“This gel will be a tad on the cool side,” Whitney said as she lathered Blythe’s stomach. “Using this gel will improve the conduction of the sound.”
“What we’re doing here today is a Level Two ultrasound. This will be a transabdominal exam,” Dr. Meyers told them. “We’ll be checking to see if the due date we’ve calculated correlates with the baby’s size. This will let us know how your child is developing and if there’s more than one baby.”
“More than one baby?” Blythe tried to sit up, but Whitney patted her shoulders and eased her back down onto the examining table.
“This won’t take more than five or ten minutes,” Whitney said. “And it’s totally painless.”
Totally painless, huh? For whom? Blythe wondered. For someone who hadn’t drunk a gallon of water? For someone who hadn’t just realized she could be carrying twins? For someone who wasn’t trapped in a phony marriage?
“Now, I’m going to run this transducer over your abdomen. See it?” Whitney held the object up for Blythe and Adam’s inspection. “And y’all can watch that monitor over there.”
Adam sat down beside Blythe, but did not take her hand. She hadn’t offered it to him, and he certainly wasn’t going to just grab it. He had known there was a good chance she’d be upset when he hired two employees to work at Petals Plus without consulting her on the matter. But she kept putting off hiring any help, when she knew she needed it. He’d done the only sensible thing he could do—what any husband who wanted to take care of his wife would have done.
Blythe gasped. “Oh, look at that.”
Dr. Meyers patted Blythe on the shoulder. “You can see the little heart beating, can’t you?”
Blythe stared at the black-and-white images of the tiny fetus. The tiny baby. Her baby. Adam’s baby.
Adam glanced at the monitor and for one split second he couldn’t breathe. Dr. Meyers pointed out their child’s head, arms, legs and the curve of its spine.
“Looks like we’ve got a thumb sucker here,” Whitney Lawrence said.
“What?” Adam stared at the screen until he saw exactly what the technician meant. His child actually was sucking its thumb. “Would you look at that?”
“How precious,” Blythe said. Tears misted her eyes. Happy tears. Tears she didn’t even try to conceal.
She glanced at Adam and her heart skipped a beat. He stared at the monitor with a look of awe in his dark eyes. She reached out and clasped his hand. He stared down at their hands, then over at her.
“She’s real, Adam. Look at her.” Blythe glanced back at the monitor.
Dr. Meyers chuckled. Whitney Lawrence cleared her throat and smiled.
“What is it?” Blythe asked, her gaze moving from one person to another.
“Well, from what I can detect,” Whitney said, “I wouldn’t suggest rushing out to buy any frilly pink dresses.”
“Look very closely, right here—” Dr. Meyers pointed to the baby’s genital area “—and you can tell this baby’s a boy.”
“A boy?” Adam swallowed hard. A son. His son. He stared at the monitor for several seconds longer, then glanced at Blythe’s shocked face.
“My baby is a boy?” Blythe asked. “Not a little girl?”
“We can’t be one hundred percent certain, but in most cases we can be over ninety percent certain when we predict a boy,” Dr. Meyers said. “I don’t think there’s too much doubt about it. Your baby is a boy.”
“We’re almost finished here,” Whitney said. “I’ll have your videotape and some black-and-white stills for y’all to take home.”
Dr. Meyers grasped Adam’s shoulder. “You can frame the first picture of your son and put it on your desk”
“The first picture of my son.” Adam grinned. “Yeah, I suppose that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it?” Pictures of his son. Before birth. As a newborn. At two weeks. Two months. Two years. Images of the child flashed through Adam’s mind. A plump, laughing baby with Blythe’s bright hazel eyes and tufts of black hair. But then, maybe their son would have Blythe’s copper hair and freckles, and his brown eyes.
He squeezed Blythe’s hand. “Are you terribly disappointed? I know you were hoping for a girl.”
“I’m not disappointed,” she told him. “Surprised, but—” She could not erase the image of a black-eyed, blackhaired little toddler holding up his plump arms to her and calling her Mama. The child was the very image of Adam.
“But what?”
“Nothing. I’ll just have to start thinking of her as a him.” Suddenly the baby moved. Blythe gasped loudly.
“What’s wrong?” Adam gripped her hand.
“Haven’t you gotten used to the baby’s movements yet, Mrs. Wyatt?” Whitney asked. “I imagine he’s been making his presence known for a couple of weeks now, hasn’t he?”
“The baby’s moving?” Adam released Blythe’s hand abruptly, shot straight up out of his chair and stared down at her exposed belly. “You felt it move just then?”
“Yes,” Blythe admitted, then looked at Whitney. “I felt her—him—move for the first time about ten days ago. Just a tiny little fluttering at first.”
“Ten days ago,” Adam muttered quietly. She had been feeling the baby move for ten damn days and she’d never said a word to him. Not one word! Why wouldn’t she have told him? She had agreed that they would share everything.
Blythe and Adam left Dr. Meyers’s office that day with a videotape, a stack of black-and-white stills and the image in their minds of their baby boy sucking his thumb. Adam hadn’t said a word to her after he’d found out she’d kept the baby’s first movements a secret from him. He couldn’t help feeling hurt, left out and even a little bit betrayed.
He helped Blythe into his Lotus, then got in and drove them home. He didn’t look at her or speak to her, and even though she kept stealing glances at him, she remained silent all the way to the cottage.
The minute Adam closed the front door behind him, he stared across the living room at Blythe, who stood a few feet away. She tilted her chin defiantly and met his heated glare bravely.
“I just want to know why, Blythe. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you share it with me?”
“Adam, I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Joy.”
“Joy is not that baby’s father. I am! We agreed to share everything. Everything, dammit!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d be this upset.” She’d known he would resent her not having told him, but she honestly hadn’t thought he’d be so furious. “I don’t know if I can explain.” How could she tell him that the thought of him touching her so intimately threw her into an absolute panic? Every time he touched her, no matter how innocently, she felt her body come alive, wanting and needing him to continue touching her.
“Do you dislike me that much?” he asked. “I thought we’d gotten past our misconceptions about each other. I thought we were beginning to understand each other. Was I wrong?”
“No. You weren’t wrong.”
“Then what’s the problem? Explain it to me.”
“I didn’t want you to—knowing the baby was moving, you’d have wanted to—I just couldn’t bear—”
“You couldn’t bear for me to touch you? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Adam clenched his teeth so tightly his jaw ached. His wife—the mother of his son—was telling him that she could not bear the feel of his hands on her body. A deep, raw ache sprang to life inside him, building in strength as it spread through his whole body. His muscles tensed to the point of pain. He knotted his big hands into deadly fists. “You hate my touch that much?”
“It’s not what you’re thinking.” Blythe slipped off her coat, tossed it on the sofa and walked over to stand directly in front of Adam. “I don’t hate your touch. If anything, the exact opposite is true. Don’t you see? Can’t you understand? That’s why I can’t bear for you to touch me.”
He stared at her, uncertain he had understood her correctly. But then his mind began to register
the meaning and he growled, the sound coming from deep in his chest. “Blythe?”
“We’re in a temporary marriage of convenience. We got married because I’m pregnant, not because we were in love. In a few months, we’re going to get a divorce. I just don’t think I can handle a temporary sexual relationship with you.”
His heart suddenly apprehended what she’d told him. That’s when his body took charge, telling him that this woman—the woman who’d been tempting him for five long months now—was his for the taking.
Blythe took a step forward, grasped Adam’s hand and slid it under her loose checkered blouse. His hand trembled. She felt soft and hard all at the same time, her flesh warm to the touch. He breathed in her sweet, jasmine scent.
“He doesn’t move all the time, you know. It could be hours and hours before he moves again.” Blythe laid her hand over Adam’s.
“I don’t mind spending the next few hours doing nothing but touching you,” he told her.
“Adam?”
Leaving one hand on her abdomen, he reached out with the other and cupped her chin, turning her face upward. He leaned down, stared into her bright hazel eyes and kissed her. The longest, sweetest, hungriest kiss of his life.
Eight
“Oh, Adam, this was what I was afraid of.” Blythe placed her hands on his chest in a halfhearted attempt to shove him away.
He gripped the back of her neck, then delved his other hand beneath the stretchy waistband of her corduroy slacks and inside the top edge of her silky panties. “This is what you wanted. What we both wanted.”
His voice was so husky, so totally aroused male that Blythe trembled as it reverberated around her, caressing her skin as if he’d rubbed her body with heated oil.
She wanted to deny the truth of his words, but she couldn’t. She did want him, in a hungry, desperate way she’d never imagined she could want a man.
“We’ll regret it later.” She tried to reason with herself as well as with him. “Just like last time.”
He shoved his hand between her thighs, threading his fingers through the lush curls at the junction. She gasped when he eased two fingers gently inside her, testing her readiness, assuring himself that she was as aroused as he was.
“We’ll regret it if we don’t.” He moved his fingers in and out, stroking her core with his thumb.
Tingling heat rose from deep within her, spreading quickly, tightening her nipples and drenching her femininity. How could she resist the deep ache that racked her body?
While his fingers continued their rhythmic penetration and withdrawal, he lowered his head and kissed her again, thrusting his tongue inside her mouth, soon synchronizing both movements. Reaching up, Blythe clutched his broad shoulders for support. He walked her backward a few inches until her buttocks brushed the wall, then he hurriedly unbuttoned her blouse and reached inside her bra to encompass one swollen breast. Kneading her tender flesh, he rubbed his thumb across her peaked nipple. She cried out and he stilled his movements immediately.
“Did I hurt you?” Dear God, he’d never forgive himself if he’d caused her any pain in the fury of his passion.
“No, you—” she gasped for air “—didn’t hurt me.”
He began again the torturous attention to her nipple and the kernel of flesh hidden in the feminine folds of her body. Moaning deep in her throat, she closed her eyes, pressed her head back against the wall and allowed the sensations to rocket through her.
Adam felt her tightening around his fingers, felt the gush of moisture and caught her cries of completion in a tongue-trusting kiss.
While shudders of fulfillment rippled through Blythe, he pulled her slacks and panties down her hips and legs, then unzipped his pants and freed his straining erection. He cupped her naked buttocks and lifted her up and against his throbbing sex. He thrust into her, unable to go slowly or be gentle. He had waited too long, hurt too much to be the tender lover she might want. Shivering with a rekindled sexual urgency, she panted wildly when he entered her.
“Damn, but you feel good, babe.” For a few brief moments, he savored the hot, sweet ecstasy of being completely inside her, sheathed with the tight moist heat of her body. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I need this—need you so much.”
She locked her legs around his hips and flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. “You’re not hurting me. Not really. You’re just...just...”
“Just what?” he eased partially out of her, then grasping her hips, moved her onto him, burying himself to the hilt within her.
Sighing with intense pleasure, she gripped his shoulders, tossed her head back and smiled. “You’re just filling me so completely that I’m aching from the fullness. But it’s such a sweet ache.”
Her confession of what it felt like to have him inside her wrapped around him like a caressing hand, hardening him to the point of agonized pleasure. And all the while the clutching rhythm of her body beckoned him to lunge deeper and harder and faster. His release hit him hard. Urging her hips into a pounding frenzy, he drained every ounce of fulfillment from his body. The hard, hammering intensity of his sex against hers flung Blythe into a deeper and more prolonged climax, the aftershocks shaking her into uncontrollable shivers.
Breathing frantically, his chest thumping, sweat drenching his flesh, Adam held Blythe, their bodies still joined. She rested her head on his shoulder while he carried her down the hall, through her bedroom and into the master bath. Standing her on her feet, he chuckled when she swayed, her knees weak. He eased her down on the vanity stool, kissed her on the nose, turned and bent down to turn on the faucets for the whirlpool tub.
Turning back to her, he slowly removed her blouse and bra. He could not resist lifting the enticing weight of her round, full breasts, now twice the size they’d been when he made love to her that night at his condo. They were enlarging with her pregnancy, preparing for the milk that would nourish their child.
Drawing in her breath and releasing it quickly several times as he caressed her, she watched him looking at her breasts and saw plainly the renewed desire in his dark eyes. Adam released her, then pulled off his pants and briefs. He was hard again. How was that possible? He’d just had the best sex of his entire life, and it hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. Not with Blythe. There was just something about her—something about the two of them together. He had always enjoyed sex, since the first time, when he was sixteen and lost his virginity to an experienced older woman—an eighteen-year-old college freshman. He’d had his share of women, but no previous experiences had prepared him for the way Blythe made him feel every time he touched her. Nor for the way he felt about her. Possessive as hell. As if he wanted to tattoo a sign on her that said Property of Adam Wyatt.
He laughed, a deep rumble in his chest. God, if he ever told her how he felt, she’d throw a fit. She would hate the very thought of him wanting to brand her with his private mark of ownership. He supposed she had every right to consider him old-fashioned. He was. He admitted it. And he couldn’t help it.
He loved the way Blythe responded to him, the way she went wild in his arms. There was certainly something to be said about a strong, independent woman who knew what she wanted and gave as good as she got.
His wife was a constant source of surprises, starting with her innocence the first time they’d made love. That had been his first erroneous assumption about her. Every time he thought he had her figured out, she did the unexpected.
“Would you object if we take a long, hot soak in the tub before we go to bed?” he asked as he scooped her up into his arms.
“Is that all we’re going to do? Just soak?” She wriggled against him, her hips grazing his arousal.
“For a while,” he said, then stepped into the swirling water and sat, bringing Blythe down onto his lap. He eased her in front of him, between his spread legs. Her round, trim hips fit perfectly. He slipped his arms around her waist, crossing them over just beneath her breasts. She leaned
back against him, resting her head on his chest.
Suddenly Blythe gasped and sat up straight. She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her belly. “He’s moving, Adam. Feel him. Feel him moving inside me.”
Adam held his breath when he felt his son move. Blythe held her hand over Adam’s. “My God!” he said.
“I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like,” she said. “Joy tried to tell me, but words just can’t describe how it feels.”
Adam rubbed her tummy with wide, soothing strokes. “Hey, big boy, this is your father. What’s the matter? Did your mama and I wake you up with all our carrying on? Are you trying to tell us to take it easy on you?”
Listening to Adam talk to her stomach, Blythe giggled. “I think he’s a little young for you to be discussing the birds and bees with him.”
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Adam stilled his hand and spread out his fingers to partially cover the small melon-seize swell of her abdomen. “My being so rough didn’t hurt the baby, did it? I didn’t mean to take you like that, babe. Honest, I didn’t. It’s just that once things got started, I sort of lost control.”
She turned halfway around, squirming her bottom against his arousal. Twining her arms around his neck, she licked a thin, warm trail up his neck, across his jaw and stopped at his mouth.
“Don’t worry so much,” she told him. “I’m fine. Our son’s fine. I’m young, strong, healthy and there’s no reason that our having sex would harm either me or the baby.”
“In that case...” Shifting Blythe’s body so that she faced him, Adam surged into her with an upward lunge that took her breath away.
“Adam!” she gasped, then closed her eyes as he grabbed her by the waist, nudging her downward until she fit him like a tight glove.
Oh, mercy me! she thought. Just the feel of him inside her was almost enough to make Blythe lose herself. Even though Adam was her only lover, she instinctively knew that even if sex with another man might be very enjoyable, no other man could ever compare to Adam.
All her life, she had steered clear of big, old-fashioned macho guys who reminded her of her stepfather. She had always thought, when she took a lover, he would possess a gentle, artistic soul and perhaps quote poetry to her in bed. But instead, she had taken a big, strong brute as a lover—as a husband—and their lovemaking was as fierce and untamed as the wild passion inside them.
The Tender Trap Page 12