually.

  “Me, too,” he murmured.

  They stood like that for a long moment, their gazes locked, their clasped hands still. Adam swore he could hear the unsteady beat of his own heart.

  Then Eva gave a quiet, nervous laugh and started walking again, pulling him gently along.

  After a few feet, she looked in his direction. “What you said about your family. That was the truth, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  They walked in silence until they reached the path in the trees. Adam reached out and parted the branches for her and Eva ducked inside.

  “Do you regret it?” he asked.

  She turned to wait as he slipped onto the path. “Regret what?”

  “Your divorce.”

  She was quiet for a moment as she led them in the direction of the bayou. “No. I don’t regret the marriage, either. They’re both things I needed at the time.”

  The thick growth of trees lent a lush, almost cool quality to the air. “And the baby? Do you regret—”

  “Never,” she whispered.

  A warm, bottomless admiration opened up in Adam for the remarkable woman next to him. That she should suffer through all she had and yet still have enough love—more love than anyone could touch—for the child growing within her, amazed him.

  “What about now, Eva? What do you need now?”

  She slowed again, then stopped altogether. Adam found himself wishing for at least the silvery light of the moon so he might see her.

  “Now? Now I need much more.”

  More. That one word summed up precisely what Adam was coming to feel with each moment he spent near her. He was growing to want more. More out of the life he had forsaken for his career. More of the feelings he was just coming to know burgeoning inside him. Feelings Eva had shown him. Feelings he wanted to explore, both thrilled and awed that there might be no end to them.

  Eva seemed to radiate a decisive energy as she gestured with her other hand. “I want to bridge this gap, this canyon, that’s always existed between my father and me. I want a satisfying career with stress I can deal with. I want a…” She hesitated slightly, peering up at him. “I want a man who can be my partner, my best friend in every aspect of life, as well as in bed. I, um, want…no, I demand that he stick around for the bad times as well as the good. Not turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble.” She stilled her hand on her lower stomach and stared at him, suddenly quiet. “And I want him to love this baby I’m going to have. I want him to be there for our child. And always be there for me, too.”

  Adam slid his gaze over her face, finding her more beautiful than any woman he’d ever known. “Basically, you want—”

  “Everything,” she murmured.

  Everything.

  Adam was just about to crush her to him and taste deeply of that mouth that offered strength and conviction as well as carnal pleasures, when she tugged on his hand.

  “Come on. I want to show you my moon.”

  Her moon. A smile lit up his heart as she led him the remainder of the way down the path. He wanted to make fiery love to her in the golden light of “her moon.” He wanted her cries of need to mingle with the sounds around them. To have her offer herself to him completely. To take as much as she gave. Then maybe he would feel more a part of this foreign, passionate, unique world she was raised in. They moved past the hulking warehouse, then stood on the dock, where the gentle waters of the river rippled against the shore.

  Eva tried to lead him to the end of the dock, when he tugged on her hand. “No. Let’s board the boat.”

  She stood there for a long moment, tension stiffening her shoulders.

  “You’ve never been on it, have you?”

  “No.” Once again illuminated by the moon, he saw her look toward the bayou that branched off the river a mere few yards away. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, Eva, I can see it does,” he murmured. “Let’s board.”

  Without waiting for her response, he ushered her in the direction of the narrow plank that bridged the gap between the dock and the boat. Anchoring his hands against her oh-so-lush hips, he helped her across it, then jumped down after her onto the deck.

  After unloading the cargo of oysters earlier in the day, Adam had helped Tolly scrub down the white-painted wood. While the faint odor of shellfish remained, so too did the scent of oil soap and a subtle fragrance of magnolias.

  Eva freed herself from his grasp and crossed her arms tightly around her upper body.

  “Have you ever told your father you’d like to go out on the boat with him?”

  Eva slowly turned to face him. “What?”

  He remained silent, watching her.

  “Yes. I did once. When I was about ten. He told me this was men’s work and I was to go play with my dolls or something.”

  “Sounds like Tolly.” Adam chuckled softly. “And it sounds exactly like you.”

  “What sounds like me?”

  “Oh, the fact that you only asked once.”

  She moved toward the stern of the boat and sat down on the padded seat, her knees tight, her hands loosely clasped in front of her. “I think you’re coming to know far more about me than I’m comfortable with.”

  Adam took the seat next to her. “What would make you more comfortable?”

  She didn’t answer right away. He stretched his arm along the side of the boat, running his fingers over and down her bare shoulder. He reveled in the shiver that followed in its wake.

  “It might help if you told me more about yourself,” she said quietly.

  He stilled his hand against her hot skin, feeling her intent gaze on him. It would be all too easy to give her the pat, easy answers he offered everyone else. But he sensed that, at this moment, he’d tell Eva anything she wanted to know. “Yes. Maybe it would.” He tensed slightly. “What do you want me to tell you?”

  She leaned back, snuggling into the crook of his arm. Instinctively, he curled that arm more tightly around her. “Oh, no. What you tell me I want you to offer.”

  That was a new one. Rubbing his chin against the top of her silky, fragrant hair, Adam thought about what he could tell her. Which was just about anything. Except his true reasons for being here.

  She rested her hand against his thigh and the tension he felt shifted.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I could tell you that you drive me crazy when you touch me.”

  She squeezed his leg. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He glanced down at her. “I know.”

  He settled more comfortably against the back of the boat. “Well, I suppose I could start by telling you I looked for my mother once.”

  Eva searched his face. “Did you find her?”

  He nodded. Adam was amazed that he had not only said that, but that he was anxious for her response, her understanding. “I found her six years ago in a small town in Arizona, thirty miles or so southwest of Fort Defiance. She was living in a battered trailer, working at a truck stop.”

  Eva didn’t say anything, but he could tell by her posture she was listening intently.

  “She seemed to recognize me immediately. Surprising since she hadn’t seen me in thirty years. But when I explained who I was, it was obvious I wasn’t who she thought I was. This…this look of pain crossed her face, making her look twenty years older.”

  “Did she tell you why she gave you up?�
�� Eva whispered.

  At the memory, Adam grew rigid. “Yes. She took me inside, and over a cup of coffee she explained that she’d had to. That keeping me hurt too much.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It didn’t make much sense to me at the time either.” He skimmed his thumb down the back of her arm, then slipped his hand under it, flattening his hand against her rib cage. “I guess it does now, though. Some. My father was a drifter of sorts. He left her almost as soon as he hooked up with her. She hadn’t even known she was pregnant when he’d walked out. What she did know was that once I was born, I looked more like him than she could ever accept.” He gazed out at the bayou. “I guess that explained the expression on her face when she first saw me.”

  He took a deep breath of the thick air. “I send her cards, you know, on Christmas and Mother’s Day. One year I sent her a piece I found in a New York antique shop because it reminded me of her. She never writes back, though. But I’m okay with that.”

  There was a long silence. But not an uncomfortable one. Adam concentrated on the slow cadence of Eva’s heartbeat under his hand. She made lazy circles on his leg with her index finger that stirred more than his libido.

  “Did you ever think about looking for your father?”

  “No.”

  Eva rubbed her cheek against his chest. Adam lifted his other hand to hold her there, scraping a thumb against her cheek.

  “Who raised you?” she murmured. “Were you adopted?”

  “I was raised in foster homes.” He watched a mosquito land on his arm and pretended an interest in swatting at it.

  Eva laughed quietly and scolded him for scratching.

  He was raised in foster homes. That’s the part that still bothered Adam. The ceaseless moving from home to home because his mother had held on to her parental rights to him until he was five, and by then he was unattractive adoption material. He’d been in good homes, and he’d been in bad. But what remained with him even now was the memory of countless other foster kids he’d been placed with over the years. The sounds of their quiet sobs in the dark of night when they thought no one was listening. Or perhaps they cried because they feared no one was listening. And often they were right. The majority of the foster parents, no matter how hard they tried, were emotionally unequipped to cater to a child whose heart was years in the breaking.

  So at ten, Adam had reinforced his own lonely heart with imagined steel and convinced himself that family didn’t exist in the form everyone dreamed about. And the cold statistics bore out his beliefs. A fifty percent divorce rate. A staggering number of children being raised by single parents. That’s when he decided to devote his time to something that would permeate every aspect of his life, leaving little for him to give. Little for him to risk.

  Sure, when he was thirteen, social services placed him in a home he stayed in for the remainder of his teenage years. But no matter how exceptional his final foster parents, Dan and Carol Richmond were, and how devoted they were to him and the other eight children they had taken in, it had been too late for Adam. He’d already made his decision about life. His life. And after a couple of semesters at college on scholarship, he found the FBI, and made the bureau and his career his family.

  Eva gave a soft sigh. “I wonder if my son or daughter is going to want to know about Bill. And what I’m going to say when the time comes.”

  “The truth is always good,” he murmured.

  “Normally, yes.” She paused for a long moment. “Tell me, Adam, what would you do if you found out your father left because he didn’t want you?”

  Adam remembered the divorce papers he had looked through earlier. And once again he was overcome by that same piercing anger he’d felt when he realized her ex had signed away his rights to their unborn baby. He didn’t know what to say now. How to explain to Eva what he felt. Or how he might convince her that somehow her baby would be happy with the tremendous love she felt for it and the love her family would feel as well.

  “I can tell you something else about myself that you might find surprising,” he said, dreading that she might lead the conversation back to his upbringing if he didn’t take command of the conversation.

  “What?” she whispered, disappointment that he hadn’t responded to her earlier question obvious in her response.

  “That I envy you.”

  She tried to draw away as he knew she would, but he held her in place. “You envy me?”

  “Uh-huh.” He smoothed her hair away from her face. “I envy you your family. I envy you your roots. I even envy your casual way of taking it all for granted.” He kissed the top of her sweet-smelling head. “I envy the way you and your father butt heads. Too stubborn to see how much you love each other. Too proud to admit that you’re very much alike.”

  He stroked her lips with his thumb, holding her silenced.

  “I envy that in a few months you’re going to add to this family. And no matter how bad things look to you now, in the future you’ll forget about this time. Forget how much you worried. And you’ll only see the wonderful things created in this difficult time.”

  He hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “I envy that you let a man into your heart, and hate that he hurt you because of your generous nature.”

  He held her gaze, the silvery moonlight reflecting off an unnatural shine to her eyes. “I envy you…you, Eva,” he whispered roughly.

  He lay his glasses on the seat, then brought his mouth down on hers. Silently telling her with the caress of his tongue that what he’d said was true. And her equivalent response told him she accepted and even hungrily welcomed it.

  He skimmed her warm skin to rest his palm against her throat. Her low whimper told him she had some things of her own to say. Things he so longed to hear. But the time for words had passed. And now, it was time to let the conflicting emotions building within them take full life.

  Unlike the flurried, hurried fumbling the night before, this kiss went deeper than mere physical need, an unexplainable attraction that could easily rage out of control. Just as Adam’s need for her was growing to include so much more than her body.

  The boat rocked gently and he drank in the subtle taste of salt from the gulf on her lips. He hauled her onto his lap. He guessed one could argue they didn’t know each other well enough to consider taking their relationship to the intimate level he knew they would. Especially since the special woman in his arms was pregnant. And especially when he wasn’t even sure he knew himself that well anymore.

  He cradled her head in his hands, deepening the kiss, reveling in the feeling of her arms encircling him, her fingers entwining in the hair at the back of his neck. All he knew was that he liked the person he was when he was around Eva. Liked how she made him feel. Liked the way she made him take another, fresh look at the world. Making him believe, for the first time, that emotions weren’t fickle, fleeting passions that would burn out as quickly as they fired up, with little regard for the pain they left behind. Because though he might have been wrong on a lot of points since initially accepting this assignment, he was sure of one thing: Eva would be the one woman he would never forget. His time with her would not be a fling to be filed along with the others. She had reached in and touched something elemental within him so effortlessly, so unknowingly, that he couldn’t help feeling she was special.

  Eva slid one leg to the deck of the boat, never breaking their kiss as she straddled him.

  This time, she didn’t need to coax him to touch her breasts. He did so on his own. Dropping his hands to her silky, slick shoulders, he slowly pushed the thin straps of her dress aside, revealing her glistening skin in the moonlight. Her dress fell away and bunched around her waist like a whisper. Her breasts strained against the strapless bra she wore, nearly spilling out of the top. She dropped her head back, letting him take his fill as he slid his hands under the fullness of her breasts, rasping the pads of his thumbs across the nipples that made dark circles unde
r the thin white lace of her bra. With a groan, he dipped his thumbs under the material, urging both peaks out. He caught the rigid tip of the right one between his thumb and index finger, then lowered his mouth to capture the other, thinking nothing had ever tasted sweeter.

  Eva shuddered and scooted closer so the only things separating them were his slacks and her panties. Suckling more deeply, he slid his other hand down the length of her slender waist, past her dress, to her thigh, following the soft flesh inward until the tip of his index finger rested on the elastic of her panties. Eva rotated her hips, the movement nearly forcing his finger inside her underwear, encouraging the contact he sought. Then she tensed. He stopped his ascent, then realized she hadn’t frozen in fear, but in anticipation.

  He slid his finger inside, finding her slick and hot. A low groan escaped her mouth and she grabbed at his shirt, undoing the buttons, tugging the material aside and pressing her palms against his chest. Adam abandoned his laving of her breasts and pulled her flush against him, reveling in the brush of her satiny softness against his hair-covered skin. He brought his mouth down on hers with hot intent, lost in her response.

  Lord, how he was coming to want this woman. Every part of her. He yearned to possess her mind, body and soul. He longed to brand her with his passion, as she was branding him. Most of all, he wanted her to know that she meant so much more to him than just rapid breathing and searching hands. He wanted to tell her in every way he knew how that she was special. That the way she made him feel was special. That what they were experiencing, no matter how fleeting, was special.

  Holding her head against his with one hand, he pushed the crotch of her panties aside with the other. He found her silky nub and drew tiny circles around and around before pressing intently, urgently, against it. He swallowed her soft cry, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth, welcoming the answering thrust of hers. He slipped the tip of his index finger into her wetness even as he kept up the slow circling of his thumb, finding her tight, sleek, needy. He dipped his finger in a little more deeply then withdrew, finding a natural rhythm that would heighten her passion, but not draw her too near the edge. No. He wanted to be with her, feel with her, share with her the wondrous moment when she came apart.