by Diana Palmer
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m not experienced.” Amazing how easy it was to admit that to her. He toyed with his fork. “I just didn’t feel anything at all, not even when we danced and she plastered herself against me. She was experienced enough to know that she wasn’t having an effect. She walked out of the restaurant in a huff, without finishing her food.”
“I guess her pride was hurt.”
He smiled. “She called me the next week to apologize,” he added.
“I’ll bet that surprised you.”
“Shocked me,” he agreed. “But she was sure she’d guessed why it was like that. She said that I’d been an idiot to let the right woman get away, and that I was worth ten of the men she’d done business with. I got the contract after all.”
“I hope you don’t still have it,” she said icily.
His eyebrows shot up with patent delight. “Yes, I do,” he told her. Then he added, “Hers, and her brand-new husband’s.”
She flushed again. “Oh.”
“Jealous?” he teased.
She glared at him. “Of course I’m jealous,” she said irritably. “You’re the only man I’ve ever known…that way.”
He stared down at the fork instead of at her. “I’ve wondered ever since that night how it would be if we were totally honest with each other, if we had no secrets at all.” His thumb pressed the fork down absently and his jaw tautened. “I’ve read a lot of books since that night. I think I could make it more pleasurable…now.”
She lifted her eyes to his. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat as she met that smoldering glance. “Tonight?”
His cheeks went ruddy. “I hadn’t thought about it that soon.”
She didn’t drop her gaze. “But you want to.”
His jaw clenched. “My God, of course I want to,” he said in a harsh undertone. “It’s all I think about lately.”
“I’m glad,” she replied. “Because it’s all I’ve thought about since we kissed last night in my kitchen.”
His hand slipped across the small table and caught hers, fingers interlacing. His skin felt as hot as her own did. His eyes were steady, unblinking.
“I love you,” he said roughly.
Her eyes seemed to melt into his. “I love you, too, Tom,” she whispered.
The heat that look generated made her body swell uncomfortably. Her gaze dropped to his mouth and she ached to feel it on her mouth, on her body.
“Dear God, we’ve ordered food,” he whispered with wry humor. “I’ll choke!”
“So will I,” she confessed, taking a slow breath. “But now that we’re here…”
“We might as well eat.”
She laughed self-consciously, and so did he. The waiter came seconds later with seafood platters. And they did eat, but lightly. Dessert was bypassed, along with second cups of coffee.
There was a good hotel downtown. Elysia felt uneasy about going there with Tom, but she was as hungry for him as he seemed to be for her.
He paid for the room very nonchalantly for an inexperienced man, and escorted her into the crowded elevator, holding her hand tightly until they reached the right floor.
He opened the door, guided her inside and didn’t even turn on the light. His arms enveloped her, like his mouth. He didn’t say a single word.
The bed was king-size, huge. There was only a little light filtering in through the window from the city streetlights and scattered neon signs. She couldn’t see him very well. It was like their first time. Except that now they knew each other and it would be an act of love.
When she felt his nudity against her own, she moaned softly with unexpected pleasure. She hadn’t remembered that exquisite sensation until she felt it again. Her arms reached up around his neck, her hands buried themselves in his thick black hair as his mouth gently teased her neck and then her breasts.
He must have been reading more than a few books, she thought as she began to gasp and move helplessly under the expert caresses of his hard mouth.
“Here?” he whispered roughly. “And here?”
“Y…yes!” she cried out, arching.
“Dear God, this is sweet,” he murmured as his mouth moved against hers again. “So sweet!”
Her legs parted for him. She buried her face in his hot throat and held on, shivering a little as he touched her and then moved down.
But it wasn’t like the first time.
He paused to kiss her, until her tense body relaxed, opened itself to the most intimate caresses. She sighed under the teasing of his mouth and lifted her body to meet the slow descent of his hips.
It was a little painful, because it had been so long. But after a few seconds, her body accommodated him easily. He slid into her and lay there, unmoving, his kiss soft on her closed eyelids, her cheeks. His hands lifted her and he pushed, tenderly. She shivered. He did it again, listening to her breathing as it changed. He moved with slow sensuality from side to side, and then again in the tender rhythm. She cried out and clutched him.
“We’re like children learning to dance,” he breathed into her mouth, and she could feel the smile on it. “I want it to last forever. I don’t want to climax. I don’t want you to. I want to move against you and inside you this way until we grow old.”
“I can’t…live…” she said, choking.
He moved again, hearing her soft cry of pleasure. “Yes, you can, sweetheart,” he breathed. He rolled over onto his back and moved her on his body, laughing with wicked pleasure at the sounds she was making. His hands bit into her hips, demanding now, pulling and pushing and maneuvering until she lost her head and bit his shoulder in anguish.
“Do it,” she sobbed against his collarbone. “Oh, please, please, do it…now!”
“I forgot that part,” he whispered at her ear as he moved her onto her side and eased one slender leg over his hip to ease his passage. “Your body is capable of more than one fulfillment. Here…let me…”
He moved sharply and she cried out and convulsed. He felt her body contract and then expand as she shook and sobbed her ecstasy against his damp chest. When she relaxed, he kissed her eyes and soothed her. But he was still capable and showed no signs of tiring.
“Didn’t…you?” she whispered shyly.
His lean hand smoothed over her disheveled hair. “Not yet,” he whispered back, smiling. “I’m enjoying you far too much to let it end for me just yet.” He hesitated. “I’m not hurting you?”
“No!”
“Not even when I do this?” he breathed, and pushed down hungrily.
She groaned, her legs wrapping around him hungrily. “No!” she gasped.
He laughed wickedly as he turned her a little roughly under him and began to kiss her all over again. “If only I could stop time,” he whispered into her open mouth. And then he felt the heat rising in him, too, and it was impossible to say anything else.
“Elysia.”
She heard the deep voice and opened her eyes. The light beside the bed was on. But it wasn’t her bed. And there was a masculine face that needed a shave looming just above her own.
Her eyes opened wider. “Tom?”
He nodded. He touched her swollen lips tenderly. “It’s two in the morning. Wake up.”
She searched his eyes. There was no reticence there now, no shame or guilt. But there was love, and deep pride.
She smiled.
He smiled back. He bent and touched his mouth lightly to hers. “Come on,” he whispered. “Get up now.”
He pulled the covers off slowly and looked at her while she looked at him. Her face colored a little, but she didn’t avert her eyes until they were full of him. She looked up into his eyes.
“I’ve never seen a man without his clothes. Not even you, before.”
“I’ve never seen a woman,” he whispered. “You look as sweet as you feel.”
She smiled. “So do you.”
He cocked a wicked eyebrow. “I feel sweet?”
She colored aga
in. “You tortured me,” she whispered.
“I know.” He bent and touched his lips tenderly to the tip of her firm breast. “I tortured myself, too. I never dreamed it would feel like that. The first time was good, but this was…indescribable,” he said finally.
“You cried out,” she whispered, searching his eyes. “Your whole body convulsed for so long that it frightened me.”
“You aren’t the only one it frightened,” he managed to say huskily. “No book I ever read prepared me for what I felt.”
“Yes, I understand what you mean.” She touched his chest, letting her fingers curl into the thick, black hair on it. “You aren’t ashamed?” she asked, because she had to know.
He shook his head. His eyes narrowed. “Unless you were taking something, we made a baby,” he whispered.
She let out her breath very slowly. “I never thought of taking anything,” she confessed. “I…would like another child, with you.”
His face fascinated her. It was like the sun coming out. He gathered her against him in a rough, affectionate hug and growled into her throat. “Oh, God, how I love you!” he said roughly. “Love you, with all that I am, all I know, all I feel. I’ll never stop, not as long as I live.”
“Neither will I,” she moaned, holding him close. “Oh, Tom, we’re not married and I’m going to be pregnant again…!”
“I’ve got a license in my pocket,” he murmured huskily. “That’s why you have to wake up and get dressed.”
She was confused. “What? But how, when…?”
“I applied for it two weeks ago, and told them to get your blood test from your doctor.”
“He said I had to have a blood test because someone who’d been in my shop had meningitis, the wicked devil!” she gasped.
“Dr. Morris is a good man,” he murmured. “So when I mentioned this license to him, he was glad to help me out.”
“I’ll have him shot,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “No, you won’t, because we can be married in a couple of hours.” He glanced at the clock. “We’ll have to put on some clothes, though, or people will stare. Especially at you,” he added when he drew back. “God, what a body!”
She chuckled, all her shyness gone. She got to her feet and stared down at him. “I could say the same,” she mused.
He got up, too, and hugged her close with a sigh. “I suppose we should call Luke and tell him where we are.”
“You can tell him where we are,” she agreed. “But not exactly.”
“Coward.”
She grinned at him. “Where do we find a minister?”
“I’m glad you asked that,” he said. “Because I just happen to have an appointment with one at five a.m.!”
“That’s three hours away,” she reminded him, glancing at the clock. “Not two!”
He glanced down at her body and then at his own, and he smiled wickedly. “Well, I can think of a few ways to pass the time,” he murmured, and he reached for her. “After all, practice makes perfect…”
She never asked how he’d managed to talk a minister into getting up at five in the morning to marry them. It was enough that he had. She spoke her vows in the same black cocktail dress she’d worn to dinner, flushed from the bath they’d shared as well as the excitement of becoming a much-loved and wanted wife.
He kissed her at the altar, and the look in his eyes made her heart run wild. It was like no other look he’d ever given her. He whispered her married name and kissed her with a tenderness that made her knees weak. She’d never dreamed of such happiness.
They called Luke to tell him where they were, and then they spoke to an excited Crissy to tell her their news.
“We’ll be home in two days,” Elysia promised Luke, blushing even over the phone at his low laughter. “And you can stop that,” she muttered.
He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Anyway, I’ll take great care of my little buddy Crissy here, and we’ll see you two when you get back.”
Tom spoke to both of the people at the other end, too, and his heart swelled when Crissy called him “Daddy.” He thought he’d never felt so happy in his life. And when he looked at his new wife, he was certain of it.
They spent two days and nights in a romantic haze, barely taking time to eat. They talked and talked and made love and talked some more. By the time they left Houston, they were closer than ever.
When they got back to Jacobsville, two days later, it was to find themselves guests of honor at a surprise evening wedding reception hosted by Dr. Drew Morris and Luke. Half the people in town were there to wish them well, along with Crissy in a delightful little party dress with lace trim. And the crowning surprise was Tom’s sister, Kate, along with her husband, Jacob Cade, and their young son, Hunter.
Tom embraced his sister warmly and shook hands with Jacob before he bent to lift Hunter in his arms.
“You look just like your dad, young man,” he told the boy, “except for those green eyes.”
“I have eyes like my mom,” Hunter assured him with a somber gaze. “Yours are green, too, Uncle Tom.”
“So they are.” He put Hunter down, and watched the child scowl in a perfect imitation of his father when Crissy ran up to join them.
“Gee, you look like me, too,” Crissy told Hunter. “Of course, you’re a boy.”
“Of course I’m a boy,” Hunter said belligerently. He made a subtle face at the newcomer. “I can hunt and fish just like my dad.”
“So can I,” Crissy said with equal belligerence. “I caught a four-pound bass, didn’t I, Daddy?” she asked Tom.
His heart leaped as he looked down at her. “Yes, you did, sweetheart,” he agreed.
Kate was looking at her brother with open curiosity.
“Why don’t you show your fishing rod to Hunter, sweetheart?” Elysia suggested.
Crissy agreed eagerly, and motioned to Hunter to follow her. When they were out of earshot, Kate glanced from Elysia’s flushed face to Tom’s bland one.
“She’s the image of you,” Kate said bluntly.
“She was a reporter for years in Chicago,” Jacob told Elysia with an amused smile. “I can never keep secrets from her. You might as well just tell her what she wants to know. It’s easier.”
Elysia grinned. “Well, she’s Tom’s daughter,” she confessed shyly. “He never knew,” she added, so that nobody would blame her handsome husband. She clung to his hand.
“He never even suspected,” Tom added dryly with a sheepish look at his sister.
Kate smiled at him with pure love. “It looks as though everything has worked out very well, despite the obstacles.”
“Indeed it has,” Tom said, pulling his new wife close. “Better than I ever dreamed it would.”
Elysia pressed against him with a sigh. “Oh, yes,” she said.
Jacob put an arm around his own wife and grinned down at her. “Now are you going to stop worrying?” he asked. “If you can’t tell a happy couple when you see one, I’m going to get Hank to give you one of his herbal potions to improve your little brain.”
“Hank’s his dad,” Kate explained to Elysia. “He’s always poking around in my greenhouse with this herbal medicine book he bought, making up potions for everything from poison ivy to sore feet.” She cleared her throat. “And other things.”
Jacob chuckled wickedly. “Go ahead, make fun of him, but this last one worked, didn’t it?” he asked, and glanced down at her stomach with a mixture of pride and delight.
Kate flushed and hit him. “Jacob!”
“If you like, we’ll get him to fix one up for you,” Jacob added, tongue-in-cheek. “This one was for a girl, but since you already have one of those…”
“I think we can manage, Jacob, but thanks just the same,” Tom chuckled.
A small commotion caught their attention. Crissy came plowing through the crowd of people with Hunter right behind her.
“She’s got a spinning reel,” Hunter told his parents in a wounded tone. “All you
gave me was an old cane pole with corks and sinkers and hooks!”
“It was my old pole,” Jacob told him. “It’s an heirloom!”
“I want my own spinning reel,” Hunter muttered. “She’s a girl and she’s got one!”
“She’s your cousin,” Kate replied. “And you be polite, young man. Manners!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, glaring at his smug little cousin. “I could catch a four-pound bass if I had a nifty spinning reel,” he hinted, looking at his father for support.
Jacob sighed. “Okay, son, as soon as we get home we’ll go right to the sporting goods store and buy one.”
Hunter grinned. “Thanks, Dad!”
“You could have asked me to take you,” Kate prompted. “I like to fish, too, you know.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Hunter said, moving close to his dad’s side. “But this is a man sort of thing, you know?”
Kate had to smother laughter. She exchanged a glance with Elysia. “He doesn’t think women are the weaker sex, in case you’re wondering,” she explained. “But every once in a while, he plays with our neighbor’s son Buck and Buck’s dad is a…well, how shall I put it?”
“A throwback to our more primitive ancestors?” Jacob said helpfully.
She leaned against him. “Thank you, darling. Yes, that’s about the size of it.” She looked down at Hunter. “Is Mommy the weaker sex, dear?”
“Heck, no!” Hunter said immediately. “My mom can shoot a shotgun,” he said proudly. “And you should see her on a horse!”
Kate made a victorious gesture, and all the adults laughed.
It was after everyone had gone, Kate and Jacob and Hunter on their way to the airport with Luke as chauffeur, that Crissy came up to Tom and gave him a loving smile. “We’re a family now, aren’t we, Mr. Tom?” Crissy said heartily. “Now you get to be my daddy, and I get to be your own little girl, and you can just tell me everything about Indians.”
“Everything I know, pumpkin,” he agreed with a loving smile. He hugged her close with a sigh. “And I’m very happy that you’ll be my very own little girl. I promise to love you just as much as I love your beautiful mommy, too.”
“Oh, I do love you…Daddy,” she whispered, and hugged him just as hard as she could.