Bargaining for Baby(22)

       
           



       

She sighed and melted enough that he had to grip her upper arms to save   her from slipping. With patience disintegrating, he carefully backed  her  up.

As she lowered to sit on the side of the bed, he studied her unwittingly   erotic form. With his gaze slipping down the hair shimmering over one   shoulder, he shucked back his shoulders and began to undress. Jacket   first, shirt, and the rest. Then he knelt at her feet and slipped off   her shoes.

Listening to her heavy breathing, high on the scent of her perfume, he   closed his eyes and trailed his lips-moist, famished, lingering   kisses-up her satin smooth shins, and higher … over her thighs, across her   bikini line, around one hip-

He felt a lump. And another, like a welt. Frowning, he pulled back and   jumped at the light switch. Dear God, had something bitten her?

The soft glow faded up at the same time he asked, "Maddy, what's wro-?"

The question stuck in his throat.

The scars were white, many and raised. Straight, jagged. Some were dots,   reminders of deep puncture wounds. As his heart fisted in his throat,   he found her pained face-cheeks red, eyes downcast.

Sick to his stomach, he ground out, "From the attack?"

She dragged the sheet up to cover what she could. Her hair fell in a   pale blanket over her brow as she shook her head then shook it again.

"I know. They're ugly. Please … " She blindly flipped a finger at the switch. "Turn off the light."

But he found her free hand and pressed her palm to his cheek. Now it was   clear. Now he understood. This why she'd seemed so uncertain.

He brushed his lips over her inside wrist.

"Maddy, do you think that could make a difference to how I feel?"

She slowly looked at him, question marks in her searching gaze. He gave   her time to absorb the honesty in his eyes then she let him ease the   sheet down.

He kissed the marks. Each and every one. After a time, when her fisted   hands relaxed and her stiffness eased, he continued up until his mouth   found and captured hers. He maneuvered her back until she lay flat and   as she wound her hands through his hair, he pressed in, kissing her as   desperately as she was now kissing him.

His descending touch found her more ready than he could have hoped. She   was swollen, so wet. He wanted to explore her, enjoy her, with   everything she might crave and he so badly needed to give. He lowered   her panties as his mouth trailed a seductive line down her neck to her   breasts.

His fingertip drew tiny pressure circles round the bead above her folds   while his tongue twirled over her nipples. Her nails alternately  skimmed  or dug half moons into his back. Every so often she made little  noises  that shot flaming arrows to his groin. Soon she was grinding  her hips  into the sheet or curling them up to intensify his touch.

The second she tensed and her hand came over to hold his in place, he   drew back and saw to protection before he joined her again. Searching   her eyes in the shadows, he opened her with his fingers then eased   partly in.

She tightened around his tip. As she squeezed around him, her hands   filed up the plane of his chest, her fingers fanning and winding over   his muscles. Something tinkled. The wedding band on his gold chain. He   stopped, visualized the ring and what it stood for but when she began to   breathe again, that image faded and he continued to move … a little   deeper, a little harder.

Every inch of him was steamy and his heart was a fast-pumping piston by   the time he brought her leg high over the back of his thigh. Her calf   clamped down to hold him firm. Reading the sign, he drove in all the   way.

The fit was glorious, the impulse to give in was mind blowing. The   mighty force to reward physical necessity was an avalanche crashing on   his back. Clenching every muscle, he tucked in his chin until it met his   chest, but it was no good. This was way beyond control.

When she stilled, too, she set off a chain reaction he couldn't prevent.   She gave a breathy pant of air, a delicious, full body shudder. Then   she threw back her head and her hips jutted off the mattress.   Double-gripping the sheet, Maddy cried out and Jack's long-anticipated   landslide pushed through.

The release was so complete it seemed to tear his every fiber apart at   the same time a primal sound squeezed from his chest. Circling his arm   above her head, he swallowed her sigh with a penetrating kiss. Lost in   sensation, soaring on the high, Jack scooped his other arm beneath her   back and dragged her closer still. Deeply physical, gloriously fierce.   This was a passion the likes of which he'd never tasted before. And must   taste again.





Nine




Later, still floating from the effects of their lovemaking, Maddy lay   with the sheet draped over her legs, drawing lazy circles through the   crisp dark hair that dusted Jack's chest. With his arm around her and   fingertips trailing up and down her side, she thought over the amazing   time they'd spent together in this bed. Her anxiety had been   unwarranted. He'd discovered the scars but hadn't been revolted. In   fact, she'd never felt more adored.                       
       
           



       

Her hand wandered higher, into the warm beating hollow of his throat,   and her fingers met with the cool of the chain he wore and the circle of   the ring threaded through it.

A gold ring.

Maddy stilled, then her palm flattened and slid down to rest on the hard   ridges of his abdomen. She'd seen the wedding band before, when he'd   taken off his shirt that first day in the nursery, but with so many   other things crashing through her mind, she'd thought little of it.

Did he ever take the ring off? If he hadn't tonight, when making love   with her had been his intention, she guessed not. Did he wear it around   his neck to keep it close to his heart?

Although he didn't show his feelings often, Jack Prescott was a man   capable of deep emotion. Of deep loyalty. Some people gave their heart   to only one person in their lifetime. Jack had obviously found his soul   mate. Had found her and then lost her three years ago.

Maddy's brow pinched and her stomach knotted.

Where did that leave her in his affections?

But she shook herself. Tonight wasn't about eternity. He'd never   intimated that it was. After knowing each other a week, how could it be?

The ring around his neck was an acknowledgement as well as a sign that   couldn't be mistaken. What they shared was a mountain above wonderful   but their time together here was based on physical attraction. The   electricity that crackled between them was real, was strong. But, where   it counted, that ring said he would always belong to someone else.

She breathed in his woodsy masculine scent and snuggled closer.

Still, she couldn't regret agreeing to this arrangement. He wasn't   wearing that ring to hurt her. The simple truth was that she wouldn't   have missed these past hours for anything.

She'd read about men who made love the way Jack did. Unselfishly.   Finding so much pleasure in giving. He'd lifted her to another sphere of   awareness, of passion, where more than bodies had joined. She'd never   felt closer to another human being. The feeling of absolute rapture   would live with her long after tonight was over. So would his reaction   after his lips had grazed her hip.

He'd been so supportive when he'd discovered her scars. The last man   she'd come close to being intimate with had recoiled in horror. She'd   dated that guy for five months. She thought she'd known him. Had wanted   to trust him.

Did anyone ever truly know someone else?

Heck, when it came down to it, maybe Jack was just a really good actor.

Easing the sheet higher, she murmured against his chest. She had to ask.

"Those scars are pretty scary, huh?"

"The scars aren't scary." His chest hardened more as he craned to brush   his lips over her crown. "What you must have gone through would've   been."

A cold shaft whistled through her center and Maddy shut her eyes. She   didn't like to think about that day. Whenever the memories surfaced she   pushed them down as far as she could. But now she lifted the lid a   little and dared to let them rise.

The images were fuzzy.

What had she been wearing? She'd been riding to the shop, but to buy   what? Milk, perhaps. Bread. She thought harder but didn't shudder, not   like she used to whenever memories had crept up and caught her unawares.   The nightmares had been the worst.