Maybe she wasn’t sure of him. Maybe she doubted even trying to believe in a future between them. But loving him... there was no doubt in her heart about that. She wanted him to be loved. She wanted him to feel loved, by her, and that compelling emotion drove her like nothing else ever had.
Wicked used to be one of the forbidden words in her vocabulary, along with greedy and selfish, But Spence seemed to see making love as a no-rules, no-holds-barred war...and tempted her to do the same. The battle began, a skirmish to see who could give more, a war for who could please whom first, an earthy, drugging-sweet battle to see who could tease and tempt the other beyond mercy.
At least until he ran out of patience. He’d lost his pants. Neither of them were sure when, and neither would have particularly given a royal banana where, except that he had protection in a pocket. Comforter, sheets, pillows flew in his hoarse, swearing search for his rumpled dockers. Both of them started laughing but when he finally found the blasted packet, their smiles faded. Neither wanted any more distractions.
He hauled her beneath him in the tangle of sheets. His heartbeat as thrumming-hard as a drum. His arousal pressed insistently, intimately, between her thighs. He took a kiss that stole every last ounce of oxygen from her lungs, then took another.
“I love you, Gwen.”
His voice was a whisper, fierce, almost angry with frustration. She heard what he said, believed he meant it. For now. She sieved her hands through his hair and answered him with an open-mouthed kiss, thinking that now was all that mattered. If she was begging for heartache later, she couldn’t care. Nothing in her life had ever felt as right as loving him.
He tested first with his fingers and palm, stroking, coaxing, praising her in murmurs for being so ready for him. She was more than ready. She wanted him like fever and fire, and restlessly pushed against him to end such play.
Wrapping her legs tightly around him, she felt him plunge into her, filling that aching hollow. Her eyes squeezed shut and her senses turned knife sharp, every sight, sound, taste and texture acutely linked to him. Love was a gift, not a price. It was hers to give. Expressing love was the one thing that had always come naturally to her, but it was as if she’d been rehearsing her whole life for the one man who’d cherish the gift instead of using her for it. “Come to me,” she whispered. “Come to me. Now, Spence...”
He began a driving rhythm to match her need, her fears, the wild racing love song in her heartbeat. They spun and rocked on the tangled sheets, climbing higher, then in a burst of fire and friction, soared free.
A sudden fretful wind ruffled the curtains. Clouds were roiling in a storm, but it wasn’t here yet. The breezes sifted the vanilla and jasmine scents from the bedside bowl of potpourri. The room was fuzzy dark. Beneath the sheet, Spence’s arms were still wrapped snugly around her.
Any second now Gwen expected to stop feeling... free. For weeks now she’d been on a self-reliance discovery mission. She wanted to be more free, but freedom was nothing she knew as an emotion before. Like the fairy tale about the caged bird who was too sad to sing, she didn’t know it would feel like such a freeing of mind and spirit to have those cage doors opened ... not that she wanted to scare Spence witless by breaking out in song.
He shared the same pillow. He was awake, his eyes on her face as cuddling warm as his arms draped around her. Desire curled through her when his hand strayed down in a lambent, stroking caress. When a woman felt as boneless as Silly Putty, it was hard to imagine that it was even possible to feel desire. Not again. And for sure, not this soon.
“Anyone ever tell you that your mouth is a miracle of nature?” Spence murmured. His fingertip traced her lower lip.
“Umm, no.”
“How about your fanny? Were you aware that you have the most delectable, inspiring and enticing behind anywhere on the planet?” His palm managed to locate that body part, too.
“Uh, no.”
“You took me out, tiger.”
If she were feeling more like her sensible, practical shelf, she undoubtedly wouldn’t have been tempted to believe him. Even in the dusty shadows, though, he looked wonderfully wasted. His hair was disheveled, his eyes drugged with softness. The harsh lines of tension and frustration carved in his expression were definitely gone now, and his voice was thicker than syrup.
She brushed a lock of hair from his brow, hungering to give back the huge riches he’d given her. “You more than took me out, McKenna. You gave me something back that I didn’t even know I’d lost.”
His eyebrows arched in question. “Explain? What did you think you’d lost?”
She hesitated. “I’ll tell you. I want to tell you. But first, I don’t want you worrying that our making love implies any noose around your neck or any obligation...”
Spence reached up and switched on the bedside lamp. The abrupt glow of soft yellow light made her eyes blink sleepily, yet he seemed suddenly wide awake, his gaze watchful on her face. “Were you afraid I’d bring up a terrifying word like rings?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he said carefully, “I know you value your freedom.”
“I’m trying to. Leatching to And it would really, trouble me if you thought I’d suddenly become... dependent... because we made love.” She’d been honest with him about the kind of unhealthy dependent relationship she’d had with Ron. She meant to reassure Spence that she would never let that happen with him. Yet the hand trailing her back suddenly stilled and tensed.
“You’re no clinging vine with me, never have been, Gwen. But let’s go back to the question we started with. What were you afraid that you’d lost?”
“Well, this is a little embarrassing to tell you...” That fretful breeze ruffled the curtains again. “But I was afraid of making love. Maybe ever again. The thing was, I used to feel pretty comfortable with sexual feelings. Not like I was any wild femme fatale or anything silly like that, but I had no particular reason to worry that I was inadequate or lacking....”
Her voice trailed off. As much as she was willing to be honest, somehow this was a ton harder to say than she’d expected.
Spence coaxed gently, “Just tell me.”
“It was just ... my marriage seemed to end the split instant I was no longer... useful. I never resented supporting my ex through medical school. But Ron practically hit a divorce lawyer at the speed of light when he finally set himself up financially with his practice. Until then, I didn’t realize that my ‘usefulness’ was the only thing holding us together.”
“Useful,” Spence echoed the word.
“It preyed on my mind for the last couple years. That I could have been so naive as to think this part of our lives was okay, when he obviously wanted someone more...exciting. And yes, all that’s over now. But I’d built up a fear of ever doing this again. With anyone. I was scared that I’d lost those feelings, scared I’d never been any good at it, scared I’d never just be able to... let go.”
“Gwen—”
“No, just let me say it and finish it teal quick.” Her eyes had been darting all over the room, everywhere, anywhere, but on him. But she looked at him now and touched his cheek. “I felt more than free with you. I felt wonder, like an explosion. More than I knew I could feel. You gave me more than you know, Me-Kenna, more than I can seem to tell you—”
He made a sound. Not loud, but sort of a husky growl from the back of his throat. Startling her even more, he abruptly scooped her beneath him and kissed her with the sizzling pressure of a brand. “We need to get a couple of things straight, tiger. Right now.”
“We do, huh?”
“You’re about to get a lecture on how exciting you are. How exciting I find you. And there’s going to be a test on this later, so you better pay attention.”
“I...um...yes, sir.”
“I want it very, very clear that I don’t think of you as useful. What you do to me is upsetting. Unsettling. Risky. And damned unnerving for a man who is never in the habit of losing control and doesn’t have a clue how
you manage to do it. Does that sound like I find you useful?”
“Umm, no.” Apparently that was the answer he wanted to hear, because it earned her another kiss. This one in vivid color, bruise red and wet and blurring at the edges, melting into another kiss before either of them remembered to breathe in between.
“You’re a lot of trouble, Ms. Stanford. I love your brand of trouble. If you—damn.”
Like the cut in a film, his hand stopped, his mouth stopped, a halfway-to-another kiss stopped. His eyes shot to the bedside clock, then back to her face. He swallowed, thick and hard. “Gwen, it’s ten to nine.”
Her eyes shot wide then, too. “Holy horse feathers.”
“The kids are all due back from the movies—”
“I know, I know. And you can’t have April coming home to an empty house. And the boys—neither of us is dressed.”
Both of them quit talking and hustled, fast. Spence hopped around the room as quickly as she did, scrambling into clothes and shoes, finding brushes, sweeping the covers back on the bed. A swift, hard kiss from him, a “we’re nowhere near done with this conversation, tiger” and then he was bolting out the door.
A chuckle of laughter bubbled in her throat for a minute. Both of them had been running around like teenagers, scared of getting caught.
The thought of the children catching them sobered her quickly, though. She was a single mom. A twenty-four-hours-a-day ever-present and always-available single mom. Sneaking around her boys for an affair would never work. And her sons already counted on Spence in their lives, the same way April seemed to have become naturally attached to her.
I don’t regret one minute we spent together, she thought fiercely. But a sudden clap of thunder made her jump. Lights flickered. Roiling clouds burst open in a pelting, noisy thunderstorm. She was waiting at the front door when Josh and Jacob raced into the house, heads wet from the sudden deluge, talking ten for a dozen about the movie they’d seen.
So quickly she was Mom again, not lover. And without Spence there, the reckless, wondrous feeling in her heart suddenly felt less like excitement than simply fear.
There were risks she’d never had the courage to take.
And with Spence, she was badly afraid that the cost of a mistake was the price of her heart.
Demo version limitation
Eleven
Gwen had proposed the dinner together. Spence thought it’d be fun, but she knew better from the start. A masochistic love of torture had nothing to do with this. She needed a whomp upside the head—a whomp of reality—and on this earth, there couldn’t be a more guaranteed way to self-deliver one than taking both families and all three children to McDonald’s.
“Three Happy Meals, two Cokes, one Sprite, two Big Macs and a large fry...Gwen?” Spence turned to face her.
“A Big Mac and fries’ll do for me, too. I’ll get the napkins.” She herded her rambunctious sons toward the condiment counter. The instant her head was turned, Josh elbowed Jacob, and Jacob naturally retaliated by slugging his brother. “Look, you guys. You can either settle down or go sit in the car, your choice.”
“He started it,” Josh said heatedly.
“I did not. You did. He called me a wiener and a bug-face, Mom,” Jacob said plaintively.
“I’m not interested in who started it. I’m interested in seeing manners and good behavior when we’re out in public—or you die. It’s as simple as that. Now I mean it, you two. Chill out. Now.”
They subsided... for a few minutes. Spence appeared with the mounded tray of food—and his so perfectly behaved angel of a daughter. “Could I sit with Josh?” April asked the adults.
“Of course you can, honey,” Gwen responded.
Of course, once the lovebirds took one side of the booth, Gwen was packed into the other side with Jacob between her and Spence. Squished sardines had more elbow room. Spence winked at her over the kids’ heads. “Ah, the price we pay for love,” he murmured under his breath.
“Why can’t I sit with Josh and April?” Jacob demanded.
“Because the chances of your not slugging your brother, on a scale of one to ten, are about a hundred and fifty on the doubtful side. Ketchup, anyone?”
The first plastic tube of ketchup squirted in a spurt on the window. The culprit was unknown, but could have been any of the three. Then the kicking under the table began. Then came the effusive bubbling into the straws, accompanied by gross animal noises and show-off burping. Then came an out-of-control giggle attack, which was naturally more contagious than the flu.
Gwen rubbed a napkin on the window, took a bite of a Big Mac and watched for the first spill. There’d be one. She just didn’t know when or how bad—yet.
The dinner was going exactly as she’d expected, she thought morosely. Well, something had to kick her head out of the clouds. She’d been dreaming about Spence. Not just at night, when she’d wake up with damp, twisted sheets. But when she was supposed to be working or carpooling or chaperoning a field trip to the St. Augustine Fort. She would dream they belonged together. She’d dream their love was so huge, so powerful and unique, that they could overcome all obstacles. She was in so deep that Spence seemed an inseverable part of her life, part of her air, as necessary to her as water.
He mattered so much that she was scared. Soul scared. He’d mentioned love, but the word and the emotion were easy to express when two lovers were naked together. Gwen never believed he meant it. They had something special, but if Spence’s heart were inclined to be snared by a woman, she’d always pictured him with his natural mate—a sharp, cool, poised go-getter. She had, in fact, mentally pictured him with dozens of women. None of them were remotely related to a hard-core cookie maker.
There was nothing wrong with being a cookie maker. Over the course of their relationship, Gwen knew she’d changed, gained confidence and a sense of being true to herself that she’d never had before. But that was the point. Spence had become the best friend she’d ever had, someone she could be honest with about who she was. And she refused to lose that friendship because her emotions were way, way out of control.
Dinner together with their monsters was a fine, fine way of obliterating any romantic dreams from her mind. Not just for now. She didn’t figure she was going to forget this lesson when she was 110.
“I don’t know who’s kicking,” Spence said gently to the world at large, “but you don’t want me to look under the table to find out.”
All kicking ceased.
Jacob suddenly piped up, “I think we need an alligator, Mom.”
“Oh?”
“Yup. There’s places where they’re dying. People just kill ’em to be mean. That’s what we learned in school today. There’s whole bunches of alligators that just got to be protected or they’ll be murdered. I was thinking we could keep one in the bathtub.”
“I think it’s against the law to keep one in the bathtub, sweetheart.” She took a napkin to his face. Jacob, being Jacob, considered eating to be a whole-body experience.
“Are you sure it’s against the law?”
“Well, not dead sure,” Gwen admitted, “but pretty sure. And I think an alligator would feel awfully lonely, all by itself in a bathtub.”
“I have an answer for that.”
“You always do, lovebug.”
“We could get two. Then they wouldn’t be lonely. And we could protect two from being murdered.” He shifted his eyes to Spence. “Could you talk my mom into it?”
“I’d walk on water for you if I could, sport, but I’m afraid you’re on your own with this one. I can’t talk your mom into anything.”
“I have that trouble, too. But my teacher says we have to care. And I care, Mom.”
“And I’m so proud of you for caring...” From the corner of her eye, she caught a Coke tipping. Spence had the same parental instinctive reflex. He grabbed it before she could. Their eyes met.
“Did you know the S‘minole Indian guys could have a coupla wives, Mom? But
they quit that a while ago. My teacher says it’s ’cause they got some morality. Also because having two wives was too much trouble.”
“My, you learned a whole bunch of things in school today, didn’t you?” She couldn’t seem to stop looking at his eyes. Awareness lasered between them. The kids, the noise, the smell of Big Macs and fries, the messes... reality was right there, loud enough to slam some common sense into even a demented woman. But...
“Yeah, the S’minoles are really cool. They drink this really yucky stuff called a Black Drink. And the kids don’t have to go to school if they don’t want to And they live in the ’Glades, where there’s lots of alligators. Their moms probably let them have all the alligators they want.”
“You think so?” Maybe she was demented, Gwen thought helplessly. It felt like she was touching him. The air between them seemed like an invisible silk-paved road where only they could travel, only they could communicate. Sexual vibrations hummed between their eyes like a love song. Only it was more than sex. It was a plumb-crazy feeling that she’d never stop hearing that love song, not with him, and it didn’t make a lick of difference where they were or what they were doing.
“Yikes!”
Startled, Gwen’s head immediately swiveled toward the sound of the enraged yelp coming from Josh. Spence spun around, too, just in time to see April squish a plastic container of ketchup on Josh’s head.
“April!” Spence thundered.
“He called me a sissy, Dad,” April said, and then to Josh, “You call me a sissy again, I’m gonna punch you good.”
“You are a sissy.” Josh pushed both hands into his hair, effectively spreading the mess and managing to coat his hands with ketchup at the same time. Then he aimed his dripping, red palms for April’s face. She shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.
Spence whipped out of his seat and had the two separated in seconds. “You’re not punching anyone, April, and you’re never pulling that ketchup thing on anyone again, either. You owe a big apology to Josh. Now.”
“But, Dad...” Gigantic crystal tears brimmed.
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