He bore down on her, devouring her, acknowledging her gesture and demanding more. More passion. More truth. Only honesty, about what they wanted from life and what they wanted from each other, would lead them to the answers.
Angling his head and rasping her jaw with his chin, he showed her what he wanted, then swallowed a groan when he got it. His tongue thrust past her open lips. She was sweet and hot inside, tangy and salty and oh, so stimulating. The taste of her brought the blood pounding to his eardrums and his groin. The feel of her beneath him made the questions that plagued him swirl in his mind like the shiny, foil petals on a child’s pinwheel. She breathed against his neck and the wheel spun faster, the colors merging, impossible to distinguish one from the other.
Could he love another child? Could he live as a husband and father again? Did she want him to? What if Caroline or Hailey had been hurt in the fire? What kind of god suffered a man with both a pain so great as losing a child and pleasure so intense as what he felt now in one life? Is there a god at all?
Why had she left him?
Caroline’s hands smoothed over his shoulders, down to the well of his waist and rise of his hip to his groin. His neck arched and corded as her fingers circled him, measured him. His breath hissed between his teeth.
“You’re not wearing a condom,” she said.
“Don’t have any here.” The muscles in his forearms trembled.
“Are you…okay with that?”
A rusty groan tumbled out of him. “To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought about it,” he lied. To tell the real truth, he hadn’t allowed himself to think about it.
“Maybe you should,” she said softly.
“Maybe you should,” he countered. “I don’t think I have enough working brain cells to think about anything but what you’re doing right now.”
“I stopped by my doctor’s office this afternoon, on my way to see the twins.”
That got a few neurons firing. “Are you all right?”
She smiled. “Green light.”
It took him a moment to catch on, but when he did, the information hit him like a train. He hadn’t even thought to ask. “‘Green light,”’ he repeated.
She released him. The rush of blood to his head almost made him dizzy. The ache further south made his stomach tighten as if he’d been sucker punched.
“Are you going to stop?” she asked.
Her soft brown eyes, full of need—and fear—held him to her, wouldn’t let him retreat. Wouldn’t let him run, as he had before. From himself. From her. From what was meant to be. “No, I’m not going to stop,” he said roughly.
As if struck by a bolt from the heavens, he realized he wasn’t looking for answers here. What he sought came from a much deeper place than the logical mind. He was looking for peace. Faith.
His soul.
“I can’t stop,” he said, bending his head to kiss her again.
Caroline opened her legs and he slid between them. Her hands clasped his back. “You’re shaking.”
Close to her ear, he spoke low and honestly. “Because I need you so much.”
A tear slipped over the rim of Caroline’s eyelashes. He kissed it away and she exhaled in a shudder. Her thighs cradled his hips; his sex nestled against her womb. In this, the seat of creation, he felt godlike himself. Powerful. And yet awed. Humbled by the vastness of the universe. His life amounted to no more than a speck of space dust adrift in a galaxy full of suns and moons, whole star systems. Yet as he slipped inside her and her slick heat enveloped him, he couldn’t help but feel the power of that universe. Joined with Caroline he formed the nucleus of it all. The single atom, when split, that could trigger a nuclear blast.
He moved over his wife, slowly at first, as if just remembering the rhythm, practicing, then with building urgency. Her soft, gasping breaths drove him on, gave him the power to break free of the inertia that had held him bound to his earthly existence too long. Gravity had no meaning. He floated over her, pulling her up with him when he rose, burying himself deeper inside her when he drove them both back down. Each stroke took him deeper, and higher.
Caroline cried out. The sound jarred him; he thought he’d hurt her. Until he gathered enough control to look into her glazed eyes and saw the satisfaction growing inside her. She went pliant in his arms, boneless, weightless, floating.
Matt went still, let her hang there, suspended in a moment that seemed to stretch into hours, days, until slowly, her mouth curved into a smile and her body shuddered. When he answered with a smile of his own, she slid her hands over his buttocks, pulled him down and lifted her hips to meet him.
Her internal muscles seized around him, and spots as bright as sun flares appeared in his vision. Blinded, his eyes burned. His body burned. But he withheld his own completion, concentrating on her satisfaction. Her pleasure.
He bent his head to hers and thrust with his tongue as he thrust with his body. The tremors inside her rippled upward and outward, from her core to her extremities. She cried out again, and he swallowed the sound, lifting her by the hips, adjusting their angle for maximum sensation as he moved.
She shook in his arms. Her breaths became sharp, staccato. The contraction became more rapid. No longer could he distinguish one from the next. Her body tensed, one drawn-out spasm. He crushed her to his chest, fighting back a momentary panic that she might actually shatter in his arms. Fly apart into a million pieces like his life.
He’d been forced to let so much go, but he wouldn’t turn her lose, too. Not ever again. She was the center of his life. The meaning.
Why had he ever let her go before?
Gradually, Caroline’s seizure passed. Matt relaxed his grip on her. Her head fell back to the pillow, her throat working soundlessly. His hammering heart began to beat with a bit less force, a bit less speed.
Still breathing hard, she reached up to his brow and pushed away a damp lock of hair. “Matt?”
He realized he’d been frowning. Summoning up a more appropriate expression, he bent his head and circled his tongue in the well of her throat. Salt mingled with her unique flavor on his tongue. “I’m never going to let you go again,” he murmured. “You’re mine. Only mine.”
Her eyes widened. Her pupils dilated even further than they already had been. He bucked his hips against her and she raked his back with her fingernails.
“Say it,” he demanded. He almost lost the words in the roar building in his bloodstream. It was as if he could hear every molecule in his body spinning. Still, he clung to sanity and managed to insist, “Say you’re mine.”
“No.”
The single word pierced Matt’s heart, brought it to a stop. His boiling blood quieted. He looked down at Caroline, dying inside.
She pushed up at him. Pushed him over until she straddled him, still holding him inside. “No,” she repeated. Then began to move over him, grind over him. He pulled her down to his chest and she murmured in his ear, “You’re mine.”
Like a spark to pure oxygen, he exploded. He hadn’t thought it possible to become so aroused so fast. He thought his body might incinerate, but eventually the flames dwindled. The passion cooled.
He woke at dawn to find Caroline standing in the gray light streaming in the window.
He rose up on one elbow. Dread turned in his gut as he took in the stiff set to her shoulders. The way she had her arms folded in front of her. “Regrets already?” he suggested.
When she turned, her face was as gray as the morning behind her. She pulled her borrowed terry robe tighter across her chest. “No. Of course not,” she said.
And Matt was sure, for the first time ever, that his wife had lied to him.
Caroline stepped out of the shower when the water started to turn tepid. Lost in thought, she’d stayed in there longer than she’d intended. Or maybe she’d just been hiding from Matt, she realized as she wrapped herself in a thick terry towel.
What had happened between them last night confused her. She’d convinced hersel
f he didn’t love her. That he had never loved her. He’d only married her out of responsibility. Duty.
Last night hadn’t felt like responsibility. Or duty.
She’d made love with Matt hundreds of times before, and yet she couldn’t ever remember when he’d shaken with need as he had last night. When he’d held her and stroked her as if he could lift them both to a higher plane.
She shivered as a tactile memory of his touch spiraled through her. Goose bumps rose on her arms despite the heated water flowing over them. Matt had lifted them to a higher plane. The act of sex alone couldn’t produce that kind of response—in either one of them. There had to be emotion behind it. Love.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe Matt had loved her once. But even if he had, how could he love her now? He didn’t even know her. She wasn’t the docile, dependent little girl he’d married. That girl didn’t exist anymore. He was in love with a ghost.
Besides, he still didn’t want Hailey. Caroline could never give herself to man who wouldn’t give his love to them both, she thought as she tiptoed across the hallway, trying not to drip on the hardwood floor.
At the half-open door to her bedroom, she jerked to a stop. All thoughts of water on the floor fled. Walking into the sight before her was like driving into a concrete wall at forty miles per hour. The impact stunned her. A moment later the pain—and the beauty—closed her throat and brought tears rushing to her eyes.
Matt stood leaning over the antique crib, his palms propped against the railings. His strong, bare feet were crossed at the ankles. A pair of worn jeans covered his long legs and the lower half of his torso. He was singing to her. Humming, actually, but it was a lullaby.
For a man who didn’t want a family—a child—Matt looked awfully content, standing there over his daughter. He studied the baby, tiny in her oversize crib, seriously, but not dourly. As if he’d finally found something that he’d been looking for for a long time.
A small choking sound escaped Caroline—a breath aborted by a swallowed sob. Matt’s gaze flicked her way. Twin ruddy spots tinged his cheeks.
“She was fussing,” he said in an exaggerated whisper.
Caroline nodded numbly. She had to lock her knees to keep from swaying. “She’s probably hungry.”
“Nah. It’s early yet. She just needed changing.”
“You…you changed her?”
His smile was slow and devastating. He trailed the fingertips of his left hand over Hailey’s cheek. The baby snuggled into his touch.
“Couldn’t let my little girl get diaper rash now, could I?”
Caroline ducked her head. She’d been so anxious to get away from Matt that she hadn’t even checked Hailey’s diaper before her retreat to the bathroom. “I would have changed her.”
“I wanted to do it.”
Caroline raised her gaze. An energy charge rose inside her, reached its flash point when her eyes met his. “Why?”
“I figured it’s about time I get to know her.” Hailey stirred, raising a fist to her mouth. Matt cupped a reassuring palm around her shoulder. “So far I think we’re doing okay, don’t you?”
Caroline’s eyes narrowed. What had happened to the husband who didn’t want a child? What had happened to her one rock-solid reason for staying away from Matt? For making a life on her own?
“She looks comfortable.” As a cherub floating on a cloud.
“We both are,” he said.
His smile widened, but it wasn’t a joking smile. That sensuous curve on his mouth was no laughing matter. His eyes darkened. The hand wandering in soothing circles over Hailey’s tummy created fissures of desire in Caroline’s crumbling resolve to not get involved with Matt again.
“So why don’t we go back to bed and all get comfortable together?” he asked.
Standing in the debris that used to be the sunroom that afternoon, Matt kicked at a charred two-by-four and uttered a low curse. Across the floor Caroline stared wide-eyed at the melted, curling carpet, the exposed frame of the structure still standing, its wallboard and siding ripped away, like an old skeleton on a hook. A slash of ash stained one of her cheeks, stark against skin as pale as an eggshell. Stepping over the burned timber, he started toward her. She turned when he reached her side. Her gaze landed on him, then darted around the room, as if she couldn’t stand to look at any one ruined thing too long.
“I don’t suppose that offer to come back to Port Kingston still stands.” The levity in her voice sounded false, tinny.
The fire in the house had long since been doused, but the anger burning in Matt’s gut was steadily getting hotter. “Of course it does. But you’re not coming back to Port Kingston. Not now.”
She righted a pint-size chair, but it keeled over again when one leg crumbled to ash. She wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving black smears across both thighs. “Doesn’t look like I have much choice.” Her gaze swept the destruction once more. “I can’t open a day-care center here.”
“You have insurance on the house. It’ll pay for repairs.”
“Not in time to fix everything before the school year ends. Without the revenue from summer care kids, I can’t afford to stay here.”
“I’ll pay for whatever you need.”
“How, exactly?”
His thoughts stalled a moment. She had a point. His government pay with the police department would be stretched pretty thin, supporting two places. And they’d spent most of their savings fighting Brad’s illness. But he wasn’t going to let her down now. “We’ll sell the other house.”
“Then where will you live?”
He answered her with a look. A steely stare that had quelled many an argumentative criminal. But it didn’t quiet Caroline.
“H-here?” She swallowed as if she had a pineapple in her throat. “Matt, I know you’re trying to help, but—”
“I’m not asking you to let me back in your life for good, Caroline. I know you have some things to…decide. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand aside and let some punk make those choices for you. If this is the future you want—with or without me in it—then you’re going to have it.”
His voice turned gruff at the thought that she might choose the “without him” option. He wanted Caroline back. He wanted his life back. But he wouldn’t take it at the price of her dreams.
He clenched his fingers into fists and forced them away from her shoulders, adding to his promise, “I promise you’re going to have it. No matter what it takes.”
She reached up. Her palm cupped his cheek. Her eyes glistened. “Oh, Matt. My warrior.”
He calmed his fears with a deep breath, covered her hand on his face with his own for a moment, then pulled it away and warmed her chilled fingers between both his palms.
He was a warrior, all right, and Caroline didn’t have to make her choices today. He still had time. He wasn’t done fighting for her yet.
Not nearly.
The ease with which Caroline let herself become dependent on Matt again was daunting. Matt would protect her from Gem. Matt would fix the house. Matt would make sure they had enough money to put food on the table. Matt would drive her absolutely crazy hovering over her every second as he was doing right now.
“I can get it,” she cried, bending her knees and tugging the fallen beam another foot toward the rubbish pile. Stopping for a quick rest, she blew the tendrils of hair that had sprung loose from her ponytail away from her face. She refused to turn around and acknowledge his presence. He was supposed to be checking the roof for water damage, anyway. He didn’t have to come to her rescue. She wasn’t helpless.
Just hopeless.
“By myself,” she added grimly, setting herself for another go-round with the log. So far it was log two, Caroline nothing.
“Then I guess you don’t want this glass of lemonade I brought you,” he said mildly from behind her.
She dropped the log. On her foot. “Owwww!” She hopped in a half circle to face him. The sight of a sweaty tumbler full o
f ice and yellow liquid did a lot to quell her pain. “Lemonade?”
She licked her lips as he held the drink out to her.
“I was ready for a break. Thought you might be, too.”
The cool glass stung the various scratches and scrapes she’d acquired on her palm during the cleanup process. She wrapped her other hand around the glass, too. It felt heavenly.
Tasted better. When she’d emptied the glass, she handed it back to Matt and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Thanks. I was.”
His eyes twinkled merrily. “You’re welcome.”
He glanced down at the fallen beam. She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. The moment stretched awkwardly.
“Ah,” she finally said, digging the toe of her tennis shoe into the melted carpet. “Maybe you could give me a hand with this.”
“I’d be happy to,” he said seriously. But she had a feeling he had to work hard to keep a smile off his handsome face. The devil.
He bent and picked the log up as if it were a toothpick. Refusing to be outdone, she insisted on carrying one end. They’d just added it to the rubbish heap when Mrs. Johnson poked her head out what used to be the back door of the house—and was now a gaping hole in the siding. She’d offered to keep an eye on Hailey and Jeb while Matt and Caroline worked. Mr. Johnson stepped up behind her, the rubber stopper on the end of his cane thumping softly on the warped floor.
“There’s a deputy here to see you,” Mrs. Johnson called. She bounced Hailey in her arms. Jeb peeked out from behind her knees.
“Says it’s urgent,” Mr. Johnson’s raspy voice added. His cane thumped the floor meaningfully, then waved, as if pointing around the damaged house. “They’ve found the girl that did this.”
Caroline’s heartbeat tripped. Her mouth went dry. Matt took her sooty hand in his and squeezed, then pulled her toward the house.
The deputy was waiting on the front porch, the part of the house downstairs that had escaped unscathed. “I’m sorry to bother y’all,” he said. He turned the brim of his hat in his hands.
Matt wiped his hand—it was as sooty as her own—on his jeans and stuck it out. He and the deputy shook once. “No bother. We wanted to know when she’d been taken into custody.”
Keeping Caroline Page 17
