Lady with a Past
Page 15
“Are you awake?” Connor asked softly, his tender gaze moving from the photograph of his wife to the real thing beside him in the bed. When she didn’t reply, he moved to the foot of the bed and sat cross-legged on the tumbled sheets, staring at her while she enjoyed another three minutes of sleep. Then, a bit louder this time: “Maxie? Are you awake?”
“Uh-uh.” Her face was half buried in the pillow, muffling her voice. “Sleeping…”
Connor grinned, knowing all too well the reason for his beloved’s exhaustion. “Honey Bun? Snookums? Wake up, this is really important.”
Maxie sighed deeply, turning over on her back. Her face was sleep-flushed, her eyelids heavy and her luscious mouth drowsy. This, Connor thought with a hot rush of passion, was definitely a picture he needed to capture on film. Maxie Garrett in bed and in love. She put the rest of the world to shame without even trying.
“I have something very important to ask you,” he whispered, devouring her with his eyes. “Are you awake?”
“Let me think.” She stretched both arms above her head, sending the white bedsheet to an indecent level beneath her rose-tipped breasts. She loved to look at him in the mornings, with his thick hair tangled and his skin marked with the flush of sleep. It reminded her of the way he looked when they made love, so hot and wild, his glittering eyes intense with a never-sated need. “Maybe. Probably. I love you, Connor.”
“I love you back.” His eyes softened with a smile that came from his heart. He was all too conscious of the trust this woman had placed in him. He could never do enough for her, never love her enough to repay her for what she had given him. Faith. Happiness. Sunlight. Love that doubled and redoubled every moment they spent together. How had he lived so long without this? They were a family now, just the two of them. Whatever life had in store for them, they would meet together. “I just realized something. I don’t know what color our children’s hair will be.”
“Our children’s hair?” Maxie echoed, her dreamy gaze focusing on his narrow hips. Sadly, rumpled satin sheets obstructed a complete view. Her imagination kicked in and a flame flickered to life deep in her belly. “You’ve lost me.”
“Never,” Connor promised softly. “Still, here we are married and all and I don’t know what color your hair is. When you modeled, it was a dark gold. Now it’s auburn. Both look wonderful on you, but then again, green hair would look wonderful on you. So which is it?”
“I went lighter when I modeled,” Maxie said through a drowsy yawn, “but I had a brunette past. I went back to my roots, so to speak. Now you know all my womanly secrets.”
She had no idea how staggering her beauty was, her violet eyes gleaming with a soft invitation, a dusky curl clinging to her throat in a teasing question mark. Just looking at her—his wife, he thought with silent amazement—made him crazy with need. “So our girls will be dark-headed angels, just like you.”
“And the boys,” Maxie murmured, “will be dazzling charmers like their father. Unless heaven throws us a curve. It happens sometimes, you know.” Her hips began to move restlessly, sending the white sheet to her waist. “How many do you want?”
Connor was watching the seductive movements of her lithe body, his mouth suddenly dry. “How many what?”
“Children.” Bold in her new role as experienced wife, Maxie caught her bottom lip between her teeth, gently caressing his chest with soft fingers. She loved the hectic fire that flashed into Connor’s eyes. In her humble opinion, she had a gift for the powerful sexual secrets Connor had so tenderly revealed to her. “Would you like more than two?”
“Two what?” There seemed to be a lack of oxygen in the room. “Maxie, you’re killing me. My self-control only goes—”
“I’d like four,” she interrupted serenely. Her fingers continued their erotic exploration, a new wildness heating her from inside. “Uhmmm…this feels good. You know what?”
“Dear heaven.” He closed his eyes briefly. “What?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Hungry?”
She nodded, the tip of her tongue touching the corner of her mouth. “Not for food, poor man. I don’t care if I never have another can of SpaghettiOs. We’re going to live on love. Morning, noon, night, week after week, month after month.” She smiled ever so slowly, crooking a beckoning finger.
Connor’s eyes narrowed, his pulse coming hard and fast in his throat. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, baby. I’ll hold you to them.”
“Come here,” she whispered. “I need to kiss you.”
Instead of obeying her, Connor caught the white sheet half-heartedly covering her and pulled it slowly towards him. Each revealing inch gave him another view to treasure: the pearly skin of her breasts topped with pink rosebuds, her flat stomach, the soft honey-colored hair at the juncture of her thighs. “Sweetheart, you are so…”
Maxie pressed a frustrated fist to her mouth, her skin tingling from the slow movement of the cool satin sheet. “I’m so what?”
“Precious,” he said simply, tiring of the game. He stretched out against her in a rush, catching her hands in his and holding them above her head. He was already hard and Maxie gasped as she felt his warmth between her legs.
“Now you’ve got me,” she managed, “what are you going to do with me?”
Connor kissed her, anointing her throat, then moving to the baby-soft, responsive lips. “It would be easier,” he murmured, “to tell you what I’m not going to do to you.”
Maxie was squirming. She loved his open-mouthed kisses, his experienced tongue…and oh, when he released her hands and trailed his pleasure-giving mouth lower…this sent scalding ribbons of sensation through her hot body. Her excitement grew in intensity as she tried to prolong the exquisite rapture. “I love…oh…”
Connor smiled shakily against her perfumed skin. “You love this?”
Her hands tangled in his hair. “I love you. And this…”
“And this…?” Connor’s pulse was off the charts. His skin glistened hotly as he became wild, losing control in that way he had that made her body desperate with need. “And this…”
“Everything.” Maxie loved this side of him, when he became gloriously, elementally male. His hard-boned body, erotic mouth and seeking hands all adored her body, weighting her limbs and obliterating her thoughts like a powerful drug. Knowing she could make him lose control was an added aphrodisiac. She arched hard against him, deliberately adding fuel to the fire. Her fingers dug into his back as she felt the urgent pressure between her legs. Raw hunger, desperation, exhilaration…she felt it all swirling through her bloodstream like a powerful, forbidden drug.
Connor lifted his head, staring down into her flushed face with heavy-lidded golden eyes. “Look at me,” he whispered. “Look in my eyes when I…” He groaned involuntarily as he entered her. Then, when her mouth parted and her eyes drifted closed to savor the sensation, he shook her shoulders. “No. Look at me. Feel it with me. Stay with me while we go out of our minds, Maxie…”
And stay with him she did. She held his eyes when he increased his movements, clung to them as she spiralled higher and cried out for release. Never once, never once did they break that contact that went soul-deep.
Connor’s thoughts were a restless, reckless blur. He bit his lips as he drove deeper within her. He tasted a drop of blood, his breath coming in hard, racking shivers. And through it all he drifted in her eyes. In their loving, violet depths he saw the man he hoped to become. When she looked at him like that, he knew he could move mountains for her. And he would if she asked it of him.
“Now…” Maxie was trembling, moist with sexual heat. She felt him lifting her hips with his hands, giving him deeper access. Hard, fast…he took her to the edge of sanity with his fevered rhythm. Never once did he look away. And when their muscles tensed in a delirium of passion, she held fiercely to his eyes. They clung together as they reached the summit, held tightly as the frantic, pleasure-shudders spread like a sea of fireworks deep in
their bodies. Together, intertwined in body and mind, they had made a pilgrimage. And together they’d found their miracle—the sweet understanding of longing and the eternal prospect of fulfillment.
Afterwards they lay together in weary, soft-fleshed bliss. Connor was stroking Maxie’s damp hair, his eyes focused on her moist, kiss-stung lips. At times, she seemed much older than her tender years, but now he saw her youth, so pure and hopeful it wrenched his heart.
“To see you,” he whispered huskily, “is to love you. I knew that from the beginning. You’re my love, my best friend, my wife…everything I need on God’s green earth I found in you.”
She smiled tremulously, her eyes bright as sequins. “Tell me, Connor, do you feel married?”
His answer was soft, and straight from his heart. “Since the first day I saw you, angel. Since the very first day.”
“Connor?”
He nuzzled her throat. “Yes?”
“I’m hungry.”
His head came up. “Maxie, I’m only human. We just—”
“Not for that,” she chastised, her smile teasing.
“For food. Then I’ll have enough energy for the other kind of hunger. How about waffles? With big, luscious strawberries and mounds of lovely whipped cream.”
“Whipped cream?” Now she had his attention. “Mounds of it?”
“Oodles,” she promised.
“Can we have this breakfast in bed?”
Maxie might have been fairly new at physical intimacy, but she was nobody’s fool. Eyes sparkling, she ruffled the top of his head. “Silly man. I’m way, way ahead of you.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1072-1
LADY WITH A PAST
Copyright © 2011 by Tonya Wood
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