by Mallory Rush
She reached for him, and he complied. Giving her a taste, teasing her as he stepped away, taking the glass with him, laying it aside with his own next to the bed—the big four-poster, intricately carved, heavy, and very masculine.
"Turn," he commanded, circling once with his hand.
She could feel her feet slowly begin to move. Her brain felt numb but acute with awareness. A tingle was spreading. A frightening sensation, some of her control being taken away; but too exciting to resist.
Micah made the circle, feeling his eyes hot, intense, intimately upon her. Seeing the lust, the need, the love etched clearly on his face as his gaze caught hers in the cheval glass, old and beveled, positioned behind her.
Something sacred and immutable passed between them before she dared a fleeting glance at her own body in the mirror. As before, he signaled, and she began to move again, arousing him deliberately, and consequently, herself.
Gracefully she turned until they faced again.
"Take it off."
Her hand lifted slowly. A part of her, and yet, detached. She shut out the far cry of fearfulness, of any hesitance that was left.
The chemise strap fell down in a diagonal curve, invitingly coy upon her arm. Her breasts, heavy and full as they strained against the silk, felt the fabric's caress riding upon the peaks.
Her hands began to work the tiny buttons. She didn't look down to see what she was doing. Instead, her eyes sought his approval... as he watched her. As she gave in to the temptation of watching the strain of his pants.
The chemise undone, her breasts were still covered. A small shrug. The chemise fell off, creating a puddle of silk beside her stockinged feet. She paused, and waited, letting him look. His gaze rose and met hers. For long moments they sought the secrets of hearts meeting there. Too many years, they seemed to say. Too many nights dreaming of this, wanting so urgently, afraid never to have.
He gave a small nod. And she went on.
The pale slip pooled beside the matching top, and she stood with her shoulders held proudly, with elegance. Offering herself, all that she was, only to him.
He nodded his approval.
"Well done, ma cherie. As you can see, I approve."
She could feel herself flush, the rise of blood in her veins, as she whispered, "I lied. I do look at your pants sometimes. Wanting to see you react like this."
He smiled. "I know." He came toward her, walking with purpose. "You can stop now. I want to finish the rest for you."
He crossed over to where she stood by the bed. For a while he simply looked, gazing at her nudity from behind in the mirror. Then his hand came up, brushing lover's caresses down her spine before falling lower, lower still. Lifting the delicate catch, he released the fabric of French silk hose.
He worked his way down, lowering the stockings, removing them from her feet. Touching, soothing, he seemed mesmerized by the lift of her foot, its shape and texture.
"I'm a leg man, you know." He kissed the tops of her feet, then ascended with soft kisses climbing the length of her legs. As the wisp of her garter belt fell away, his attention shifted.
"I'm also a man who goes for nicely shaped behinds." His fingertips traced the contour of each cheek, separately, then as a whole. Micah could feel herself getting cold and then hot, and then it was too hard to even breathe. Her legs nearly buckled as he traced his nose against her, and then his lips. Though he didn't touch the hidden ache buried within her folds.
With one hand he reached up and expertly began to fondle a breast. "But I like breasts even more." He murmured it against her belly, vibrating the sensitive skin beneath.
She was completely naked, and his clothes were all too intact. She urged him upward.
"Chance, please."
"Please what? Touch you, kiss you? Stroke you there?"
The quick slice of his fingertips skimmed over the sheen of her femininity. And then her legs did give way. She fell against him, and he caught her firmly, anchoring his mouth between her thighs. She was helpless, caught there against his merciless probing.
It was too wonderful to bear. A delicious agony. No. It couldn't be happening. Not this quickly.
She tried pushing him away, pulling at him to stop, to rise to her at once. In silence, in the fleet movement of his tongue, his low growl of warning, he denied her. He denied her the right to ever say no to his wanting again. He denied her the right to control her own longing, pushing her closer, closer, until she plunged off the edge.
She was crying. She could feel the tears of release pouring out of her. Could hear the keening wail of his name fall from her lips. And the floor was suddenly beneath her back, and he was moving inside her with the rush of his fingers, the vibration of his hand. He was talking to her without words, making sounds that were guttural and inarticulate. Or maybe she was too far gone to understand.
She thought she must have fainted. His lips were beside her ear, calling her name. Saying he loved her, and now she was his. Would always be his. She felt herself being lifted in his arms, weightless, her head falling back, still spinning in electrical arcs.
"See me, Micah. Look at me now." She opened her eyes, coming slowly back to reality. He stood there, naked and proud. His physique was tough, hard, nothing soft or immature about it. A man of rough, coarse hair, with muscles that were heavy and thick. Not pretty in the least. But how very manly he was, how eloquently strong.
She found the strength to lift her arms, asking him in.
He came to her, laying by her side at first. Gently, so surprisingly tender, he traced the shapes and curves beneath his fingers, learning her in repose, even while the heat anchored in his body pressed impatiently into her hip.
"Chance," she whispered, reaching for him, touching him. In a fluid, swift motion, he was over her. His chest pressed into hers, then lifted. Just high enough so he could stroke her breasts, dip, and touch his mouth to them by turns.
The edge of passion that he had stoked then soothed had begun to mount again. Nothing had ever approached the magnitude of this. No, not even the night when they had lain naked and all too young.
The aching began again; the deepness burned within her. She craved to hold him closer. That close to her heart, that much a part of her.
"I want you inside me," she whispered. No, she had never said those words before. How easy they were to say now, how natural. She pulled him over her with a sudden, urgent strength. "Please, Chance."
She reached for him to guide him within. He caught her hand.
"No, not like that." His fingers slipped through hers. "Together."
He slid inside, their clasped hands leading him home. So full. So warm. So incredibly right. How had she lived without this? She never could, never again.
"From now on, Micah," he whispered, looking down into her face, "always, together."
Just short of his ultimate destiny, he stopped. She let him take her hands. He spread them wide in surrender as he held them firmly apart upon the bed.
The texture of crisp cotton rubbed against her back. The rough hair of his chest played across the smoothness of her breasts. The beginnings of his heavy beard scratched a light burn over the skin of her cheeks, the delicious rawness of her chin. But it was the feel inside, the internal holding that pinned her, bound her to him, and beneath him.
She wound her legs around the backs of his, silently pleading for the rest. She raised her hips up in entreaty. He fixed her with a satisfied, meaningful pout, and made a small retreat.
"Love me, Micah."
"I do," she cried.
"Say it." His breathing was growing harsher; his thrusts harsher too.
"I love you. Oh, Lord, Chance. I could never stop loving you."
"I'm going to marry you, Micah Sinclair. And you're going to have our children. Our future starts tonight."
Faster. Harder.
"Please, Chance. Come in me. Now... please now."
He filled her then, spending himself into her womb.
Time expanded, contracted with only the rain and the walls to listen as they whispered their intimate vows. Still buried inside he grew large again... and yet again.
They had forever. They had each other. They had now.
* * *
Micah stretched languorously. Preparing for the evening had been quite an unnerving experience, she'd wanted to look just right. But now, rumpled, sated, her hair mussed and her makeup smudged, she felt as though she must look at least a hundred times better. The night of loving had brought them closer in a way nothing else ever could have.
"How do you feel?"
She laughed a sensuous sound, pleased with herself, her nudity. The ache of too much satiation between her thighs.
They snuggled and whispered intimacies and made the sounds of morning lovers.
"I'll be right back." She nipped his shoulder playfully then bounded off the bed.
"You'd better be, or I'm liable to come looking for you. If I have to get out of bed, there's a penalty attached, of course."
"Oh?" she teased, deliberately wriggling her rear end as she sauntered toward the door. "What if I want to stop in the kitchen and make some coffee?"
"Coffee? Hmmm. Maybe I could grant you a pardon if there's coffee involved."
Micah stopped beside the dresser. Turning to Chance, the sensuous woman retreated a bit back to the discreet woman of the day before.
"Do you have something I could wear around? I feel a little awkward walking through your house stark naked."
"Okay, just so you don't make it a habit. I find that I definitely prefer you naked. Look in the dresser. The T-shirts are under the—"
Reaching deep into the drawer, Micah's fingers contacted the cotton cloth beneath a stack of briefs. She pulled it out, with a strange surge of proprietary excitement at wearing one of Chance's underthings against her skin.
A folded sheet of paper that had apparently been wedged at the bottom caught under her fingers as she lifted the shirt. She couldn't help but be curious about what Chance had obviously meant to hide in there, knowing the lingerie drawer was where she kept most of her own personal letters or cards. But it wasn't polite to pry.
Glancing at the folded paper as she moved to put it back, she stopped. Dead. This paper was familiar. A too terribly familiar sheet of ivory with a scroll of raised letterhead at the top. Someone's personal stationery.
She felt as though her stomach had just been brutally jabbed with a sharp elbow. In the distance she could hear Chance's voice, sounding urgent.
"Wait a minute, Micah... don't look in... here let me get that."
He was throwing the covers back, rising naked from the bed, as she turned to him slowly, in what surely was a nightmare she would be waking up from any minute.
In the nightmare she didn't try to hide the stricken look that was etched in bold relief across her face, or the stinging tears she couldn't stop from flowing in shimmering streams from her accusing eyes.
His face was ashen, nearly as stricken as hers felt as he came to her. She jerked away the moment he touched her arm, the exact same moment the note fell from her nerveless fingers and sailed blindly to the floor. The IOU lay there between them, sharp as a razor blade, slashing her trust in two.
Chapter 12
They stood facing each other. Naked. Too vulnerably naked in the cold, startling light of day.
Once his body demanded he breathe again, Chance could hear the tight, rasping sound. It sounded loudly disproportionate between his ears. This couldn't be happening. Not after all he'd gone through, waiting, hoping. He couldn't bear to lose her again. Not now, not after knowing what it meant to hold her again, filling up the gaping, empty void that life had been without her.
"Micah. Listen to me. Please—" He reached for her hands. Needing something, anything, of substance, to assure himself she was still there.
She eluded his grasp as though he were poisonous.
"How could you, Chance? You made me believe in you. That you were being honest with me, that I was doing something all on my own. You knew how important that was to me! You knew—" She snorted with disgust, the anger and hurt too entwined for him to separate. "You couldn't have let me down more, Chance. Not even if you planned it."
She was waiting, looking at him anxiously. She wanted an answer, something to explain away the obvious, because she was being torn up inside too. He could lie, tell her some glib excuse she might be all too ready to accept rather than the awful truth.
He braced himself, the armor of self-protection slipping for once, just when he needed it the most.
"You were never meant to see that, Micah."
"I suppose not. After all, you wouldn't want me to know you were just as guilty of gambling as Jonathon. That you were no better than him—"
"That's enough! Call me anything vile you can think of. But don't you dare ever compare the two of us again." The anger felt good, familiar. It muted the horrible feeling of vulnerability threatening to overwhelm him.
"No? Then you tell me what's the difference. You gambled with him. Him of all people—"
"That's right. Him, of all people. Tell me something, Micah. How else was I supposed to learn how you were doing, get some kind of idea as to how fast your marriage was going down the tubes? What was I going to do? Call you? Say 'Hey, babe, how's tricks? Got a divorce on the agenda anytime soon? Let me know when it's final and we'll tie the knot as soon as you're free." He ran a hand through his rumpled hair in agitation. He hated the way she just kept staring at him: Wide-eyed, hurt, and distant. If only she'd say something, anything. The silence was too accusing.
"In a way, I'm glad you know that I played poker with him. You probably would have found out eventually... only I wish I'd been able to tell you in my own time."
"Your own time? And when would that have been, Chance? Ten years, twenty? Maybe just a note you could leave for me after you were dead too?"
He shook his head, not really sure of the answer himself. "When I felt our relationship was strong enough to handle it. Please, Micah, try to understand. The way I saw it, that was my one link with you. Twisted as it was, ma cherie."
"Don't call me that," she snapped.
For a moment he wasn't sure if she was going to slap him or scream at him. Maybe fall on the floor and sob. Or worst of all, just turn around and leave. Her chest was heaving, making her breasts pout temptingly. The morning air, the stimulation of fury was causing her nipples to contract, and he remembered all too vividly his mouth suckling her there what now seemed so long ago.
Before he could stop himself, his eyes traced the defiant stance she presented. His own body reacted to the challenge, the knowledge of her hidden secrets, and the power he possessed in making her yield. He longed to make her yield now, spending their anger in a heated frenzy rather than in the lonely isolation of words and more words—hurtful things that could never be taken back.
"You're disgusting," she said. "How can you stand there looking at me so hungrily, after something like this?" She began to yank on her own clothes, so sensuously discarded the night before. "Get dressed, would you?"
He was tempted to keep them off, just to unnerve her. Remind her of their night together. Only the important thing now was to undo the damage, to somehow put it right again. Antagonizing Micah would only defeat that purpose. Scowling, he reached into the bottom drawer and got out a pair of faded jeans.
He noticed Micah kept her eyes averted. Just past his shoulder. He moved so that she had to meet his eyes, so that she could see how deeply he hurt for her, how very much she meant to him.
"I love you, Micah." He bent down swiftly and retrieved the paper, held it up between them. "See this? It's nothing. Let it go. What we've got between us is too good, too right. And Jonathon's not going to take that from us again."
Very deliberately he tore the paper, the sound of it rending the silence of the room. It was now in halves, then quarters. He tore and tore until there was nothing but shreds. Then he turned
his hand upside down and let them fall, littering the small space between them, floating on the gulf that he was trying desperately to bridge.
Sadly Micah shook her head. "Do you actually think it's that easy, Chance? That by tearing the evidence up, it doesn't exist? No. It's still there between us. Even now my mind's firing questions, demanding to know things I'm afraid to ask. Things that are bound to point out just how different we really are."
He took a step forward, but Micah stuck her hand out, stopping him. "Don't touch me now. All it can do is confuse me. I want some answers. Chance. Honest ones... if you're even capable of it."
"I'll give you any answers you want or need. Honest ones, Micah. Because nothing is worth your distrust, no matter how unsavory the answer might be."
The hurt tightened around his heart. As long as he could remember, she could tear him apart with no more than her distance; and her distrust of him now was painfully bitter. Chance clenched his jaw, enduring it.
She hesitated, watching his face, as though searching for anything sly or dishonest there. She finally gave a short, curt nod of the head.
"Did you play with him often?" The words came out faint, the dread in knowing too obvious for him to miss.
"Often enough." There was no reaction except a tight swallowing motion. She was waiting for more, her silence told him that. "About once a month... for the last two years or so."
She closed her eyes, as though trying to block out the damning truth.
"Then this isn't the only one?"
He shook his head slowly. He braced himself, knowing what would come next.
"How many?"
"About a dozen."
She made a noise. A strangled, sobbing catch in the throat. Instinctively he stepped closer.
She shook her head in a short, stilted motion. "No," she said quickly. "Stay back."
He understood, and nodded, feeling a crumbling sensation inside, afraid to confront the growing, terrible premonition.
"How much?"
"Micah, you don't want to—"