by Deborah Camp
“Levi.” Her voice broke on his name. His caresses and raspy, sex-laden voice released rivers of desire in her. Suddenly, she was achy with need. She wanted his mouth on her almost as much as she wanted to breathe.
He turned her around and kissed her, biting her lower lip, pulling at it. “Sexy witch,” he murmured, kissing her cheek, nuzzling her neck. “Tell me you want me. Tell me you need me.”
She nodded and brought his mouth around to hers again. “I do. You know I do.” The heat of him blasted through her, singeing her nerve-endings. In a flash, she was all writhing desire as she arched against the solidity of him. He gripped the back of her thighs and lifted her. Trudy wrapped her legs around his middle and he kept kissing her as he carried her to the master bedroom. Their bedroom.
She stripped off his shirt and unbuckled his belt as he made quick work of her top and yoga pants. In a hot minute, they were nude and on the bed, him on top of her, kissing his way from her throat to her breasts.
Tracing the contours of his body with impatient hands, she found her favorite spots; the dimples at the base of his backbone, the hard planes of his shoulder blades, and the tight muscles of his buttocks. She skimmed her fingers along his strong jawline, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the straight bridge of his nose, and the sexy curve of his upper lip.
“I want you inside me,” she whispered, then gasped when he drove into her in one, swift move. He felt like hot iron. Hard. Deliciously invasive. Her inner muscles protested for an instant and constricted around him. “Oh, God, Levi!” She grasped his head in her hands and brought his mouth to hers again. Her tongue danced with his and the groaning sounds rumbling up from his chest heightened her pleasure.
He tore his mouth from hers and suckled her nipples until they stung and sent molten streams of pleasure down between her trembling thighs where he moved in and out of her.
“Fucking delicious,” he murmured, then moved lower, kissing her stomach, her inner thighs, her mound. His tongue flicked her clitoris and he chuckled when she made a garbled sound and arched against his mouth. “Sweet, sweet sugar.” He lapped at her like a cat after cream, chuckling again when she moaned and her hands grasped his head.
“Levi. I can’t . . . oh, oh!” The sensations he spawned were almost piercing. She wanted to stop him and press him against her from one instant to the next. He decided for her by gripping her thighs and holding them apart while he tongued her, suckled, kissed, and nuzzled her.
She came in a thrashing, aching, trembling chaos of feelings. Her throat felt raw from her breath sawing in and out and the nonsensical words that battered it. When she floated back to comprehension and opened her eyes, Levi had propped himself up on his elbows and was watching the show with a half-smile.
“That was fun,” he said, licking his glistening lips. He positioned himself and slipped back into her. His eyes rolled, making her laugh. “That feels so fucking wonderful. Sliding right into home like that.” He took his time, gazing at her intently as he found and stroked flashpoints inside her. Gradually, his thrusts increased to urgency as he showered her face with quick, hard kisses. “Love you, love you.” His breath stirred the damp curls on her forehead. “God have mercy, I love you so much.” He shuddered and issued a long growl as he emptied inside of her. She shook right along with him as another climax wrung her out. “Mine.”
She clung to him, smiling inside at the possessiveness he couldn’t tame, couldn’t shake. “Yours,” she assured him.
When he stilled, his breath hitching in and out, his voice came to her muffled against her shoulder. “Damn it all, Tru. Marry me.” It sounded as if he were talking through gritted teeth. He lifted his head. “Trudy.”
The gravity in his tone coupled with the vulnerability lurking in the depths of his eyes made her become hyperaware of his changing mood. “Yes? What is it?” He was still inside her, still joined with her. She ran her hands down his sides and flattened her palms against his buttocks. “You look so serious!”
“I am serious. Marry me.”
“That’s the plan.” She shook her head and gave him a smile of confusion.
“That proposal? I did it wrong. I know that. I bullied you into the engagement. I probably should have done the whole bended knee routine.”
She pressed her finger against his lips, stopping him. “Levi, it was okay. It was fine.”
“Then why won’t you set a date?” He narrowed his eyes and she felt him soften inside of her. With a huff of exasperation, he disengaged and flung himself onto his back. “You don’t want to go through with it, do you?”
Staring up at the dancing array of lights on the ceiling, she chastised herself for being such a wimp. He was right. She was stalling and it was stupid. They needed to have “the conversation.” It would make him uneasy, but he was already agitated and irritated, so she might as well go for broke.
“Okay. Here’s the thing.” She shifted onto her side to face him. He was staring at the ceiling lights, his brows dipping low over his expressive eyes. “I think we need to –. No, we definitely need to talk about something important.”
He turned his head toward her. “I’m listening.”
“Children.”
As she’d fully expected, he jerked all over and his eyes widened as if she’d said something god-awful like abstinence. Children made him uneasy. He hadn’t had a childhood – or much of one – and so he didn’t know how to act around them. She’d seen him go all stiff and cold with his step-sisters and with Wes and Gonzo’s kids. But she knew he had a good heart and that a child – their child – would melt that heart of his. This man, this complex man of hers, had founded a charity that provided better homes for families, but he was afraid of having a family of his own.
His throat flexed and he swung his gaze back up to the ceiling.
Trudy rested a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t want kids any time soon, but I figure I will at some point. If it turns out that I can’t conceive for whatever reason, I don’t want to go through all that in vitro fertilization stuff. I would rather just adopt. That would be perfectly fine with me.”
He blinked like he did when she said something that stalled his brain. “You’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Well, sure.” She drew a heart on his shoulder with her fingertip. “When we marry, we’ll be each other’s closest living relative. A family. I will eventually want to have a child. Or two. Are you okay with that?”
His chest rose and fell with a big sigh. “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”
Pressing a kiss in the center of the invisible heart she’d placed on his shoulder, she tried to calm him. “Hey, I don’t want this to be a deal breaker, but it is important to me, Levi. I want you to be fully on board with us being parents. You’ll be a wonderful father.”
He laughed – one, big, mocking ha! – before he sprang off the bed, all agitation and emotions she couldn’t decipher. Pacing, he shoved his fingers through his hair and flung a look at her that was a little disbelieving and a lot cynical. “A father. Me?”
Her heart began a slow descent. “Yes. You.” She sat up, worried that he was going to nix the whole thing. “Why not you? Why not us?”
“What you’re saying . . . suggesting . . . it’s . . . I don’t know.” His words came out jumbled and a thread of panic worked its way into his voice.
“Is it that bizarre? Levi and Trudy, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, and then comes Levi with a baby carriage,” she recited, which got her another narrowed-eyed, sardonic glare from him. That look made her heart nosedive and she reached out to him. “Levi, please . . .”
He backed up a step, away from her seeking fingers. “You’d trust me with a child?”
Trudy’s heart stopped its freefall and cracked open for him as the intense anxiety and self-doubt he was dealing with became excruciatingly obvious to her. She surged up on her knees, grabbed him by the shoulders, and hauled him into her arms. Love for the b
roken boy still residing in him engulfed her. She ran her hands over his thick hair and kissed his temple and between his eyes.
“Of course, I do,” she managed to choke out. Gripping his head in her hands, she locked gazes with him, wanting him to have no doubt of her total belief in him. He looked achingly vulnerable and haunted by ghosts from his tattered past. “I wouldn’t even consider marrying a man I didn’t want to have a child with.”
As if her words weakened him, he dropped to his knees at the side of the bed. Trudy pulled him closer and he rested his head in her lap as his arms circled her hips.
“I don’t know, Tru. I don’t know. I . . . wouldn’t want to ruin an innocent. What if I couldn’t love it enough and—and—our child could sense it? That scars for life. For life!”
She stroked his hair and kissed his shoulder. It pained her that he was still in the clutches of the psychological injuries inflicted on him by his bastard of a father. A father who had accused his only offspring of hurting another child. A father, who had sent him away to religious schools and camps where they had resorted to abuse to drive the so-called devil from Levi. Even after all these years, that branding of being unloved and somehow responsible for another child’s death – a dead girl who had appeared to him and guided him to her cold body so that her murderer could be apprehended and put in prison – that heinous, totally unfounded accusation bedeviled him, damned him.
“Levi,” she whispered, kissing the top of his head. “You had nothing to do with that little girl’s death. You were only seven years old! Your father is a despicable worm of a man. You’ve suffered enough because of him. Don’t let him rob you of the joy of being a loving, devoted father. I want to have children with you. I’ve never wanted that with any other man. Just with you.”
He lifted his head from her lap and his eyes shimmered. “I’ll do anything for you. You know that. Even this.”
A little sob escaped her before she wrestled for control. She swallowed the knot in her throat and blinked away the tears filling her eyes. “Parenthood is a crap shoot. Nobody’s perfect at it. Think of the parents we’ve interviewed. Many of them – no, most of them – seemed to do everything right. They adored and nurtured their kids, provided nice homes and sent them to good schools, and, yet, some of their kids couldn’t wait to get away from them. All we can do is our best. We both have a lot of love to give, right? But, I want you to want it, Levi. Not just to appease me. I need for you to want to have children with me someday.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek as he drew in a deep breath. He nodded. “Yes. Okay. I’m all in.”
She thought she might explode with relief. Instead, she kissed him soundly, solidly, gratefully. “Good. Now, let’s make a pact.”
He nodded again and gave her a watery smile.
“No more silly talk about you being untrustworthy around children. Agreed?”
He released a long breath and his answer was a mere wisp of sound. “Agreed.”
“Okay. Now let’s decide on a date.”
He blinked and wet his long lashes. A smile curved his kissable lips. “You mean, now that I’ve assumed the correct position . . .” He leaned back a little on his knees before her. “You’re willing to set a wedding date, Miss Tucker?”
She giggled and nodded.
“Well, alrighty then!” He swiped at his moist eyes and flung his arms out from his sides in a show of pure relief and exaltation. “Let’s do it!”
She brought his face to hers and kissed him, her lips caressing his as she said, “How does next week strike you?” She heard his sharp intake of breath and then his arms came around her as his smile doubled in size against hers. “I’ll take that as a yes, Mr. Wolfe.”
The End
Dear Reader;
I hope you enjoyed this fourth novel in the Mind’s Eye series. I had planned to write a trio, but Trudy and Levi’s intricate love story will take more than just three books! Now I’m shooting for six, in total. If you like the series, please do me the kind favor of leaving reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads to help steer other interested readers to them.
Until next time,
Deborah
About the author . . .
Author of more than 50 novels, Deborah lives in Oklahoma. She has been a full-time writer since she graduated from the University of Tulsa. She worked for a few years as a reporter for newspapers before becoming a freelance writer. Deborah's first novel was published in the late 1970s and her books have been published by Jove, New American Library, Harlequin, Silhouette, and Avon. She has been inducted into the Oklahoma Authors Hall of Fame and she is a charter member of the Romance Writers of America.
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Other Novels by Deborah Camp
All available on Amazon
Novella
The Madcap and the Miser
Historical Romances
Blazing Embers
Primrose
Fire Lily
Black-eyed Susan
Fallen Angel
Cheyenne’s Shadow
My Wild Rose
Lady Legend
Master of Moonspell
Too Tough To Tame
Tough Talk, Tender Kisses
A Tough Man’s Woman
To Seduce and Defend
Belle Starr, Bandit Queen
Solitary Horseman
Contemporary Romances
To Have, To Hold
Devil’s Bargain
For Love or Money
This Tender Truce
In a Pirate’s Arms
Just Another Pretty Face
Vein of Gold
Right Behind the Rain
After Dark
The Butler Did It
Wrangler’s Lady
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Love Letters
Weathering the Storm
The Second Mr. Sullivan
A Newsworthy Affair
Destiny’s Daughter
Taming the Wild Man
Oklahoma Man
Sweet Passion’s Song
A Dream to Share
Winter Flame
Midnight Eyes
Riptide
Tomorrow’s Bride
They Said It Wouldn’t Last
Strange Bedfellows
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