Melody was silent, just staring at him, her eyes wide.
“So,” Cowboy said, “now you know.”
She still didn’t say a word. But she didn’t run away, either.
He took a step toward her, and then another step, and she still didn’t move. “I may be way out of line here—no, I know I’m way out of line, but I figure as long as I’m being brutally honest, I have to tell you that I’ve spent these past few weeks damn near tied in knots from wanting you so badly. I wanted you and I thought I needed you, but I found out today that wanting and needing aren’t the same thing. Need’s not about sex, is it? Not really. Because today I needed you more than I’ve ever needed anyone, and you were there for me.” He forced a smile. “And what do you know? We had our clothes on the entire time.”
He touched her hair, touched the softness of her cheek. “Look at me,” he said. “Still putting the moves on you. We’ve reached an understanding, made an agreement. We’ve achieved a friendship of sorts, and I still can’t seem to back away. I still want you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman.”
She was trembling. He knew damn well that kissing her wasn’t the gallant, gentlemanly thing to do, but he couldn’t keep himself from lowering his mouth to hers.
She tasted so sweet, so perfect. Her lips were deliciously soft, exquisitely inviting. He pulled her closer, and the tautness of her belly pressed against him. He loved the way she felt beneath his hands, loved the way she seemed to sigh and melt against him as he kissed her again, deeper, longer, but just as slowly and gently.
“Come inside,” she whispered. Her eyes were soft and dreamy as she gazed up at him. “Please?” Her fingers were laced through his hair, and she tugged his head down toward her to kiss him again.
She kissed him.
Cowboy knew he should turn and walk away. He knew nothing had changed. He was still going to have to leave tomorrow. But hell, it was entirely possible that she was doing this because he was leaving.
He broke free from her kiss. “Mel, are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Yes. It wasn’t something he needed to hear twice.
She took his hand and drew him into the house. She didn’t say another word as she led him toward the stairs and up to her bedroom.
Cowboy felt compelled to speak. “Honey, I don’t have any condoms. Again.”
She glanced back at him. “Jones, it’s not as if you’re going to get me pregnant,” she said. “Again.”
“Still, I was reading this whole huge debate about whether or not women should have sexual relations in the eighth and ninth months of their pregnancies,” he told her. “The consensus was unless the pregnancy was high risk, anything goes. Except there was a minority who seemed to think unprotected sex increased the risk of potential infection to the baby.”
She’d gone into her room without turning the light on and now stood there in the moonlight, gazing at him. “Sometimes I think you go a teeny bit overboard with your research. My garden, for instance. It looks as if it’s ready for a Siberian winter. All I really needed was someone to clear out the dead plants and throw down a little mulch.” A smile softened her words. “Thank you for taking care of it, by the way.”
“You’re welcome. But yeah,” he agreed, “I’ve definitely read far more than I should have about the potential dangers of pregnancy. Eclampsia. God. Just the thought of it scares me to death.”
Damn, he was nervous. He’d wanted her for so long, but now all he could do was stand here and talk. Yada, yada, yada. He couldn’t seem to make himself shut up. He cleared his throat, fighting the urge to ask her about her blood pressure. She was fine. He knew she was fine. With the exception of the relentless morning sickness she suffered, she was healthy. Melody’s was not a high-risk pregnancy. He’d already discussed it with Brittany, and she’d reassured him. She was a nurse; she should know.
He cleared his throat again. “May I lock your door?”
Melody nodded. “Please.”
The door had an old-fashioned hook-and-eye lock, and he fastened it. It wouldn’t do much against an invading horde, but for privacy, it would work just fine. When he turned around, she was closing the curtains. Without the moonlight, the room was very, very dark. He switched on the light.
“Oh,” she said, “please don’t.”
He turned it off. She must’ve had some kind of room-darkening shades because it was nearly as dark in there as it had been down at 175 feet in the quarry. “Mel, I’m going to need night-vision glasses to see you.”
She was a disembodied voice, lost in the shadows on the other side of the room. “That’s the idea.”
“Oh, come on. Weren’t you paying attention to anything I said downstairs on the porch?”
“Yes,” she said. “And it got you this far. It was…very nice. But…You know that cover Demi Moore did for Vanity Fair when she was pregnant?”
“You mean the one where she was naked?”
“Yeah. Pregnant and naked. She looked amazingly beautiful.” She paused. “I don’t look anything like that.”
Cowboy had to laugh. “How will I ever know?”
She laughed, too. She had a musical laugh that brushed over him like velvet in the darkness. “My point exactly.”
“How about we turn on the light in the bathroom? Nothing too bright?”
“How about you come over here?”
It was an invitation he couldn’t refuse. He moved toward her, sensing more than seeing that she’d climbed into bed. He reached for her, and with an explosion of pleasure, discovered that in the darkness she’d rid herself of her clothes. Every last little stitch was gone.
It was a total surprise, and as he touched her, he realized that with the lights off and the room so very dark, his other senses were heightened. Making love in the dark this way might not have been exactly what he’d wanted, but it was going to be very, very, very good.
He kissed her, her skin smooth beneath his still-exploring fingers. Her breasts were so full, they rested on the enormous bulge of her belly—the bulge that held their baby.
She moaned as he kissed her harder, deeper, filling her mouth with his tongue and his hands with the softness of her breasts. Her nipples were hard peaks pressed against the palms of his hands, a sensation that was impossibly delicious.
And apparently, it felt as good from Melody’s end.
She pulled his shirt free from the waist of his pants, slipping her hands underneath and sliding her fingers up along the muscles of his chest as they knelt there together on her bed.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to touch you like this,” she whispered. “All those weeks of watching you run around with hardly any clothes on…”
Cowboy had to laugh. All this time, he’d thought she’d become immune to him.
He ran his hands lightly down her stomach, marveling at the way it seemed to bloom from her body. The rest of her was still slender. It was true, she’d put on a few extra pounds since Paris, but he’d thought she was a bit too skinny before. She felt good beneath his hands—so soft and utterly, thoroughly feminine. He strained to see her in the darkness, but though his eyes had tried to adjust, he still couldn’t see a damn thing.
She kissed him as she tugged at his shirt, breaking off to say, “I’m feeling very much as if I’m the only one naked here.”
“That’s because you are. And, to be honest, I like it. There’s a real hint of a master-slave thing to it,” he teased. He lowered his head to draw one hard bud of a nipple into his mouth as his hand explored lower, sweeping beneath the taut curve of her stomach, his fingers encountering her soft nest of curls. Talk about a turn-on. She was ready for him, slick with heat and desire, and as he touched her, first lightly, then harder, deeper, she clung to him.
“Master and slave, huh?” Her voice was breathless. “In that case—slave, take off your clothes.”
Cowboy cracked up. Damn, he couldn’t get enough of this girl. He yanked his shirt over his head, then
kissed her, pulling her back with him onto the bed, careful, so careful to be gentle.
He felt her fingers fumble with the buckle of his belt, and he tortured himself for a moment, just letting her knuckles brush against him as she worked to get him free. There was no way she’d ever figure out how to unfasten that belt—certainly not in this blanket of darkness, and probably not even in the light.
“Jones…”
He reached down with one hand and released the catch.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
It took her next to forever to unfasten the button. And he was so aroused, it took her another eon to work the zipper down, and then…
She didn’t touch him. Damn, she didn’t touch him! She dragged his pants and his shorts down his legs instead, leaving him screaming with need, aching for her touch, and loving every minute of the way she always kept him guessing.
Melody pulled off his boots one by one, and he wished for the zillionth time that it wasn’t so damned dark. He would’ve loved to have watched.
He propped himself up on his elbows as he helped her pull his legs free from his pants. “Honey, do you have a condom?”
She froze. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No. I…just want to protect you and the baby.”
He felt her sit down next to him on the bed, felt her touch his leg, her fingers trailing up from his calf to his knee to his thigh. “Most guys wouldn’t think past the fact that they couldn’t get me more pregnant than I already am.”
Her fingers did slow figure eights on his thigh. He reached for her, but she heard him start to move and backed away. He felt her fingers again, this time down near his ankle. He’d never realized that being touched on the ankle could be such a mind-blowing turn-on. He tried to moisten his dry lips. “Most guys wouldn’t have gotten totally paranoid by reading every book in the library on pregnancy.”
“Most guys wouldn’t have bothered.” She kissed him on the inside of his knee, her mouth soft and moist and cool against the fiery heat of his skin.
Cowboy reached for her again, but again, she wasn’t there. He had to move slowly, searching for her carefully in the pitch black. He didn’t want to knock her over with quick moves and flailing arms. Besides, he liked this game she was playing too damn much to want it to end.
But it was going to end. In just a handful of hours, the sun was going to creep above the horizon, and this night was going to end. And he was going to crawl out of Melody’s soft bed and walk out of her room, out of this house. He was going to pack up his tent and be gone. Game over.
It was ironic. The fact that there was an end in sight was quite possibly the only reason Melody was making love to him tonight. It was possible that it was only because he’d already told her that he wouldn’t stay that she could let herself have this time with him.
But with each kiss, each touch, each caress, he was wishing that he could keep this crazy game alive forever.
Forever.
She touched him again, and this time he was ready for her. His fingers closed around her arm and he gently pulled her up, finding her mouth with his, her body with his fingers, entangling their legs, the heaviness of his arousal against the roundness of her belly.
She moved languidly, lazily, kissing his neck, his ear, that delicate spot beneath his jaw that drove him crazy and made him want nothing more than to bury himself inside her forever.
Forever.
In the past, the word had scared him to death. It meant a deadly sameness, a permanent lack of change. It meant stagnation, boredom, a life of endless reruns, a slow fade from the brilliant colors of fresh new experiences to the washed-out gray of tired and old.
But Cowboy could be a SEAL forever without ever fearing he’d fall victim to that fate. Even if he ever got tired of parachuting out of jet planes, Joe Cat would have Alpha Squad doing HALO jumps—jumping out of planes at outrageously high altitudes, yet not opening the chute until they reached a ridiculously low altitude. And if he got tired of that—and he’d have to do one whole hell of a lot of ’em ever to be blasé about the adrenaline-inducing sensation of the ground rushing up to meet him—there was always Alpha Squad’s refresher courses in underwater demolition, or Arctic, desert and jungle survival, or…
The truth was, he could be a SEAL forever because he never knew what was coming next.
Cowboy had always thought he’d feel the same about women. How could he possibly agree to spend the rest of his life with only one, when he never knew for certain who might be walking into his life at any given moment? How could he survive the endless stagnation of commitment even as temptation walked toward him every time he turned a corner?
But as he lost himself in the sweetness of Melody’s kisses, he found himself wondering instead how he could possibly survive the constant disappointment of searching for her face in a crowd—despite the fact that he knew damn well she was two thousand miles away. How could he survive turning corner after corner, coming face-to-face with beautiful women, women who wanted to be with him—women he wanted nothing to do with, women whose only real faults were that they weren’t Melody?
She pulled away from him slightly, opening herself to his hand, lifting her hips to push his fingers more deeply inside her. Her own fingers trailed down his side, moving across his stomach, almost but not quite touching him.
“You’re driving me insane,” he breathed.
“I know.” He could hear the smile in her voice.
“I want you so badly, honey, but I’m terrified I’ll hurt you.” His own voice was hoarse.
She pulled back. “Do you mind if I get on top of you?”
Mind? Did she actually think he would mind? But then he realized that she was laughing at his stunned silence.
“But first…” She touched him, and his mind exploded with white-hot pleasure as she kissed him most intimately. “Do you think if I keep doing this while calling you Harlan,” she wondered, “you’ll learn to associate positive emotions with the use of your first name?”
Cowboy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Harlan,” she said. “Harlan. Harlan. Harlan. You know, I never really thought about it before, but I like that name.”
He could barely speak. “I like it, too.”
Melody laughed. “Wow, that was easy. I think I may have just developed a powerful brainwashing technique. Better not let any enemies of the U.S.A. get their hands—so to speak—on this, or we’ll all be in trouble.”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t work with anyone else but you.”
Melody was quiet for a moment. “Well, that was really sweet,” she said. He could tell from her voice that she didn’t believe him.
He pushed himself up on one elbow. “Melody, I’m serious.”
She pushed him back down, straddling his thighs. “Let’s not argue about this now,” she told him, reaching for something. He heard the sound of a drawer opening, and then she moved back. “Let’s just…pretend that we might’ve been able to make this thing between us work.”
“But—”
“Please?” He felt her touch him, covering him with a condom.
“Mel, dammit, if you could look into my eyes—”
“Hush up and kiss me, Jones.”
It was an order he couldn’t refuse. And when she shifted herself forward, and in one smooth, languorous motion, surrounded him with her tight heat, he couldn’t do more than groan her name.
He wanted more. He wanted to thrust deeply inside her. He wanted to flip her onto her back and rock her, hard and fast, the way he knew she liked it. He wanted to turn on the light and gaze into her eyes. He wanted to watch her release, see the incredibly sexy look on her beautiful face as he took her higher than she’d ever been before.
Instead, he lay on his back. “Mel, I’m afraid to move.” His voice was a paper-dry whisper in the darkness.
“Then I’ll move,” she whispered back, doing just that.
The sensation was off the charts. Co
wboy clenched his teeth to keep from raising his hips to meet her. It was possible that he’d never been more turned on in his entire life. Not in the bathroom of the 747. Not in Paris. Not anywhere.
“But I want—”
She pushed herself a little bit farther onto him, and he heard himself groan. “Come on,” she urged him, “I promise I won’t let you hurt me. I promise there are pregnant women everywhere around the world, making love just like this, right this very minute….”
Her long, slow movements brought him almost entirely out of her before he glided deeply back in.
And it was then, as Cowboy pushed himself up to meet her in this, the sweetest of dances, that he knew the truth at last.
He wanted to come home to this woman every night for the rest of his life.
He wanted forever, and he knew that that forever with Melody would be as fascinating and endlessly exciting as his future with the SEALs, because, bottom line—he loved her.
He loved her.
And he knew right at that moment that in Paris, when Melody had kissed him goodbye and told him not to write, not to call, not to see her anymore, she’d been both very, very wrong and very, very right. She had been wrong in not giving them a chance to be together. She had been wrong not to let their passion deepen. But she had been right when she’d told him that real love was so much more than the hot flood of lust and relief. Because while his feelings for her had been born of danger and attraction and the powerful rush of being trusted and needed so desperately, it wasn’t until he was here, in everyday, average Appleton, U.S.A., that those feelings had truly started to grow.
He loved her, but not because she needed him. In fact, one of the reasons he loved her so very much was because she refused to need him.
He loved her laughter, her point-blank honesty, her gentle kindness. He loved the faraway look she would get in her eyes when she felt their baby kick. He loved the fierceness with which she supported her sister. He loved the sheer courage it must have taken for her to stand up in front of the conservative Ladies’ Club of Appleton to announce her pregnancy. He loved sitting on her back porch and talking to her.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Part 1 Page 98