This Heart of Mine (Chicago Stars #5)(86)



"This is how I always wanted a summer camp to be."

"Boring and lots of old people?" He bit into a cookie. "You've got strange taste."

She wasn't going to argue with him about this. Instead, she asked the question she'd been postponing all afternoon. "You haven't said anything about your interviews this morning."

He scowled. "They didn't go as well as I wanted. The first guy might have been a great chef once, but now he shows up drunk for interviews. And the woman I interviewed put so many restrictions on when she could work that she'd have been useless."

Molly's spirits soared, only to sink as he went on.

"I've got one more candidate coming in tomorrow afternoon, though, and she was great on the phone. She didn't even mind a Sunday interview. I figure we can train her on Monday and leave here by Wednesday afternoon at the latest."

"Hooray," she said glumly.

"Don't tell me you're going to miss falling out of bed at five-thirty in the morning?"

Amy giggled in the hallway. "Troy, don't!"

The newlyweds were getting ready to check in before they left. Every afternoon right after tea they raced back to their apartment, where Molly was fairly certain they jumped into bed and made very noisy love before they had to return to the B&B for the night.

"Lucky us," Molly muttered. "Now we can get lectured on our sexual inadequacies by both of them."

"Like hell." With no warning Kevin grabbed her, pushed her against the refrigerator, and crushed his mouth to hers.

She knew exactly what he was doing. And while this might be better than her hickey idea, it was a lot more dangerous.

His free hand caught her leg beneath the knee and raised it. She snaked it over his hip and curled her arms around him. His other hand dipped under her top and covered her breast. Just as if he had the right.

It was all for show. She told herself that as she parted her lips and let his tongue slip into her mouth. He felt as if he somehow belonged here, inside this one small part of her, and she wanted to kiss him forever.

The kitchen door thumped, reminding her they had witnesses. Which, of course, was the whole point. Kevin drew back a few inches, not even far enough for her lips to cool. His eyes never left her mouth, and he kept his hand on her breast.

"Go away."

A gasp from Amy. The thud of the door. The sound of quickly retreating footsteps.

"I—I guess we showed them," Molly breathed against his mouth.

"I guess," he replied. And then he started kissing her all over again.

"Molly, I—Oh! Excuse me…"

Another quick thud of the door. More retreating footsteps, this time Lilly's.

Kevin muttered a dark curse. "We're getting out of here."

His voice held the same note of determination she'd heard in television interviews when he promised to dominate Green Bay. He released Molly's leg. His hand slipped more reluctantly from her breast.

She'd gotten herself right back where she wasn't supposed to be. "I really don't think—"

"No more thinking, Molly. I'm your husband, damn it, and it's time you start acting like a wife."

"Like a—What do you—"

But Kevin was fundamentally a man of action, and he'd done enough talking. Shackling her wrist, he hauled her to the back door.

She couldn't believe it. He was abducting her to have__

Forced Sex!

Oh, jeez… Fight back! Tell him no!

She knew from watching Oprah exactly what a woman was supposed to do in this situation. Scream at the top of her lungs, drop to the ground, and start kicking her assailant as hard as she could. Oprah's authority had explained that not only did this strategy have the advantage of surprise, but it used a woman's lower-body strength.

Scream. Drop. Kick.

"No," she whispered.

Kevin wasn't listening. He was dragging her across the garden and along the path that ran between the cottages and the lake. His long legs ate up the ground just as they did when he was trying to beat the final whistle. She would have stumbled if he didn't have such a tight grip on her.

Scream. Drop. Kick. And keep screaming. She remembered that part. You were supposed to keep screaming the whole time you were kicking.

The idea of dropping to the ground was interesting. Counterintuitive, but it did make sense. Women couldn't compete with men when it came to upper-body strength, but if the male assailant was standing and the woman dropped… A shower of hard, fast kicks to the soft parts… It definitely made sense.

"Uhm, Kevin…"

"Be quiet, or I swear to God I'll take you right here."

Yes, this was definitely Forced Sex.

Thank goodness.

Molly was so tired of thinking, so tired of fighting what she wanted so much. She knew it was a lousy reflection on her personal maturity that she needed to believe that the decision had been taken out of her hands. Even crummier to regard Kevin as a sexual predator. But at twenty-seven she wasn't yet the woman she wanted to be. The woman she intended to be. By the time she was thirty, she was absolutely certain she would have taken charge of her own sexuality. But for right now let him do it.

They were bump, bump, bumping down the path, passing Fairest Lord Jesus, passing Noah's Ark. Lilies of the Field lay right ahead.

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