He grinned, his attitude one of complete male confidence. “And what’s that?” he asked patiently.
“Pursue me until I relent, and you finish the Good Samaritan task you started last night. The thing is,” she warned in a low, fierce voice, “it’s not necessary.”
Gabe leaned closer in a drift of brisk, masculine cologne. He planted his hands on the counter on either side of her. The dark hue of his eyes, the firm, implacable set of his lips, gave him an even more rugged look than usual. “I beg to differ with you there, since you’re my wife, you’re ovulating, and you haven’t changed your mind about getting pregnant.”
Refusing to encourage his fantasies about making theirs a real marriage, in every sense, Maggie splayed her hands across the hardness of his chest and pushed. To her frustration, he didn’t budge, not in the slightest. “The difference is, I no longer want you to father my child,” she told him emotionally. “And I certainly don’t want you making love to me!”
“Really?” he drawled.
Maggie drew herself up to her full height and glared at him warningly. She dropped her hands from the steely warmth of his chest, and folded them tightly in front of her, like a shield.
“Really!” she said, angling her chin up another notch.
Gabe merely smiled, wrapped both his arms around her anyway, and brought their bodies into full frontal contact. “Then let’s put it to the test,” he murmured as his lips traced a fiery, erotic path down the slope of her neck, behind her ear, across her jaw.
Hot tingles swept through Maggie. Her knees were so weak it was all she could do to stay on her feet. She glowered at him stubbornly, forcing herself to be as logical and cool as the situation demanded, when all she wanted was to be wild and passionate, completely swept away. “What are you talking about?” she demanded hoarsely, turning her head away.
Gabe caught her face between his hands and brought it right back to his. “Kiss me, and then tell me that.”
Lips touching.
Refusing to give in to the pounding of her heart and the feeling inside her, she kept her lips firmly closed and herself stiff in his arms. “Convinced I mean what I say?” she taunted recklessly.
Gabe shook his head slowly, deliberately. “I’ll only be convinced when you give me a real kiss and then tell me that,” he said.
The dare in his eyes was impossible to resist. “All right,” Maggie replied defiantly, knowing she was up for the challenge, for both their sakes she had to be. “If you insist.” Her heart pounding, whole body trembling, Maggie thrust herself all the way into his arms, and opened her lips to the plundering sweeping motions of his tongue. And that was when everything predictable ended. He stole her breath, the passion in his deep, insistent kiss fueling her own. She tingled everywhere they touched, and everywhere they didn’t. Despite herself, she began to respond as she felt his need and his yearning. Again and again they drew from each other, too swept up in the moment to let go. One instant Maggie was letting him take control, the next she was seizing the lead. Gabe shifted closer still, his tongue learning the sweet, damp contours of her mouth, touching her teeth, her lips, then returning in a series of long, tantalizing kisses that robbed her of the will and ability to think. “Damn you,” she said on a shuddering breath, aware desire was flowing through her, more potent and mesmerizing than she had ever believed possible.
“Damn us both,” Gabe agreed huskily, as he swept her into his arms and carried her down the hall and up the stairs to the master bedroom.
He helped her off with her blazer, her boots.
“This isn’t going to mean anything,” Maggie promised as she swiftly and methodically stripped off the rest of her clothes while he did the same, then climbed beneath the covers on her bed and brought them to her chin. She would never let him hurt—and desert—her again, the way he had the first time. “It’s only a means to an end,” she stated resolutely. To the baby they both wanted. Their baby.
Resplendent and unashamed in his nakedness, in much less of a hurry to get the necessary coupling over with, Gabe lifted the covers and climbed in after her. “Tell me that again later and I’ll believe you,” Gabe taunted with a sexy smile. He stretched out beside her and draped her body with the length of his. Immediately, she felt what she had only seen. Another hot rush of sensation swept through her, and then his lips were on hers once again and she tasted the hot, irrefutable force that was Gabe, felt his passion in the heat and danger of his kiss. She didn’t want to surrender herself to him, she wanted to keep everything in the proper perspective, but his will was stronger than hers. With a low moan of surrender, Maggie tilted her head to give him better access. His lips meshed with hers, his manhood surged against her—hot, demanding—and Maggie knew this time there would be no going back. No chickening out for either of them.
“Now,” Maggie murmured. Before I lose my nerve.
“Not,” Gabe said, just as decisively, “until we’re ready. We’re not ready, Maggie. Either of us.”
But Gabe was determined they soon would be. He rolled off her, peeled back the sheet, baring her to the waist. Maggie flushed all the hotter, behaving, he thought, like the virgin he knew she couldn’t be. Nevertheless, he found her shyness appealing, and knew he had his work cut out for him if he was going to make her as at ease with him in the bedroom as he wanted her to be. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured as he admired the softness of her fair skin. Her breasts were high and full, softly rounded globes with dusky rose centers, her waist slender.
Not content with just seeing her, he cupped the softness of her breasts in his hands, brushed his thumbs across her nipples, again and again until she moaned. Loving the way she trembled, even as her nipples budded, he bent his head and traced the rosy areola with his tongue, brushed it dry with his lips, then suckled her tenderly. Eager to know more of her, he kissed his way to her tummy, back again to her breasts, to the nape of her neck, then lower still. Past her waist, to the nest of curls hidden between her thighs. Trembling from head to toe at the long, sensual strokes of his lips and tongue, Maggie caught his head in her hands, tangled her fingers in his hair. She moaned again, “Gabe,” and this time it was an entreaty, a plea. Gabe paused and their eyes met. She looked so beautiful in her passion, so wanton with her cheeks flushed, her lips wet and open, that he felt himself responding wildly. He wanted to make her his, all the way, right now, and yet…he also wanted this night to be the fulfillment of every fantasy she’d ever had. He wanted to make sure she had exactly what she yearned for before they tended to his needs. So he parted her thighs all the wider and found her again, tracing the moist, tender petals, then plunging his tongue deep inside. Her head fell back, her body shuddered, and then she was throbbing all over, inside and out, falling apart in his hands. Satisfied at the way he was pleasing her, Gabe held her until the aftershocks had nearly passed, then moved swiftly upward. Wanting to prolong her pleasure the best way he knew how, he positioned himself and prepared to slip deep inside her.
And hit…resistance. Resistance he didn’t expect.
Gabe paused, shocked, not sure whether to proceed or to ask the questions that obviously should have been asked before. And that was when Maggie took the lead. Her eyes fierce with yearning, her body melting against him in surrender, she opened her legs all the more, flattened her hands on his hips, and brought him the rest of the way home, not stopping until he was surrounded by hot, silky warmth. Pleasure flooded through Gabe in fierce, unrelenting waves. The softness of her body giving new heat to his, he took her to the heights and depths. He showed her they didn’t need to do anything but feel. He did everything he needed to do to make her his, not just for now, but for all time. Until Maggie arched against him, holding him just as close, kissing him just as deeply, until their mouths fused as intimately as their bodies.
Then need took over once again, making them both relentless. Reckless.
Lost in the swirling pleasure, Gabe lifted her hips and went deeper yet. Loving her fiercely
until she clung to him, encouraging him with every kiss, every untutored stroke of her hands, and his blood ran hot and quick, Gabe once again took and kept the lead.
“This could be it, Maggie,” he murmured wonderingly as he sought to make them one, not just in the physical sense, but in every respect—heart, mind, soul. “We could be making our baby right now.” The link that would meld—and keep—them together for all eternity. And then all was lost, in the fierce ascent to oblivion, and the sweeter, softer fall back.
MAGGIE LAY ON HER BACK, eyes shut, catching her breath. She felt Gabe gently disengage their bodies and shift his weight off her. She had read enough about the mechanics of conception to know it was best that she stay right where she was, for the prescribed fifteen minutes after making love, to ensure the most favorable angle for the baby-making process.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked gently.
Unable to turn away, for fear of accidentally dislodging his seed, Maggie stared at the ceiling overhead. “Maybe because I thought it was obvious,” she said, unable to help her flush.
Gabe’s eyes widened. “That you were a virgin?”
Maggie wished she could run. Avoid all these questions. But she wanted a baby—Gabe’s baby—too badly to risk negating what they had just done. She sighed, closed her eyes against his searching gaze, and did her best to hide a very acute case of embarrassment. “Why should it matter?” she asked him on a weary sigh. Why did he care that she had been a failure in the lovemaking department for a very long time?
“Because it does,” Gabe said gently.
A very awkward silence fell between them. After a moment, Maggie slanted Gabe a glance. He had rolled onto his back too, and his forearm shaded his eyes, keeping whatever he was thinking or feeling from her view. “Why?” she whispered, even more insistently, needing to know.
Gabe rolled onto his side. He looked angry now—with himself. And with her—for not giving him a heads-up on the subject before they leapt into bed together. “Because you’re my wife,” he told her grimly, looking as if he felt as betrayed as she felt embarrassed. “And you’ve never made love with a man—until now. Even though you were engaged to be married.”
Aha. There it was, she thought angrily, the sibling rivalry again.
“You want to know why Chase and I never made love,” she guessed, wishing for the millionth time she had never been foolhardy enough to get engaged to Gabe’s wildly successful older brother.
Gabe shrugged, his feelings suddenly more in check. “Chase is supposed to be the authority on women in the family,” he pointed out with a tranquility Maggie guessed he couldn’t really begin to feel. She sighed, knowing whether she liked it or not she absolutely had to explain the reasons behind the second biggest mistake in her life to Gabe. That was, if she wanted Gabe to understand her, and she did.
“There’s no question Chase has the ‘art of the chase’ down pat,” she said eventually.
Gabe’s lips curved at her play on words. “So, if he is so good at pursuing a woman, then why didn’t you let him make love to you?’
“Because he had such a reputation as a ladies’ man and bachelor at large. I guess I was a little intimidated, given my lack of experience.”
“Guys like their women to be innocent,” Gabe said, eyeing Maggie with a depth of male speculation she found disturbing. He caressed the bare curve of her shoulder with a light, gentle touch. “It means a lot to be someone’s first lover. To know that they waited for you.”
Ignoring the way she tingled warmly at his slightest touch, Maggie tucked the top of the sheet around her breasts. She folded her arms in front of her matter-of-factly. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, even as she struggled to get a handle on her soaring emotions. “You’re reading a lot into this.”
“There’s a lot to read,” he stated, his gaze raking the length of her before returning to her face. He looked as though he had a lot more than just her virginity on his mind.
Maggie sighed. Feeling the flush on her face deepen warmly, she guessed, “You want to know why I made love to you and not him.”
“Yes,” Gabe said, as their knees collided beneath the sheet.
Maggie swallowed as she edged her knee away. “I told him I wanted to wait until we were married.”
Gabe drew back slightly, to better study her face. “And Chase accepted that?”
“Yes.” Almost too readily, Maggie thought in retrospect.
“But that wasn’t really it,” Gabe theorized.
How did Gabe see so much of what she was really thinking and feeling? “No,” Maggie said.
“Then what was it?” Gabe persisted.
Maggie drew a deep, bolstering breath, afraid if she told Gabe everything she would look even more foolish and femininely inept in his eyes. “I was scared.”
And ashamed of being so unenthusiastic about what was an integral part of every healthy marriage. At the time, she had blamed her earlier bad experiences in the bedroom for her anxiety. But now, she knew her resistance to the idea of going to bed with Chase had been rooted in something else.
“Of the man you were going to marry?” Gabe regarded her in cool disbelief.
Maggie bit her lip. “I wasn’t frightened of Chase. I know there is nothing to be frightened about when it comes to Chase.” Like Gabe, Chase was a gentleman to the core.
“Then…?” Gabe persisted, really wanting to understand.
Maggie shrugged and plucked at the sheet drawn over top of them. “Maybe it was just never right. Maybe I just never really wanted your brother to make love to me because I wasn’t really in love with him, nor was he really in love with me.”
Gabe frowned. “Then what was your engagement to him about?”
This, Maggie knew. “Because Chase pursued me the way I had always wanted to be pursued—with no holds barred,” she explained. “And that fed my ego, big-time. The fact I wasn’t initially interested in him at all only made him work all the harder, which he loved.”
Gabe nodded, agreeing. “Because he’s the kind of guy who loves a challenge.”
“And I loved leading him on a merry chase,” Maggie concluded with chagrin. “So in that sense our courtship was very exciting. And my life back then, when my parents were still alive and watching over me constantly, was about as far from exciting as one could get. I knew there was something not quite right between me and Chase all along, of course—”
Gabe’s eyes gentled with understanding as he said softly, “That something being that Chase was really in love with Bridgett Owens.”
Maggie sighed her regret, thinking how much better hindsight was. “Right. But at the time, I just enjoyed the way he came after me. It was very flattering. And I mistook the thrill of our constant witty sparring for love. It was only after we got closer to the wedding day, and things were really set in stone, that the sparks between us began to fade, and I began to question if we really loved each other, or if it was all just a game.”
“Which is where I came in,” Gabe recalled, not quite happily.
Maggie nodded and continued plucking nervously at the sheet as she recalled that awful confusing time. “When I felt physically attracted to you, I knew I couldn’t marry Chase. So I broke it off with him. But maybe that, too, was just a convenient excuse.”
Gabe’s brows knit together in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Maggie’d had a lot of time to think about and rationalize this—almost two years. She shrugged. “Maybe I wasn’t really as attracted to you as I thought.” Maybe even now she was fooling herself: incorrectly identifying her deepest emotions, such as they were, confusing physical desire with love. Because right now…here, with Gabe, in her bed, she was sure she had fallen in love with Gabe. Aware Gabe was waiting for her to continue, Maggie gulped. “Maybe our chemistry wasn’t as strong as I thought it was back then. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to end my engagement and you were just handy.”
“The way I’m handy now?”
His low voice was self-assured and faintly baiting.
Maggie told herself the fifteen minutes were up. She started to get out of bed. “Yes.”
His actions a lazy counterpoint to hers, Gabe reached over and brought her back down among the pillows once again. He smoothed the mussed hair from her face. “You can tell yourself that, if you want.”
Maggie tried not to think how incredibly alive she felt whenever she was around Gabe. Never mind how much she had missed him during the two years they had avoided seeing each other as much as possible. “But you don’t believe it,” she guessed.
“No.” Gabe regarded her steadily. “I don’t.”
“Now whose ego is involved?” Maggie demanded, her breath suddenly coming as erratically as the quickened pounding of her heart. The last thing they needed was to confuse their mutual desire to make a baby with anything remotely akin to love.
“It’s not my ego you have to be worried about,” he told her gravely, kissing her lips, her temple, her cheek. “It’s my heart, Maggie. Because whether you want to admit it or not, we can’t keep getting more and more involved with each other and keep our feelings out of it.”
But that was exactly what she had been trying to do! “That’s not what you said when you married me two days ago,” Maggie reminded as he shifted over top of her.
“Two days ago,” Gabe drawled, as he parted her knees and settled heavily between them once again, “I didn’t know we’d be doing this.”
Nor had she, Maggie thought, as Gabe bent his head, and with little protest from her after all, made hot, wild, passionate love to her again.
Chapter Seven
“Okay, you proved your point,” Maggie conceded with a heartfelt sigh an hour later, as she rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow with a low anguished groan that didn’t begin to reflect the depth of her conflict. She literally could not believe the way she and Gabe had just made love—not once, but twice. The heat of their passion had enveloped her in a pleasure unlike anything she had ever dreamed possible. It might have given her the baby she wanted so desperately. And yet at the same time, she knew she should have used a lot more common sense. In making love with each other they had not only crossed a line that probably never should have been crossed, they had simultaneously made their marriage legal and taken the informal prenuptial agreement they’d had and turned it upside down, adding intimacy and physical contact where there should have been none.
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