ROPPED UP IN bed with Mitchell’s arm around her, Kate watched the night sky giving way to dawn. When they’d returned from swimming, they’d showered and then discovered they were famished. The remnants of their shared feast of strawberry crepes and eggs Benedict were on the coffee table.

Afterward, they went to bed, but sleep was not what Mitchell had in mind. The fierce, demanding urgency of his earlier lovemaking was gone, and now he made love to her with slow, torrid sensuality, driving her steadily toward a final climactic destination, while detouring on previously unexplored erotic routes to get her there, whispering directions and encouragements that were as arousing to Kate as the things he was doing with her. By the time he finally let her finish, Kate was writhing wildly in his arms, frantically whispering “Please,” over and over and over.

When the last spasm had shaken her, he changed the tempo of his strokes and Kate’s limp body suddenly arched up like a tightly strung bow, straining toward him of its own volition while he poured himself into her. Kate heard herself moan, and she clung to him, caught up in a moment that was not only tumultuously sexual but almost fiercely spiritual.

Later on, when she looked back on it all, she might have seen herself as a naïve student who’d just been tutored by a consummate, perhaps less involved master—except that afterward, he’d gathered her against his full length and kept their bodies clamped tightly together with his face buried in the curve of her neck for a very long time, as if he’d been profoundly affected by their lovemaking, too.

Even now, as they watched the sunrise, his hand was curved around her arm, his thumb caressing her skin. They were both drowsy, the periods of silence between them growing longer, but as the sky continued to lighten, the dawn of a new day was banishing Kate’s quiet euphoria and filling her with worry and fresh guilt about Evan.

She’d waited to return his phone call yesterday until she was getting dressed for the casino, because she knew Evan would be playing tennis at his club by then. She’d left him a voice mail message assuring him that she wasn’t at all angry with him, that she was having a lovely time visiting neighboring islands, and that there was absolutely no need for him to worry or feel guilty about anything. Everything she told him was true, but the things she did not tell him made her message a tawdry, unforgivable deception. On the other hand, she couldn’t possibly break up with him by phone, not after the years they’d been together, and especially not after he’d just brought up marriage. There were only four days left of their planned ten-day trip. If his case dragged on another day or two, he’d surely decide there was no point in flying back down to Anguilla.

Sensing her change in mood, Mitchell glanced at the woman who was responsible for the most exhilarating, fulfilling sexual experience of his life. Her red curls were in wild disarray, tumbling over her shoulders and the tops of her breasts, and her porcelain cheeks were still slightly flushed from their lovemaking, but her expression had turned very pensive. Mitchell assumed she was probably thinking about her boyfriend and wondering whether he was going to arrive that day. He’d been thinking about the same thing.

“Troubling thoughts?”

She turned her head on the pillow. “Not really. Not about you, anyway,” she amended. After a moment, she smiled and said, “Have you ever been married?”

Ordinarily, that question in this particular location would have evoked a wary reaction in Mitchell, but they’d been lying there asking each other desultory questions off and on since they finished making love. They were, after all, two people who had intimate carnal knowledge of each other, and they had feelings for each other, but they had no facts. And since they’d already traded information about favorite pastimes, favorite foods, least favorite politicians, and so forth, her question seemed perfectly reasonable to Mitchell. “Yes, have you?”

“No,” she said.

This, unlike all their previous questions and answers, she clearly thought required some amplification, because she lifted her brows and looked at him expectantly.

“I was married to Stavros’s daughter, Anastasia, for three years,” Mitchell added to satisfy her. It didn’t satisfy her. Rolling onto her side facing him, she reached up and pressed her finger across his sealed lips. “If I die of curiosity in this bed,” she warned, “you will have a lot of explaining to do to the hotel management.”

Mitchell tried to scowl, but a lock of her soft hair was brushing his cheek, her finger was brushing his mouth, and her smile was irresistible. “Anastasia was Stavros’s youngest child and only daughter,” he explained in defeat. “He kept her under his thumb and in his sight by preventing her from having any money of her own to spend.”

“I thought Greek heiresses ran wild.”

“So did Stavros,” Mitchell replied drily. “By the time she was twenty-one, she was so desperate to have some freedom and to ‘experience life’ that it was almost pitiful. Marriage was her only ticket out of bondage, but Stavros wouldn’t let men near her—except for a couple of them who suited him but not Anastasia.

“We’d known each other since we were kids and we understood each other. We also liked each other. So we made a deal. We got married and I allowed her to accumulate all the life experiences she wanted.”

“What went wrong?” Kate asked, searching his features.

“Anastasia decided she wanted one life experience that I refused to allow, one that she’d expressly agreed to forgo before we ever got married.”

“What was it?”

“Motherhood.”

“You divorced her because she wanted to have your children?”

“No, I let her divorce me.”

Warned by his tone that the topic was now closed, Kate dropped her gaze, wondering whether she ought to try to get more information. She decided she wasn’t likely to succeed right now, and she didn’t want their mood spoiled any more than it had been already.

She sought for an innocuous question to ask and after a moment decided to ask about the tiny scar on his right arm. “Where did you get this scar?” she asked, touching it with her fingers.

He looked down to see what she was talking about, and his tone lost its edge. “When I was fifteen, I bumped into a rapier.”

“That would have been my first guess.”

His blue eyes warmed with laughter and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Lifting his hand to her face, he brushed his thumb over what he thought was a cleft in her chin and teasingly asked, “Where did you get this cute little dent in your chin?”

“When I was thirteen, I bumped into a U.S. mailbox.”

Mitchell laughed at the joke and started to kiss her chin, but she shook her head and said, “I’m serious.”

He pulled back in amused surprise. “How in the hell did that happen?”

“Just before my fourteenth birthday, I decided to make an unauthorized trip to Cleveland to visit someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. I persuaded a fifteen-year-old boy I knew to give me a ride, so Travis borrowed his brother’s car in the morning, and we cut school at lunchtime and took off. Three miles away, Travis lost control of the car, ran over a curb, and hit a U.S. mailbox. I banged my chin on the dashboard.”

“Are fifteen-year-olds allowed to drive?”

“Not legally. Which was one of the reasons we got busted when the police arrived on the scene.”

“What were the other reasons?”

“Possession of a stolen vehicle, truancy, possession of marijuana, and destruction of government property.”

Mitchell’s guffaw lifted his shoulders clear off the pillows.

“It was a bum rap,” Kate protested, rearing up on her elbows, and he guffawed again. “Well, it was. Travis simply ‘forgot’ to tell his brother he was taking his car, so his brother reported it stolen. And the marijuana wasn’t ours; it was his.”

“My choir-girl image of you is undergoing a radical change.”

“Those were my wild-child days. Anyway, they came to an end that same day.”

“Why?”

“I had to be taken to the hospital for stitches in my chin, and naturally, the hospital called my father. He was so scared and so furious that he ranted at me all the way back to the restaurant. When we got there, he sent me upstairs and told me I was grounded for two months. He said he was going to cancel my surprise party for my fourteenth birthday that week, and that there would be more punishment to come when he was calm enough to think straight. Then he walked into his office and slammed the door so hard that it popped back open.”

“Poor little wild child,” Mitchell teased, his thumb touching the dent in her chin. “Grounded for two whole months.”

“I didn’t intend to be grounded for two whole hours. I was just as furious with him for grounding me and yelling at me when I’d just had stitches. I hung around upstairs for a few minutes, and then I snuck downstairs, intending to go to a girlfriend’s house for a little while. As I tiptoed around the stairwell toward the back door, I heard a sound coming from his office, a sound that froze me in my tracks.”

“What was it?”

“Sobbing,” she said. “I could see his reflection in a wall mirror outside his office. He was sitting at his desk with his hands over his face, crying his heart out. He was such a strong, indomitable man that it never occurred to me that anything could make him cry. It was the most wrenching moment of my life.”

“What did you do?”

“I went back upstairs and grounded myself for two months. I never cut school again, and I stayed out of trouble—at least big trouble—from that day forward.”

Mitchell fell silent, assimilating what she’d told him, trying to get a three-dimensional picture of her life, but he’d never known anyone from a background even remotely like hers.

“You never mention your mother,” he said finally.

Lifting her brows, Kate said, “You never mention your mother either.”

“Is she alive?” Mitchell persisted.

“I refuse to tell you, unless you tell me about yours first.”

“I think you’ll tell me anyway.”

“You couldn’t pry it out of me with a crowbar.”

“I can pry it out of you with two fingers,” he promised with absolute certainty, sliding his hand under the sheet.

“Don’t you dare—” Kate warned, clamping her legs together. Suddenly it was important that he not be able to keep his secrets while manipulating her so easily into divulging hers.

His fingers slid through the triangle at her thighs. “Open your legs, Kate.”

“No.” It hit her then that her logic was totally wrong and that she was silly to resist. She relaxed the tension in her legs, gasping when he slid one finger deep inside of her and rubbed his thumb against the curly hair above it; then she relaxed and let him spread pleasure and warmth through her.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked, slowly increasing the pressure and altering the movements of his fingers.

“Not yet,” Kate whispered faintly, putting her arms around his shoulders and closing her eyes. He was getting her so close she could barely stop herself from moving with him.

“Isn’t there something you want to tell me now?”

She was clinging to him, her heart racing, her nails digging into his back.

“No,” she gasped, but her body was on the verge of convulsing.

He stopped. “How about now?”

She was hanging on a cliff, desperate, and he knew it; he’d intended to deprive her of a climax just when she was on the verge and withhold it from her until she yielded. Somehow she’d mistakenly thought he believed he could get an answer out of her by giving her pleasure. While he intended to do it by depriving her of pleasure.

Her body was begging her to give in; her heart wouldn’t let her. She let go of his shoulders and dropped back onto the pillows, looking up at him with wounded eyes, silent and disappointed.

He stared back at her, his blue eyes heavy-lidded, his expression unreadable. Suddenly, he scooped her into his arms, his fingers seeking the same places he’d touched and left, driving her all the way to the climax he’d deprived her of before.

Kate clung to him while shudders shook through her, and when they passed, she lay back on the pillows and lifted her hand, sliding it across his hard jaw, tenderly smoothing back his thick black hair. “My mother lives in Cleveland,” she whispered, conceding victory to him—but a victory that was won on her terms, not his.

Unfamiliar emotions swelled in Mitchell’s chest, unfolding and unfurling. She was meant for him; they were meant for each other. But later today, or tomorrow, another man was going to come for her; a man who had more right to her than Mitchell did....

In his mind, Mitchell heard the trumpets blast and the heralds calling out his name, summoning him to appear in the Coliseum of Commitments and present himself before the roaring crowd—a gladiator, without sword or shield, armed with only his secrets and fragile hopes. The horns were already blaring, and he was already striding toward his fate, defenseless but fearless.

Kate’s hand was lying against his cheek, her fingers caressing his jaw while her green eyes beckoned him. Smiling, Mitchell turned his face into her hand, kissed her palm, and whispered, “We who are about to die salute you.”