Borrowed Bride

by Patricia Coughlin

  Gaby shrugged. “At first I just wasn’t ready. Then I told myself that waiting for our wedding night would be symbolic of making a clean break with the past and starting fresh. Maybe it was because he had been Joel’s friend and partner and all, but I always felt as if I had to make it clear to Adam and myself and everyone else that this was an entirely different relationship. That I wasn’t simply trying to replace Joel with a reasonable facsimile, that this was something completely and utterly new, with no relation to what I had shared with Joel. I guess I thought that was the way to protect and preserve what Joel and I had together.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “It shouldn’t,” she replied. “Because it’s really dumb. Especially coming from me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking about my work. I’ve spent my whole life trying to meld the old and the new. People bring me old panels of stained glass that have been treated less than kindly by the years, and it’s my job to salvage what can be salvaged and replace what’s missing. It’s not easy,” she went on. “Colors fade, lead seams shrink and grow brittle. But with a lot of skill and patience and luck, the end result can be something stronger and richer and sometimes even more beautiful than either the original panel or an entirely new piece. You see, it’s the blending of the old and the new that makes it unique.”

  She glanced at him self-consciously. “Sorry. I tend to rattle on about my work.”

  “Were we talking about your work?” he asked her quietly, the intensity in his gaze suggesting he knew her remarks had been more cogent and complicated than an impromptu lecture on restoring stained glass.

  “No,” she admitted. “I guess I was really talking about my life.”

  “Well, then, as long as we’re on the subject,” he said, seeming to come closer without moving. It was his eyes, Gaby thought; the look in his eyes made her feel he was closing in on her without him moving an inch. “What are your instincts telling you to do about me, Gabrielle?”

  A half a dozen glib, evasive replies came into her head and died there. She didn’t want to be glib and she didn’t want to lie to him. The question was, did she have the guts to tell him the truth?

  “I...you...” She looked away from his searching gaze and blew out an anxious breath. Coward, chided a small voice. Ready to climb back into your shell so soon, are you? it taunted. Lifting her chin, she turned back to him.

  “I want to give myself to you, Connor. I know that sounds corny,” she continued in a rush. “Old-fashioned, I mean, but that’s how I feel. That’s what I want. You said your instinct was to take me. Well, mine is to give myself to you, free and clear, with no strings and no expectations on either side. I mean it,” she said as his expression turned frankly skeptical.

  “You’re not that kind of woman,” he told her.

  “What kind? The kind who knows what she wants and reaches out for it? The kind who just once wants to put that first and let herself feel...everything there is to feel,” she finished, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.

  Connor rubbed his jaw, frowning as if she’d presented him with a ten-line algebraic equation to solve.

  “Let’s face it,” she said to him, her expression rueful, “anything that happens between you and me is bound to be stormy and fraught with questions and...complications. It comes with our history. And maybe we’ll realize it isn’t worth the bother of trying to sort it out and decide what’s salvageable and figure out how to fit in all the new pieces. Why go to all that trouble just to find out that we’re not...compatible?”

  His mouth curved into a bemused smile. “If by ‘compatible’ you mean what I think you mean, believe me, we will be very compatible. My instincts in that area are never wrong.”

  She lifted her steady gaze to his. “Prove it.”

  Gaby heard his sharp intake of breath and watched his eyes darken and heat.

  “Hell, Gaby,” he muttered, leaning closer, “you know how I am about dares.”

  “Right. I do.”

  He stopped with his face very close to hers, his dark gaze intense and just slightly amazed. “All I wanted was to do right by you.”

  “Here’s your chance, tough guy.”

  He raised his hand, and she felt it close on the back of her neck, drawing her toward him. Her eyes closed. Her mouth lifted to meet his. It was so easy, so simple and uncomplicated, just the way she told him it would be. Just the way she needed for it to be.. She couldn’t bear to think of all the shoulds and ought tos and what ifs right now. She refused to think of them.

  It was easy to let all other thoughts drift away when she was being kissed by Connor. He filled her senses, overwhelming her, leaving no room for anything but the heat and scent and feel of him. His mouth moved over hers, slow and easy, savoring that first heady kiss as if it was fully as pleasurable and important as anything that might follow. His tongue stroked her lips, warm, rough strokes that made her tremble even before he pushed inside her mouth, letting her feel him the way she yearned to.

  She lifted her hands and clasped his shoulders. Her head tilted as she sought to fit her mouth to his even more closely, and her tongue moved against his in an age-old game of thrust and parry.

  Gaby was breathing hard by the time he pulled back to look at her, studying her face, already flushed with pleasure, as if it was something rare and remarkable that he might never see again.

  “Tell me, Gabrielle,” he said in a slow, husky drawl that sent a tingle racing down her spine, “have you ever made love outside in the grass before?” Before she could reply, he pressed his fingers to her lips. “No, on second thought don’t answer that. What happened in the past doesn’t matter. It won’t change the fact that unless you tell me to stop pretty damn quick, you’re about to.”

  An eager smile bloomed on her lips and in her eyes. “Stop stalling, Connor. I have no intention of telling you to stop.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked simply, asking everything with those two words. “You’re sure, Gaby?”

  She nodded. “I’m sure.”

  This time when he kissed her he leaned into her with his body, letting his weight bring her down on her back in the grass, which felt both soft and prickly through the thin cotton of her top. He came to rest half on top of her, their legs entwined, his body a welcome anchor as need, deep, dark and turbulent, rose up inside her, threatening to sweep her away.

  The strength in him was unmistakable. She felt it in the lean hardness of his thigh when it pressed against hers, and in something as innocuous as the movement of his hands on her face, his rough palms framing her, his thumbs rubbing across her lips before his fingers arrowed into her hair to hold her still for another kiss. His strength excited her even further, reminding her that he could be ruthless if he needed to be, that he was a man who went after what he wanted without fear or restraint. He was a fighter, and that triggered something untouched inside of her.

  Last night she had marveled to discover how tender he could be. But today it was his ruthlessness she wanted, she realized, his toughness. The honesty of his desire, of a give-and-take without pretense or reservation, thrilled her, and she arched beneath him with the sudden urgency of her need for him.

  She wanted him to crush her into the soft earth, to sweep her away with the force of his passion. Instead, his touch at that moment was strangely gentle, even hesitant. Her fists clenched restlessly as his lips lightly brushed hers and his fingers trailed across her throat, tracing a delicate pattern at odds with what he was and what she needed. He slid one long, sun-browned finger beneath the narrow shoulder of her tank top, but made no move to lower it.

  He was holding back, she realized. And the cost of his restraint was revealed in the shudder that gripped him when she once again instinctively shifted her weight beneath him.

  With a soft groan he dipped his head and touched his tongue to her breast, just long enough to leave a wet circle on her shirt there. Gaby shivered, her teeth coming down hard on h
er bottom lip as desire clawed at her.

  Connor lifted his head and looked down at her, misreading her response. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked.

  Gaby shook her head. “No.”

  His smile was ruefully decisive. “You are. You ought to be. I’m not sure I know how...”

  His words trailed off uncertainly, but when she looked in his eyes there was no uncertainty there, no ambiguity. There she saw only hunger, bright, hard-edged, urgent—everything she wanted and needed to feel alive.

  “You said you wanted to take me,” she reminded him. “Do it.”

  He hesitated, watching her, a sort of frantic uncertainty still hovering about him, like a man handed a newborn infant for the first time.

  “Do it,” she urged. “Do it, Wolf.”

  Instantly his gaze narrowed in surprise, either at the fervor in her voice or her unconscious use of the nickname she’d previously shunned.

  Conscious or not, the use of the name seemed appropriate now since it was the danger and recklessness in him that had earned him the name Wolf and it was that dangerous, reckless side of him that she wanted to make love to her.

  She wasn’t looking for promises of tomorrow or trying to recreate a lost love from her past. She wanted right now, today, that very moment. She wanted to be reminded that she was a woman, a woman with desires too long denied. She wanted to be pushed to the very edge of what it meant to want and need and feel. She wanted Wolf, with her, over her, inside her.

  Her breath caught as his expression changed, darkening, reflecting the exquisite danger that was the other side of passion. His hand wound slowly, roughly through her hair. His hips pinned her to the grass, and her eyes widened at the sudden feeling of being overwhelmed by his power.

  But it wasn’t fear that made her tremble as his mouth slammed into hers. And the sound that vibrated deep in her throat as she met the driving thrusts of his tongue was one not of surrender, but triumph.

  Chapter 8

  He wasn’t a needy man. Self-reliance and independence and a take-it-or-leave-it philosophy that ran right to the bone—those were the qualities he had been honing to perfection ever since he was six years old, the attributes he prided himself on.

  But he needed something now, Connor realized as he sought to devour Gaby’s soft mouth, and he needed it bad.

  He needed to make this woman, who stood apart from all others in his memory, scream and tremble and melt beneath him. He needed to bury himself in her, to lose himself and find himself and make it to the other side. He had a sense, haunting and vague, that if he did, then maybe, just maybe everything would be all right.

  And he needed to bring her with him every step of the way. He needed the sweet, hot taste of her all over his tongue and the liquid fire of her fingers moving on his skin. He needed to conquer, to overwhelm, to possess.

  He needed to win this, without even knowing what “this” was.

  With desire like a saber at his back, he left her mouth wet and swollen and dragged his teeth along her throat and the curve of her shoulder. Hooking one finger in the neckline of her top, he jerked it down to expose the sweet, secret valley between her breasts. He licked her there and groaned. She tasted of soap and salt and woman, and he couldn’t get enough. He was afraid if this moment went on forever, he would still never get enough.

  Gaby twisted under him as he stretched the neck of her shirt lower still, snagging the upper edge of her bra and dragging it down, too, until her breast was bared to his hungry mouth. He felt her hands in his hair as he captured the hard pink crest between his lips, her fists clenching and holding on.

  Her hips lifted and fell as he sucked and licked, using his teeth and his tongue and the heat of his breath to make her shiver, make her moan, to draw from her the small, halfformed whimpers of pleasure that fed his excitement and fueled the towering need inside him.

  Take her, take her, take her, it roared.

  It was what she wanted him to do. She’d said so.

  Take her. Put an end to it.

  The command pounded inside his head, urgent and compelling. But Connor wasn’t sure he wanted it to end. Only that he wanted it. He wanted it fast and furious and he wanted it to last forever and he wanted it all, all she would give him. All that was hers to be taken.

  He lowered his hands to her hips, grasping her tightly and stretching out on top of her, holding her still as his pelvis slowly rocked against hers. Desire, white-hot and sparking, hissed inside him.

  He buried his face in her shoulder, inhaling her scent, like wildflowers, like yesterday, inhaling, drinking her into his senses until it hurt to breathe.

  He thrust his leg between hers and felt a shudder that began in her and traveled through him, as though they were one, sharing flesh and sensation. It thrilled him and scared him and made him tighten his grip on her. He bent his head and again suckled her breast, harder now, as Gaby groaned and groaned, her head turning from side to side on the pillow of summer grass.

  She tossed her arm across her face, hiding her eyes from him, and drew her knee up. It angled outward just a little, just enough to draw his attention to the soft, pale flesh of her inner thigh. He was instantly riveted. The movement, at once so guileless and so utterly erotic, made his blood run hot and thick.

  He moved to touch her there, discovering the taut muscle beneath the softness, his fingers stroking upward, drawn to that spot where her silky flesh disappeared inside the loose leg of her shorts. The spot that had become for him in that second the most mesmerizing and mysterious in the entire universe.

  His fingers curved into her, greedy, wanting. Needing. Needing this. Needing her. Needing more. He shoved his hand fully inside her shorts, his fingertips butting against the elastic band on her panties, clawing it aside until he uncovered the soft nest of curls between her legs.

  Heaven.

  Gaby froze, her eyes still covered, her breath seeming to catch deep in her throat.

  His own breath came in short, harsh pants as he followed the path of heat and dampness, ruffling through her silky curls, parting her flesh hurriedly, wanting, craving, too deep into her now to slow down, to wait, to do more than feel and let the feeling take him.

  He gasped as his fingers at last uncovered what he sought, the core of her. Hot. Wet. She quivered against his fingers, and he was lost forever.

  She was dying. She had to be, thought Gaby. It wasn’t possible to feel this good and live. Sensations bombarded her from everywhere. Her mouth, her breasts, the ultrasensitive flesh between her legs, all of her was burning up, melting in the frantic inferno of Connor’s touch.

  His hands were on her shorts now, ripping open the snap, tugging on the zipper. He went up on his knees, his eyes hot and bright as he watched her watching him strip off her shorts and her panties and toss them aside. His movements were quick and efficient as he reached for her top and pulled it over her head. He dealt with her bra by curling his fingers around the narrowing where it dipped between her breasts and ripping it from her.

  Then she was naked and he was grinning and reaching for her, murmuring to her, rough, urgent words. Gaby didn’t know what he was saying. Didn’t care, as his hands moved over her body, her breasts and tummy, her hips, sliding between her thighs, parting them to make a place for himself there.

  His clever, dangerous fingers stroked her, making her tremble, turning everything inside her to liquid that pooled right inside the place he was touching her, stroking her.

  She closed her eyes, and lights danced inside her head. Her senses were humming, supercharged. She felt herself being lifted, carried out of herself. Strong. He was so strong.

  “Yeah, like that,” she heard him say. “Just like that, baby.”

  He’d called her baby. Gaby smiled. She always thought she hated being called baby.

  His touch changed suddenly, the pressure and texture all different, still good, just so different and wonderful. Her eyes fluttered open, and she gasped to see him bent over her, her legs
propped on his shoulders, his head buried in between.

  He was ...

  She’d never...

  She had to stop him...his mouth...his tongue...

  She levered upright, her gaze locked onto the top of his head, on the streaks of sunlight dancing on his dark hair. She reached for him as wave after wave of pleasure radiated out from where his mouth was doing such incredible, unspeakable things to her. Magical things. Making her shimmer inside. Making her crazy.

  “Connor. Please...”

  She wasn’t sure if he heard her. She wasn’t even sure she was speaking out loud.

  Connor, oh, Connor.

  She reached for him, clutching his shoulders, her head thrown back as the pressure inside wound tighter and tighter until she was arching her hips and gasping for air.

  “Please, please.”

  Please stop. Please don’t. She couldn’t think.

  He was devouring her, frightening her, thrilling her.

  She cried out. Grabbing at him, dragging him back up, unable to bear whatever was happening to her. Desperate for more.

  Connor grinned at her again, a wicked grin. She reached for his shirt, scratching at the buttons that held it closed, as frantic now as he was, maybe more. She wanted to touch him, to feel his flesh rubbing against hers all over.

  “Forget that,” he murmured, his grin fading as he grasped her wrists firmly to pull her hands away from the buttons. “I can’t wait that long.”

  He dropped his hands to the front of his jeans. They were stretched tight across his arousal, underscoring the accuracy of his claim.

  They were both kneeling now, facing each other. Gaby pushed his hands aside and opened the metal button at his waist, then tugged on the zipper. He winced as her knuckles pressed against him, sucking air between his clenched teeth.

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered, clamping his hand on top of hers and holding it there for a few seconds, his head thrown back.

  Gaby turned to cup her fingers around him, feeling his responsive jerk through the layers of cotton and denim. His response sent her back to work on the zipper with a frenzy, lowering it, wrestling his snug jeans and shorts over his hips at the same time. She stopped, holding her breath, spellbound as his manhood sprang free, intimidating to behold.