She smiled up at him before she took a sip of champagne, never letting her gaze falter. “It’s going very well, don’t you think? We couldn’t have had a better night for it.”
He’d merely nodded as he stared down at her from his height of six-foot five-inches. He looked thin. Beautiful as an angel fallen from heaven, but too thin. She held up the pastry appetizer to his lips. It was a common thing for her to push food on him. He glanced down at her hand. His nostrils flared as he inhaled slowly but he shook his head in refusal.
Funny…he looked hungry.
“Go on, eat it. You’re throwing this party, and I haven’t seen you touch a morsel of all this fantastic food.”
“I can’t eat anyone’s food but yours, Stina.”
She smiled. Saint was the only person she knew who shortened her name to Stina. Given his typical laconism, she’d always prized the sound of the pet name uttered in his deep, husky voice. Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part, but it always sounded like an endearment on Saint’s tongue.
“Right. If that were the case, you’d be capable of surviving on what—three meals a week, tops? Why don’t you just say you’re not hungry?” She chewed and swallowed while he watched her.
“Aren’t you at least going to cut the silent act to tell me I look beautiful tonight?” she asked him brashly, not concerned in the slightest by his refusal to chitchat with her. Saint wasn’t one for small talk. Never had been. How many times had he walked across the grounds and sat on the front porch with her, or with her and Aidan, said a total of a dozen words the entire time, before uncoiling his long frame from an Adirondack chair and sauntering silently back to the big house?
She couldn’t imagine how he thrived in a social gathering such as this. He always managed to get exponentially more money donated to LifeLine’s shelters and group homes than any board member, so he must not be entirely backward. But if he possessed an ounce of social acumen, Christina had yet to see it.
Saint was just…Saint.
He’d shrugged and blessed her with a rare smile. “Do you really need to hear that you’re beautiful? Why state the obvious? Might as well say the sun is bright.”
She paused abruptly in the act of lifting her champagne glass to her lips, her eyes flashing up to meet his. Had he really just said that? Saint never complimented her. At least not with words. With her special ability to read people’s minds, however, Christina had always known he admired her…wanted her.
Not enough to ever do anything about it, she’d thought irritably. Not even after eight years of knowing her. But still, she’d known. She’d seen the expression of longing in his eyes, noticed how even the slightest snarl on his shapely mouth resulted in her boyfriends preferring to stay clear of Whitby altogether. Certainly Aidan’s deadbeat dad, Rick, had avoided Whitby like the plague, but Christina suspected that had just as much to do with Rick being a loser as it did Saint’s intimidating frowns.
Saint was always her silent sentinel…her distant lover.
She’d recently made it her mission to narrow that distance to nothing.
She’d swallowed heavily as she stared into his mesmerizing eyes. She’d thought she’d understood the depth of his longing before, but she’d been wrong. It was as though he’d been blocking her from his desire and he suddenly released the barrier. Arousal flooded her awareness. A pleasurable tingling sensation buzzed just beneath her skin. Heat sunk from her belly to her sex. A mandatory need to touch him, to press her body against his long, hard length overcame her.
She’d stepped forward as if to do precisely that—yes, even in the midst of a party related to her work. His head lowered, as though to meet her in a kiss. For an electric second that stretched impossibly long, she was lost…gone…flying around in the depths of Saint’s eyes.
A harsh moan scraped her throat.
For just a moment she’d existed in a different world—a place of rich, voluptuous pleasure. She could still feel the slight rasp of Saint’s teeth brushing her inner thigh, his firm tongue sliding between the swollen folds of her pussy, the sensation of his big hand opened across her ribs and his fingertips lightly skimming the soft curve of her lower breast. She stared up at the roof of the gazebo, ecstasy nearly blinding her.
“No. Never again.”
She’d blinked at Saint’s roughly spoken words, the trance broken. The lights around her seemed to throb against the velvety black background of the night sky. In the distance, she heard the waves of Lake Michigan striking the beach rhythmically, or was that the sound of the blood surging in her veins? She’d felt hot. She touched her fingertips to her cheek. Her face wasn’t the only thing that had grown warm and damp.
Warm moisture pooled between her thighs.
Had it really happened?
Her gaze locked on Saint’s rigid features. She took a step closer to him, stunned by the magnitude of desire she saw etched on his features…hurt by the fact that he appeared to be struggling like crazy against that desire.
“Saint?” she asked in a hushed tone.
Her boss, Al Anderson, had stepped up to her and asked her a question about the renovations at Altgeld House, and Saint was gone.
That hadn’t been just her fantasy that she’d seen graphically as she stared into Saint’s amazing eyes, Christina thought bitterly as she stood alone on the shadowed Whitby grounds. He’d experienced it as well.
He’d wanted it, too.
So why did he make love to others beneath the gazebo on this sultry, sweet-smelling night that should have been theirs to share, Christina wondered, still shocked by the unexpected blow he’d dealt her.
Resentment swept through her when she gleaned the truth. She’d never considered herself a masochist, so she couldn’t imagine why she took one step, then two, and then was racing through the cloak of darkness.