Sleepless Nights:The Donovans of the Delta 2(43)

“Yes.”

“That was merely to get your attention.”

“You did.”

“A real proposal should be more romantic. And private.”

“Tanner, please. You know how I feel.”

“Hear me out, Amanda.”

His voice was quiet and rich with feeling, but it held the steel edge of command that she couldn’t ignore. She half turned in the saddle so she could see his face. All the love he felt for her was there.

“Loving you again has given me new purpose, Amanda. The public sees me as a man who has everything—good health, fame, wealth. They don’t see the emptiness, the lonesome times when I rattle around in my big old house with nobody but the staff to know or care whether I’m dead or alive.”

She started to protest, but he shushed her with a finger on her lips.

“I know I have a family who loves me—wonderful parents, brothers and sisters and sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews. But they have private lives that don’t include me. What I’m missing is a special someone to call my own, a woman who will share my life, bear my children.”

He cupped her face and gazed at her in silence that echoed all the things he’d said. “You are that woman, Amanda. You’ve always been that woman.”

“Thank you, Tanner. That was beautiful.” She pressed his hands, holding them close against her face so that she could feel the strength and power of him. “I love you. That’s all I can give you right now. You are a special man, a man who deserves the truth. And the truth is, I’m more cautious than you, and more practical. I don’t think life is as simple as getting married and living happily ever after.”

“We could, you know.”

“When you say, it like that, I want to believe you.”

“Believe me.”

She reached out and traced his face with her fingertips. The mesmerizing gleam in his eyes spoke to her, beckoned to her, seduced her. She leaned into him and lightly outlined his lips with her tongue.

“You tempt me so,” she whispered. “But I cannot marry you.”

“Our time will come, Mandy. I promise you that.”

With a quick flick of the reins Tanner sent Napoleon thundering along the river. Sand spewed up behind them, silver plumes of fairy dust in the moonlight.

The power of horse and man flowed through Amanda. On the wild gallop down the river they merged in her mind until Tanner and his stallion became one and the same, a magnificent creation pulsing with the electrifying force of nature. Raw passion burned in the winter night. Amanda felt its heat. Every fiber in her body responded to Tanner, cried out “Yes” to him.

Tanner reined the stallion to a halt. He dismounted and reached up for Amanda, setting her down and pulling her swiftly into his arms. “Mandy?”

“Yes, Tanner. Oh, Lord, yes.”

His lips were on hers, frenzied, wild, greedy. With their hungry mouths on each other she ripped his shirt aside, sending buttons flying across the sand. She circled her arms around him under the shirt, pulling him so close that she thought the pounding of his heartbeat was her own.

With an urgency that comes from passion too long denied, they fell to the sand. Their hands tore open zippers, pushed aside restraining fabric, until they were joined.

Only then did the urgency begin to subside.

“Mandy!” Tanner crushed her in his embrace. “You feel so good. Oh, Lord, I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“So have I. Always I remembered how you felt, like thunder clothed in velvet.”

“I’ve dreamed of you like this a thousand times, but it was never this good.”

Amanda felt the chill sands against her back as she welcomed Tanner home. They began another wild ride, heart to heart, flesh to flesh. The pounding of water against the shoreline was tame compared to the wild, wanton rhythm of the lovers. Vocal in their loving, they murmured into each other’s mouths, cried out private words of encouragement, words that only they had shared.

The chill winds blew across them, but they didn’t notice, for they were wrapped in a cocoon of heat generated by their passion. They loved as only two people starving for each other could love—long and hard, driven by a desperate need to wipe out the past and bridge the empty years.

When they finally lay still in each other’s arms, languid and fulfilled, Tanner’s hands, and his softly crooned words, created a beautiful harmony that was like music.

“I’m glad, Tanner,” she whispered. “I’m glad we loved.”

“It’s a new beginning for us, Amanda.”

“Please don’t make more of this than it is.”

“Shhh. Let’s not listen to reason tonight. Let’s listen only to our hearts.”