by Diana Palmer
She nodded.
He sighed. “You’ll get used to me. A lot of times I say things in the heat of the moment that I don’t really mean. I lose my temper sometimes when I shouldn’t. I’m set in my ways.”
“I know.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Second thoughts, Corrie?”
She stared into her coffee cup. “I want to have your baby,” she whispered. “Ted, for heaven’s…sake…!”
The coffee had gone everywhere, as if his hand had suddenly developed a huge spring. He muttered apologies and started grabbing for paper napkins to mop them both up.
“Don’t say things like that to me when I’ve got a cupful of hot coffee, for God’s sake!” he raged, glaring at her from his superior height. “Don’t you know that it’s taking every ounce of willpower I’ve got to sit here calmly with you when all I want to do is get you into the nearest bed!”
Chapter 11
Coreen flushed wildly at the stark exclamation. “Well, you don’t have to make it sound like some sinful orgy, do you?”
“That’s what it is,” he returned. “Sinful. Dangerous. Delicious. Forbidden.”
“You want it, too,” she accused.
“I want you,” he said heavily. “You! It never stops.” His eyes betrayed him, for once. “It never has and it never will.”
The confession made her breathless. She sat down, ignoring the coffee stains on the sofa, and stared up at him helplessly.
“Why don’t you laugh?” he demanded. “Don’t you feel entitled to rub my nose in it? I’ve given you enough hell over the years that you should feel vengeful.”
“All I feel is hungry,” she whispered. “I love you so much, Ted,” she added on a shaky breath. “More than you could imagine in your wildest dreams.”
His face went hard. “Prove it. Marry me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she agreed huskily.
“No protests? No postponements?”
She shook her head.
He nodded slowly. “All right.”
He left five minutes later. The next morning they were married by a nervous justice of the peace in Jacobsville, with a shocked and delighted Sandy for maid of honor and a highly amused Calhoun and Abby Ballenger for witnesses.
After the ceremony, everyone congratulated her and then Ted, and walked out arm in arm, speaking in incredulous whispers.
“Shell-shock,” Ted informed Coreen when they were back at the Victoria apartment two hours later. “They think I’ve lost my mind.”
“So do I,” she agreed.
He turned, his pale eyes possessive on his new wife in her neat white suit and pale pink blouse. There had been a pillbox hat with the ensemble and a white veil over it. Ted had lifted the veil to kiss her with brief affection in the justice of the peace’s office.
“I want you,” he said roughly. “Right now.”
She flushed. She’d thought they might have a meal, go to a movie, do something together. Apparently this was his idea of togetherness, and perhaps the only sort he wanted with her.
“All…all right,” she said, taken aback.
He shepherded her into the bedroom, closed and locked the door and took the phone off the hook. It wasn’t even dark, and she was intimidated by the passion in his eyes and the urgency of his hands on her clothing.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said unevenly as he divested her of jacket, blouse and skirt in short order. “I swear to God I won’t. Just…bear with me, if you can.”
“Of course,” she said nervously.
He slid the rest of her clothing from her stiff body and lifted her gently onto the bed. His pale eyes wandered over her like loving hands, lingering, possessing until a muffled groan broke from his tight lips.
He sat down and pulled off his boots. Coreen turned her head away while he undressed, dreading her own inability to respond so quickly to him.
Scant minutes later, he pulled her into his arms and she felt the impact of his nudity against her like a long, hot brand. She gasped.
He broke her mouth open under his, and his hands began to smooth over her back in long, slow caresses. She felt his arousal against her smooth belly and stiffened.
“Open your eyes,” he said huskily. “Watch me while I take you.”
She flushed as she complied, her embarrassment plain in the eyes that watched him lever above her.
He coaxed her legs apart and eased between them. She felt him in total intimacy and was shocked into looking down. Her eyes widened and her body went rigid.
“So that’s what you think,” he murmured gently, and smiled. He chuckled as he settled himself against her and relaxed. “No,” he said. “Not quick. Not this time. I only want you to get used to the feel of me. But you’ll beg me before you get me.”
She didn’t understand. Not then. But fraught minutes later, after his mouth had explored every silken inch of her and then his hands had kindled sensations that had to be sinful because of their incredible stimulation, she did understand.
She was perspiring madly, shivering all over with a throbbing ache in her lower body that was new and frightening. And he kept the intimate contact between them, but when she lifted her hips to coax him into possession, he lifted free of her tempting pressure.
By the third time it happened, she was in tears. “Oh…please,” she sobbed, lifting to him in such a tense arch that her whole body shuddered with the strain. “Oh, please, it aches…so!”
“Aches,” he agreed huskily. “Burns. Throbs like a wound.” His lean hand slid up her thigh and caught it firmly. “Look, Corrie. Look!”
He pulled her up toward the hovering threat of his masculinity and slowly, tortuously, let his body ease into hers.
She gasped, shivering, at the feel of him. She was so aroused that the tiny hesitation her body caused him was only part of the miracle. She looked down and her eyes dilated feverishly as she saw them join.
Her rose flush mirrored his own fascination. None of his experiences had prepared him for the shock of her virginity, or its implications. He was her first lover. In spite of everything, he was the first.
His fingers dug into her soft thigh and he caught his breath. “My God,” he whispered, awed.
Her own eyes sought his then, wet with tears, wide with wonder.
His teeth clenched at the hot wave of pleasure that shot through him as he felt her take him completely. He met her eyes for a second before he groaned and lost control.
She felt the impact of his weight on her as he pressed her hungrily into the mattress, his hands under her hips, his muscular body suddenly dancing with hers in a rhythm that she felt to the soles of her feet.
“Match me,” he whispered urgently into her mouth. “Yes…yes! Take me…take all of me…take me, Corrie!”
She cried out as the deep, dragging pleasure suddenly spread over her like fire, throbbing, throbbing, throbbing!
He groaned harshly and his breath raked his throat as he gave in to the same madness that had her in its sweet grip. For endless, aching seconds, they shared the same soul.
His forehead was damp against her breasts. She felt her heartbeat, like an unsprung watch, shaking him in her clasping arms.
“I couldn’t have waited one more minute,” he whispered harshly. “Years of waiting, years of holding you in my arms, only to wake at dawn and find you gone!” His arms tightened and his mouth moved hungrily against her body. “I’ve got you now. You’re mine, and I’ll never let you go!”
Coreen heard him, but it took a minute for the words to register. “Years?”
“Years.” He nuzzled his face against her soft breast. “Corrie, I haven’t had a woman in almost three years,” he said heavily.
She went very still in his arms. “But…but all those photos in the gossip columns!”
“Window dressing,” he murmured with a harsh laugh. “I couldn’t even feel desire for anyone else. You were all I wanted. Only you, Corrie.”
“But you let me marry Barry! You
said…you said you didn’t want me!”
His arms contracted. “I tried so hard to be noble,” he said, his voice tormented. “I wanted to spare you a husband so much older than you, whom you might regret marrying one day, don’t you see? I had no idea, none at all, what a hell Barry would make of your life! I have even that on my conscience.” His voice went husky. “I loved you. Loved you more than honor. More than self-respect. More than my life.”
Her own words. Echoed. Felt. She closed her eyes and tears slid from them, burning her cheeks. She began to sob.
Vaguely she heard him gasp, felt his mouth taking away the tears, soothing away the pain. He eased over her, his body as gentle as his mouth, loving her with motions as tender as they were stimulating. Possessing her all over again, but with such love that she wept all through it, until the contractions began deep in her body and echoed in his, until they lay as close as two souls, straining together in the soft explosion of ecstasy that formed total communion.
He didn’t move away afterward. He held her to him while he rolled over onto his back, sparing her his weight. But they were still joined, completely.
He drew in a shaken breath, feeling her so much a part of him that when he breathed, her body moved with him.
“It will be like this every time, now, when we love,” he said deeply, smoothing her back with lean, tender hands.
She smiled and kissed his damp chest. “When we love,” she echoed shakily. Her hands clung to him. “Don’t ever let go.”
His arms enfolded her and he smiled with loving exhaustion. “Well…maybe just long enough to eat,” he murmured dryly. “Eventually.”
Sandy glowered at both of them when they told her, six weeks later, that she was going to be an aunt.
“It’s positively indecent,” she muttered. “You’ve only been married six weeks today!”
Ted managed to look proud and sheepish all at once, his hand tight around Coreen’s as she looked up at him with pure adoration.
“We’re in a hurry,” he said.
“No kidding!” Sandy said sarcastically.
“I’m not getting any younger,” he continued, but without any traces of resentment or bitterness.
“And we did have in mind a baseball team,” Coreen lied, tongue-in-cheek.
Sandy burst out laughing and hugged them both. “Well, I’m very happy,” she confessed. “But what are people going to say?”
Actually they said very little. Mostly they grinned at the inseparable newlyweds who were so obviously in love and offered double congratulations.
As Ted later told his beaming wife, it was mostly his pride that had kept him from proposing to her years ago. Now Regan’s pride was his wife—and the child they would both welcome.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0005-0
REGAN’S PRIDE
Copyright © 1994 by Diana Palmer
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