Men Made in America Mega-Bundle

by Gayle Wilson, Marie Ferrarella, Jennifer Greene, Annette Broadrick, Judith Arnold, Rita Herron, Anne Stuart, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Bevarly, Patricia Rosemoor, Emilie Richards

  “My fault,” she whispered, knowing that it had been.

  “Yes,” he said. His hand eased under her chin, lifting until her eyes met his again. “All your fault,” he echoed. He was smiling at her, the hard lines of his face totally relaxed for the first time since she’d met him. The cold blue eyes filled with warmth.

  “It’s been a long time,” he confessed softly.

  Apologizing, she realized suddenly. Deke was apologizing to her. For…

  She took a deep breath, wondering how to respond. There was nothing she wanted to criticize in what had happened. Maybe he hadn’t given her time to join him, but it didn’t matter. There had been something totally satisfying in the uncontrolled quickness of his release. In the strength of his passion. Satisfying that he had wanted her that much. At least that’s what she had believed until he’d said…

  “Is that all it was?” she questioned. “Because it’s been a long time?”

  She forced her eyes to hold his, but she was aware that he had smiled again. His hand fitted under her face, caressing, cherishing with his touch. And then the tips of his fingers floated down her throat, flattening against her breastbone as they moved downward. His palm settled finally over her breast, enclosing. Expressing the gentleness that had not been there before, that had been lost in need, in its hot fierceness.

  “That’s not all,” he acknowledged. “You have to know that’s not all.”

  Deke Summers wasn’t a man who openly expressed his feelings. He might never say the things she wanted to hear, but they were in his face. And in his eyes. Like those ancient creatures who strayed too close and were captured forever in amber. Waiting there, to be found and examined, wondered over, a million years later.

  She nodded.

  “It’s okay,” she said, and watched his smile inch upward, escaping his control.

  “It will be,” he promised. “I promise you, Becki. The next time it will be.”

  AND FINALLY IT WAS. He had carried her to the bed in the other room, throwing the coverlet back with one strong sweep of motion. It slid unnoticed to the floor as he laid her wet body on the sheets. She was so cold, and she wanted to tell him to turn off the air conditioner, but before she could formulate the words, his mouth and his body were over hers. His tongue caressing. Seeking. Searching her. Beginning to know her responses.

  His hands were very sure. Slow and painstakingly competent. She had never thought he would be patient. But this time he was in no hurry, his touch selective. He didn’t intend to rush any of the detailed examination he was making of her body.

  She was grateful at first for the dimness of the bedroom. Embarrassed by what he was doing. By the caress of his eyes, followed deliberately by the surprisingly feather-soft stroke of his fingertips. Drifting, examining every inch of her skin. Lingering over its small imperfections. The thin lines of pregnancy, clearly visible on the smoothness of her belly, traced like silver etchings over the darkness of her skin. Following them with his eyes and then echoing that examination with his hands.

  He had lifted onto one elbow, easing away from her body to ask, his voice low in the shadowed isolation of the world they now shared. Only they.

  “From Josh?” he asked, still touching the telltale marks.

  Unable to speak, she nodded, wondering what he was thinking, if he found them ugly, disfiguring. Then his head lowered to her stomach, his tongue replacing the satin glide of his fingers. And, reassured by the worship of his lips, she knew that was not what he had thought.

  They traveled, eventually, hot and demanding, to cover the aching nipples of her breasts. She was reminded again of when she had carried Josh, of their heavy fullness. Of the sweetly satisfying suckle of an infant. Mouth seeking. Unknowingly seductive. Her hips writhed against the dampness of the sheet. Arching. He was creating the same deeply erotic sensations within her belly. The same way. Yet stronger, and this time demanding release. Sexual. A different fulfillment, just as compelling.

  His mouth examined her throat. Her ear. Slowly. Tongue probing. Soft whispers erasing the other so that finally she no longer remembered that the men the previous night had wanted to profane this act. Aware only of his voice.

  As tender as his fingers, rolling the taut peaks of her nipples slowly between them. His lips had created their pearled hardness, and now his hands delighted in it. His mouth over hers. Making her forget to breathe. To be afraid. To think.

  His breath silvered her skin with moisture, touching each rise and fall of bone with its mist. Gliding like fog over her ribs. Tantalizing with promise over the faint marks of her body’s ripeness, which he had traced with his tongue. Floating across the small downward slope of her belly. Dropping words like hot incense on her skin, but she couldn’t think what they meant. It was no longer important that he said anything. His touch communicated. Broke in waves over the center of her need. And he was as demanding there as he had been before, under the throbbing heat of the shower. Pulsing again, long, rolling waves of power pushing upward into her stomach. Into her consciousness.

  Her fingers were locked into the gilt of his hair as he caressed her. Mouth moving. Tongue circling. So hot. She was on fire, tendrils of smoke from the sudden conflagration curling upward. Fluttering into her belly. Burning under her skin.

  Her legs loosened, relaxed with the sweet pleasure of what he was doing. She had forgotten to be embarrassed, to be shy. This was Deke, and she was made for him, for his touch.

  Her hips lifted, seeking to strengthen the contact. A stronger caress. Almost to the edge. Almost—as she had been before. She could hear her own breathing. Shallow. The occasional gasping response as she edged nearer to what she sought, to where he was taking her. So near. Suddenly the remembrance of his power was inside her body, memory tangled in the honeyed warmth of his mouth. She arched again, trying to force, to hurry the clamoring insanity of her need.

  She felt his body shift, the sudden desertion of his lips, and she cried out against the loss. Her hands found and held, pulling him to her. Then his mouth was over hers. Open. And his body. And memory became reality.

  She exploded with the first hard thrust, arching wildly into his strength. She was aware of the sounds she made. Sounds she had never made before. Sensations she had never felt before.

  Release blossoming upward from their joining, rocking her with its power so that she only wanted to relax into its heat and strength. Carried like driftwood with the force of the tide that roared through her. Light and weightless. Drifting on the surge of its current. But there was no rest. No ebb from the flood of his demand. Still it drove her, hammering into the oversensitized walls of her response. More sensation, more of everything. Wave after wave beating against her senses until she was drowning again in sensation.

  Now he would allow her to rest. To savor. But the demand was building again, the hard muscles in his legs moving against the slack, unresisting flesh of hers. Incapable of resisting. Wanting again, and yet wanting release. Freedom from his demand. And instead the spiral built, heat circling upward. Too intense. Too strong. Frightening with the realization of his power over her.

  She cried out, arching. Body leaping upward to meet and absorb him. To enclose him, to be captured forever in the amber of her memory. Never to be released. Caught and held like the old enchantresses of mythology held their knights. In thrall. She wanted Deke Summers in thrall.

  Perhaps even in the extremity of her passion, she knew, recognized the transitory nature of what he had given her. There were no vows, no commitments, no whispered promises. He was a man who could promise nothing. A brief summer’s heat, hot and fierce, burning away all the restraints and conventions by which she had lived her entire life, and then fading, its power enfolded by the cold darkness that surrounded him.

  Eventually the sensations shivered away, her skin trembling with aftereffect. Cold, even under the warmth of his body. She was aware again of his weight. Of his skin against hers. Of the hard muscles underlying its hair-roughen
ed texture. Capable again of thought, she put her mouth on his shoulder, lips parted, tongue tracing the warm, salt-sweet flavor of his skin.

  “I love you,” she whispered. The words had been there a long time, hiding from their own reality in her consciousness. But there was no reason now to deny. He must know, must now be aware of all she felt.

  His big body lifted, sheltering pressure removed from her breasts, her stomach. She wondered if it had been as difficult for him to find the will to separate their bodies as it would have been for her. They were still joined, she comforted her sudden fear. Still joined.

  He was looking down into her face, eyes again shadowed and remote. She wondered if that was only a trick of the lighting. Surely he couldn’t be that far from her, not so soon after they had…

  “No,” he said softly, but his mouth found hers again, and she answered his kiss, allowing nothing of what she felt to remain unrevealed.

  Eventually he put his cheek to hers, his weight held on his forearms still, her body covered but not connected. Except where it mattered. Still joined echoed again in her heart.

  He didn’t move for an eternity. She felt the slow softening. The relaxation. Her hands moved over his shoulders, feeling beneath their exploration the forgotten bandage. She hadn’t even thought about the injury. He had given her no reason to think about it, to be concerned for him. He had held nothing back except his acceptance of what she had said.

  She smiled, fingers still drifting lightly over his back, his breath slow and regular against her throat. He could deny the expression of what she knew, but he couldn’t destroy its reality. It was useless to argue with him. Let him say whatever he wished. They both were aware of what was real, of what was between them.

  She closed her eyes and put everything else from her mind. Everything but the feel of his body under the slow caress of her hands.

  DEKE SUMMERS LAY in the shadowed gloom watching her sleep, remembering what she had whispered. Not in the extremity of desire, but afterward, her voice calm and reasoned. I love you. He blocked the power of the words, covering their force deliberately with the horrifying images he had fought for four years. He reminded himself that another voice had whispered that promise from the darkness and then had been destroyed by the explosion which had shattered his life. Another woman, dark haired and dark eyed as this one, her body as softly responsive under his hands, her lips as tender.

  He had danced on the edge of redemption for Lila’s death for four years. Taunting his enemies. Hiding. Running. Always, carefully, one step ahead. Some part of his rational mind had long ago recognized and acknowledged the game he played. Not with those who followed, but with himself. He had wondered how he would know that it had been enough, when he would finally give himself permission to let it end. To let it all be over. Final redemption for his mistakes.

  And it had been ever closer. He had known that. It had been harder to move on. Harder to break away from the fleeting familiarity of whatever stolen life he had slipped into. Becoming harder every day to care any longer what happened to the man who had once been Deke Summers.

  Until now. He found his eyes again tracing the sleep-relaxed features of the woman who lay beside him. She had forced her way, she and the child, past the cold, broken shell that was all that had remained of that man. He had thought at first it had simply been a trick of memory, some delicate modification of the punishment he had devised for his own guilt. But she was not Lila. And he knew that. Had known it as he made love to her. With every movement, every whisper, he had been aware that she was Becki Travers. Aware of her strength, her courage, her determination.

  But that was not why he had made love to her. Not admiration for her courage or her intelligence, her fortitude. What she offered had drawn him like the remembered warmth of a winter’s fire, offering life in the chill of his existence. He could no more have turned away from that promise than he could have prevented his body’s physical response.

  For the first time he allowed himself to wonder if it might be possible. To love this woman and the boy. To live again. To find his way back from the edge of that cold darkness which he had always known led to hell.

  HIS TONGUE WOKE HER. Pulling her out of the dream images of what he was doing. Had his mouth evoked those images or had he shared somehow the remembrance, been aware of what she was dreaming? Her body was too languid to participate. Exhausted. She lay and let him touch her. Felt her responses build, but there was none of the urgency there had been before. This was only pleasure. Slow and tempered by her satiation. She felt him more intensely, was more aware of each individual stroke and less sensitive to its demand. Relaxed. Accustomed now to the intimacy. Not driven by need nor restrained by embarrassment.

  The force shimmered through her body this time, like the waves that flickered over the highways in summer, distorting the clarity of the landscape that was still there behind their curtain of heat. Everything that had lain between them was still there, but overlaid now by lovemaking, the outside world’s harsh reality distorted, at least momentarily, by this.

  When her body had stilled, spent and mindless, boneless against the bed where they had slept together, he came to lie again beside her. She turned her head, the effort almost too costly, so that she could see his face. He smiled at her again, the slightest movement of his lips, and she felt hers respond.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded and at what was in his eyes, crystal blue and warm, her smile widened.

  “I like your mouth,” he said, expressing the errant thought he had had before.

  “I like your mouth,” she whispered.

  He laughed and leaned to touch his lips to hers, gentle and intimate.

  “Old married-people kiss,” she teased, the unthinking comment spoken as his mouth lifted away from hers.

  “No,” he said again.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. The cold remembrance was in his eyes. She didn’t know what else to say. She was sorry. Sorry that she had reminded him, had broken the connection between them by speaking of the unspeakable. She had not remembered.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, breaking off abruptly and deliberately any discussion.

  Her eyes studied his face a moment before she gave in, agreeing to ignore what she had said, what had gone before. And only with his question did she realize that she was hungry. It seemed forever since she had eaten.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He got up and found the room-service menu. He tossed it on the bed before he disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Just like old married people,” she said again, but this time under her breath as she opened the folder and began to examine the motel’s offerings.

  It was not until Deke was placing their order, until she saw the phone in his hand, that she realized she had forgotten to call home the night before. It had been Friday night, and she told her sister she would check with her. Mary had thought it might be Saturday before the men would be in touch, but even so, that was today. There was the chance that they had called last night and left word of their location. She and Deke could even now—

  “What is it?” Deke asked. He had put the phone back into the cradle, but he was still sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her face.

  “I forgot to call Mary,” she said, worried eyes rising to meet his.

  “Mary?”

  “My sister. My brothers might have called home last night, but with everything that happened…I forgot to call. We could have been there by now.”

  “If they called,” Deke reminded her. “You don’t know that they did. A few hours aren’t going to make that much difference.”

  But what she suggested made him uneasy. He didn’t like the possibility that someone else knew where Josh was, might have known now for hours. More than enough time to get to the child. More than enough.

  “Why don’t you call her,” he suggested, trying to keep his voice casual. There was no need to worry Becki. She hadn’t wanted the delay i
n getting to her son any more than he had. Too much had happened the previous night to interrupt the normal thought processes, her instinctive mother’s concern.

  “How could I have forgotten to call?” she breathed. “How could I have forgotten Josh?”

  “You didn’t forget Josh. And your brothers may not have been in touch. Call your sister now and see,” he suggested again.

  He handed her the phone and then punched in the numbers she called out to him. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching her face while she talked. He read relief in the wide brown eyes, raised smiling to his when she knew that her sister had talked to them.

  “They’re all right,” she mouthed.

  He nodded, wondering if that was still true. How many hours had passed since they had pinpointed their location for their family? And for who else? He looked up when she leaned across his body to put the phone back in the cradle.

  “They were in El Paso. Today they’re heading to Carlsbad. They promised to call again tonight if I didn’t get in touch. Eight o’clock tonight. Mary will get their number, and then I can call them. She talked to Josh.”

  He could hear her fear easing with every word. They had been all right the night before, so to her that meant Josh was safe. He didn’t like what was happening, but he didn’t tell her that. Too much time had passed. Too many people might know, might have known their location and their destination, long before he did.

  “Deke?” she said, questioning his silence.

  “Why don’t we eat and then head that way,” he suggested. “Now that we have some specific information.”

  “That sounds good,” she agreed, but she recognized something was wrong. Deke’s face didn’t reflect the soaring relief she had felt, simply knowing that Mary had talked to Josh. It seemed to her that they were now closer to accomplishing what they had set out to do than they had been since they’d left home—getting to Josh before anyone else could.