"Why?"
"Because I would steal your love."
"You don't have to," he answered. She heard a slight tremor in his voice.
Mayree bit her bottom lip. He loved her! He hadn't said it, but it was there. She wiped her eyes and rolled over. Quinn was lying on his back. Mayree wrapped herself around him, holding onto him as tight as she could.
"Goodnight Quinn. I love you."
She heard him draw his breath in sharply. He was good at keeping things inside, but even he couldn't hold out forever.
She kissed his cheek softly. "With all my heart I love you." His breathing was ragged and she felt him shaking. Her head rested against his chest. He didn't say anything but she could feel his heart thumping hard and fast beneath her cheek. He loved her.
145
CHAPTER 8
Quinn had trouble sleeping, he hadn't even kissed Mayree goodnight and it bothered him. She cried because he didn't tell her he loved her, and he still put the chain on her. He wasn't ready to tell her how he felt yet. How could he be certain she wasn't lying to him just to get an opportunity to escape? Donna had told him she loved him too, and it wasn't true. While it made his heart ache listening to Mayree crying, he couldn't hold her. He was at the breaking point, the next time he held her he would have to tell her.
He hadn't expected her to kiss him and tell him again, and yet she had.
He listened until he heard her deep breathing. "I love you Mayree," he whispered, knowing she couldn't hear him, not even sure if he wanted her to.
Quinn woke very early and lay in bed, thinking. He wanted to wake Mayree, make love to her, tell her he loved her. Instead he got up, dressed, and went down the hall to Jack's room. The floor was ice cold. "I'm sorry, Jack," he said aloud. "It's wrong, I know. I shouldn't be happy. I don't deserve it. What happened to you was my fault."
Reminders of Jack were everywhere here, but Quinn didn't need reminding. Memories of a young man with so much potential filled him. How unfair it was that someone like Quinn would be allowed to live, yet a life like Jack's would be taken. How unfair that the sweet innocence of Mayree would be spoiled and tainted by a man like Quinn. She deserved much more than that. He often thought about how things might have played out that night if it had been him instead of Jack who was wounded and died. Mayree wouldn't have spent the night 146
in the cellar. Jack would have fallen in love with her – of that Quinn had no doubt. Jack would have treated her with kindness and respect. Treated her the way she deserved. Despite the guilt that wracked him, he knew Jack would never want him to feel guilty. Jack sure as hell wouldn't want him to hurt the sweet heart of the girl sleeping down the hall. She was Jack's angel for Christ sake!
Quinn sighed. It was time to grow up, be a man. It was a shame that a thirty-four-year-old was less of a man than his nineteen-year-old brother.
He made his way to the kitchen, and pulled open the refrigerator. Surely he could manage to cook breakfast for her. He opened a package of bacon, and when it was almost through cooking he cracked some eggs in a pan to fry them. When he tried flipping the first egg it was apparent they wouldn't be fried eggs, they'd be scrambled.
After a maddening ordeal, Quinn woke Mayree for breakfast.
She sat across the kitchen table from him looking forlorn, staring blankly at the plate of burnt bacon and scrambled fried eggs. He watched her picking at them, and finally she laid her fork down.
"I'm not hungry this morning," she said softly. "I don't feel very well."
"Eat your breakfast," Quinn said, aware his tone sounded as if he were talking to a child.
Tears streaked down her face as she picked up the fork.
"It's okay, Mayree, you don't have to eat if you don't want to," he relented. He was being such an ass. Last night she'd told him she loved him, and he was treating her worse than ever. He was such an ass.
147
"Listen, Mayree, about what you said to me last night..."
"That I love you?" she said hopefully.
"Yeah, about that… I'm so sorry for what I've done to you, for what I've done to your life."
"I really didn't have much of a life before you, Quinn."
Her voice was so sincere, he didn't know why it was hard for him to believe her.
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud rushing sound coming from outside.
"What is that?" Mayree asked.
He opened the kitchen door and saw the geese beginning their mass exodus from the pond.
"The geese are leaving," Quinn said.
"Can we go see, please?" Mayree asked, sounding excited.
"Sure," he shrugged.
She darted out the door quickly in her bare feet. For a minute he considered chasing her, but instead he picked up his boots and went outside on the porch. More and more he trusted she wouldn't run away, but still he had to fight the urge to chase her.
She was halfway to the pond already, as he pulled his boots on watching her. She looked like a little girl, squealing with excitement at the rising geese, their beating wings sounding like rushing wind.
He walked to the pond, keenly aware the last time he'd been here was when he'd laid Jack to rest near the weeping willow tree. He watched Mayree, so full of joy in this place where he felt such grief.
Looking over at the spot where Jack was buried, tears filled his eyes. Jack was always going to be gone. If he told Mayree the truth and let her loose would she be gone too? Just the thought of not having her here made his 148
chest ache. If he trusted her and he was wrong she could destroy him. She would leave him.
The geese began their formation of a giant V in the pale, cloudless sky. The sounds of their honking got fainter as they neared the crest of the hill beyond the orchard. They soon disappeared completely from view.
Mayree stood looking up at the big empty sky, suddenly looking very sad. She turned to him. "Wow!
That was amazing. They just all go, all of them."
"There might be a few that stop here on their way from other places." He put his arms around her. "They come back in the spring, you know." Was the thought of still being here in the spring unbearable to her?
Quinn swallowed hard, "Mayree Jacobs, I love you."
She was shivering, staring at him, her eyes were wide.
She smiled at him, her eyes glittering like he had never seen before. "I love you, Quinn".
"You're cold and you don't have shoes on. Let's go back inside." He looked down at her bare feet in the frosty grass, and picked her up against his chest. She wrapped herself around him, her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.
He carried her to the house, his face buried in the softness of her hair, and he sat her on the sofa.
Kneeling on the floor in front of her Quinn took her hand. "I'm not going to put the chain on you anymore. If you decide to leave then just leave. Do my brothers a favor and leave them out of this though. Randy didn't do anything wrong to you, neither did Jack. If you want to get even with me make it about just me, just please don't mention why I brought you here. Tell them I kidnapped you because I wanted you, because you know damn well that's why you've been here this long. I have wanted you, I will always want you. I love you more than anything."
"I don't want to leave," Mayree said.
149
"What do you want?"
"You," she replied.
Quinn smiled at her, saying out loud what he felt in his heart. "I hope you mean that, because you have me.
You have me in a way no one has ever had me. You have me weak, you have me on my knees."
Mayree sighed. "I wish I knew that you believed me. I don't know how I can prove it to you. I do everything you tell me to do. I do anything you want. It's not because I am afraid of you, it's because I love you."
"I love you, Mayree," he said, and somehow saying it out loud again made him feel it even more in his heart.
"You have done something to me. I knew when I first kissed you that you could chang
e me, that having you would change me."
"What do you mean?"
"I've completely wasted my life. I was a worthless, heartless piece of shit when I met you. I might still be a worthless piece of shit now, but I know I'm not heartless.
I am capable of love."
"You were never heartless, and you aren't a worthless piece of shit. Even when you made me go into that room in the cellar you weren't heartless. You had tears in your eyes for Jack."
"Jack was my brother. Of course I loved him. Loving a woman, that's different. That's not how I am." He corrected himself. "Not how I was. Before you."
Mayree looked at him solemnly. "If Donna would have only wanted you, would you have loved her?"
Quinn shook his head. "I just wanted so bad to believe someone in this world thought I was good. The only woman who ever loved me was my mother. No one ever felt anything for me other than contempt or distrust."
"I know you're good. No one ever told me they loved me," Mayree said. "No one ever said I was beautiful. No 150
one ever wanted me. Most of the time no one even noticed me. But then there was you. You wanted me.
You told me I was beautiful."
Quinn studied her face as he had done so many times before. Sometimes he wondered what kind of idiots she had spent her life around that no man ever noticed just how stunning she was. Other times he was just thankful they hadn't. She was here and she was his.
"I wish you could see yourself the way I see you," he said. "I have never seen anything in my life as beautiful as you. You have felt how hard you make me. How much I want you. Words can lie, flesh can't. You're beautiful. How did I know you wanted me before I ever had you in my bed? Because your body didn't lie, it gave away your secrets, Mayree"
"I love you so much. I'm so sorry, but I have lied to you," she said sadly.
Fear tightened his chest. "About what?"
"I know when my last period was. I'm late."
He smiled, with both relief and happiness. "How late?"
"Over two weeks."
"Damn! That is late. Well, I guess we better do something about that then."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we have to go to Weston. I guess we need to go buy one of those tests."
The look on her face was priceless. "You mean you're going to take me with you to Weston?"
"Well I sure as hell won't leave you chained up again in the kitchen."
Her arms wrapped around him as tight as she was wrapped around his heart. "Mayree, I will tell you every day for the rest of my life that I love you, and want you, and that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.
151
I just, I want to ask you something. No, I want to tell you something."
"What?"
"Marry me."
Her arms dropped away and she stared at him, her face a mask of shock.
"I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. You're going to be my wife, have my kids, and spend the rest of your life with me."
"Quinn, I might not even be pregnant."
"That's not why I want you to marry me. I'm like one of those geese, I need you. For life. Without you I couldn't live. Please, Mayree, be my wife."
Her eyes shimmered with tears. "Did you just say please?"
Quinn laughed. "I've said please before." He frowned, thinking, then grabbed her hand. "But only for you.
Only for you, Mayree Ross."
Her mouth curled into a smile.
"It sounds good, doesn't it? he asked hopefully.
"It does," she agreed.
"Then you will?"
"I will."
Quinn took her face in his hands. "Good. Now, I want you to tell me something."
"What?"
"Look me in the eyes, and tell me you're beautiful."
"Why?'
"Because you don't like yourself because of stupid things people have said to you. I want you, Mayree. I love you. You need to love yourself as much as you love me. You matter."
She bit her bottom lip, then let out a little cry. "I don't know."
152
Quinn stood and jerked her to her feet. He tried to be gentle as he pulled her up the hall and into the bedroom.
The old oak dresser in the room had a large mirror attached to it. Quinn took her chin in his hand and pushed her face inches from the glass. "Who is she?" he demanded.
"It's just me," she replied looking back at him in the mirror.
"Wrong answer! Who is she?"
"I don't know!" she exclaimed, beginning to cry.
He squeezed her chin harder. "Look in the fucking mirror!"
Quinn saw her eyes focus forward. Satisfied she was truly looking at her own reflection, he again asked, "Who is she?"
"Mayree," she said.
"Wrong. She is so much more than that. She is..." he swallowed on the tears he felt rising in his eyes. "She is beautiful. She is the woman who changed my whole world, my whole life. Look at her! She's the one thing in this world I can't live without!"
Mayree's eyes flashed a dark blue. Darker blue than they had ever been after she had had an orgasm. Darker blue than he had ever seen them since he had known her. She studied the reflection in the mirror. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, "She's beautiful."
"Say it louder," Quinn demanded.
"She's beautiful!" Mayree cried.
Quinn released his hand from her chin and took a step back. His eyes met hers in the mirror. "Take off your clothes!" he said.
Without ever looking away from his gaze, Mayree removed her clothes, until she stood before him naked.
Her eyes remained locked onto his, but he noticed that 153
for the first time she didn't tremble. She stood boldly, with nothing on, right in front of him.
"Now," Quinn said softly. "Look at her. Look at the woman who's going to be my wife!" He reached around her and cupped one of her heavy, full breasts in his large hand. "Who is she?"
He watched her gaze into the mirror. Her eyes squinted, then widened, as if she was looking at something she'd never seen in her life. "She is beautiful"
Mayree whispered.
"You don't have to whisper. Say it loud. Look in the mirror and tell me who the fuck she is!"
She took a deep breath and swallowed hard. "She is beautiful!"
Quinn put his arms around her and hugged her. "Yes, she is, and she's going to be my wife. Not today or tomorrow, but just as soon as I have enough money to buy you a ring, Mayree. I'm going to get a job. I won't put a ring on your finger that I've paid for with stolen money. I won't start the rest of my life with you like that."
Mayree touched his face. "Quinn you are the most wonderful man. I love you."
"I didn't make love to you this morning. I couldn't touch you. I knew if I did I'd have to tell you I loved you.
"And?"
"I've told you. Now I want you." He laid her on the bed, more gently than he ever remembered doing anything in his life.
His mouth was soft on her nipple, his fingers caressing the other. They swelled into hard buds beneath his touch. He kept his mouth on her nipple and moved his hand between her legs.
His fingers stroked gently up and down the lips of her pussy making her shiver. Turning his hand palm up, he 154
dragged the middle finger all the way up her entrance which he could feel was wet. Shuddering, she threw her head back, letting out a little gasp as he made his way over her clit. His fingers swirled gently over her clit while his mouth and tongue worked on her nipples.
His index finger worked into her. "Mmm, you are so wet" he said approvingly.
He brought his coated finger to her mouth, and she sucked it.
Kneeling between her outstretched legs, he hooked her knees in his arms and pulled them up high. His throbbing erection slid back and forth over her soaking slit.
She moaned, her body was tense, just as his was, anticipating, wanting, needing his entry.
"What do you want Mayree?"
&n
bsp; "I want you" she answered.
The head of his cock brushed over her clit and he heard her gasp.
Quinn slid into her slowly, tenderly. Her inner muscles gripped him tightly. He leaned in, grinding even deeper, touching her everywhere, making her writhe and buck beneath him. Slowly he started to move in and out of her. She moaned, eyes closing, reveling in the delicious friction. His thrusts quickly turned harder as he eased out and slammed back into her, over and over.
"God, you feel so good around me" he moaned. "I will do anything for you Mayree. Anything. Whatever you want from me you can have. I love you so much!"
She squeezed him even tighter, shuddering and moaning as his cock slipped in and out of her. She began to whimper.
He paused, his cock lodged deep inside her, leaving her heaving, panting, desperate.
155
"Oh ... no ... no, please don't stop ... I need it ... don't stop ... please..." she begged, thrashing, trying to thrust herself onto him.
He eased completely out of her and began to rub his slippery cock head slowly up and down her slit, causing her to moan. Each time he grazed her swollen clit, she would jerk and shiver.
"Are you going to come for me, Mayree?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Open your eyes. I want you to look at me when you come," he told her.
She opened her eyes and stared up at him, her eyes locking with his. No one had ever looked at him the way she did. No one had ever seen him the way she did.
He eased his cock back inside her. "You are such a good girl," he said, his voice hoarse, and raspy. He held her legs up higher and took her with long slow thrusts, until he was at the brink. He could feel her orgasm approaching, and he let himself go.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream, every muscle in her body was quivering and shaking beneath him. His cock spasmed and jerked as she twitched and shuddered all around him. He never took his eyes away from hers.
The only thing in the world was the woman beneath him.
Stolen Property: The Abduction of Mayree Jacobs Page 14