by Noelle Adams
He needed to do this for now. Kaya had meant it when she told him he couldn’t come home until his heart was completely free to love her. He wanted to go home.
“We did have some happy times,” he said, rising to stand at the foot of the grave. “I’m sorry it was so short, and that I didn’t protect you. Please, forgive me for that. I will always remember you and the baby our love created. I often wonder which one of us he or she would have most resembled. Either way, our baby would have been beautiful because our love was beautiful.”
Bryce cast his eyes heavenward to a deep-blue, cloudless sky then back to the grave one last time. One day, her soul, up there, would return to her body, down here, and they would be reunited. But for now…
“Goodbye, Pilar, my love. Goodbye, my sweet babychild.”
Blinded by his tears, Bryce turned his back on his past, and walked up Celestial Path, toward the future that awaited him in Granite Falls.
*
Naked, his body warm from his shower, Bryce stood at the top step and gazed down at his sleeping wife. She looked so small, so childlike lying in the humongous bed. He eased down on the edge of the mattress, trying not to disturb her—or perhaps he should disturb her, he thought, reaching out to brush her soft curls away from her face bathed in moonlight.
He could live a thousand years, Bryce realized, and he would never tire of gazing at Kaya. She had the longest, curliest lashes, the daintiest nose, the sexiest lips, and the hottest mouth. He’d taught her how to pleasure him with her mouth, and a fiery ache settled in Bryce’s loins as he recalled the abundance of indescribable pleasure the strong suction of those lips and mouth brought him.
It had been four days since he’d last seen her, yet it felt like a year to Bryce. He never wanted to go a day without seeing her again, even if it was only by satellite. He wanted to gaze into her fiery brown eyes every single day for the rest of his life, and tell her that he loved her.
Bryce drew back the covers and scooted down next to Kaya. Wearing clothes to bed was something they’d both realized was a waste of time. They made love almost every night, sometimes three and four times, into the morning hours, and sometimes beyond. After missing a couple of early morning meetings when he couldn’t drag himself away from Kaya’s tantalizing body, or when he awoke to the suction of her hot mouth on his swollen sex—her favorite way of waking him up—he’d had to rearrange his regular schedule at the office. The times when he absolutely had to go in early, he groaned all the way in, but then he’d groan in a different way later on in the day when his insatiable wife showed up in his office, wearing nothing but a warm winter coat.
With misty eyes, Bryce gazed at Kaya’s slender, naked body, mesmerized at her beauty, grateful that she’d chosen him to love her, enjoy her for the rest of their lives. Until he met Kaya, until he’d made love to her, Bryce never knew that he could long for, ache for another human being this much. She’d turned him into a Kaya addict. It was a high he never wanted to come down from.
Reaching out, Bryce eased his left arm under Kaya, his right arm across her, and pulled her close, the warmth exuding from her soft skin seeping into his pores, making his heart tremble, his limbs weak.
He tightened his hold and burying his face in her hair, he breathed in her sweetness.
“Bryce?” she whispered, stirring against him, her warm breath tickling the hairs on his arms.
“Yes, baby, it’s me. I’m back. I’m home.” He was home.
She turned completely around and nestled her face in the hollow of his neck. “I’m glad.”
No explanations were necessary. His being home was enough for her.
“Kaya.” Bryce turned on his back, bringing her on top of him then reached up to turn on the bedside lamp. He wanted to look deep into her eyes. “Wake up, baby. Look at me.”
She raised her head from his chest and her eyelids fluttered a few times as she tried to adjust her pupils to the soft light. “Hi.” She gave him a sleepy smile that made his toes curl.
He cupped her face in his hands. “I love you, Kaya Brehna-Fontaine,” he said, his voice trembling with the emotions that swelled inside him. “I love you with every cell in my being, with every breath in my lungs. I love you, and I will tell you that every day, several times a day until you beg me to stop.”
“I never will,” she said with a tremor in her voice. Tears pooled in her eyes as they darkened with love and passion. “Say it again.”
“I love you, Kaya. I love you. I love you. I love you…”
“I’m pregnant.” Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, waiting for a reaction.
Bryce went stiff as his heart stopped beating for a few seconds. He closed his eyes to let the information sink in. He swallowed the lump that lodged in his throat before he asked in a trembling voice, “Are you sure?” He didn’t want to get his hopes up, seem too happy, tempt fate again.
“Yes. I’m sure. I’ve been having morning sickness for three days now, so I bought a test. It was positive. I went to see Erik this afternoon. I’m four and a half weeks along. You’re going to be a daddy, Bryce. You’re going to have your own baby.”
Tears spilled down Bryce’s face as Kaya’s sweet words wrapped him in a silken cocoon of euphoria and sent a warm glow flowing through him. Kaya was going to have his baby. “I love you. I adore you. I worship you.” The pads of his thumbs brushed her cheeks, her lips, her forehead.
“I know. I’ve known for a long time. I just needed to hear you say it. You needed to hear you say it.”
“I was afraid I’d lost your trust, not your love, that you wouldn’t forgive my infidelity, because that’s what it was. I was cheating on you with Pilar.”
“I thought about making you grovel, but then I spoke with Michelle today and she told me how people thought she forgave Erik too quickly for hurting her. Even when they were apart, she still loved Erik and she knew he loved her, and she wasn’t going to waste time making him beg, just to make a point, especially in the condition she was in at the time. She said it’s punishment enough when people realize they mess up, and may lose everything they love because of their stupidity. She said love isn’t about groveling or revenge, or hurting you because you hurt me, but that love is just what it is: love. It’s pure and kind and forgiving. She said life is too short to hold grudges and toy with the emotions of those we love, and that I should just open my arms to you when you came home.”
“Michelle is a very smart woman, and I’m so happy you two are getting along. You need friends like her and Libby.” True friends Pilar didn’t have. But his life wasn’t about mourning Pilar anymore; it was about loving Kaya and celebrating the creation of his baby growing inside her. “I missed you, love.”
“I missed you too, so much. I love you so much, Bryce, my heart hurts from it.”
Bryce reached a hand down between them, and spreading his palm across her belly, he caressed her gently. It was so tiny and flat. He wondered if his child had room to grow in there. He eased her onto her back and kissed his way slowly down her body to her stomach. He planted a series of kisses on the soft skin there before laying his cheek against her.
He felt Kaya’s hands on his head, her fingers burrowing into his hair, caressing him as he savored the newness of being told he was going to be a father. It was a gloriously rapturous feeling, so strong, so intense that Bryce couldn’t help but weep softly.
He felt like the Biblical Job who’d lost everything he loved, but whom God later blessed, twofold. Finally, he lifted his head and gazed up at Kaya, noting the lingering tears in her eyes. “You make me so very happy. Happier than I ever imagined I could be.”
“You deserve to be happy, Bryce,” she replied with love in her eyes and voice.
His body shuddered on a strong emotion. “Now that my parents are here to take care of the kids, I want to take you away on a honeymoon. I want to be alone with you for a few weeks, block out the rest of the world. Anywhere special you want to go? Just say it and we’re there.”
> Her smile was radiant. “Disney World.”
Bryce cocked his head, his brow wrinkling. “Disney World?”
“Oh, please, Bryce. It was the one place I wanted my daddy to take me when I was a little girl, but we didn’t have the money to go.”
Bryce’s heart ached with the pain and neglect she’d endured as a child. He moved back up in the bed and rolling onto his back, he brought her to lie supine on top of him again. “Okay, sweetheart, I’ll take little Kaya Brehna to Disney World.”
“Can big Kaya Fontaine come, too?” she asked with a mysterious twinkle in her eyes. “She’ll give you a one hundreds of kisses.”
His body shook with laughter. “She’d better.”
“And she promises to dress up in the outfit of your favorite princess, and you can have her any way you want, Prince Bryce, my Royal Highness.”
Bryce’s heart jolted in his chest. “I love the way you think, baby, but we’re only spending a week in Disney World. After that, I’m jetting you off to a private island somewhere where you can be the Naked Queen for three weeks, and I’ll be your Hard Dark Knight and bow to your every demand.”
“See, we make a great team. And I do have demands,” she said, lowering her head to lick and kiss the sensitive hollow of his neck, an extremely erogenous zone of his that she’d discovered.
Oh yes, she did have demands, Bryce thought, as his heart began to pound in his chest.
The thought of Kaya in a princess outfit straddled across him, riding him with her head thrown back and her long, curly hair swinging across her back, or her bent over a table with pink lace, chiffon, and mesh hiked up over her head while he took her from behind, or with her lying on her back with her legs draped over his shoulders and the dress bunched at her waist while he thrust madly into her, brought heat and vigor to Bryce’s sex, filling him with an overwhelming need to be with the now Naked Queen Kaya, in her, show her how much he desired her, wanted her, loved her. Four days was way too long for him not to have made love to his wife.
“Are you up to making love, My Queen, see how hard you can make this dark knight?” he asked reaching out to turn off the light.
“What kind of stupid question is that? I should have your head just for asking.”
Bryce chuckled. “Oh, you shall have my head, My Lady, anywhere you want it.”
He pulled her head gently upward and met her halfway, swallowing her giggles into his mouth. Her lips were warm and gentle as they joined his in a deep, soul-wrenching, tantalizing kiss. Her hands came up to caress his face, her fingers burrowed into his hair.
Bryce’s hands trailed eagerly down her soft body, caressing every sacred inch of her. He sighed in pleasure as his hands moved to cup her delectable buttocks. She rubbed against him and curved her body, allowing him to easily dip his finger between the apex of her thighs, to thrust one deep inside to find her hot and wet, ready for him.
With a bit of maneuvering of their bodies, Bryce spread her thighs over his and eased his turgid aching erection inside her warm slippery channel. She trembled on a long deep sigh of desire as her muscles closed and tightened around him. Each tremor resonated deep inside Bryce, past his flesh to his heart and soul.
He angled his head and captured one swollen breast in his mouth and suckled her. The thought of his baby’s little mouth nursing at her breasts in fewer than nine months deepened his hunger. He moved to the other one and loved it just as voraciously, then with his hands on the lovely arc of her buttocks, guiding her, he began to thrust up inside her, slow, deep, and steady. Her sighs and moans and the undulating movements of her body on his sent deep, earth-shaking tremors surging through him.
Flames of passion churned deep within both of them, pushing them higher and higher to that pinnacle of delight where the only way out of the sizzling vortex that whipped them about was to crash and burn. They cried out each other’s names as the hot tide of passion pulled them under then eject them up and out into the universe, where they exploded, shattering into a million glowing stars. Yet one body, one mind, one soul.
They clung to each other, soaked and trembling, fighting for air.
Reclining on his stomach with his still hungry sex buried inside her, Kaya spoke. “Bryce?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“My panties have been disappearing.”
Bryce held his breath, his stroke down the hollow of her back temporarily halted. “I wonder where they could be.”
“I found a few in the pockets of your trousers. And I know why you take them.”
Bryce chuckled. “You got me.”
He groaned as her muscles contracted around him as if to punish him.
“You’re a dirty, dirty man.”
His laughter floated up from his throat, and he felt the vigor return to his sex, full force. It was going to be another long night of passion. Supporting Kaya’s back with his arm, Bryce rolled over and pinned her to the mattress. “Can’t help it. I love the way you smell, love. And you’re right; I’m dirty. Just let me show you how dirty I am.”
He reached down to where their sexes were joined and lathered his fingers with her hot juices now mixed with his. He smeared it all over her face, her neck, her chest, loving her girlish chuckles as she wriggled around in an attempt to elude him. He was never letting her go.
He kissed her deeply, and as her laughter turned to desire and she began to move provocatively under him, Bryce buried his face in the hollow of her neck. “What’s the count?” he asked against her skin. They’d been practicing Taoist Secrets of Love.
“Nine,” she whispered on a shudder.
Bryce recaptured her mouth as he began to thrust with measured strokes. Nine shallow quick thrusts, one deep and long, nine shallow, one deep, nine shallow…
Bryce repeated the mesmerizing cadence until Kaya’s erotic groans and unintelligible words floating from her lips, the unrelenting convulsions of her thrashing body, the thumping of her heart under his, and the sheen of moisture covering her body told him that she was trapped in the relentless cyclone of a series of tumultuous orgasmic waves. She was drowning, raking her sharp nails into his back and shoulders, bawling out his name, and the only way he knew to save her was to jump into the water with her.
All the blood in Bryce’s body rushed to gather in a sizzling whirlpool between his legs. He thrust with abandoned speed and intensity—just in and out, back and forth at his body’s will, for his mind had gone numb.
When the dam broke and the torrential waterfall of his seed flooded her womb, Bryce bellowed Kaya’s name, then dropped his head in the hollow of her neck and filled his lungs with her intoxicating aroma.
As he succumbed to the passionate undertow of lust and desire, Bryce thought that if anyone ever asked him what love smelled like, his reply would be, “Kaya.”
From the Desk of Ana E Ross
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed following Bryce and Kaya on their journey to love and Happily Ever After in The Mogul’s Reluctant Bride. If you haven’t already, check out The Doctor’s Secret Bride – Book One in the series, and read about Erik and Michelle’s journey to their own HEA.
Reviews, comments, follows, and likes are greatly appreciated.
www.AnaERoss.com
www.facebook.com/Ana-E-Ross
Twitter@anaeross
Until our paths cross again in Granite Falls, enjoy an excerpt from Book Three in The Billionaire Brides of Granite Falls series.
Excerpt from The Playboy’s Fugitive Bride
Chapter One
He was the epitome of masculinity as he strolled through the door of the ski cabin, bringing a draft of New England’s frigid air with him. The rough-hewn floor groaned under his weight, and his hard muscles rippled beneath his skin-tight ski outfit as his sturdy legs transported his six-foot, three-inch frame across the room. He came to a stop in front of a woodstove, pulled off his mittens and held his large hands toward the roaring flames.
Nia’s eyes glowed wi
th a mixture of conflicting emotions as she gaped at the notorious Italian playboy of the century—Massimo Luciano Andretti, sole heir to Andretti Industries, one of the largest textile manufacturers in the world.
With his smooth olive complexion, jet-black wavy hair, a wide sensuous mouth, and eyes as blue as the Atlantic Ocean on a sunny day, Massimo was by far the sexiest exhibit in the billionaire bachelors’ storefront window. No woman he set his sights on was safe. He captured them, pampered them, bedded them, then wiped his mouth and moved on to the next willing victim like an impartial judge at a pie-baking contest.
But Massimo’s irresistible sex appeal wasn’t the reason Nia had tracked him down to his resort mountain town of Granite Falls, New Hampshire. She had a six-year-old score to settle with the bastard who’d caused her family’s financial ruin, the death of her father, and just recently placed her younger brother’s and her own lives in jeopardy.
On his dying bed, her father had made her promise to forgive the Andretti’s and take care of Aaron. Nia had kept her promise and gone on with her life as best she could, even though she had never been able to put Massimo Andretti completely out of her mind since she’d first seen him seven years ago.
Aaron had grown into a responsible young man and didn’t need her protection from Maine’s child welfare system, anymore. He was a high school senior, and had recently received an early acceptance and a full scholarship to attend Princeton next year. Nia was so proud of him, and grateful that she’d had a chance to give him as normal a life as possible. It wasn’t easy, and many times she’d prayed for someone to come along and take the enormous burden of parenthood off her young shoulders. But no one had come. She was all Aaron had, and he was all she had. Together, they’d survived their turbulent past and had been looking forward to a better future.
But the past had a way of invading a girl’s present and hijacking her future. It showed up in the form of a letter from a loan shark named Eddie. Included in the letter was a copy of a six-year-old promissory note that bore her father signature. Apparently, in a desperate attempt to save their family’s paper mill, her father had borrowed a substantial amount of money from Eddie after Massimo failed to honor the contract his then recently deceased father, Piero, had made with hers. Eddie wanted his money—interest, penalties, and late fees included.