The Marrying Kind

by Beverly Bird

  She was at the mercy of a stranger inside herself, she realized. Not Gunner, no, he would never twist her arm. But that gremlin inside her was hungry now, desperate. Perhaps if Gunner had never touched her the way he had when she had been driving, she might have been able to turn away from what he offered. But he had touched her, and that changed everything.

  If she loved him, if that was what this was, then she would just have to tuck it away somewhere inside herself and try to live with it. She had the strong feeling that if she told him so, she would lose him. And she would pray, oh, yes, she would definitely pray, that he would live to an arrogant, macho old age, with or without her.

  Another cop.

  She closed her eyes briefly and wondered if she was out of her mind, then knew that she didn’t have much of a choice. If she didn’t go with her heart, she would be miserable. She tried to recall Matt’s beloved face, needing to say goodbye to him before she did what she knew she was about to do.

  But of course he wouldn’t come to her. Not now. He had already been slipping away from her before she had been partnered with Gunner and her world had been turned upside down.

  She reached for the hem of her sweater. He was out of the car before she could barely touch it. She looked around, startled, just as he wrenched the passenger door open. He caught her hand, pulling her out as he dug into his pockets for the key.

  He couldn’t find it. Ah, well. He had tried, Gunner thought. He had gotten them this far. And he had never been of the mind that a bed was necessarily the most romantic place in the world.

  She was suddenly in his arms again, and her hands were everywhere, in his hair, stroking down his face. He pulled up on her sweater himself, and a heartbeat later he felt like a fumbling teenager. It tangled at her neck, unable to go any higher unless he lifted his mouth from hers.

  He was not aware of having started to kiss her again, before they even took a step away from the car. He eased away from her and pulled the sweater the rest of the way over her head. Her bra was all caught up with it. She had never hooked it again.

  That hit him like a fist, that she, too, should feel this hunger, this immediate necessity. She had simply been holding her breath, he realized, waiting for this place, this moment.

  She began pulling at his T-shirt and he managed to shrug out of it before dragging her back to him. Tessa breathed in the scent of him and couldn’t be quite sure this time where his cologne ended, and where the smells and sounds of the forest began.

  How right this was, she thought shakily. How fitting that they should come together here, in woods like those she had thought of every time he had gotten close enough to her that she could smell his cologne.

  She pressed herself to his chest, rubbing against him and shuddering as skin touched skin, at the friction of masculine hair against her nipples. It felt so good to be held. By him. It felt so good to be kissed. By him. His arms were hard across her back, holding her against him, and his mouth demanded. Still, she wanted more.

  His tongue swept past her teeth and somehow the kiss felt deeper than any other time he had touched his mouth to hers. Or maybe it was just that this time she knew he wasn’t going to stop. She wasn’t going to stop. And knowing that changed everything. Instead of worrying that she should put an end to this before it got out of hand, instead of fighting herself, she savored him.

  She did what she had wanted to do from the first time she had watched him walk. She slid her hands up to his shoulders, feeling muscles knotted with the last of his restraint. She ran her hands down his ribs, his skin seeming to burn beneath her palms despite the cold, winter air.

  He realized he had waited forever for this, for her. He had waited even before he had known he was waiting. Everything inside him throbbed. The way she explored his body with a sort of desperate determination made it threaten to explode.

  He kept her mouth even as he stepped back from her, teasing her tongue with his own. He caught her hand and pulled her away from the car. Her eyes opened and focused on him dazedly.

  “Where are we going? I can’t walk, Gunner,” she admitted shakily.

  “Right here, Princess. Right about here.”

  They moved to a towering tree near the house. A mattress was one thing, a bed of pine needles something else entirely.

  He scooped an arm beneath her legs and lowered her to it. And then, with a blow that he hadn’t been expecting, urgency rammed into him again.

  She laid beneath him, her hair all black curls tucked behind her ears, with one diamond missing. Her eyes were wide on his face, pleading with him, and he wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted but he knew he would move heaven and earth to find it and give it to her. She was breathing in quick, short gasps again that made her bared breasts rise and fall. Her nipples tightened even as he watched, turning a dusky rose, maybe from the cold, maybe from need. Either way, it was all the invitation he needed.

  He lowered his head slowly and took one nipple into his mouth and she cried out. Her arms came up, groping for him. He used his tongue, teasing the puckered tip, and she drove one hand into his hair, pressing his head there. He half smiled and moved to her other breast, his tongue trailing a warm, wet path. He would use every bit of knowledge he had ever learned about women, and make up new, intriguing ideas as he went along. He would brand her, mark her, change her so she could not live without this, without him, ever again. He would give her pleasure that would make her ache for more throughout the rest of her days.

  His palm covered her breast as he left it behind, as though protecting and warming her. He sucked in breath as he felt her fingers brush the skin at his waist, fumbling for the snap on his jeans. He didn’t help her but popped the one free on her own jeans instead, working the zipper down. He spread the denim and found midnight blue lace—but then, he had known it would be something like that, something feminine and pretty, a scrap of sexy, yet somehow demure, womanhood. Black curls crept over the top of the blue, and it undid him.

  “Ah, Tess.” His mouth went back to hers as he slid his hand beneath the lace, his fingers searching for the center of her. And he found her slick and hot and needy. He groaned into her mouth and heard her breath escape her on a sob.

  Gunner froze.

  “You want me to stop.” The words would kill him.

  “No. Oh, no,” she gasped. “I need you so much.”

  Relief flooded him. He was amazed that he could still chuckle. He pulled back a little to look down at her. “You can have me anytime, sweetheart.”

  “Now, then. Please...now.”

  “Soon,” he promised. “Soon.”

  As soon as he got tired of the way her body closed over his fingers in eager acceptance. Would he ever? He finally removed his hand to work her jeans down over her hips, then he took down the midnight blue panties.

  “Your jeans,” she gasped.

  “In a minute.”

  The jeans were safety, he thought, a much needed barrier. Without them he would find himself inside her with no further thought, succumbing to something he was sure he had wanted since time began. Not yet. Not now. Not quite.

  The fact that she was naked when he wasn’t left her feeling momentarily abashed, vulnerable, shaky. The way he gazed down at her made her skin flush with heat. She felt it creep over her breasts, up her neck. But then he was kissing her again and it didn’t seem to matter.

  She was dizzy, her mind spinning. One moment he had her mouth captured with his own, his tongue moving deep, leaving her unaware of almost any other sensation but the way it teased and swept past her teeth. She tried to catch it with her own. Then his lips were at her breast again, suckling, and his magic fingers were back between her legs, so easily this time with no barriers to conquer. She felt herself opening for them unabashedly, and yes, oh, yes, they were good with delicate work.

  She had known, of course. She had known from the time he had mentioned it that they would be. They slid inside her again and she arched into him uncontrollably, her body
moving almost without conscious thought. She did not know the woman who was clawing at him, trying to bring his mouth back to her breast. His thumb found the nub at the center of her, and she cried out loudly enough to startle some birds in the tree above them. They took flight, their calls drowning out her own voice.

  “Please,” she begged. “I need.”

  I need. It was as simple as that, and all that was inside her. A rampaging hunger. A painful desire. She did not want to be alone any longer. She wanted to be with him, joined with him, and only then would she feel sated and whole.

  “Please,” she said again, and she felt him pull away from her. She looked up, panicked, and realized that he was pulling out of his jeans. Her heart seemed to thunder as she waited, but then he stopped and swore.

  “What?” she cried.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” His voice was strangled.

  “Back?” She sat up fast. “No! Gunner, no! Why?”

  He came down on one knee again with a pained laugh, hooking an arm around her neck, drawing her head to his chest. She felt his mouth on her hair, then his chin as he rested it on the top of her head. She could imagine him closing his eyes. She felt his labored breathing beneath her cheek and heard his heartbeat, thunderous.

  “No,” she said again, confused. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t do that to me. Why?”

  “Princess, you’ve been alone in your ivory tower for a long time,” he said finally, his voice raw. And, he thought, I’ve been out of circulation twice as long as that. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought, hadn’t planned ahead. Some Don Juan.

  He couldn’t expect her to believe that. Not given what the women at the office said about him. Not given what she had heard. But he would protect her from a threat that didn’t exist, and one that did. He knew as well as he knew his own heart right now that she would not have been taking any precautions against pregnancy all these many months since Matt had died. Not this woman, this princess peering out warily from her castle.

  His princess. His own. And damned if there wasn’t responsibility tangled all up with that. He groaned.

  “I’ve got to go back to the drugstore,” he said and finally, reluctantly, let her go.

  Tessa watched him disbelievingly as he stood again. He would do that? For her? Now? She felt hot tears burn her eyes. There were no recriminations that she might have thought of this herself. There would be no equal sharing of the responsibility. He was macho to the bone, taking it all upon himself, taking care of her...when he had finally remembered.

  In that moment, she stopped hiding from herself. She stopped believing in a reputation that hadn’t really seemed to fit him at all once she’d gotten to know him. She stopped telling herself that she didn’t love him.

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “John, come back.”

  He was amazed and overwhelmed. Not so much that she had finally used his given name, though it came off her lips as if it were a prayer. That she didn’t seem to care that this act, this moment in time, might end up binding her to him forever.

  He knelt again slowly. For the first time in his life, even through the short span that had been his marriage, he didn’t care, either.

  She opened her mouth to say something more. He caught her lips before she could find her voice. He eased her back onto the pine needles again.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll stay. I’m not going anywhere. Shh.”

  This time when she reached for his zipper, he helped her. No more barriers. He was past needing them. He struggled out of his jeans and eased his weight down on top of her, finally naked, finally body to body, skin to skin. Her legs tangled with his, then came up around him. His hips moved, and the rigid hardness of him pressed against her, seeking entrance.

  “Please,” she whispered. Make me whole. Make me yours. She couldn’t wait anymore, wouldn’t wait. Her hand caught him, encircling him, to guide him inside.

  He made a choking sound at her touch, of need too raw, too new, to be conquered. His hips jerked again, if only to press himself into her palm, but she lifted her hips and caught him.

  He slid into her slowly, easing his way home, watching her eyes change. She welcomed him and moaned his name again.

  Matt’s face finally came to her. Briefly, fleetingly, then he was gone. There was only Gunner’s eyes, his voice.

  “Tess, I can’t... all that waiting.” With a guttural groan, he thrust hard and deep, with a suddenness that made her cry out. Pleasure and sensation filled all the aching emptiness inside her. It happened so fast, so completely, it brought a shudder to her as deep as her soul.

  Gunner felt it and went still. “I hurt you,” he rasped.

  “No.” And her body told him that she spoke the truth as she tightened over him.

  He began moving inside her again. Tess was torn between the sweetness of him filling her, and the sight of him, the way his jaw had gone rigid, the way the taut cords of his neck stood out. His arms trembled as he braced his weight upon them.

  He thrust deeper, and she lifted her legs instinctively to take him in. And that was the moment when sensation won out, when need overcame curiosity, when there was only the fullness of him inside her. She closed her eyes and let pleasure build and coil.

  His mouth brushed her forehead, and she was vaguely aware of him finally settling down on top of her. His thrusts became harder, more desperate, even as he tangled one hand in her hair and found her mouth again.

  He had to kiss her at this moment, he realized. Had to be with her, part of her, when she went over the edge.

  Her hips rose rhythmically to meet him. And then he felt something in the tension of her body change, spasming, erupting. He let himself go with her.

  She nearly wept with the power of it, the force, as wave after wave pummeled her body. She clawed her fingers into his skin and held on. Then suddenly his hands were beneath her, molding her hips to his through that moment when his own body arched and shuddered.

  And she knew, even as he collapsed on top of her, that she was forever and irrevocably changed. She would never be able to live without this, without him, again.

  She heard him murmur her name and turned her face to the side to find his. She thought he would kiss her again, needed him to kiss her again. But his mouth only caught the single, hot tear that slid from her eye.

  She was lethargic, dazed. And cold, she realized. She was very, very cold.

  Gunner had rolled a little to his side, though his arm was still around her, holding her close. She tried to scoot even nearer to him for his body warmth, and he muttered something that might have been a curse. It was inarticulate, as bemused as she felt.

  “Where the hell is that key?” he mumbled, finally sitting up.

  It was right in his front jeans pocket. Had it been there all along? he wondered. Possibly. Probably. He shook his head and laughed at himself.

  He got up and took her hand, holding on to it even as he began to grab up their clothing. She watched him, feeling warm inside all over again. His body was lean and hard, and she loved the way his muscles slid beneath his skin when he stretched.

  “Let’s go inside and get warm.” He tugged on her hand again.

  Unfortunately, it was as cold inside the cabin as it was out. Gunner went to turn on the furnace, then he disappeared into a bedroom. Tessa stood in the main room, hugging herself, looking around.

  It struck her then that she had never actually set foot in a cabin before. But this was exactly how she would have expected one to look. There were sliding glass doors over a narrow, back deck. Just beyond it, the wooded land plunged steeply to the water. Tucked to one side of the doors was a tiny kitchen, separated from the main room by a breakfast bar. The fireplace was bigger than she had first thought, taking up much of one wall. A bearskin rug was centered on the floor in front of it, topping dark, hardwood floors.

  Gunner came back and dropped a pile of blankets on the rug, then he opened the fireplace and set to work. Tessa looke
d dazedly at the blankets.

  “We could always get dressed,” she murmured, shivering.

  He looked back over his shoulder at her. “What for?” he asked blankly.

  She laughed.

  It was a breathy sound at first, a sound almost startled by its own existence. He had been able to do that to her from the first.

  “Do me a favor, Princess. There should be a cord of wood on the back porch. Bring me a couple more logs?”

  She started automatically for the sliding glass doors, then she stopped cold. Her laughter got fuller. She finally had to lean against the breakfast bar to catch her breath.

  Gunner looked up at her curiously. “What am I missing here?”

  “Me,” she gasped. “This.”

  Ozone layer, he thought.

  “It just struck me how ever since I’ve known you, I keep finding myself doing things I would never have dreamed of before.” Like breaking into Benami’s house. Like what had just happened between them outside. She couldn’t regret it, she realized. How could she regret something so sweet, so perfect? And now, she thought, now she was about to stroll outside onto the back porch of this cabin buck naked.

  It didn’t matter that he didn’t quite understand, Gunner realized. Her laughter was alive. Her face lit with it. But his eyes didn’t stay on her face for long. They moved down the length of her, over her full breasts and narrow waist, and the black nest of hair that held secrets he had waited his whole life for.

  Something inside him quickened all over again. “Hurry up,” he said hoarsely.

  Her heart kicked at his look. “I’ll be right back,” she said softly, and went outside.

  When she returned with the wood, the fire was already blazing. He threw an extra log onto it anyway, and shook out one of the blankets. Tess dropped to her knees beside him. His strong hands caught her waist and tumbled her beneath him. He pulled the blanket over them.

  She was still shivering, but not with cold. “You do something to me,” she whispered. “You make everything...new, an adventure.”

  He looked down into her wide, bemused eyes. He wanted to tell her that he always would, that he’d always try to do just that. He thought of telling her that he loved her, that he’d been waiting his entire life for her, knowing she was out there somewhere, never quite able to find anyone else to fit the bill. And so he had stayed alone, dating but never loving, never able to, never wanting anything or anyone so much that he couldn’t walk away.