Big Sky Bride, Be Mine!

by Victoria Pade

  His entire body was a glory of masculinity, sleek sinew and mounds of muscle all working together, turning more taut in response to what she was doing to him, to the strokes and exploration of that thick, hard staff she held within her grasp.

  And then neither of them could contain themselves another moment.

  Ian reached over on the bed and retrieved the condom he’d taken from his pants’ pocket earlier, sheathing himself before he came to her again.

  He kissed her—a long, lingering kiss. He caressed a breast in one hand with adoration. Then he rose above her before the weight of his big body pressed her flat to the mattress as he fitted himself between her thighs.

  Jenna answered with the invitation of open legs, and once more, her breath caught as he slid into her with such sublime perfection that it was as if she’d been fashioned especially for him.

  His tongue came to reclaim hers, too. His hand at her breast teased and tormented her nipple, as he started to move in a slow, rhythmic dance of his hips and hers.

  Up and down, in and out, now faster and faster they moved together in harmony, in unison. Passion, intensity mounted, and somewhere along the way they stopped kissing, and Ian’s hands found the mattress on either side of her head, lending strength to each thrust and then speed she couldn’t match.

  Jenna curled her legs over his. Her hips rose to him to fully receive what he was offering, what he was doing to her, all that he was arousing in her.

  She clung to the majesty of his back, and what was building inside of her grew and grew until it overtook her, until it washed through her with a blinding burst that was so exquisite that it held her in its grip and sent tiny sounds from her throat as she was suspended in that moment of almost unbearably divine bliss.

  So divine that she nearly missed Ian’s own surrender to that same peak.

  Nearly, but not quite, as his whole body stiffened, and he plunged so deeply into her that it was as if they truly fused into one body, one being, one moment of shared ecstasy that was truly, shockingly, like nothing Jenna had ever experienced before.

  Then it all began to ebb. To ease. Gradually. Little by little. Ian’s incredible body relaxed and became a welcome weight atop her. He dropped his forehead on the bed beside her ear and kissed her bare shoulder, the heat of his breath brushing her skin like warm cotton.

  For a time, neither of them said or did anything while breathing calmed and quieted, while a wonderful sense of satisfaction, of contentment, of repletion seemed to wrap around them.

  Then, in a tone that combined awe and mock chastisement, Ian said, “Jenna Bowen. You have secret superpowers.”

  Jenna laughed. “I do? Yes, I do! But I think you must, too.”

  “I don’t like to brag,” he joked, his voice husky with spent passion, “but I think we rocked the world.”

  “The whole world?”

  “Mine, anyway….”

  Hers, too. But only her body would admit it with a reflexive raise of her shoulders and an involuntary tightening of her arms around him to hold on for a moment before she realized what she was doing and slightly let go.

  His response was a pulse inside of her before he slipped free and rolled to his back, scooping one arm underneath her so he could pull her to his side where she rested her head on his chest.

  “Can I stay?” he asked quietly.

  Forever?

  No, he couldn’t have meant that. It was just what flashed through her mind, all on its own.

  But she knew he meant could he stay the night.

  And in truth, she didn’t think she could have endured it if he got up and left.

  Only she forced flippancy and said, “Sure. I don’t have to work tomorrow, you can even have breakfast with us.”

  “I can sneak out and then ring the doorbell and pretend that’s all I came for so Abby won’t know,” he offered.

  Jenna laughed again. “I don’t think you need to do that. She’s too young for it to matter. And after how in-love-with-you she was tonight, she’ll probably be thrilled to have you here when she wakes up. It’ll be a treat for her.”

  “And the night is still young. Maybe there could be a couple more treats for us before that….”

  “Really?” Jenna asked because his lovemaking already surpassed what she’d been accustomed to.

  “Like I said, you rocked my world. Let’s see if you can do it again.”

  “Oh, good, no pressure.”

  “Only in the right places,” he muttered under his breath as he repositioned them so he could kiss her and start anew….

  Chapter Ten

  Monday was strange for Ian.

  It started with his watching Jenna sleep and, oddly, enjoying that so much that he spent a long while at it. Then he woke her with multiple kisses to every surface of bare skin exposed above the blanket that he’d pulled over them both after making love to her for the third time Sunday night.

  When she was awake, he made love to her for the fourth time. Once they were done and she was resting in his arms again, he wished that they could stay right where they were for days and days. At least…

  Then Abby had called to Jenna, and that wish hadn’t been granted.

  But he’d gone on to watching Jenna make pancakes while he sat at her kitchen table with a pajama-clad Abby cozily perched on his lap.

  And that had its own appeal.

  Warm country kitchen. Beautiful woman at the stove. Cuddly, adoring baby enthralled with him and with studying his morning beard.

  Sure, it had seemed odd to be satisfied with merely watching Jenna sleep. But it seemed equally odd to feel so content in this domestic situation. But again, he wished that they could all stay this way for days and days. At least…

  But he had business appointments. And when Jenna got a call from another nurse asking her to take a three-to-eleven shift at the hospital, the face of her day changed. So that second wish wasn’t granted, either. After pancakes that tasted better than anything he could ever remember eating, he’d left Jenna—and Abby—behind, taking with him more reluctance and regret at having to do that than he thought it was possible to feel. That had also seemed odd.

  The hours that followed had been busy—particularly since the auction of Jenna’s farm was on Wednesday. Plus he’d fielded three calls from his father, primarily about Chelsea.

  But all through those calls Ian hadn’t been able to think about anything but Jenna, and that was when he’d told his father that he wasn’t going to see Chelsea again.

  That had resulted in a disagreement with his father. But not even that had stopped him from wishing—every bit as badly as he’d been wishing it since the moment he’d left this morning—that he was with Jenna again.

  Which had led him not to return to the apartment on the Mackey and McKendrick compound when he finally finished work late that evening. Instead he went to Jenna’s place to park in front of her dark farmhouse and make his gazillionth wish of the day—for her to hurry home from the hospital when her shift was over, despite the fact that they hadn’t made plans to see each other tonight.

  Because something had happened to him since he’d met her. And the last twenty-four hours had made it impossible for him to keep it at bay any longer.

  He felt about Jenna the way he’d never felt about anyone. Not even Iris, not even when he’d asked Iris to marry him. It was a realization he’d come to during the course of the day.

  He didn’t understand it. He only knew that he was completely at its mercy.

  Jenna was all he could think about. He wanted to be with her day and night. He wanted to do everything with her. She was it, he admitted to himself in the silence of his car, the silence of the night.

  He couldn’t explain how he knew, but he knew that she was the one person in the universe for him. It was a gut feeling, an inner knowledge, an instinct, something he couldn’t exactly put a name to that all boiled down to one thing—knowing without a doubt that they were destined to be together. That they n
eeded to be.

  And unlike with Iris or with Chelsea, it didn’t have anything at all to do with his father or his father’s agenda—in fact it was actually contrary to what his father wanted.

  With Jenna, it wasn’t about a single thing except his feelings for her—entirely separate from anything, everything, anyone else.

  Accepting that as he sat there in his car dumbfounded him. Nothing and no one had ever hit him like this, and for a moment, he wondered if he’d gone a little crazy.

  But he hadn’t. His feelings for Jenna were off the charts, and for the first time in his life, everything else finally seemed to have found its rightful place. He seemed to have found his rightful place.

  With Jenna, everything else fell away, and nothing mattered as much as the two of them and what they had together. He was just himself—not Morgan Kincaid’s son, not one of Morgan Kincaid’s adopted children, not Morgan Kincaid’s reflection or right-hand man or hope for the future.

  And maybe because of that, he’d reached a different level with Jenna. A level where he had been more open with her than he had been with anyone, ever. A level where he’d found a whole new closeness, a whole new sense of freedom, a whole new intimacy…

  “No wonder last night was so good,” he muttered to himself when the memory cropped up.

  And oh, what a memory it was!

  For a moment he was lost in it, in picturing Jenna, in recalling the texture of her skin, the scent of her perfume, the warmth of her body. In wanting to be right back in bed with her…

  Just thinking about her made him smile.

  Jenna was everything. Serious when she should be serious. Funny when she should be funny. Intelligent and gorgeous and wise and witty and strong and insightful and generous and sexy and sensual and…

  And she was the first person he could genuinely, vividly picture—without a single doubt in his mind—going through the rest of his life with.

  “Which is really why I’m here tonight,” he mused when it sank in.

  He was there because every minute that he’d been without her since he’d met her had felt more empty without her in it.

  He was there because he needed to know—right now—if they could have the future together that he so vividly saw for them….

  “Wow…” he muttered to himself as it all took root in his mind.

  Then something else occurred to him.

  Her family home loomed in front of him, her family farm, reminding him that what he wanted didn’t come without complications.

  There was still the issue of her property and the instrumental role he played in Jenna’s not being able to give her late father the one thing he’d asked of her—to keep the place a farm.

  And there was Abby.

  With Jenna came Abby…

  And parenthood…

  Not when he’d planned—ten years from now.

  Not the way he’d planned. Not the traditional course he’d been determined to take, the traditional course that meant he would meet a woman as free of encumbrances as he was, that meant they would fall in love, marry, have a few years alone together and then start a family of their own making.

  In fact, what he was picturing with Jenna was exactly what he’d planned not to do. Exactly the way he hadn’t wanted to become a parent, because he would be a parent to a child who could well feel all the same things he’d felt growing up.

  But it was Abby….

  Cute, cuddly, lovable Abby who had sort of adopted him already…

  Abby.

  The more he thought about her, the more the fact that they didn’t share blood ties began to seem less important.

  Abby had latched on to him, anyway. And it was nice. It felt good. Good to have her look up at him with those big, trusting eyes of hers, to have her reach her chubby little arms out to him when she wanted him to hold her, to have her climb up on his lap. It had all spurred something in him, he thought now, when he realized that lurking behind his feelings for Jenna were some fledgling feelings for Abby, too.

  He’d known all along that he liked the baby girl. But now, when he analyzed what she’d stirred in him, he recognized protective feelings. Nurturing feelings. Feelings that probably qualified as parental…

  That seemed so weird. As weird as seeing Hutch with a kid. As weird as Hutch himself had said it was to find himself a father.

  But now Ian could actually start to envision himself stepping into that role with Abby. Doing exactly what he’d been doing with Abby when he’d escorted her around the wedding, every time he’d helped with her care or held her or played with her.

  As much as it fed his soul to be with Jenna, it occurred to him that there also seemed to be some indefinable connection between himself and Abby, too. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t a biological or genetic link tying them together. An already-existing attachment. An attachment that maybe Abby—with the innocence and purity of a child—had felt herself and simply embraced.

  An attachment that his own adoptive parents must have felt for him and Hutch at the start and to Lacey when they’d first adopted her.

  And couldn’t that—wouldn’t that—grow to something stronger if he became a fixture in Abby’s life from this early age? Couldn’t that connection grow as strong as the bonds birth parents and children felt?

  His own parents had always told him and his siblings that what they felt for them was no different than what any birth parents felt for their children. That they thought they loved them even more because they’d chosen them…

  His own concerns, his sense that he had to work harder to earn his place with them, the right to the Kincaid name, had come from something inside of him. Not from them, he admitted to himself now. It hadn’t even come from the pressures his father had put on him and his brother, because he knew that his father would have put the exact same pressures on any biological child.

  But what about Abby?

  How could he prevent her from feeling the way he’d felt growing up?

  He hated the thought of her ever feeling as if she needed to work harder to deserve anything he gave her. To go to extreme lengths to please him.

  But maybe Ian and his siblings were a special case because his father—with all his good intentions—had made such a public cause of their adoptive status. Making them feel different.

  Maybe if the fact that he wasn’t Abby’s birth father was taken more in stride, it wouldn’t matter as much to the little girl as it had to him.

  He wasn’t sure. He hoped so.

  But before Ian could hash through any more, he saw car lights coming down the road.

  His pulse picked up speed.

  Jenna.

  She was what mattered.

  Jenna and Abby and the three of them being together.

  The mere thought of that made the complications fade into the background for him.

  Jenna and Abby and the three of them being together—that was what he wanted, that was what he was going after.

  And he was willing to do whatever it took to make it happen….

  It was shortly before midnight when Jenna finally pulled onto the drive that led to her house.

  After next to no sleep the night before, chasing after well-rested Abby who wouldn’t nap, then working a busy shift at the hospital, she was beat.

  And yet, the very minute she spotted Ian’s car parked in front of the farmhouse, she perked up.

  There hadn’t been any arrangement to see him tonight. She hadn’t heard from him since he’d left this morning. And while she had gone through the day and evening in a sort of rosy glow after spending the previous night with him, she’d still kept in mind that she’d given herself permission to make love just the one night. Just one night that wouldn’t take her off the path she’d set for herself.

  But the instant she saw his car, the instant she had the chance to see him again, all of that flew out of her head and what remained was merely the rosy glow and the excited hope that tonight might be spent the way last
night had been….

  He got out of his car as she pulled up beside it. He looked as wonderful as ever in jeans, a turtleneck sweater and a leather bomber jacket that gave him a hint of bad-boy appeal.

  “Hi,” she whispered when he stepped up to open her door the minute her engine was off.

  “Hi,” he answered at a normal volume, smiling a knowing sort of smile that she didn’t quite understand.

  But rather than addressing it, she nodded over her shoulder and put an index finger to her lips to let him know to be quiet.

  Abby had been asleep when she’d picked her up from Meg’s house, and the baby had remained asleep through the short drive home. Jenna didn’t want to wake her. Especially now.

  “I’ll get her,” Ian whispered. He came around to open the rear passenger door and leaned in to release the baby carrier while Jenna got out of the car.

  Neither of them said anything as they went into the house, even as Ian led the way up the stairs to the nursery.

  Once they were there, he set the carrier on the floor beside the crib.

  He did it gently, without jostling Abby, and there wasn’t a sound to wake her, but the baby raised heavy eyelids anyway, saw him, smiled and said a sleepily pleased, “Un…”

  “Sleep tight, Abby,” Ian whispered to her, and the baby immediately closed her eyes again.

  The whole thing made Jenna smile as she unbuckled Abby from the car seat straps, removed her coat and lifted her into the crib.

  Abby turned on her side, curled into a little ball and continued sleeping as Jenna ran a loving hand over her head and kissed her forehead.

  Then Jenna stood up straight, motioned toward the door and led Ian out.

  They both took off their coats as they retraced their path down the stairs. Jenna left hers on the newel post at the foot of the steps.

  She was still wearing her navy blue scrubs, her hair was in the ponytail she’d put it in before work. As Ian hung his bomber jacket on one of the pegs behind the front door, she was wondering if, instead of coming back downstairs, she should have taken him into her bedroom, into her bathroom, into her shower….