So where did they go from here, he wondered. She was still Cathy’s sister. That still shouldn’t have anything to do with anything, but somehow it did. He still felt guilty.
For Belinda the guilt was worse. Not only had she practically devoured her sister’s husband while standing in her sister’s kitchen, but in some dark corner of her mind she still blamed him for his part in Cathy’s death.
How could she want him? How?
No answer came from her mind or her heart. She only knew that she did want him, did care for him much more than she should.
Care for? Get real, girl.
Yeah, yeah, so it was more than that. But until she resolved things in her own mind, she wasn’t about to even think that other, more accurate word again. She couldn’t afford to. She would go crazy if she did.
Somehow she made it through the afternoon, past supper, and into the night. Her nerves were stretched taut, her skin felt too tight, and her pulse had yet to calm since he’d first touched her that afternoon. But she managed.
Now it was full dark. The men had gone their separate ways—probably to the bunkhouse for a few hands of poker. The boys were in bed. Belinda had seen Ace take a bottle of beer out onto the front porch and knew she had to go out there. She had to talk to him about what had happened and why it couldn’t happen again.
The screen door squeaked as she pushed it open and stepped out into the dark night. Ace was seated on the steps, his elbows resting on his thighs, the bottle of beer dangling from his fingers.
“Come on out,” he said quietly. “Have a seat. It’s a nice night.”
The low, intimate timbre of his voice made her shiver. “We need to talk, Ace.”
He raised the bottle and took a pull of beer. “Do we?”
Belinda moved to the porch post beside the steps and leaned against it. “You know we do. About this afternoon.”
Rather than look up at her, he stared out into the darkness. “Was there something there you didn’t understand? Or are you going to deny what really happened?”
“It’s a little hard to deny, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Seems to me like we’ve both been doing a pretty good job up until today.”
She followed his gaze off into the darkness, finding it easier than looking at his rugged profile in the dim glow of the living room lamp and the utility light behind the house. “It was a mistake. Wasn’t it?”
“Probably a lulu,” he admitted.
Her heart pounded so loud she feared he could hear the thunder of it. “It probably shouldn’t happen again.”
“Probably not.” He took another swallow of beer. “But it will.”
When her heart resumed its beating, Belinda let out the breath she’d been holding. “Before it does, I need you to tell me something.”
Now he looked up at her, and she wished he hadn’t. “Tell you what?” he asked.
Belinda struggled for the right words, the ones she thought she had planned so carefully that now eluded her. “Are you aware,” she asked tightly, “that I’ve blamed you for Cathy’s death?”
Ace felt like he’d been sucker punched. His breath left him in a hiss. It was a long moment before he could draw another. “I figured as much, after what you said a couple of weeks ago.”
“You said I didn’t know what I was talking about. That whatever went on between you and Cathy was private and none of my business.”
“I guess I said that, yeah.”
“It’s still none of my business, but I’m asking, anyway.”
“What, exactly,” he said cautiously, “are you asking?”
She was quiet for so long that he started to hope she had dropped the subject. But no such luck.
“I know the two of you said from the beginning that you wanted at least four children. But dammit, why did you get her pregnant that third time, when you knew there would most likely be serious complications?”
Ace took another swig of beer, then let his eyes fall shut. “I didn’t.”
As if the very air around her telegraphed her movements to him, he felt her stiffen. “You didn’t get her pregnant?”
A bark of self-deprecating laughter escaped him. “Oh, I did that right enough. But not intentionally.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he said tiredly, “that she neglected to tell me she’d gone off the Pill. Yes, I knew the doctors expected problems with the delivery when she carried Clay. Which is why, after he was born, I told her we didn’t need any more children.
“You...” Belinda slid down the post and sat next to Ace on the steps. “What?”
“You heard me. We miked about it, and she agreed. Sure, before we were married we knew we wanted a big family. Four kids, at least. After Jason we were hoping for a girl, but Clay was so perfect we decided we didn’t need a girl, after all. With the complications of his birth, we decided two kids were enough. We wouldn’t have anymore. We agreed.”
“You mean...Grant wasn’t...planned?”
Ace felt his heart twist. “What do you want me to say? That I wish he’d never been born?”
“Of course not.” For the first time since she’d brought up the subject, her voice softened. “Of course not, Ace. I’m just trying to understand why my sister died. If you agreed on no more children, why didn’t you have a vasectomy so you couldn’t get her pregnant again?”
“You think I didn’t offer? She wouldn’t hear of it. She said it wouldn’t be fair. That if something ever happened to her. I might decide I wanted more children with another woman.” He let out a harsh laugh. “Can you believe that? She was worried about what might happen with me and another woman.”
“It sounds like Cathy. But it’s hard to imagine,” Belinda said quietly. “The two of you were perfect for each other. She was perfect for you.”
“She wanted—said she wanted to go in and have her tubes tied. But she kept putting it off. She was on the Pill. Or so she said.”
“You don’t mean—”
“I do mean. I didn’t know she’d stopped taking the Pill until she told me she was three months’ pregnant.”
“But...why?”
Ace shook his head. “She wanted more babies. I remember when Jason startled walking, she started wanting another baby to hold. Not just wanting. Needing. That’s what she said. That sine needed another baby. She said once that she felt as though her reason for existing was to have babies. My babies,” he added, his voice breaking.
The anger that rose to Belinda’s throat shocked her. Anger at Cathy. To have been married to this man, to have two beautiful sons, and feel incomplete? What incredible... greed.
Then shame swamped her. Cathy had more than paid for the so-called crime of wanting another baby. Paid with her life.
Still, “Why would she have risked her life, after the warnings with Clay? Why would she do such a thing?”
Ace shook his head. “She wasn’t concerned about problems. They warned her of problems when she had Clay, and there were none. So she just dismissed the possibility. Right up...until the end, she never believed anything would...go wrong. Never believed a word the doctor said. She had made up her mind, knew what she wanted, and that was that.”
“God,” Belinda breathed.
“I’m surprised she didn’t tell you all of this.”
Belinda shook her head. “She just kept telling me how excited both of you were about the new baby on the way, how much you both looked forward to it.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed on a swallow. “I was scared spitless from the minute she told me she was pregnant. I even—”
When he didn’t go on, she prodded. “You even?”
Ace closed his eyes and remembered the pain. “When I found out from her doctor just how dangerous the pregnancy was, I suggested an abortion.”
“Oh, God.”
“Yeah.” He let out a long breath. “She wouldn’t speak to me for a week. Wouldn’t do anything but c
ry. She was making herself sick with crying until I gave in. And if I say that I’ll never forgive myself for that, that I wished she’d had the abortion, that Grant had never been born, what kind of monster does that make me?”
“No.” Belinda reached out and placed her hand on his knee. “It doesn’t make you any kind of monster to wish your wife was still alive.”
“Thank you for that.”
She started to slip her hand from his knee, but he placed his hand over hers and held it there.
“I can’t believe you let me kiss you today, that you kissed me back, knowing what you thought I’d done.”
Belinda wished she had a logical answer for that, but nothing about their situation was logical. She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Sometimes there’s just no accounting for taste.”
“Ouch.” He chuckled. “Damn, Slim, you’re kinda hard on a guy’s ego.”
She smiled into the darkness. “I figure your ego’s strong enough to take it.”
They fell silent for a while, his hand on hers, listening to the night sounds, the crickets, the cicadas. Up in the hills a coyote howled.
Belinda shivered. “That’s a lonely sound.”
“One of the loneliest.”
After another moment she asked, “Do you get lonely, Ace?”
“Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes.”
“Is that what this...thing, whatever it is, between us is all about? Are we just trying to assuage our loneliness?”
“Is that wrong?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I just wish...”
He squeezed her hand. “What do you wish?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Maybe. So what? You laugh at me plenty.”
“Maybe.”
“So? What do you wish? I’ll try not to laugh.”
“You’re a prince, Wilder, and that’s a fact. I just wish you weren’t my sister’s husband. Okay, now you can laugh.”
“Afraid I can’t accommodate you. I’m not that big a hypocrite. Not when I’ve been walking around for weeks wishing like hell you weren’t my wife’s sister. We’re a hell of a pair, Slim.”
“What do we do about it? I know in my head that she’s gone, but I still feel guilty for...”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand again. “Me, too.”
“Which is silly,” she added. “I mean, we’re not talking about a lifetime commitment or anything. We’re talking about two people who—”
Ace leaned closer, until his breath brushed her cheek.
Belinda held her breath as his lips touched hers, thinking surely that she had blown their last kiss all out of proportion. Nothing so simple as a kiss could have had the effect on her that she thought she remembered. Nothing could be that devastating, that powerful. Nothing...
Nothing, except the feel of his lips on hers. The tenderness, in sharp contrast with the heated attack on her senses that afternoon, proved just as devastating, just as powerful. His lips were soft, yet firm, and warm. They teased and tormented and promised more. They made her yearn for things she had no business wanting, such as a lifetime of kisses just like this.
His tongue traced the seam between her lips, parted them, dipped inside to taste and be tasted. There was nothing else, only this gentle, soul-stirring kiss, and his hand atop hers on his knee. Nothing more. And it was everything, and it made her want to weep.
Then his hand slid up her arm and brushed her breast, and it made her want to feel his weight against her body, to feel his flesh mate with hers. And she was falling, falling, gently, and he was there holding her when she felt the porch miraculously rise up to press against her back. Only when he pulled away and looked at her, let her breathe, did she realize she was lying on the wooden porch, with Ace leaning over her, making her head spin.
“Ace, I...”
“Shh.” His lips nipped hers. “It’s just a kiss.” And again. “Just a kiss.”
Maybe to him it was just a kiss. To Belinda it was so very much more, this swirling of emotions, sensations, things she’d never felt before, with a hint of more if only she had the courage to reach out and grasp it. One by one, each of her ugly little insecurities tried to rear its head, and one by one Ace unknowingly kissed them away.
Around her the nighttime air was cool. The man pressed against her was warm, so warm. Denim brushed against denim with a soft sound. Cotton against cotton. Breath against breath.
Against her hip she felt a ridge of male flesh swell and harden. “Ace?”
“You’re not surprised, are you? This—” he nudged himself against her hip “—is what you do to me.”
A low moan escaped her. Reaching for courage and boldness she didn’t know she had, finding it in his touch, his kiss, she took his hand in hers and pressed it over her heart for him to feel the pounding. “This,” she whispered against his lips, “is what you do to me.”
Ace felt her small breast and resented the T-shirt separating it from his touch. Taking her mouth with his, he ran his hand beneath her shirt until he touched her, flesh to flesh, hand to breast. And it still wasn’t enough. With a groan, he tore his mouth from hers and took her nipple instead.
Belinda’s gasp of breath, her startled cry of pleasure, the way she arched clear off the porch, tore holes in his carefully constructed control. Suddenly, instead of the gentle tasting he had planned, he was devouring her, suckling, grinding his erection against her hip.
Belinda reveled in his sudden fierceness. Cupping his head in her hands, she held him to her breast, biting back a moan as his mouth pulled at invisible wires that she’d never known ran from her nipple to the heat that throbbed between her legs. If he stopped, she was sure she would simply shrivel up and die.
“I want you,” he whispered against her breast. “I want you, Belinda.”
She said the only thing possible in that moment. She said, “Yes.”
Ace raised his head and looked at her. “Will you come upstairs with me?”
“Yes.” Again, it was the only thing she could say. She wanted him too much to give any other answer.
Ace knelt beside her and lifted her in his arms. He didn’t dare pause to kiss her on the way into the house or up the stairs, no matter how badly he wanted to. He was very much afraid that if he stopped, that would be as far as they got before he lost his head completely and took her there and then.
But he didn’t trust his control to last long, so he carried her to the closest bedroom—hers. The room was dimly lit by the glow of the backyard utility light. Ace closed and locked the door, then lowered Belinda to the bed. Without breaking his hold, he lay down beside her.
“Now,” he whispered, “where were we?”
She took his hand in hers. “I think,” she whispered back, sliding his hand up beneath her T-shirt until his palm cupped her breast and took his breath away, “we were here.”
With his hand on her breast, Ace kissed her slowly, thoroughly, and the heat between them built. He kissed his way down the side of her neck until, with her shirt pushed out of the way, his lips trailed up her breast to settle over her nipple.
Belinda’s breath caught in her throat. Oh, the pleasure of it. She wanted it to go on and on, to never stop. She wanted to return the favor, and she wanted more.
While his mouth tormented her, she pulled her T-shirt off and dropped it to the floor, then found the hem of his T-shirt and slipped her hands beneath. With fingers splayed, she ran her palms up the smooth, hard contours of his back.
Ace shivered at her touch. It felt so good he was torn between shouting for joy and weeping in pleasure.
“Ace?”
He tensed. Had she changed her mind? He wasn’t sure he would be able to bear it if she had. Slowly he raised his head and looked at her. “Belinda, I—”
“Take off your shirt,” she whispered. “Then kiss me again.”
He nearly shook with relief. Rising to his knees, he peeled his shirt off over his head and tossed it aside. Then he ea
sed down, his belly to hers, and slowly, slowly, lowered himself until they touched, bare flesh to bare flesh, waist to shoulders.
It was heaven. Warm skin and soft sighs, with the teasing scent of talcum powder from somewhere in the room. Her breasts nestled against the crisp hair on his broad, muscled chest.
“Tell me you want me,” he whispered.
Belinda swallowed. “I want you.”
“Right here, right now. You and me.” And he kissed her again. Thoroughly. Fiercely. With lips and tongue and teeth, while his hands roamed everywhere he could reach.
Belinda reveled in it, let herself be overwhelmed by him. Welcomed him as he slid into the cradle of her thighs. The weight of him, his heat, his taste—it all felt so right. Too right—as though if she didn’t hold on tight he would disappear into thin air.
She held on tight. The need for him swelled up inside her until she felt raw with it. She wanted to urge him to hurry, to fill this gaping need, to merge his flesh with hers. But she couldn’t speak without taking her mouth from his, and she couldn’t. Just... couldn’t.
The muscles in his arms were rock bard. His chest and back felt like velvet over contoured steel. She touched him, stroked him, raced her greedy hands over every inch of exposed flesh she could reach.
Her heart pounded in her ears. Her lungs labored for breath. When his hips flexed against her, she welcomed his thrust, urging him on. Her head was filled with him, as was her heart.
Ace had thought he wanted to go slow, to take all night with her, but she suddenly turned wild beneath him, responding to his touch as no other woman ever had. She went to his head faster than the most expensive Kentucky bourbon. When he opened the zipper on her jeans, his hand shook. No woman had ever made his hands shake before. Not ever.
His hand was hot against her belly, and Belinda moaned. Then he slid it down, down, until he was touching her where she most needed his touch, and she thought she might die from the sheer pleasure. “Ace,” she said breathlessly.
His name on her lips drove him higher, made him harder. The feel of her against his fingers, so hot, so slick. He slipped a finger inside, and she was tight and ready, and he couldn’t wait another minute.
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