by Linda Howard
“Yes,” she said, and splintered with joy. “Robert, yes!”
He bucked violently against her with his climax, flooding her with moisture and heat. Evie locked her legs around him and took him deep within, her senses whirling and fading, all consciousness gone except for the primal awareness of him inside her.
Some endless time later, she realized that she was on the bed and he was stretched out naked beside her. She hadn’t fainted, but neither had she been aware of anything else but him. He hadn’t released her during the entire time he had stripped both her and himself, struggling out of clothing while still keeping her in his grasp. She turned to snuggle closer, and the lure of his body, after the long deprivation, was too great. She found herself on top of him, wriggling to find the right contact and nestle his sex against the soft heat between her legs. He caught his breath, and she felt him begin to harden again.
“You might get started on that house full of kids sooner than you thought,” she murmured, moving against him again in voluptuous delight. “I stopped taking the birth-control pills the day you left.”
“Good.” He caressed her bottom and hip, urging her closer to him. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said even as he slipped inside her.
She heard the worry in his voice and knew that he was uneasy with releasing all the force he’d kept contained for so long. She kissed him and bit his lip as his subtle movements made her nerve endings riot with pleasure. “You can’t hurt me by loving me,” she said.
His eyes glittered in the faint light coming from the lamp in the living room. “That’s good,” he murmured. “Because God knows I do.”
Epilogue
Evie heard the elevator arrive and crouched down beside the tiny, adorable creature who was clinging unsteadily to the chair in the entrance hall. “There’s Daddy,” she whispered, and watched her daughter’s big eyes go round with delight. She barely restrained herself from gathering the baby into her arms; sometimes the surge of love was so strong that she thought she would burst from the force of it.
The elevator doors slid open, and Robert stepped out, an indescribable light flaring in his pale green eyes as he saw them waiting for him. With a joyous gurgle, the baby let go of the chair and hurled herself toward him, every toddling step teetering on the edge of disaster. Robert turned absolutely white, dropped his briefcase with a thud, and went down on one knee to swoop her into his arms. “My God,” he said, shocked. “She’s walking!”
“For a couple of hours now,” Evie said, smiling as Angel caught her father’s silk tie in one tiny, chubby hand and began babbling at him. “It makes my heart stop every time she lurches across the floor.”
“She’s too young to walk. She’s only seven months old.” Aghast, he stared down at the small head, covered with downy dark hair, that butted against his chest. He had been just as aghast when she had started crawling at five months. If he could, Robert would have kept his darling offspring as a babe in arms for the first five years of her life. She, however, was blissfully oblivious of his panic at her daring.
Still holding the baby, he hugged Evie close for a long kiss, one that quickly grew heated despite his squirming burden, who tried to poke her fingers between their mouths. They had named her Jennifer Angelina, intending to call her Jenna, but instead she had been Angel from the day she’d been born. She was angelic only when she was asleep, however; during waking hours, she had the fearless spirit of a daredevil.
Evie clung to his mouth for a long time, her hand clenching his hair to hold him in place. She had been waiting all day for him to come home, feeling shivery and excited and a little frightened.
“You were right,” she murmured.
He lifted his head, and the green eyes gleamed. “I was, huh?”
She laughed and pinched him. “You knew you were.” They had decided to have another baby as soon as possible. Both pregnancy and delivery had been easy for her, and though they had decided that two children would fill the house they were building just fine, they had both wanted to have them close together.
Three weeks ago, they had spent the night locked together, lost in the passion that hadn’t faded during the sixteen months of their marriage. When they had awakened at dawn, for their ritual of morning love, Robert had looked down at her with his sleepy green eyes barely open and said, “We made a baby last night.”
She had thought so, too, her instincts certain even before the early pregnancy test she’d taken just that morning had confirmed it. Already it was as if she could feel that hot, tiny weight in her womb, pulsing with life.
She leaned her head against his broad shoulder, remembering the sheer terror she’d felt when she had realized that she was pregnant the first time. Taking a chance on loving Robert had required all her courage, but now there was to be someone else to love, someone who was part of her, part of Robert. She would have no defense against this new little person, and she had thought she would shatter from the fear. But Robert had known how she was feeling, had seen the raw fear in her eyes and hadn’t left her side all day. He had called Felice and announced that he wouldn’t be in, cancel everything, and had spent the day holding Evie on his lap or making love to her. His solution, she thought wryly, had been to overwhelm her with what had gotten her in that condition to begin with; the tactic had been amazingly successful.
Angel was trying to throw herself bodily out of his arms. Sighing, he released Evie to bend down and set the baby on her chubby feet. As soon as he released her, she was off like a wobbly rocket. Evie went back into his arms, but they both kept a weather eye on their precocious daughter as she began investigating a fascinating crack in the hardwood floor.
Evie rested her head on his chest, reassured by the strong, steady thump of his heart beneath her ear. Far from losing himself in his work and demanding that she structure her time around him, as he’d said he would, Robert had instead ruthlessly reorganized his office schedule so he could spend every available moment with her and Angel. She had known that he was a man of alarming intensity, but instead of being frightened when he focused it on her, she had bloomed. Robert wasn’t a man who loved lightly; when he loved, it was with every fiber of his being.
His hand moved to Evie’s belly and pressed in gentle reassurance. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.
She lifted her head and gave him a luminous smile. His love had renewed her strength, banished the shadows. “I’ve never been better.”
Robert kissed her, savoring her sweet taste and the familiar, delicious tension of desire that quivered in their bodies. “I love you, Evangeline,” he said, gathering her close to him. Loving her was the most joyous, satisfying thing he’d ever done. She demanded everything from him and gave him all of herself, and sometimes he was staggered by the richness of the bond between them. He’d been right; loving Evangeline took everything he had, heart and soul.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1639-0
LOVING EVANGELINE
Copyright © 1994 by Linda Howington
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