“You were made for me,” he whispered brokenly. “I swear you were made for me, Jessica. We fit together so well.”
The words were nearly as pleasurable as the feel of his hard body against hers. His approval meant so much to her. She desperately wanted to please him.
“I’m not too thin?”
He ran a large hand over her bottom and hips. “Oh, no. You’ve got curves in all the right places.”
“You didn’t think so once.”
“I was a jackass then. Besides, I didn’t see you like this then.” He dipped his fingers under the waistband of her panty hose, then withdrew them in the next breath and gently lay her back on the bed. His eyes were dark and avid as they studied her breasts, his hand worshiping as it cupped a rounded curve. Then he met her gaze. “I’m going to take off the rest. I want to see all of you.”
She didn’t speak over the thudding of her heart, but she gave a short nod. Though she’d never have believed it possible, she wanted him to see her. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to make love to her. She was living the fantasy, and in the fantasy, she was a beautiful, desirable woman. Her insides were a dark, aching vacuum needing to be filled in the way that only he could.
She lifted her hips to help him. Her panties slipped down her legs along with the nylons, and all the while she watched his eyes. They followed the stockings off, then retraced the route over her calves and thighs to the dark triangle at the notch of her thighs. There they lingered, growing darker and more smoky.
Lifting his gaze to hers, he whispered in awe, “You are so very, very lovely.”
At that moment, she believed him, because that was part of the fantasy. She was trembling. Her bare breasts rose and fell with each shallow breath she took, and the knot of desire grew tighter between her legs. She wanted him to touch her, to ease the ache, but she couldn’t get herself to say the words.
Carter didn’t need them. He had never seen such raw desire in a woman’s eyes, had never known how potent such a look could be. It was pushing him higher by the minute, making him shake beneath its force. His body clamored for release. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold back. But he wanted it to be good, so good for her.
“So very lovely,” he repeated in a throaty whisper. Tearing his eyes from hers, he lowered his gaze to her body. With an exquisitely light touch, he brushed the dark curls at the base of her belly. When she made a small sound, he looked back up in time to catch her closing her eyes, rolling her head to the side, pressing a fist to her mouth. He touched her again, more daringly this time. She made another small sound and, twisting her body in a subtly seductive way, arched up off the bed.
It was his turn to moan. He was stunned by the untutored sensuality he saw, couldn’t quite believe that a woman with Jessica’s potential for loving had lived such a chaste life. But she had. He had no doubts about it, particularly when she opened her eyes and seemed as stunned as he.
“How do you feel?” he whispered. He stroked her gently, delved more deeply into her folds with each stroke.
Raising her hands to the pillow, she curled them into fists and swallowed hard. “I need you,” she whispered frantically. “Please.”
Between the look in her eyes, the sound of her whisper and the intense arousal to which her straining body attested, Carter was pushed to the wall. His blood was rushing hotly through his veins. He knew he couldn’t wait much longer to take the possession his throbbing body demanded.
He paused only to shuck his briefs, before coming over her. “Jessica?” Unfurling her fists, he wove his fingers through hers.
She tightened the grip. Her body rose to meet his. “Please, Carter.”
Rational thought was becoming harder by the second. He fought to preserve those last threads. “Are you protected, honey? Are you using something?” When she gave a frustrated cry and lifted her head to open her mouth against his jaw, he whispered, “Help me. Tell me. Should I use something?”
“No,” she cried, a tight, high-pitched wail. “I want a baby.”
Swearing softly—and not trusting himself to stay where he was a minute longer, because the idea of her having his baby sent a shock wave of pleasure through him—he rolled off her and crossed the room to the dresser.
“Carter,” she wailed.
“It’s okay, honey. Hold on a second.”
“I need you.”
“I know. I’ll be right there.” A minute later, he was back, sitting on the edge of the bed to apply a condom. A minute after that, he was back over her, his hands covering hers, his mouth capturing hers. While he took her lips with a rabid hunger, he found his place between her thighs. Slowly and gently in contrast to his ravishment of her mouth, he entered her.
Her name was a low, growling sound surging from his throat, a sound of pleasure and relief when her tightness surrounded him. He squeezed his eyes shut in a battle against coming right then, but she wasn’t helping his cause. She lifted her thighs higher around his in an instinctive move to deepen his penetration.
He looked down at her. Her face was flushed, lips moist and parted, eyes half-lidded and languorous. Her hair was wild, the dark waves fanning out over the slate-gray spread.
In an attempt to slow things down, he anchored her hips to the bed with the weight of his own and held himself still inside her. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered.
“Oh, no,” she whispered back. “Does it feel okay?”
“More okay than it’s ever felt,” he answered. His words were hoarse, his breathing ragged. “You’re so small and tight. Soft. Feminine. You have an incredible body. Incredible body. Are you sure I’m not hurting you?”
She managed a nod, then closed her eyes because even without his moving, the pressure inside her was building. “Please,” she breathed.
“Please what?”
“Do something. I want … I need…”
He withdrew nearly all the way, returned to bury himself to the hilt. In reward for the movement, she cried out, then caught in the same breath and strained upward. “Carter!”
“That’s it honey,” he said, and began to move in earnest. “Do you feel me?”
“Yes.”
“That what I want.” Catching her mouth, he kissed her while the motion of his hips quickened. He pulled out and thrust in, filling her more and more, seeming to defy the laws of space. A fine sheen of sweat covered his body, blending with hers where their skin touched.
He had never known such pleasure, had never dreamed that such a physical act could touch his heart so deeply. But that was what was happening, and the heart touching was an aphrodisiac he couldn’t fight. Long before he was ready to have the pleasure end, his body betrayed him by erupting into a long, powerful climax. Only when he was on the downside of that did he feel the spasms that were quaking inside Jessica.
Forcing his eyes open, he watched her face while the last of her orgasm shook her. With her head thrown back on the pillow, her eyes closed, her lips lightly parted, she was the most erotic being he’d ever seen in his life.
Her breathing was barely beginning to calm when his arms gave out. Collapsing over her, he lay with his head by hers for several minutes before rolling to the side and gathering her close. Then he watched her until she opened her eyes and looked up at him.
He smiled. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said, shyly and still a bit breathlessly.
“You okay?”
She nodded, but when he expected her to look away, she didn’t. Her eyes were increasingly large, expectant, trepidant.
“Having second thoughts?”
“One or two.”
“Don’t. Do you have any idea how good that was?” When she hesitated, then gave a short shake of her head against his arm, he brushed her eyebrow with a fingertip. “It was spectacular.”
Still she hesitated. “Was it?”
“Yes.” His smile faded. “You don’t believe me.”
She didn’t say a thing for a minute, then spok
e in a small voice, “I want to.”
“But?”
She didn’t answer at all this time, simply closed her eyes and lay her cheek on his chest. Carter would have prodded if he wasn’t so enjoying lying quietly with her. But her body was warm, delicate, kittenish by his. Gently he drew her closer.
Her voice was flat, sudden in the silence. “Tom used to say things after it was over. He’d tell me how lacking I was.”
Carter felt a chill, part anger, part disbelief, in the pit of his stomach. “Didn’t he come?”
“Yes, but that didn’t matter. He told me I wasn’t much better than a sack of potatoes. I suppose I wasn’t. I used to just lie there. I didn’t want to touch him.”
Carter remembered the way her hands had tightened around his, the way she’d arched to touch him with her body when he had restrained her hands, the way she brought her knees up to deepen his surge. She had been electric.
“That was Tom’s fault,” he said in a harsh voice. “It was his fault that he couldn’t turn you on.”
“I always felt inadequate.”
“You shouldn’t have. You’re exquisite.” Cupping her face in his hand, he kissed her lightly. “I have no complaints about what we did, except that I wanted it to last longer. But that was my fault. I couldn’t hold back. I’ve been wanting you for days. I’ve been imagining incredible things, and to find out that the imagining wasn’t half as incredible as the real thing—” He kissed her again, more deeply this time. His tongue lingered inside her mouth, withdrawing more slowly, reluctantly leaving her lips. “Jessica,” he said in a shaky whisper and clutched her convulsively. But the feel of her body did nothing to dampen his reawakening desire.
Moaning, he released her and lay back on the bed.
Jessica came up on an elbow to eye him cautiously. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He covered his eyes with his arm. “I want you again.”
She looked at that arm, looked at the silky tufts of dark hair beneath it, looked at his chest, which was hairy in thatches, then his lean middle. By the time her eyes had lowered over his belly to the root of his passion, she was feeling tingly enough herself not to be as shocked by his erection as she might have been.
Without forethought, she touched his chest. He jumped, but when she started to snatch her hand away, he caught it, placed it back on his chest and laughed. “It’s like lightning when you touch me. I wasn’t prepared. That’s all.” Her hand was lying flat. “Go on. Touch. I like it.”
Very slowly she inched her hand over the broad expanse of hair-spattered flesh and muscle. She felt those muscles tighten, felt his heartbeat accelerate, knew that her own was doing the same, but she wasn’t about to stop. “I never dreamed…” Her fingertips lightly skimmed the dark, flat nipples that were already pebble hard.
“Never dreamed what?” he asked in a strained voice.
“That I’d … that we’d … you know.”
“That we’d make love?”
“Mmm.” Her thumb made a slow turn around his belly button.
Clapping a hand over hers, he pinned it to his stomach. When she looked up at him in surprise, his dark eyes smoldered. “Once before you touched me. Remember? By the duck pond?” She nodded. “I was wearing jeans then, and more than anything I wanted to unzip them and put your hand inside.” He swallowed, then released her hand. “Touch me, Jessica?”
She looked from his eyes to his hardness and back.
“Touch me,” he repeated in a beseechful whisper. The same beseechfulness was reflected in his eyes. More than anything else, that was what gave her courage.
Slowly her hand crept the short distance down a narrow line of hair to its flaring, finally to the part of him that stood, waiting straight and tall. She touched a tentative finger to him, surprised by the heat and the silkiness she found. Gradually her other fingers followed suit.
Taking in a ragged breath, Carter pushed himself into her hand. He wanted to watch her, wanted to see the expression on her face while she stroked him, but the agony of her touch was too much. She seemed to know just what to do and how fast. Closing his eyes, he savored her ministrations as long as he could before reaching down and tugging her back up. Then, when his mouth seized hers, his hands went to work.
He touched her everywhere, taking the time to explore that which he hadn’t been able to do before. Where his hands left, his mouth took over. It wasn’t long before Jessica was out of her mind with need, before he was, too.
Incredibly they soared higher this time. When it was done, their bodies were slick with sweat, their hearts were hammering mercilessly, their limbs were drained of energy.
They dozed off, awakening a short time later to find the sun down and the room dark. Carter left her side only long enough to light a low lamp on the dresser and draw the bedspread back. Then he took her with him between the sheets, settled her against him and faced the fact that he wanted her there forever.
“I love you,” he whispered against her forehead.
Her eyes shot to his, held them for a minute before lowering. “No.” She couldn’t take the fantasy that far. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“I am. I’ve never said those words to a woman. I’ve never felt this way, felt this need to hold and protect and be with all the time. I’ve never wanted to wake up next to a woman, but I want it now. I don’t like the idea of your going back home.”
“I have to. It’s where I belong”
His arm tightened. “You belong with me.” When she remained silent, he said, “Do you believe in fate?”
“Predestination?”
“Mmm.”
She didn’t have to think about it long. “No. I believe that we get what we do. God helps those who help themselves.”
But Carter disagreed. “If that were true, I’d never have returned home from Vietnam.”
His words hovered in the air while Jessica’s heart skipped a beat. Sliding her head back on his arm, she looked up at him. He was regarding her warily. “What do you mean?”
“I deserved to die. I hadn’t done a decent thing in my life. I deserved to die.”
“No one deserves to die in war.”
“But someone always does.” He looked away. “Good men died there. I saw them, Jessica. I saw them take hits. Some died fast, some slow, and with each one who went, I felt more like a snake.”
“But you were fighting right alongside them,” she argued.
“Yes, but they were good men. They were intelligent guys, guys with degrees and families and futures. A lot of them were rich—maybe not rich, but comfortable, and here I was walking around with a chip on my shoulder because I didn’t have what they did. So they died, and I lived.” He made a harsh sound, half laugh, half grunt. “Which says something, I guess, about the important things in life.”
Jessica was beginning to understand. “That was what turned you around.”
“Yes.” His eyes held the fire of vehemence when they met hers. “Someone was watching over me there. Someone didn’t let me die. Someone was telling me that I had things to do in life. I knew other guys who survived, but me, I never got the smallest scratch. That was fate. So was your asking me to work on Crosslyn Rise.”
“Not fate. Gordon.”
“But the setting was ripe for it.” He turned on his side to look her in the eye. “Don’t you see? You weren’t married. You had been, but you were divorced. I never married. Never even had the inclination until I met you. Never wanted to think of having babies until I met you.” Hearing the catch of her breath, he lowered his voice. “You do want them.”
Her cheeks went red at the memory of what she’d cried out in the heat of passion.
He stroked that flush with his thumb. “I’ll give you babies, Jessica. I couldn’t take the chance before, because I wasn’t sure you meant it. But you do, don’t you?”
Silently she nodded.
“And until now the chances of it seemed remote, so you pushed it to the back of y
our mind. Then I said something about having children to leave the Rise to—”
“I won’t be able to do that anyway. The Rise as I knew it will be gone.”
“As you knew it. But all that’s good about the Rise—its beauty and dignity, strength and stability—is inside you. You’ll give that to your children. You’ll make a wonderful mother.”
Tears came to her eyes. What he was saying was too good to be true. He was too good to be true.
It was the aftermath of lovemaking, she decided. She didn’t believe for a minute that he’d really want to marry her. Give him a day or two and he’d realize how foolish his talk was.
“I love you,” he whispered, and she didn’t argue. He kissed her once, then a second time, but the stirring he felt wasn’t so much in his groin as in the region of his heart. He wanted to take care of her, to give her things, to do for her. She was a gentle woman, a woman to be loved and protected. He would do that if she let him.
Rubbing her love-swollen lips with the tip of his finger, he said, “You must be hungry.”
“A little.”
“If I order up pizza, will you have some?”
“Sure.”
He kissed her a final time, then rolled away from her and out of bed. She watched him cross the room to the closet. His hips were narrow, his buttocks tight, the backs of his thighs lean and muscled, and if she’d thought that his walk was seductive when he was dressed, naked it was something else. When he put on a short terry-cloth robe, the memory of his nudity remained. When he returned to her, carrying the shirt from the bathroom, she felt shy.
“Uh-uh,” he chided when she averted her eyes. “None of that.” He helped her on with the shirt. “I’ve seen everything. I love everything.”
“I’m not used to this, I guess,” she murmured, fumbling with the buttons.
He could buy that, and in truth, he liked her shyness. It made the emergence of her innate sensuality that much more of a gift. “I’ll give you time,” he said softly, and led her out of the bedroom.
The Dream (Crosslyn Rise Trilogy) Page 16
