“Alex told me what happened with the Hanrahans bringing that extra couple.” He leaned over, she imagined to take off his shoes. “You don’t have to explain.”
“So we’re good with this—with sharing the bed?”
He’d gone still, the set of his shoulders tense and Angie thought he might have shaken his head. Just one small, disbelieving movement before he answered. “Yes, we’re good. Can we leave it?”
Not waiting for her answer, he stood abruptly, undid his trousers, kicked them off. Desire speared through Angie, a strong, sweet ache that came of knowing he stood so close in nothing but his underwear. Would he climb into bed now? Would she be able to stand to lie here, to not reach out and touch?
But he started to walk away and struck by momentary panic, she bolted upright. “Where are you going? I thought you were good with sharing.”
He stopped and his sigh sounded unnaturally heavy in the darkness. “I’m not that good with it, okay? I’m taking a shower and I could be a while, so just go to sleep.”
He was gone longer than Angie would classify as “a while,” but how could she sleep? Through the bathroom door she could hear the sounds of his shower, and when she shut her eyes she saw him in that split second before he closed the door. Illuminated by the bathroom light, in tall, tense, erect profile.
Was that why he said he would be a while? Did he need to take care of that hardness? Did he mean to cure it with a cold-water blast or ease it with a warm, soapy hand?
Heat washed through her, heat and a dangerously alluring temptation. What would he do if she walked into the bathroom and into the relentless wet pounding of that shower? Would he welcome her initiative, her hand, her body?
Hot and restless, she kicked the sheet from her body but the still bedroom air felt no less sultry. Even her silky little nightdress felt too much against her overheated skin. She sat up. Stared at the door. Started to peel the straps from her arms.
I don’t like surprises.
Life was so much easier as an impulsive, straight-forward, do-what-comes-naturally gal. Before he filled her mind with doubts and insecurities and cause for caution. She hated diffidence. She loathed this whole game of patience. She despised hiding her feelings, her wants, her heart’s desire.
“Aargh.” Arms and legs akimbo, she flung herself back onto the bed, kicked the sheet further away, pummeled the pillow. And about a second after she jammed her eyes shut, she heard the blessed silence of a shut-down shower. Probably she took a number of breaths in the ensuing minute or two. That seemed likely since she didn’t pass out from oxygen deprivation. But Angie didn’t remember doing anything other than lying in heart-thumping stillness.
Waiting.
He came out of the bathroom naked, but not to the bed. After he walked out of her line of vision she heard the soft shush of a drawer rolling open, and she wondered what he was pulling on. The fitted briefs he wore so well. Sleep-shorts. Full body armor.
Too tense for amusement at that last image, she closed her eyes and smoothed her nightdress down over her body. He didn’t like surprises. And despite the eyes shut and his silent barefoot approach, she knew exactly when he arrived at the bed. She knew he stood looking down at her.
“It’s okay,” she said, a husky sliver of sound in the dark. “I won’t bite.”
Ah, but she did. The heat of her voice. The shimmer of her nightdress. The line of her legs against his pale sheets. They all bit great ravaging holes in Tomas’s willpower, in everything he’d convinced himself to avoid in that shower. And while he stood there with all his blood and willpower and logic racing south, she stretched out her arm and ran a hand across the sheet.
“See…I can’t even reach your side.”
Apparently that was a demonstration of his safety. Laughable, really, given the perilous snarling state of his body. She might as well have reached over and ran that hand over his butt. He sat that part of his anatomy down on the edge of the mattress and considered the alternatives. Sheet or no sheet? Tent or no tent?
“Did the shower help?” she asked.
And this time he did laugh, a caustic, rough-edged sound that had little to do with amusement and a lot to do with the timing of her question. “Not my immediate problem, no.” However, he was very, very clean.
“Hot or cold?”
What? He swung his legs onto the bed, kept them bent, pulled up the sheet hip-high.
“The unhelpful shower,” she persisted. “Was it hot or cold?”
He rolled his head a little on the pillow, enjoying the cool imprint of his wet hair. It was the only hint of coolness in his burning body. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”
“It would stop me wondering.”
Yeah, well, maybe it would. And just maybe it would shock her into silence. “I tried both. Neither worked.”
“Does it usually?” Her silence had lasted all of ten seconds. And she didn’t sound very shocked…just curious. “The cold method, I mean. I’m well aware that the, um, hot alternative does its job.”
“You know this from experience?”
“More from reading than firsthand.” She huffed out a little sound of amusement. “No pun intended.”
“None taken.”
He heard her move, a silky frisson of movement as she turned or shifted positions. And, hell, he could feel her watching him. Intently. Which didn’t exactly help the problem they were discussing.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
Shee-sus. “If you want to know how I get off, why don’t you just ask instead of beating around the bush.”
“Interesting phrasing,” she said after the briefest pause. “But that wasn’t really my question. I asked if cold showers help.”
“Sometimes. Other times, you need a release.”
She didn’t say anything for a long while, so long that he thought he’d finally satisfied her curiosity. Long enough that he turned his head on the pillow to check. He wished he hadn’t. She lay on her side, closer to the middle of the bed than he would have liked, just watching him with a quiet intensity that grabbed him in more places than under the carefully draped sheet.
“Is that satisfying?”
He made a strangled sound, part disbelief, part laughter. “Jeez, Angie. Can’t you just read about this in a magazine?”
“I’m asking you, Tomas. I want to know if there’s a difference between that kind of release and making love with a woman.”
“Of course it’s better with a woman.”
“With any woman? Like one you pick up in a bar or something?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Angie was so involved in her side of the conversation, in choosing her careful words to keep him talking, sharing, giving, that his answer took a moment to sink in. She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I haven’t slept with a lot of women.”
“I didn’t think that you had, actually.”
“My inexperience showed?”
“No.” Surprised by his question—by its tone—she lifted up on her elbow, better to see his face. “Why on earth would you say that?”
“Two, okay? You and Brooke. Is that what you wanted to know?”
“I…” God, what could she say? Angie wet her dry mouth but that didn’t help when she had no words.
“Have I finally managed to shock you?”
Not shocked, she realized as the impact of his honesty took hold, but blown away that he’d told her. “It doesn’t surprise me,” she said slowly. “Knowing the kind of man you are… No, I’m not shocked.”
“You don’t know me, Angie.”
“I’ve known you most of my life, Tomas. I know what matters to you. I know that you never looked at another woman once you met Brooke. I know this whole deal with me and the baby has been incredibly difficult because you still love her—and because you could never treat sex casually.”
She could feel his tension radiating across the space that separated them in the big bed, could sens
e the barriers going up, but Angie couldn’t stop. He’d shared something incredibly personal, and she wanted—no, needed—to do the same.
“If your inexperience showed, then I wouldn’t have noticed. Every time I slept with you, every time you came to my bed and every time you came in my body, was completely amazing. Completely.”
There. She’d said it. And as much as the words, she heard the resonance of her heartfelt passion filling the heavy silence of afterward, perhaps because her heart and her body were so jam-packed with love and need and wanting that she could no longer contain it all.
“Do you know yet?” he asked.
Instantly, with absolute certainty, she knew what he meant. Her heart bumped hard against her ribs and she felt its beat low in her body, deep in her womb. “I don’t have my period yet, but that doesn’t mean anything necessarily. Not yet.”
“When?”
“Maybe tomorrow, although…”
When her voice trailed off he turned his head sharply, his eyes piercingly intense in the dark. “Although?”
“I don’t feel PMSy, either.” She laughed, a soft nervous bubble of sound, because he’d forced her to think about the forbidden. Every thought and connection she’d disallowed herself these past few days. “No chocolate cravings. No bloated tummy. I feel…”
She pressed the palm of one hand against her stomach, and felt an overpowering surge of emotion, part awe, part excitement, part nerves. Was she pregnant? Was there a minute speck of life already dividing and growing beneath her hand?
“How do you feel?” he asked, his voice low and gruff.
How did she feel? As if she hovered on the brink of something momentous. As if the night and their tenuous connection rested on her answer and his response. Her heart thudded so hard she felt constricted and breathless, and the arm holding her weight suddenly wobbled and wavered.
Before it collapsed her gracelessly, she sank down onto the bed and rolled onto her back. And she could find only one word to sum up that crushing wave of emotion. “Terrified.”
“Of having the baby?”
“I’m more terrified that I’m overreacting and overreading these tiny little signs.”
Slowly she turned her head and saw his eyes slide down her body. Everywhere they touched she felt an acute need, a cry from deep in her heart, and when they came to rest on her stomach, she could take no more.
“I’m more terrified,” she said huskily, reaching for his hand and drawing it to her, “that there is no baby here.” She pressed his hand against the curve of her belly. “I’m afraid that if I’m not pregnant I will leave here next week and that will be it. Over between us.”
She stroked her fingers between his, linking them, letting him know with her eyes and the arch of her body how much she craved his touch. “One more night,” she whispered. “One more time.”
“That won’t help anything, Angie.” Their gazes locked in a clash of heat and resistance, as he dragged his hand free and back to his side of the bed.
Angie followed. Slowly, inexorably, she peeled the sheet from his body and she touched him with only her fingertips, a teasing stroke as soft as he was hard. Breath held, she waited, knowing the night’s outcome hovered on the brink of this second.
He didn’t move. He didn’t turn. He didn’t run. And when she pressed her palm against him, when she molded her fingers to his thick heat, his whole body shuddered in response.
“I can help you with what the shower couldn’t,” she whispered. “Let me.”
His eyes burned into hers as she leaned in to kiss his mouth, and when their tongues came together in a slow, wet slide of heat the last threads of his resistance gave. She saw the flames leap, felt them spark and take hold in her body. She kissed him and caressed him until their breathing grew ragged and then she slid down his body, kissing him in a dozen quick places as she went.
She paused below his waist and told him she’d wondered.
“About what?”
“What you put on.” From hip to hip, she traced the wide black band at the top of his fitted boxers. “When you came out of the shower.”
“Would you like me to take them off?”
“No.” She dipped her hand into the waistband. “I would like to take them off.”
He helped her by lifting his hips. She didn’t help him by scraping her nails down his thighs. Or by dipping down and pressing her lips to the satiny tip of his erection. Then she eased back and took him in her hand.
“I was thinking about this, all the time you were in that shower.”
“So was I.” His voice was a low, hoarse rip of breath.
“I wanted to touch you, here—” she slowly stroked the full slick length “—and here.”
She moved lower and cupped his heavy weight, squeezed gently until he groaned in a mixture of pleasure and protest.
“And not only with my hand.”
His eyes flashed with dark heat. “No.”
“You don’t want me to make love to you?” She shifted closer, until her hair settled in a dark cloud over his tight belly, then she turned her head and rubbed her cheek against him, a soft sensual caress that filled her with a shivery tension.
She touched him with her tongue and his stomach muscles clenched as he sucked in quick air. And when she took him into her mouth and tasted him with slow, moist pressure he swore softly and profoundly and it wasn’t in protest. His hands fisted in her hair, stroked her face, touched her lips where they touched him, and his whole body jolted.
“Not like this,” he said, as tight and hard and strained as his body. “Inside you.”
Fingers fisted in her satin slip, he dragged her up to his mouth and kissed her deep, fierce, long. In the whisper of a moment he stripped her bare, but when he started to ease her onto her back Angie resisted.
“Not like that.” Hands planted on his shoulders, she forced him back down. “This time, I’m making love to you.”
When she came up on her knees and straddled him, hot hands spanned her waist and stroked around and over her bottom. In a hard roll of flexed muscles, he rose up from his waist to lick across her nipples, one after the over. To draw at her breasts until she cried out with a greedy need for more, for now, for him in her body.
“Now?” Raw, guttural, hot. “Here?”
And he parted her, stroked her there, found her wet and wanting. His eyes burned with the same blue fire that lit her blood as she lowered her hips and took him inside, and her heart all but exploded with the immensity of joyful hope.
This was different. This wasn’t a quick, purposeful joining in the dark. This wasn’t about making babies.
In this position there was no hiding. Their eyes locked and held with a connection more intimate than the slow, luscious slide of her body on his. More intense than the fire that licked at her control as he lifted and thrust hard. Fiercer than the heat whirling and spiraling through her blood as she rode him harder and faster until the climax exploded in a searing incandescent flash.
And tonight he wasn’t leaving afterward. Angie collapsed in his arms and listened to the strong race of his heartbeat against her cheek until sleep claimed her.
Angie woke alone, but that didn’t dim her memory of the night or of sleeping in her lover’s arms. Her lover, her man, her love. A goofy big smile spread across her face as she smoothed a hand over the tangled sheets. Cool, but that didn’t faze her blissful state.
Tomas always woke early, Sunday or not. Usually he rode, although some days he spent the early hours in his office. Today he’d been awake before dawn, when she’d needed the bathroom. Awake but not yet up, and when she’d returned to the bed he’d drawn her into his body, spoonlike, and cradled her belly with a protective tenderness that had twined her heart even faster to his.
Her hand crept now to that same spot, and a thrill of nervous excitement shivered through her body. She had to be pregnant. She felt too changed to be anything but. Not different physically—she palmed the rounded curve
that was her normal shape—but different as a woman. Hormonally, she thought, and she smiled even wider, amused with herself.
Could she really recognize the different mix of hormones at play? Could she know without knowing?
Slowly she turned her head on the pillow and her eyes fastened on the bag sitting by the bathroom door. The bag she’d hastily packed with what she might need overnight and what she didn’t want visitors to unwittingly find in her room. Things such as the half-dozen pregnancy test kits she’d brought with her from Sydney.
Her heart thumped hard in her chest. Too early? Maybe, maybe not. The instructions said the test was accurate from the time of a missed period, but was she missing a period yet? Maybe, maybe not.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and slowly padded toward the bag.
Thirteen
Tomas’s early morning ride wasn’t an easy lope to check water or the recently weaned herd, but a testing session with his young colt. Ace was ready to step up his training and as for Tomas—well, he needed an activity that required concentration, something to ground him in his world, to settle the niggling sense that giving in to Angie last night had changed everything.
It hadn’t. A weak moment and consensual sex without promises altered nothing. If anything had changed, then it was down to his visits to her bed two weeks before.
If.
The little word wormed its disturbing way into his composure as he strode back to the homestead. If she was pregnant. If she decided she wanted to stay. If he couldn’t convince her he had nothing more than his body to give.
He circled around the back, avoiding the living area where the overnight guests would be gathering for breakfast. He would do his duty and join them, but first he needed to shower and change. Outside his bedroom door he hesitated a moment. His pulse hiked, and he hated that uncontrolled response as much as he hated his indecisiveness.
And all for nothing, because he opened the door to an empty room. The bed was made, her overnight bag gone, and he fought an illogical sense of letdown. He’d dreaded this morning meeting and what she would say, what she might expect of him, the questions she hadn’t asked in the night that he knew she wouldn’t let lie.
Princes of the Outback Bundle Page 18