He stood near the counter, a brow slightly arched with gentle amusement. “Sure,” he murmured. “I’ll have some more coffee. And everyone is fine.” Erin kept her eyes on the cup while she poured more coffee from the pot. Her fingers were shaking badly, but what was worse, as she took a step closer to hand the cup to Jarod, she tripped. The coffee ran all over Jarod.
“Oh, no!” Erin gasped in horrified apology. She glanced down to see what had caused her to trip. Bill—Casey’s scrounging Persian—had not made it out the door with his mistress. Funny, Erin thought, she hadn’t even noticed the cat. But then she hadn’t noticed anything but Jarod, who was hastily slipping out of his jacket before the coffee soaked the material and scalded his flesh.
“Oh, Jarod!” Erin wailed, but he was laughing.
“I feel like I’ve really come home,” he murmured, tossing the jacket on the counter and ripping quickly at his tie and shirt, which a second later were also on the counter. Erin stared at his bare chest, thinking how badly she wanted to reach out and touch the crisp curling hairs that stretched across the muscled breadth and disappeared into the waistband of his pants. Then she thought, Oh, yes, Casey, he is gorgeous naked, he is trim and wired and hard as a drum and wonderful to crush against.
“I, umm, I tripped,” she stammered, swallowing and taking a step backwards. “Bill was beneath my feet. Bill is Casey’s cat, but he thinks he lives here half the time. I didn’t see him in the kitchen. He’s a bit of a pain, but he really is a beautiful cat. Nice company. I am so sorry about your suit—I didn’t burn you, did I?”
He planted his hands on his hips. A broad smile touched his lips, his eyes sparkled with the beauty of crystal. “You didn’t burn me, Erin, any more than just seeing you ever burns me. As to the suit”—he shrugged—“maybe we should move to Texas. Or California or Florida. I could probably get away without dress shirts in those climates—much more economical with you around.”
Erin stared at him blankly. She felt as if she had lost all control of her breathing once more.
Suddenly he took a step toward her, and his arms came around her. One hand held the small of her back, pressing her close against him, close against the heat of his hips; the other held her nape; his fingers raked through her hair, and her head was tilted to his.
“My interfering but sometimes uncannily perceptive cousin told me that you loved me, Erin,” he said huskily. “Is that true?”
She stared at him, at the deep warm cobalt in his eyes. She felt his chest so hard against hers, the coarse jet hairs she had longed to touch touching her flesh through the soft knit of her summer dress. His hands held her firmly, pressing her to him, to the desire that she could feel growing against her.
Anything that she might have planned to say to this man entirely escaped her. She closed her eyes for a second, but nothing helped. She inhaled his scent deeply, and she gasped out a yes that turned to a sob, and despite his hold on her hair she buried her face against his neck and repeated her broken yes.
“Erin,” he murmured, and his arms held her even closer. “Oh, Erin …” It was a reverent murmur, a brush of velvet that whispered through her hair and touched her cheek as he nuzzled against her bent head. For several moments, lost to time, they stood that way, as if afraid to let go and clinging to something infinitely precious in the determination that it not be lost. But then Jarod untangled himself from her arms and took her hands and she saw that his eyes held no guard as well as no ice; they were open and giving and more gentle than she had ever seen them, and they were filled with the tender love she could barely believe could be for her.
“We need to talk, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Could you handle getting me another cup of coffee?”
She nodded. Trembling, she poured more coffee and removed the whistling kettle—which neither had noticed—from the stove. How can I be doing this, she wondered, when I am not sure how I am standing? He loves me, and I can’t believe it. Oh, dear God, don’t let it be a dream.
He carried his coffee and her tea into the living room, seated her on the sofa, and stooped before her. “You have a lot to forgive me for, Erin.”
“No,” she protested, but he stopped her with a finger to her lips.
Then he rose, sipping from his mug as he moved about the room. “I love you, Erin, I want to live my life with you, I want not only this child, but perhaps one or two more. I want to sleep with you, wake to your beautiful silver eyes every morning …”
“Oh, Jarod,” Erin murmured. It was all she could think of to say. His words were all she could ask of God for a lifetime. Why did he keep talking, she wondered in a daze. What else could matter? He was here, all she wanted to do was bury herself within him.
“Erin,” he said softly, “you have to listen to me—I want you to understand. I believe I have loved you for a long time. But I didn’t want to love you. I did love Cara, very much. When I lost her, I couldn’t handle it. I was afraid to love. The only relationships I could have were those in which I could do nothing but take.”
He came back beside her again, taking both their cups and setting them on the small coffee table before the couch, and then taking both her hands between his. “Erin, I didn’t mean to be so cruel the day you came to me about the baby. All I could remember when you told me was the way that Cara had died. And then I assumed that you didn’t want the child—couldn’t possibly want my child—and that you, who were beautiful and healthy and alive, would abort the child. I don’t think I knew it at the time, but I wanted you to tell me that you did intend to keep the baby and that we would have to give our marriage a real chance.”
“Jarod,” Erin murmured, “I did want the baby all the time, I would have never …”
“I believe you, darling, I believe you. That’s why you have so much to forgive me for! Oh, Erin! You thought you were the cripple with nothing to offer because you were terrified to make love. But Erin, you were never the one lacking. I could take you, I could make love to you, but I was the cripple. You never lost the capacity for love itself—I had. But I think it was really from that night, from that very first night we lay together, that I began to love you. Erin, you gave me so very much….”
Erin opened her mouth to speak, to assure him, to tell him that nothing mattered any more except for the incredible fortune that he had come to love her, but he wasn’t done. He set her hands down firmly and began to stalk the room again, and she found herself thinking just what a magnificent man he was, with his handsomely toned, cat-graceful body and rugged features, remarkable eyes, and fine, sound character.
“I was jealous of Gil,” he said with self-contempt. “With no real right. Oh, I think he would have gladly had an affair with you—but half the men in the world probably feel that way. I should have known I could trust you.” He fell silent for a minute, looking out the glass unseeingly. “I misjudged Gil pathetically—and we all paid for it. I’ve apologized to him, but …” He shrugged, and Erin saw again how strong a man he was to recognize his own faults and be pained by them.
He looked back to her suddenly. “Erin—I did use you. I knew you couldn’t be a spy—and you could have left the Soviet Union long before you did. I simply couldn’t let you go.”
Erin was no longer able to stay seated. She flew from the couch, sliding her arms around his neck and holding him as her eyes sought his and her words spewed out vehemently. “I don’t care, Jarod! Oh, don’t you see, I don’t care about anything that happened in the past! You’re here, Jarod.” She broke off abruptly and stared at him with confusion misting the silver of her eyes to a charcoal gray. “Oh, Jarod! Why did you send me home? Why did you let me go through this month of thinking you didn’t care?”
“Because,” he said softly, “I couldn’t believe that you really loved me. That you would want a life with me: That you could give up all the glamour of your life to have our child.”
Erin tilted her head back and started to chuckle throatily. “Jarod—you do need to be forgiven—
for the torture my life has been all this time! I couldn’t care less about my career! I was busy retiring while you were sitting here getting acquainted with Casey.”
He took her by the shoulders and held her away from him, searching out her eyes. “Really, Erin? I have to admit that I’m too selfish to allow you in any more bubble baths! The only man I want seeing you clad in soap is me!”
Erin chuckled again and lowered her eyes demurely. “I was always dressed in those commercials!” she murmured chastely.
“But not in enough!” he charged. But then he was pulling her back against him and adding gruffly, “Mary said you always wanted to teach. Is that true?”
“Ummm,” Erin nodded against his chest. “But that doesn’t even matter …”
“It does matter,” he said softly. “And one day, we’ll see that you get to teach. But God, honey,” he added, inhaling deeply of the soft perfumed scent of her hair, “I never had a teacher like you. We’ll have a pack of adolescents falling in love with …”
“I doubt it—I’ll be too old to them!”
They laughed together, and the sound was wonderful to them both. It made them gaze at each other with a new shyness. And then a guarded mist shrouded Jarod’s eyes once more. “Do you realize, Mrs. Steele, that your child will be a quarter Russian?”
Erin sensed both the pride and the insecurity in him. “I know that,” she said softly, a beautiful smile curving her lips. “And I insist that you teach him—or her—the language. And how to play that beautiful instrument. And all the history and heritage…. We tend to lose so much of our pasts, Jarod. I want our child—or children, but I warn you, I think three will be quite sufficient!—to know all about both sets of grandparents! And to value their ancestry. I want them to know all that went into making their father such a fabulous man.”
“Erin…. My God, sweetheart,” he said, a husky timbre to his voice, “how I do love you.”
Erin smiled. “Can you think of anything else?”
“Yes, lots of things. I’ll need to go back to the U.S.S.R., but I can arrange to be here for the next year. I want to make sure that our child is born on American soil. And I’m afraid we can’t really move to California—the United Nations is headquartered here. And—”
Erin placed, the tip of her forefinger over his lips. “Jarod, I know we will have a great deal to discuss. I want to know more about your parents, and I want to know more about Cara. I know you will always love her a little, and that’s okay, Jarod. I’m glad you had such a wonderful love, I believe that that wonderful love is the same that we will share…. And I also want to know about Catherine, Jarod, even if knowing will hurt me.”
“Catherine?” he queried, a devilish tilt to his eyes. He half closed them lazily. “I’ll introduce you to Catherine—tomorrow.”
Erin swallowed suddenly. “Catherine is here? In the U.S.?”
“Ummmm,” Jarod teased. “One of her is.”
“One? You mean there are two Catherines?”
“Ummmm, but you love me and trust me, right? So for the moment, we can forget all about Catherine and Catherine.”
Erin pouted for a second, but he was right. She loved him, and right now they had been apart a little too long. A fire was raging within her, and being next to him was like trying to put that fire out with gallons of gasoline.
“Yes,” she murmured, her half-closed silver eyes luminescent as she tilted back her head. “We can forget Catherine if you’ll just make love to me…. Oh, Jarod! It’s been so long!”
He swept her into his arms and easily found the bedroom. But as he touched the zipper of her dress, the doorbell began to ring. “Don’t answer it,” he murmured, and with his whisper deliciously searing the lobe of her ear, she was tempted to obey.
But the bell kept ringing. “I have to get it, Jarod, I’m sure it’s Casey to pick up Bill, and she knows we’re here so she’ll just keep ringing.”
He lifted a brow in autocratic query, then scowled. “Okay—but get her out quick!”
“Yes, sir,” Erin complied, laughing as she scampered out of his reach. She grabbed the indignant Bill off the sofa where he had made himself comfortable after tripping her and walked to the door.
It was, indeed, Casey. Her eyes were alight with her insatiable curiosity, but before she could speak, Erin stuffed the protesting Bill into her hands. “Here he is, Case—and as to Jarod”—she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“I’ll tell you two things. He is absolutely gorgeous naked, and he is … wickedly … wickedly … wickedly wonderful!”
For the second time that day, she closed the door on Casey’s open mouth. And then Erin chuckled—wickedly—and hurried back to the bedroom door. She paused as she looked in. Jarod had already stripped and was waiting for her on the expanse of her bed. Erin’s smile deepened as she thought two conflicting thoughts—one, that her white ruffled bedroom set was way too feminine with Jarod sharing the room—but also that his powerful bronzed body looked wonderfully rugged against the sheer white.
“Is she gone?” Jarod demanded.
Erin nodded, suddenly discovering she had lost her voice again.
Jarod scowled at her with the brilliant, compelling blue of his eyes taking the lash from his next command. He patted the bed beside him. “Then come here, wife, and do it quickly!”
“Certainly,” she replied, lowering her thick lashes sweetly, and pretending to comply. But she moved toward the bed very slowly, shedding her clothing with infinite grace as she took tiny steps. She watched as his eyes narrowed and roamed over her.
And for several seconds he was content to watch as the still deceptively slender form of his wife was bared inch by inch before him. He breathed in deeply as she stood naked before him, savoring the high rise of her breasts heaving slightly in anticipation even as she taunted him, loving with his eyes the tiny waist that flared to full hips … to the long, shapely length of silken thighs and calves. She stood just out of reach, and for a second he allowed it, letting his eyes have the first touch of her assets, allowing the blue of his to meet and clash with the suggestive, sultry silver of hers.
And then he snaked out a hand, jerking her so that she fell on top of him with a little gasp of surprise. “Think to torture me again, eh, wife?” he teased, drawing provocative little trails over her buttocks as he pressed her against him, allowing the pressure of his own full arousal to further elicit hers. “Thank God you’re a klutz!”
“A klutz!” Erin protested in a panted shriek, pressing her palms against his chest in an effort to confront him with blazing eyes.
“Ummm …” he murmured, taking the advantage to lean up and encircle his mouth tenderly around a nipple that had provoked him beyond reason by jutting hard and impertinently in front of his face. “An … exquisitely … beautiful … klutz …”
By the time he finished his words, spoken brokenly as he savored first one breast and then the other, she could protest no more. Her breathing had become very ragged. The strength had gone out of her arms and she was above him only because he held her.
Then she was lifted, dragged beneath him, and accosted from head to toe with burning, fevered kisses and hands that caressed and fondled and teased, and her strength returned along with the delicious weakness so that she could tease and touch him in return.
His hands roamed everywhere, and she gasped when they eased her thighs apart, subtly teasing until she whimpered and cried out when his fingers touched the core that burned so for him. He whispered how much he wanted her, and she writhed insanely with the wildfire need. His kisses covered her again, and then she was begging him, and then refusing to beg, touching him until he stopped torturing her with that incredible magic because she had caused him to groan his own need out in guttural demand.
Tears escaped her as he moved within her. She shuddered, opening to him, locking her slender legs around him in feminine surrender that created, that gave and demanded in return.
Similar thoughts struck them
both as the world evaporated into a red glow that eclipsed the magnificence of that upon Red Square at midnight. They were together, they were home.
Jarod caught her lips as he escalated his rhythm with the rising spiral of his flaring desire. How he loved her, how he loved the tempestuous passion that met and matched his own. Deep within her he knew not only the ecstasy she gave him, but the love.
When the red glow shattered into blinding rapture, he held within her still, knowing that even now they were together, and that this lethargic delight that gently brought them back to the world was also a form of rapture. Touching her, holding her, being near her. It was all rapture. It was home. It was love.
He refused to pull away from her, but held them locked together. He lifted his head to meet her silver eyes and to see if her need to be together so intimately matched his own.
Her eyes flickered open. They half closed, beautiful, lazy, sensuous with satiation. She smiled, her lips a moist, lazy, half curl. And then she allowed her eyes to close, answering his unspoken question. Her words were richly husky. “My dear Russian American husband, my darling, my love, you are wickedly, wickedly, wickedly … wonderful.”
EPILOGUE
THE HALLWAY WAS LONG and white, white walls, white tile flooring, evoking complete sterility.
The man and woman who walked the corridor were a vivid contrast, he so dark, she so vividly fair. Both tall, lithe, statuesque; something about them as a couple was very beautiful, arrestingly stately.
Her silver eyes flashed with confusion and sparkling curiosity, and she demanded in a hushed whisper that well fit the sterility of her surroundings, “Jarod, where on earth are we going?”
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