by Lora Leigh
"Maggie. God, Maggie. I missed you . . ."
Her heart clenched at the words, at the emotion she fooled herself into believing she heard. She loved him. She had always loved him. In that moment, Maggie knew that nothing and no one would ever replace Joe in her heart.
Chapter Seven
"Did you really love him?"
Joe's question wasn't unexpected. Hours after the lust and hunger had burned itself down to a dull glow, sleep had stolen their strength. Now, awake, he held her, her back against his chest as she watched the day lighten beyond the bedroom window.
He wasn't confrontational this time, not as he had been when he questioned her about Grant before. He was quiet, reflective. Unfortunately, it was also when he was at his most dangerous. And she was very aware of the fact that right now he had no intentions of allowing her to brush the subject away. And maybe it was time to face it, to face the truth of the mistakes she had made.
"I thought I did," she finally answered. "I wanted to, until a few weeks after the wedding. Had he been the man I thought I married . . ." She paused. She didn't want to break the fragile peace between them.
"You would have," he answered for her.
He sounded accepting. There was no anger in his tone, he wasn't tense. She hadn't expected that. In the past two and a half years she had seen Joe only once, at her wedding, where he had been best man. It had been hell. The moment she whispered her vows to Grant something had shattered inside her soul.
She should have walked out then; she admitted that to herself long ago. When the vows had stuck in her throat, and the tears had flowed, not from happiness, but from sadness, sorrow, she should have turned and walked out.
But she hadn't wanted to hurt Grant. She had cared for him deeply.
"I could have," she amended. "If I had let myself."
"Would you have let yourself?"
That question no longer haunted her. At first it had, in those first weeks when she had questioned herself so deeply, before Grant had shown himself for the bastard he was.
"If he had been the man I thought he was." Admitting it to herself was the hardest part. "Then I would have loved him." She would have lived her life loving two men, rather than just one.
"You wouldn't have." His answer had her jerking in his arms, turning until she could face him.
"I married him," she pointed out, ignoring the dark look he flashed her. "I cared for him then, Joe. Deeply."
"You cared for him, you didn't love him." His broad hand cupped her face, his thumb caressing over her swollen lips gently. "You would never have loved him, Maggie. Because you loved me."
She breathed in roughly as she stared back at him, remembering the nights she had ached for him, dreamed of him. The nights she had cried for him.
"I cared for him," she repeated. "He wasn't the man I thought he was, so I wasn't given the chance to love him."
She felt him behind her, hard, erect. There was no demand in him though, at least not yet. He smoothed her hair back from her face as he watched her patiently, his gaze velvet-soft, nickering with emotion.
"Wouldn't have mattered." The arrogance that suddenly stamped his features moments later had anger simmering inside her. "You loved me, Maggie. You still love me. You married Grant loving another man and you know it."
She gritted her teeth. She was not going to argue with him. Arguing with him got her nowhere.
"Stop it, Joe."
His smile was patronizing. "You knew when you married him that you didn't love him. You loved me. Admit it."
"Why? So you can gloat? So you know you've won?"
"Oh baby, I already know I've won," he growled. "I just want to make certain you know it."
"I know you have got to be the most infuriating man I have ever met in my life," she snapped, jerking out of his embrace as she moved from the bed. "You just can't help yourself, can you, Joe? Being an asshole is so deeply ingrained inside you . . ."
"I loved you, Maggie."
His calm, quiet announcement shut her up. She stared back at him in surprise, her eyes wide, the elation she would have once felt overshadowed by more than two years of pain.
"You loved me?"
Maggie watched as Joe flicked the blankets back and moved to the opposite side of the bed. The muscles in his back and lean buttocks flexed as he rose to his feet before turning back to her.
He was aroused. The hard length of his erection jutted forward demandingly. Muscular, hard, and proud, the sheer power in his body had always commanded her attention.
"You seem surprised," he grunted. "I haven't had a woman since you left my bed. Do you think it was from choice?"
Of course it wouldn't be. Joe was highly sexed, a creature of lust when it came to his pleasure. That didn't mean it was love. Did it? Or could it?
"I think I'm very much afraid you're playing one hell of a game with me," she admitted the possibility to herself. "You terrify me, Joe, simply because you hold the power to destroy me in the palms of your hands. And if you've already judged me guilty, you wouldn't hesitate to use whatever weapons you could come by. Even lying."
His eyes narrowed on her; the distance of the bed between them suddenly seemed much farther and much more difficult to cross than it had been even days before.
"You're right," he finally answered. "If I thought you were lying, if I thought you were involved, nothing would save you, Maggie. But I haven't lied to you. I don't believe you were involved."
"You've just suddenly found all this love for me that wasn't there two and a half years ago?" She jerked her long shirt from the floor and pulled it on with shaking hands.
"It was always there, Maggie." He didn't bother to pull his sweatpants on, he just stood facing her, aroused and proud and so damned confident she wanted to throw something at him.
Her smile was mocking as she shook her head slowly. "I don't believe you, Joe."
A frown jerked between his brows. "Oh, really?"
The dangerous undertone of his voice wasn't exactly a comfortable sound.
"Really." Maggie ignored the nerves building in the pit of her stomach as she faced him.
She had never truly challenged Joe, not in anything he said or the parameters of their relationship. Confrontations weren't her first choice in solving anything, but as she stared back at him she realized that this particular confrontation had been coming since he had taken her from the police station.
"You don't want to do this right now, Maggie," he warned her quietly. The velvet softness of his voice was a sure sign that his temper was rousing.
"I don't want to push you, period, Joe." She turned from him, bending to pick up her pajama bottoms before putting them on. "It's not worth the heartache you can deliver. But I stopped believing in fairy tales two and a half years ago." She turned back to him, fighting the need to believe him even as she doubted him. "Especially yours."
She didn't expect his sudden response. Joe always handled himself calmly. Coolly. He never lost control. Until that moment.
The change came over his expression so suddenly that Maggie had no chance to react. From one second to the next the easygoing facade was stripped. His dark eyes narrowed, the flesh along his cheekbones tightened, and he had vaulted onto the bed, crossing it in one step before he was in front of her.
Turning to run wasn't really an option, but she tried anyway. With a squeak of alarm she turned and tried to jump for the safety of the bathroom, only to feel the manacle of his heavily muscled arm wrap around her waist as he pushed her against the wall.
"You stopped believing in my fucking fairy tales?" His voice was a hoarse snarl at her ear as she felt her heart rate increase, the blood suddenly thundering erratically through her veins. Not from fear. There was no fear as his hands literally ripped the T-shirt from her body and flung the scraps aside, all the while holding her in place as she struggled against him.
"Are you crazy?" she yelled out, more from shock than any other emotion. Where the hell had this Jo
e come from? She could feel the anger, the lust, and more. Some added edge to his touch that had her heart leaping in hope.
His hands were gentle despite their commanding strength, his body controlling her, even as it stroked against her. This was no act. She could feel it in his hands, in the sudden, dominant hunger blazing in the air around them.
"Believe in this fairy tale then, damn you," he snarled at her ear as the straining length of his cock pressed into the crevice of her buttocks. "You want reality, by God? This is reality, Maggie. I can't bear another woman's touch, and knowing you slept in that bastard's bed ate into my guts like fucking acid. My best goddamned friend, and all I wanted to do was slip into his bed and fuck his wife until she screamed my name and begged me for more. Is that enough reality for you?"
She was panting for him, in the space of seconds just as aroused, just as hungry for him as he obviously was for her. She could feel the pulsing, driving lust in the engorged length of his throbbing erection as he moved back, then spread her thighs further apart.
"You make me fucking crazy."
One hard, desperate thrust filled her with his flesh, took her to her tiptoes and had her crying out his name.
"Joe, please . . ."
"Yes," he snapped, his voice thick with lust. "Joe. It's Joe, Maggie. It's Joe fucking you and it's Joe that's going to make you come. Come for me, baby. Oh God . . . Maggie."
He stilled as she felt him inside her, bare, the latex barrier he normally wore no longer there.
"Shit. Oh hell, Maggie, you feel so fucking good."
He was lost. Joe knew he was lost and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. The bitterness and pain in her voice and her expression as she doubted the emotions that had tortured him for so long, had broken his control. Control he had built for his own sanity, control he had sworn he would never lose with Maggie.
But there he was, his dick buried full length inside her, as bare as hell, throbbing with the need to spurt his semen inside her. No condom. Some primal instinct inside him screamed out the denial as he clenched his teeth and fought to pull back, only to return in a thrust that ripped the breath from his body.
"Oh fuck, it's so good," he whispered at her ear as he held her hands to the wall, shifted his hips, and stroked the brutally tight tissue clasping him. "Maggie, baby. You're so sweet and soft. So hot . . ."
He didn't know how to let her go. He knew he should, he needed to. This was a risk he shouldn't be taking, a risk he should have never allowed. But he couldn't release her. God, he couldn't let her go.
"Joe . . ." There was a sense of wonderment in her voice. The cynicism was stripped away, the doubt gone. Innocence filled her tone, the same innocence he heard the night he took her virginity.
Hell, he had been just as shocked then as he was now by the sound of it. A woman nearly twenty-six years old should not be a virgin in this day and age. But Maggie had been. She had laughingly told him she was just waiting on a man who could do more than make her tingle. One who could make her desperate. And he made her desperate.
She made him desperate.
"It's okay, baby." He was panting with the effort not to come, not to fill her with the raging release drawing his balls tight. "Oh God, Maggie. Tell me it's okay. Tell me it's okay."
He had to move. She was so silky soft, slick, tight, gripping him and moving with him as he moved in short, hard strokes that sent radiant pleasure racing down the shaft to clench in his scrotum. He was shaking, literally, with the pleasure tightening along his cock. It
was agonizing, blistering, the most sensation he had ever known in his life.
"Joe, please . . . harder. Please."
Her hips were twisting against him, her internal muscles milking him. Hell, it wasn't as though she were the first woman he had taken without a condom. There had been others. A few. But it had never been like this. She was so slick, so tight that the soft sucking sounds of their movements were killing him.
The effort not to come had him drawn on a rack of torturous pleasure. He was going to pull out, he assured himself. He was.
"Are you on . . . the Pill? The Pill, Maggie." Please, God, let her be on the Pill. Let her be protected.
She shook her head, even as her pussy tightened on him. His hips slammed against her, driving him in deep, hard before he forced himself to stillness.
He couldn't breathe for the need to come.
"Move." He was at the point of begging. "Get away from me, Maggie. God, do it now. I can't do it."
He loosened his grip on her hands, but he couldn't pull free of her. Hell, where had his control gone? Where was his good sense? If he spilled inside her, she was going to get pregnant. He knew she would. Some instinctive knowledge tightened his gut, flared in his chest.
She didn't move away from him, she moved closer. Her hips shifted as her fingers splayed against the wall.
"Baby . . ." He stared at the side of her face, her cheek was pressed into the wall, her eyes opening with drowsy, sensual pleasure. "I'll come inside you, Maggie."
Her breath caught. He saw it, saw the flush that mounted her cheeks, felt the further tightening of her pussy as her excitement mounted.
"I'll give you my child, Maggie. My baby. Is that what you want?" He wanted it. Oh God, he wanted it so bad. His baby growing beneath Maggie's heart, sheltered by the woman who owned his soul.
Her doubt didn't matter. He loved her, and he was man enough to admit he had been a fool to ever believe Maggie would have aided Grant in any way. This was his woman. She had always been his woman.
He had dreamed of her for over two years. Dreamed of her back in his life, in his arms, her body growing heavy with his baby. God, he wanted that. Wanted to tie her to him in the most elemental way, in a bond that could never be broken.
"I love you, Maggie," he whispered again as he lowered his lips to her cheek and a fierce involuntary motion of his hips had him thrusting against her again.
It was heaven. Ecstasy. The feel of her surrounding him, clasping him so tight he could barely breathe for the pleasure.
"Joe . . ." Emotion thickened her voice as her fingers tightened around his. "God, please don't hurt me again. Please, Joe . . ."
He saw the tear that tracked down her cheek, glimpsed the ragged fear and emotion that filled her eyes. And he knew the pain she feared, that he would let her go, that he would hide the need, the hunger, the desperation he felt for her again.
There was no hiding now. Not now, not ever. He was instinct, a male claiming his female; more animal than man, as he fought to hold to him the one person he knew he could no longer survive without.
"I'll not let you go again, Maggie." He was on autopilot and he knew it. Hated it. Only Maggie could do this to him, and that was why she had terrified him two and a half years before. This was why he had let her run when she had believed there was no hope for the emotion she needed from him.
"Oh God, Joe. I can't live without you again." She was moving against him, gripping him, writhing against him. "I've always loved you, Joe . . ."
Sanity disintegrated beneath her words. His head lowered, his lips covering the sensitive point between neck and shoulder as he began to move. Hard. Fast. Deep. He was fighting to breathe, feeling her tighten around him, hearing her cries in his ears, and finally feeling her dissolve around him.
Sweet and tight, the hot clasp of her cunt began to milk at his erection, long contractions of pleasure that had him slamming inside her, his back arching, his neck tipping back as he felt his semen pouring from him. Thick, hard jets of ecstasy spurted inside the flexing depths of her pussy as he cried out her name. He heard his own voice, guttural, unnaturally hoarse, as he tried to drive deeper inside her, to fill her womb, to tie her to him in the most fundamental, primal way possible.
She was his. Only his. And for Maggie's sake, not to mention his own, he hoped she realized that.
Chapter Eight
Maggie was stepping out of the shower hours later, her body p
leasantly sore and aching, a delightful reminder of Joe's loss of control and the feel of his semen spurting inside her.
As she dried, she rubbed the towel over her belly slowly, thoughtfully. She had always wanted children, had dreamed of having Joe's children. The knowledge that life could be growing inside her now sent an exciting shiver up her spine.
She had never allowed herself to hope, or to dream, that this could actually happen. But in the hours since that first shocking display of primal domination, Joe had done nothing to regain that control. No sooner than he had spent himself inside her, he had her back in the bed, moving over her, and claiming her again. And he hadn't stopped until morning was well on its way and a hunger for food had driven them to the kitchen.