by Diana Palmer
“Lock the door and let your hair down. I’m starving to death.”
She felt breathless just looking at him. “Wolf, your chest...”
“I don’t care if it kills me,” he whispered roughly. His face showed the strain. “Oh, God, honey, I’m dying...!”
She went and locked the door. She unplugged the phone. She let her hair down. Then she took off the sweater and the slacks. Her hands hesitated at the bra.
“Come here,” he said softly. “I’ll do that myself.”
She went to him, as hungry as he was. It had been a very long time. Her conversations with Emma Cain had shown her that she’d let a sad incident rule her life for far too long. Wolf wasn’t a man bent on hurting her. He was, in a very real sense, her lover. And she wanted him. She wanted to marry him, live with him, love him all her life.
He was wearing pajama bottoms, but he slid those off as she came to the bed. He tossed back the covers and let her look at him. He was painfully aroused already.
“You really are...magnificent,” she whispered unsteadily.
“Only for you,” he replied, and held out his arms.
She went down into them, shivering a little when her body touched his. He turned her, grimacing a little. The muscles were still sore.
“Are you sure?” she began.
He brushed his mouth over hers. “I’m very sure that I’ll die if I can’t have you,” he whispered back.
“I wouldn’t want that,” she whispered, arching as he found the clasp of the bra and loosened it, pushing it away from her breasts.
He looked at them, frowning. “You’re bigger,” he whispered. “Or am I just imagining it?”
“I’ve gained weight,” she lied.
“Is that it?” He smiled. “It’s very becoming.” He traced the soft flesh down to her nipples and back again, watching her move sensuously against the gentle pressure. “Do you like that?”
“I love it.”
He tugged off her briefs and tossed them to the floor. His face was solemn. “We’ve played at this,” he said gently. “But this is the real thing. I have to be slow and careful with you. It may be uncomfortable, even with the surgery. I’m over-endowed.”
“I noticed.” She flushed, trying to sound sophisticated and failing miserably.
He smiled. “You’re nervous. Don’t be. I know exactly what I’m doing. This time,” he whispered as he lowered his mouth to hers, “there won’t be any hurtful remarks. I only want to please you, in every single way I can.”
She tried to answer him, but his mouth was on her hard-tipped breasts, and she was lost. His mouth slid up and down her, touching her in new ways, in places she hadn’t expected. She fought him a little at first, until the sensuality made her reckless, made her hungry, made her wild.
She cried out softly as he touched her, his fingers probing, teasing, enticing. His mouth burrowed gently into hers while he aroused her to such a pitch that she was moaning long before he began to move over her.
“This is where it might get...complicated,” he breathed into her mouth as he slowly, gently, began to enter her.
Her eyes opened very wide as she felt, for the first time in her life, intimate contact with a man.
In the darkened bedroom, there was still enough light for him to see her face, drawn, tense, uncertain.
“Shh,” he whispered. He shifted his hips, watching her. “That’s it,” he murmured when she jerked. “You feel it when I do that, don’t you? Lift your hips, just a little...that’s it. You’re doing fine. Just fine.”
She hardly heard him. Something was happening. Something new. Something she’d never felt before, even with him. Her eyes widened, and her mouth opened as a jolt of sensation so excruciatingly painful as death itself lifted her toward him with pure exquisite passion.
“There...!” she cried out. “There. Oh, there...!” Her eyes closed on a harsh moan, her teeth clenched. She lifted and lifted and lifted, pleading, her body straining to hold on to something so sweet that she didn’t even know if she could survive it. “There,” she choked out, shuddering. “Yes, there, right there, right...”
She cried out, a sound she’d never heard from her own throat in her life. Her body convulsed under his delighted gaze. He watched her, gloried in the fulfillment he could see in the taut arch of her body, in the helpless cries of pleasure, in the shuddering, endless climax that drove her hips up into his with such pressure that he could feel her hip bones digging into him. And still she shuddered, and sobbed, clinging to him, her face rigid with ecstasy, her eyes closed, her breasts arching up against his chest.
She felt him inside her. Felt him swell, felt the power and heat of him. But he was only giving pleasure, not taking it. She fought to get her breath, to stop crying. It had been so sweet, so beautiful...
“Please,” she whispered.
He was smiling tenderly. He moved his hips. “Like this?”
“No. For you,” she whispered back. “I want what I had, for you,” she said. “Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything. Anything!”
His face was a study in tenderness. “You don’t have to do a thing.” His hips moved and his teeth clenched. “Not now.”
“I won’t watch,” she whispered. “I promise.” She closed her eyes.
“Don’t do that,” he whispered back, his voice terse as he moved deeper inside her. “Watch me. Look at me. I belong to you as surely as you belong to me. You gave yourself. Now I’m giving myself. Watch...!”
He went off like fireworks. She saw his body arch over her, his hips grinding down into hers, his face tormented, his throat as taut as rope. He was shuddering. His mouth opened on a harsh, helpless cry as his body convulsed over and over and over again. He sobbed as the passion spent itself in him, as he felt his body explode with pleasure. It was the second time in his life he’d ever had an orgasm. Like this, the first had been with her, with the beautiful, sensual woman under his body, clinging to him, soothing him as he came slowly back down from an incredible height.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, touching him, kissing him tenderly, her lips all over his face, his eyes, which were oddly wet. “It’s all right, my darling. It’s all right.”
The endearment, the tenderness of her lips on his face, were tearing him apart inside. He couldn’t bear the pain he’d caused her. He’d given her so little, and she’d just given him paradise. He’d never known such joy. Such peace.
He cradled her against him, damp with sweat, still shivering in the aftermath.
“Are you all right?” she asked at his chest, worried. “It didn’t hurt you?”
His arm drew her closer. “I never knew what the hell they were talking about when they mentioned orgasms until you came along,” he murmured unsteadily. “My God! I think my whole body exploded.”
She laughed softly, secretively. “So did mine.”
“Yes. I saw. I watched you.”
“You did?”
He rolled over and looked down into her wide, soft eyes. “I dreamed of going inside you like this,” he whispered. “I ached to do it, to make you feel what I felt that last time we were together. And then Ysera came back into the world and put you at risk. And I...” His voice broke.
“Wolf?”
“I cost you our baby.” He buried his face in her throat. His eyes were wet!
“Oh, my darling, no. No! You didn’t!”
“You went to a clinic...!”
“Wolf, look at me. Look at me!”
He dashed at his eyes and lifted his head, reluctantly. His expression wounded her. It was taut with anguish.
She took his hand and drew it over her breasts. “Turn on the light, please.”
The room wasn’t dark, but it was hard to see details. He grimaced as he reached for the light switch and put on the small lamp on the night table.
“Look at me,” she said, drawing his fingers over her breasts. “I’m not pale enough for it to show much,” she whispered, “but do you see all
the little veins?”
He frowned. There were a lot of them. He didn’t remember them from before. “Yes.”
“They’re feeding the milk glands,” she whispered. “They’re preparing me, so that I can produce milk.”
He blinked. His hand was fascinated with her beautiful breast. It was fuller, softer, than he remembered it. He smiled with pleasure. What had she said? Something about milk?
“Sweetheart, breasts only produce milk when there are going to be babies,” he said with a faint smile.
“Yes, I know.”
He was very still for a minute. His hand pressed down against her breast. He lifted his pale eyes to hers and pinned her with them.
She took his hand and drew it slowly down her body to the small hardness there, and pressed it to her.
“Oh, my God,” he breathed reverently. He went pale.
“I went through the front door and out the back door of the clinic,” she faltered. “I couldn’t. I just...couldn’t. I didn’t know how you’d react. I thought you might not want the baby, but I did, and...”
His mouth cut off the rest of the hurried little speech. He was kissing her, in a way that he never had before. His whole body was shaking. He gathered her close and just held her, rocked her, his face buried in her throat.
“Wolf?” she asked, surprised.
“Just give me a minute,” he whispered gruffly in her ear. “The trip from hell to heaven takes a little time to adjust to.”
She couldn’t repress a soft laugh. Her arms stole around him and held him tight. “I would have said something sooner,” she said. “But I was afraid.”
“You thought I wouldn’t want a baby.”
“I didn’t know. I was afraid you wouldn’t want something permanent, with me. And I couldn’t live somewhere else and have you come to visit the baby...”
His arms contracted. “We got off to a rocky start,” he said in her ear. “We didn’t know very much about each other, and we were too hungry for each other to take time to talk.”
“Yes.”
He lifted his head. “I want a baby,” he said solemnly. “I want you. I want marriage.”
She searched his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”
She relaxed a little. “Okay.”
Her soft movement triggered a sudden, sharp arousal. He grimaced and started to move away.
“Where are you going?” she asked, pulling him back to her.
“You’re pregnant,” he began. He winced. “I might have already hurt the baby. I was so hungry for you. I was rough!”
“You weren’t rough, and babies are very sturdy,” she murmured. She reached down, boldly, and ran her fingers over him. He shuddered. “Now you just come right back here and let me take care of that little problem you’ve got...”
“Little?” he managed as he rolled her onto her back and went into her.
She gasped. “Ooookkay,” she said breathlessly. “Not so little...!”
He laughed wickedly. “And very soon, perhaps not even big enough,” he said huskily as his mouth moved down over hers. “Let me teach you something new. Draw your legs in between both of mine.”
She gasped again.
“Oh, yes, that’s the way,” he groaned as he moved down against her.
She shivered. Her body tautened as the pleasure came back, suddenly and very deep. She lifted against him.
“I like that,” he whispered into her mouth. “Do it again.”
She did. He was more potent than he’d been before. She caught her breath as he moved deeper, slower, into the softness of her.
“You’re very, very aroused,” he murmured into her mouth, “and sensitized, as well. I’m going to shoot you off like a rocket,” he whispered roughly. “And I’m going to watch you go.”
She shivered. The pleasure was biting into her like hot nails, lifting her, grinding her up into him. She was frankly afraid, nervous about even being able to survive it, it was so overwhelming.
She didn’t realize that she’d whispered that to him, frantically, until she heard the soft, deep laughter above her.
“You’ll live,” he whispered unsteadily as the sharp, quick movements began to take her right up the spiral into unknown heights. “But you’ll blush every time you look at me...for a week,” he concluded.
She began to cry out, her voice throbbing in tune with her body as she arched and shivered and then climaxed over and over and over again until she thought she couldn’t live through it. At the last, she heard a deep groan from above her, felt a furious shudder, and then driving movements that ended in convulsions so violent that she worried if he was going to survive it, as well.
They shuddered together, sweating all over, trembling in the aftermath of something so powerful that neither of them could even speak.
“The baby,” he whispered roughly, his hand going protectively to her belly.
“The baby is fine,” she whispered back. He tried to lift away, but she held his beloved weight over her, clinging. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “I love feeling you on me, feeling your weight.”
“I’m heavy,” he said.
She smiled against his throat. “No, you’re not.”
He shivered again as he moved. “Damn,” he groaned.
“Damn?” she asked.
He laughed. “I’m sore.”
Her eyes were very wide. “You’re...what?”
“Sore.” He pursed his lips as he looked down at her with possession and affection and pure joy. “Very sore.” He drew back, wincing.
She winced, too.
“See?”
He rolled over onto his back, groaning. “That’s what we get for overdoing.”
She sat up, laughing delightedly. She winced again. “I didn’t know people got sore.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What, after reading all those torrid novels?”
“They’re romantic novels, not anatomy books,” she replied.
He drew in a breath, relaxed, comfortable, letting her look at him with complacent amusement. “Speaking of anatomy lessons,” he mused.
She flushed.
“I told you that you’d blush for days,” he pointed out. He grinned.
She laughed delightedly.
He caught her hand and pulled it to his lips. “So now we have a real problem.”
She stiffened. “We do?”
“Yes. Grayson is going to have to come back down here and live. How do we manage that without firing my new foreman?”
She let go the last bit of her fears. “We go home and tell her about the baby,” she said simply. She smiled. “That’s all it’s going to take.”
“The baby.” He drew her over and pressed his mouth hungrily to the swell of her stomach. “I wonder if a man can die of happiness.”
“Don’t you dare try to find out,” she said firmly.
He smiled against her belly. “Are we having a boy or a girl?”
“Yes.”
He burst out laughing. “Which?”
“We’ll find out when he or she is born,” she replied. “I don’t want to know. Not yet.”
He lifted his head. “Neither do I. People will laugh.”
“Let them. It’s my baby. Our baby.”
“Our baby,” he whispered. His heart was bursting. He’d never dreamed that out of such tragedy could come such joy.
But the next morning, everything changed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SARA WAS STILL asleep when the phone rang. Wolf reached past her head, pillowed on his shoulder, to get his cell phone off the bedside table.
“Hello?”
“It’s Eb. Listen, you have to get Sara out of there, right now,” he said urgently.
He sat up, displacing her. She woke up and stared at him sleepily.
“What is it? The man Ysera sent...?”
“No, they’ve got him in custody. That threat is over,” he said. “This is somet
hing new, something worse. The reporters got hold of the story. You know where Gabe is, what he’s doing?”
“I know where he is. Is he all right?”
“Yes. I’ve got him stashed, along with his unit, in a luxury hotel in the Middle East. But his ward, you remember her, Michelle Godfrey?”
“Yes,” he said.
“She came out to interview me last week. I thought she was going to be fair, to tell the whole story. She didn’t,” he said coldly. “She told the world that Gabriel and his men led a massacre against women and children. They printed photos...”
“Gabriel would die before he’d hurt a child!” Wolf raged.
“I know that,” Eb groaned. “It isn’t what it looks like. I have them hidden and I’ve hired attorneys and a private investigator, but it’s going to be a publicity nightmare for a while. They’ll find Sara, if they haven’t already.”
“I’ll get her back to Wyoming today,” he said.
“You aren’t fit to travel,” Eb protested.
“I’m going. They have doctors in Wyoming.” He looked down at Sara’s drawn face, touched it gently. “We’ll leave as soon as we’re packed. Their ward did this? Michelle?”
“Michelle.” Sara’s eyes widened. “What did she do?” she whispered.
Wolf put his hand over the phone. “I’ll tell you in a minute.” He went back to Eb. “Why?” he asked.
“She didn’t know Gabe used a different name when he did jobs for me,” Eb said shortly. “One of us should have told her. I didn’t realize what might happen. She’s devastated, but things have gone too far. Get out of there as soon as you can. Satellite trucks are popping up like daisies around here already.”
“Thanks, Eb. For everything.”
“You’re my friend. I’ll help any way I can. Hurry.” He hung up.
Wolf got out of bed, drawing Sara up beside him. “We’ll have a quick shower, then we’ll pack. I’ll tell you while we’re bathing.”
He pulled her into the shower and told her what Michelle had done. Tears mingled with soap and water. He held her, rocked her, while she let it all out.
“How could she do that to my brother?” she wailed. “I thought she loved him!”
“She didn’t know who Angel Le Veut was,” he replied heavily. “Nobody told her.”