Now she heard him fold the paper and set it aside. She felt his gaze travel over her, from the back of her head, down her shoulders, her back, her legs.
She wished she had pulled the bedspread over herself. Had she done so, she wouldn’t now feel quite so exposed.
She wondered what he was thinking, sitting over there staring at her. He was probably shaking his head, thinking she’d lost her mind, running from him in the morning, sharing a motel room that afternoon.
In truth, she didn’t know what she was doing. Maybe pregnancy really did make a woman stupid. It would be nice to be able to blame it all on raging hormones.
In her case, however, it was due more to her own insecurities than hormones. At least, she thought so.
When the subject of marriage arose, she panicked. Marriage terrified her. She was so afraid of ending up like her parents that running to Enid, then Ponca City, then Stillwater, then heading for home just to keep some sort of distance between her and Justin made perfect sense.
So did sharing a motel room with that same man.
Go figure.
They’d already shared a motel room, she was already pregnant. Nothing else bad could happen.
Not that she thought of being pregnant as bad! Unplanned or not, she wanted this baby, welcomed it with her whole heart.
She was utterly comfortable sharing a room with Justin. She was completely uncomfortable discussing marriage.
There. That made perfect sense to her.
Behind her she heard Justin rise and walk to the bed. The mattress dipped with his weight. It took him a minute to tug off his boots, then she felt him stretch out beside her.
She concentrated on remaining relaxed. He thought she was asleep. If she tensed up he would know she was faking it. That would be too embarrassing.
A few minutes later his breathing grew deep and even. He was asleep.
Or he was faking it, as she was. She smiled at the thought of the two of them sharing a bed and pretending to sleep.
That was not what they’d done the last time they’d shared a bed. Nobody had faked anything that night.
At the memory, a deep warmth rushed through her and settled between her legs. It was all she could do to swallow the moan that threatened.
He wasn’t even touching her. She couldn’t even see him. Yet still, she wanted him in the worst way. She wanted to feel his hands, hard and callused from work, on her bare flesh. Wanted to feel his warm, naked skin, surprisingly smooth, beneath her fingers. She wanted to taste him, smell him, take him inside and hold him there as he filled her so that she felt as if she would never feel alone again.
She let herself drift on images of him until she imagined she lay facing him and could feel the hard dips and bulges of the muscles in his arms and shoulders beneath her hands. The warmth of him drew her closer. The breadth of his chest invited her to snuggle.
Oh, it felt so good to be close to him this way, even if it was only in her imagination.
She let herself drift further, until she imagined his arms surrounding her, pulling her flush against him. His heat was incredible, and yet she knew the two of them would generate more, until they both went up in flames.
She wanted that. That mindless pleasure, the likes of which she had felt with no other man.
Sure, she’d had orgasms before, but none so sharp and intense as when she was with Justin.
His hand slid around her ribs and up to cup one breast.
Ahh. Such warmth, such pleasure. Then she pictured his thumb flicking across her nipple and she whimpered. Even in her imagination she felt the sharp pull of pleasure reach down to the core of her and make her squirm.
She wanted to feel his flesh, but there was fabric in her way. A shirt. Why was he wearing a shirt?
With nimble fingers she unbuttoned several buttons until she could slide her hands inside and feel his chest muscles flex under her touch.
She wanted to taste him. She stretched up and started at his neck. With lips and tongue and teeth, she indulged herself. Never had her imagination been so real. She could swear she tasted the slight salty flavor of his skin, and farther up, over his jaw and onto his cheek, the slight rasp of a day’s worth of whisker growth. She loved his whiskers, the way they rasped against her hand, the way they made her lips tingle.
She wanted better access. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips. This was her fantasy, wasn’t it? She could do whatever she wanted.
But when she leaned forward to kiss him, his hands pressed against her shoulders and stopped her.
“Blaire?”
Blaire blinked and looked down in shock. Justin lay beneath her while she straddled his hips. One of her hands was inside his unbuttoned shirt. His chest was heaving. Her loins were throbbing. Her nipples were erect and hard.
“Oh, Justin!”
“It’s all right.”
“No! I’m sorry.” She tried to scramble off of him and away, but couldn’t seem to move. “I didn’t—”
“Shh.” He placed a forefinger across her lips. “Look at me. Blaire, look at me.”
Realizing she had her eyes squeezed shut, Blaire forced herself to open them and look at him.
“It seems to me,” he said, tugging on her arms to pull her down to his chest, “that you and I were having the same dream.”
She saw it then, in his dark brown eyes. That look of heat, of passion. Of a man’s attention focused solely and intently upon one certain woman.
It was a look that took her breath away. He pulled her down until her breasts met his chest. The same chest she had bared and run her hands across in her imagination. In her sleep.
The most natural place for her mouth to settle was against his.
“Justin,” she said on a sigh.
Their lips met with an explosion of soft heat. Blaire felt every bone melt right there inside her own body. It had been weeks since she’d been this close to him, kissed him, tasted his heat, felt his hands on her.
How she had missed being with him this way.
Was that the same as missing the man? She feared it was. There was so much more to him than simply a great lover, but in that particular moment, she put it all aside and enjoyed. She might never have a chance to be with him again this way, so she would take advantage of it while she could.
His lips were soft yet firm, hot and slick. His tongue dove into her mouth and danced with hers. She tasted salt, and coffee, and Justin. With a moan, she deepened the kiss.
With an answering moan Justin wrapped his arms around her and rolled until Blaire lay on her back and Justin lay nestled right where he’d longed to be for weeks and weeks, in the cradle of her thighs.
“Let me,” he whispered against her mouth. He reached between them for the snap on her jeans. But he didn’t free it. He raised his head, breaking their kiss, and waited until she looked at him with eyes of liquid golden brown. “Let me,” he asked again.
Blaire didn’t give him a verbal answer. Instead she used one hand to pull his head down again until their lips met. With the other she helped him unsnap and unzip her jeans.
It was answer enough for Justin. Within seconds he had her jeans opened and his hand cupping the heat of her, nothing separating him from the core of her but a thin layer of silk.
At his touch Blaire’s hips rose. With a gasp she thrust herself hard into his hand. Oh, she had missed this. Missed the way he touched her, the way he could drive her to the brink so easily. Their one night together had not been nearly enough.
Their last time together, they had liked each other, certainly. But mostly they’d been driven by hot blood and hormones.
This time, she knew him a little better, and what she knew made her want him more, made her care about him more. Was she in love with him?
He removed his hand from between her legs.
Blaire moaned in protest, forgetting entirely her emotional dilemma in favor of the more pressing physical one: whether or not to lay back and beg for his touch,
or reverse their positions, straddle his hips as she had done earlier, and take what she wanted from him.
Justin didn’t give her time to make a decision, had her mind been capable of such a feat just then. He pulled the bottom edge of her sweater up and over her head, forcing her arms upward in the process. And he left her that way, with her arms stretched over her head, trapped in the sleeves of her sweater.
She began to struggle to free her arms. She wanted them wrapped around him, wanted her hands on him, not all tangled up in a sweater.
Justin stilled her with his hands on her arms. It wasn’t his gentle touch that caused her to cease her struggles as much as it was the look in his eyes. A smile lurked there, a devilish one, along with heat and a promise of more pleasurable things to come.
“Be still,” he whispered, “and let me.”
Blaire’s heart raced. “Let you what?”
He leaned down and flicked his tongue along the upper edge of her bra. “Do anything I want.”
Blaire sucked in a sharp breath. Flames of anticipation teased her from nipple to loins and back again. “I guess,” she managed, her lungs suddenly struggling for air, “that would depend on what you want.”
He smiled slowly. “For starters…” With the fingers of one hand he flipped open the catch on her front-closure bra. He dipped his head and took one nipple gently between his teeth.
Blaire sucked in another sharp breath. Her breast seemed to swell to meet his mouth.
His teeth teased and nipped almost, but not quite, to the point of pain. His lips and tongue joined in and drove her so wild that she cried out and arched her back clear off the bed.
Her reaction drove Justin closer to the edge of control than he wanted to be. He didn’t want to rush this. He knew she wanted him, but when her brain kicked into gear again she was going to come up with all sorts of reasons why they shouldn’t do this.
When she did, he was going to have to come up with answering reasons why they should. Why they should love each other. Why they should get married. Why they should raise their baby together.
Baby. The two of them had already made a baby together. The breast beneath his lips would nourish that child through infancy. Was it his imagination, or was it already fuller than it had been, in anticipation of the new life it must feed? Women’s breasts became more sensitive during pregnancy, didn’t they? He thought he’d read that somewhere.
He raised his head and looked at Blaire. “Am I hurting you?”
Blaire blinked. “What?”
He cupped her breast in his palm. “Your breast. I was wondering if you’re more sensitive here, if maybe I was being too rough.”
Blaire’s heart turned over in her chest. “No.” Her vision blurred. “You weren’t hurting me. Except by stopping.”
He grinned. “Liked it, did you?”
Blaire studied the ceiling and shrugged. “It was all right.”
“That’s all?” He leaned down and swiped his tongue across her nipple again.
Blaire could not hold back another sharp breath.
Justin chuckled. “That’s what I thought.” He kissed his way down her breastbone and into the vee of her unzipped jeans. He pressed his lips against her yellow panties and blew hot air through them and onto her skin.
“Hear that, kid? Your mom’s a big fibber.”
In that instant when he spoke to their child snuggled safely in her womb, Blaire felt a connection snap into place in the vicinity of her heart. Until right then, she was the only person alive to ever speak to the baby, to acknowledge that it was a real person. Now there were two of them.
Blaire knew she was suddenly in serious trouble. She might have been able to resist, had Justin not spoken to the baby, but he had. She was a goner. If she’d had doubts before—and she had—they were gone. Whisked away by a few simple words spoken by a man she wanted to trust but didn’t know how.
Yet her inability to trust didn’t seem to matter to her heart. She had just fallen totally, completely in love with the father of her child.
Chapter Nine
Justin looked up and saw not laughter in her eyes, but some other deeper emotion. It filled her eyes and glowed from her face and made something inside him go all soft and tender, even while another part of him hardened.
He couldn’t take his gaze from hers. Clothes that should have required effort to remove seemed to fall away with ease, then they lay together, flesh on flesh, muscle to muscle, chest to breast, hip to hip. Breath to breath.
Blaire raised her knees to make more room for him, to grip his hips and hold him close to her.
Wordlessly Justin accepted the invitation. He joined his hands with hers, and then his body, entering her slowly, one hot, slick inch at a time.
Blaire felt him stretch her, fill her. It was as if she was being completed, made whole when she hadn’t realized any part of her had been missing. She welcomed him inside, urged him to go deeper. Slowly at first, until slow was no longer sufficient to ease the terrible wanting that consumed her. Then faster, harder. She met him thrust for thrust, knowing that in the end he would hold her and they would fly off the edge of the earth together.
And they did.
The first thing Blaire became aware of minutes later was the heat and pressure of Justin’s glorious weight covering her as if shielding her from the cold, cold wind howling outside their door.
Justin was also aware of his weight and feared he might be crushing Blaire or the baby or both. As the strength returned to his limbs he pushed himself up on his arms and started to shift his weight off her.
Blaire made a tiny sound of protest in the back of her throat. It was about all she was capable of at the moment. She wanted to raise her arms and hold him there, but her arms were too limp. But she did manage to press her knees against his hips.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t go. Not yet.”
Justin eased his weight onto his elbows. “How is it,” he asked, cupping her face in his hands, “that you and I are so damn good together?”
“Luck?” she answered.
He shook his head and kissed the tip of her nose. “Fate.”
“You believe in fate?”
“I believe some things are meant to be,” he said quietly. “Don’t you?”
Blaire found that she could no longer meet his gaze. “I believe the conversation is turning a little more serious than I’d like.”
Justin gave her a quick smile. “Coward.”
“That’s me.”
“It is not,” he objected. “But I’ll let you off the hook anyway.”
They got dressed and spent the rest of the day watching old movies on television. Blaire might have felt awkward—she expected to, after their lovemaking— but Justin proved so easy to be with that awkwardness was impossible. Throughout their movie-watching they argued about the on-screen action, debated the merits of different characters, cracked jokes about all of it, then eventually they got hungry again. The snow was deeper than it had been by a couple of inches.
“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll bring our dinner back to the room?” Justin suggested.
“Because the food would freeze before you got back with it. I vote we bundle up and walk.” Blaire peeked out between the edges of the drapes. “The parking lot’s pretty full, and I bet it’s slicker than glass.”
“Meaning you think I’ll run into something if we drive?”
“Well, no offense, but…”
He laughed. “None taken. Under these conditions, walking would be safer. But it’s damn cold out there. I don’t see any reason for you to freeze your tush off. They can wrap the food so it won’t get cold in the few minutes it’ll take me to get back with it.”
Blaire crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “If you think I’m going to sit here all snug and warm and play the little woman while the big, bad man forges his way out into the wilderness in a blizzard to bring me something to eat, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“Aw, come on.�
� He gave her a look that said she was being unreasonable.
Blaire objected to that look. She objected to his making decisions for her. She objected to his assuming she would simply go along with him, stay when he said stay, come when he said come.
And she thought she loved him?
“It’s freezing out there,” he protested with a wave of his hand toward the door. “Why do you want to go out in that?”
“I don’t, particularly, but I’m hungry, and I want out of this room for a while. If that means wading through snow in a blizzard, then that’s what I’ll do.”
With a scowl on his face, Justin pulled her coat from its hanger and held it. “I suppose if I try to help you on with your coat I’ll hear all about how you’ve been putting on your own coat all your life and don’t need help now.”
“See there?” She beamed at him. “We’re getting to know each other real well.”
He tossed her coat to her and grabbed his own. “Have you always been this stubborn?”
“Yes.” She slipped her arms into her coat. “But if you want to offer to bring me food and run my errands in a few months when I’m big and fat I probably won’t be.”
The thought of her big and fat, because of his child, made him pause with his coat half on. He shook his head as if to clear it. “I can’t picture it.”
“Picture what? Me fat?”
“That, and agreeable,” he said.
“Oh, you.” She snatched a pillow from the bed and threw it at him.
With a laugh, Justin ducked and threw his arm up. The pillow bounced harmlessly back to the bed.
When they stepped from their cozy motel room into the blizzard, the wind was so sharp and cold it sucked the tears right out of their eyes. Out in the parking lot they sank past their ankles in snow. For Justin, in his boots, it was no problem as long as it wasn’t too slick. But Blaire had on sneakers. Cotton socks were all that protected her ankles. She walked as fast as she could to lessen the duration of her exposure.
The Chisholm Brothers:Friends, Lovers... Husbands? Page 51