by Gayle Wilson
They had napped, at least briefly, sprawled in a tangle of naked arms and legs. They had then awakened to eat, suddenly ravenous, and made love again with the remnants of that half-finished repast scattered around them.
Later—how much later she didn’t know—Rafe had trailed openmouthed kisses over her bare stomach, his lips eventually moving lower. In response, her fingers had threaded through the dark, silken strands of his hair. She held to them like a lifeline, while his tongue and teeth and lips delicately, and yet deliberately, revived each sated cell of her body. Nerve endings, pleasured beyond endurance, were stimulated to new life. Finally, muscles that quivered in fatigue were soothed until her relaxation was so complete she’d again fallen asleep.
She had no inkling if hours or minutes had passed before his body lowering over hers awakened her. There was no doubting the hardness of his erection, however, pushing into her with the same control with which he had taken her the first time.
This had been nothing like that heated coupling, impatiently begun and as quickly ended. This was a slow, deliberate seeking. The joining of two bodies, so attuned that their responses were, if not simultaneous, then mutual.
The lift of her hips met the downward thrust of his. Her shoulder turned into the seductive brush of his lips, tracing over sweat-dampened skin. Her fingers stretched and then closed tightly over the calloused strength of his.
It would seem that the descent into mindlessness would be delayed, or at least prolonged, because of the intense sensuality of their previous encounters. Instead, she had been surprised by how quickly her body responded. How instantly ready she had been. Wet and aching from the first graze of his hand against her breast.
Now the spiral had begun, her breath panting with each downward stroke, his breathing as harsh as hers. His features, highlighted by the fire, seemed almost too finely drawn as he strained above her. It softened their harshness, however, smoothing the powerful line of jaw and cheekbone.
Even as she watched, unable to look away, his eyes closed, his chin tilting upward. The tendons in his neck corded as the shuddering release began. His seed jetted into her body, and as if she had never before felt that rush of hot moisture, hers responded.
A tremor, hardly more than a shiver at first, grew and then expanded. Moving outward, sensation spread like the circles generated from a pebble tossed carelessly into a still pond. It ran, liquid and molten, through veins and arteries to crash and foam against the relentless, rocklike strength that drove within her. And when it was over, feeling ebbed, streaming away into eddies that trickled again to nothing. To stillness.
Rafe raised his upper body, propping above her on his elbows. The air, cool despite the banked fire, brushed over the film of perspiration on her breasts.
“Cold,” she whispered.
He lifted their still-joined hands, bringing them toward her face. The sides of his thumbs smoothed over her forehead, starting in the middle. He lowered his head, slowly kissing each eyelid in turn. When he raised it again, she opened her eyes to smile at him.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I could tell.” Her smile widened.
“I used to think I liked the quietness up here,” he said. “The isolation. I thought that’s why I’d come.”
She waited, but disappointingly, he said nothing else.
“It wasn’t?” she asked finally.
“I don’t know. I can’t really remember. All I know is that now it isn’t isolated. It’s…lonely. At least when you’re not here.”
Not really a declaration of any kind, she supposed, but it was more of one than he had made in the four months since she’d been here. And he had said it while she was awake.
She nodded, holding his eyes. After a moment his lips tightened. Then he dropped a kiss on the end of her nose, freeing his hands from hers at the same time. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him.
He held her against his chest, her head fitted on his shoulder, the curve of her hip over his. She felt his breathing gradually slow, becoming deep and regular.
She didn’t close her eyes, however, staring out into the fire-touched darkness. Watching the play of shadows the firelight painted on the rough-hewn walls and thinking about the words he had whispered.
I missed you…
It’s lonely. At least when you’re not here….
There was no one else. No one who was ever like you. There never will be.
And she thought, too, despite everything she had promised herself, about the others. All the ones he had never said.
“YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED to be the one who doesn’t sleep.”
She turned to smile at him over her shoulder. He walked up behind her, wrapping the patchwork quilt he’d brought with him around her body, enfolding her in his arms as he did. She leaned back against his chest, thinking that she had never been more content in her life than here.
Which made the strange sense of ennui that had kept her from sleeping all the more inexplicable. There was literally nothing that should keep her awake.
“It’s snowing,” she said, looking up at the night sky.
It was the snow that had brought her outside. She had slipped out of bed, pulling on her nightgown, to stand on the small front porch of the cabin. Despite the steady shower of flakes, which had increased in the short time she’d been out here, she could still see stars. So clear in the thin mountain air she felt as if she could reach up and touch them.
“It does that this time of year,” Rafe said.
The teasing note didn’t bother her. Actually, she welcomed it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Typical male question, she thought, smiling to herself.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?”
“You getting out of a warm bed in the middle of the night to stand in the snow.”
She turned, still enclosed in the cocoon of quilt and his arms, to look up at him. His expression was far more serious than his voice had been.
She reached up to touch his cheek. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said truthfully. “I can’t remember a time in my life when things have been less wrong.”
There was a small silence.
“The whole time you were gone,” he said, “I kept wondering what I’d do if you didn’t come back.”
She felt guilty she had been away so long. More guilty that he still didn’t understand there was nothing he could ever do that would make her not come back.
She stretched on tiptoe, putting her cold lips against the warmth of his. For less than a heartbeat, they were unresponsive. Then he bent, his mouth opening over hers with the same hunger the long hours of their lovemaking had not, apparently, assuaged.
Not for either of them, she discovered. She answered each demanding movement of his tongue, relishing the knowledge that he still wanted her this much.
It was Rafe who broke the kiss, raising his head to look down into her face. His eyes were shadowed, the line of his mouth set. Unsmiling.
“I’ll always come back,” she said. “This is my home.”
It was true. Each time he took her into his arms, she knew the same sweet sense of homecoming she had felt today.
“There’s something I want to show you.”
He released her, stepping back, but at the same time pulling the quilt more securely around her shoulders. She brought up one hand to hold the edges together as she shook her head, puzzled by his tone.
“Something to show me?” she repeated, unresisting as he took her elbow to urge her toward the door.
“I was going to save it for Christmas, but…maybe you should have it now.”
“Something in the way of a bribe?” she asked, smiling at him as she entered the cabin.
“Or an insurance policy.”
“Insurance against what?” she asked, following him across the central room.
The fire on the hearth provided enough light that she hadn’t turned on the lamp when she’d crawled out of bed. H
e didn’t now. Not until they reached the dark utility hallway. There Rafe flipped the switch that controlled the overhead lighting, forcing her to blink against the brightness.
“In here?” she asked, still mystified.
“In the workshop,” he said, opening the door.
Despite the quilt, she shivered as the cold air from the room was pulled into the cabin. She hesitated on the threshold, watching Rafe cross the workshop to turn on the lights.
She couldn’t remember being in this room since the day of the fire. Involuntarily her eyes found the spot on the floor where Jorgensen’s body had lain. There was nothing there now to mark it except memory. She pulled her gaze away, forcing it to focus on Rafe instead.
He was standing on the other side of the central workbench. On top of it was an object over which a sheet had been draped.
“It’s not finished, you understand,” he said. “You’ll have to use your imagination.”
“Okay,” she said.
There was nothing remotely boyish about Rafe Sinclair, but there had been something in that disclaimer of a small boy who is about to show off a prized possession. Or some accomplishment.
And when he lifted the sheet, revealing what was beneath it, she knew that was exactly what this represented. An accomplishment.
Within a framework of elaborately turned spindles hung a cradle, intricately, beautifully hand carved.
“It’s solid oak, but you can choose another color for the stain,” he said. “Darker if you want.”
Through a sudden veil of tears she looked up into the eyes of the man who had made no promises. And no commitments. Except, it seemed, this one. Shaped by his own hands.
“It rocks,” he said unnecessarily, setting it into motion with the touch of one long, dark finger. The movement was noiseless, an effortless back-and-forth glide.
“It’s a cradle,” she said. The word sounded almost reverent. It was how she felt.
“I thought…” Rafe began before the sentence faded. His throat worked before he tried again. “We’ve wasted a lot of time. I thought you probably wouldn’t want to waste any more.”
“Babies,” she said softly. Although technically, by inflection, that hadn’t been a question, she wanted to be very sure she wasn’t mistaken.
“That’s generally what cradles are for.” Thankfully the teasing note was back.
She took a breath, wondering what words she could possibly need to hear in the face of this. She crossed the room, coming to a stop across the workbench from where he was standing.
The workmanship of what he had made was even more apparent here. She touched the cradle into motion as he had, watching it swing for a moment before she looked up.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded, blue eyes suspiciously bright.
“Are you sure, Rafe?” she asked softly. “This isn’t exactly something you can change your mind about.”
“This,” he said, looking down at the cradle he’d built, “isn’t a spur-of-the-moment endeavor. I’ve had lots of time to think about what I was doing.”
“No reservations?”
“A thousand. All of them about the kind of husband and father I’ll be. None of them about you. None about this.”
All of them about the kind of husband and father I’ll be.
Husband and father. For someone like Rafe, a man of honor, those roles couldn’t possibly be separated. She had not dared to think beyond what the cradle represented. Now she realized she hadn’t trusted him enough.
“Husband?” she repeated.
“You need to hear the words, I suppose.”
“I want to hear them,” she corrected.
“All of them?”
“As many as you want to say.”
And only when he smiled did she know that whatever had happened to him at Amsterdam, whatever he had seen and done and experienced—none of it could destroy the core of decency she had recognized the day she met him.
“Husband,” he said, sending the cradle gliding toward her.
When it swung back to his side of the workbench, he touched it into motion. “Marriage.”
The third time, she knew the word that would accompany the push. “Baby,” he said.
She caught the edge of the cradle, keeping it from swinging back. “Do I get a chance to answer?”
“I wasn’t through.”
“How many babies do you want?” she asked, laughing as she sent the cradle swinging toward him.
“Let’s start with one,” he said. “Isn’t that how it’s usually done?”
Long, dark fingers closed over the curved rim, holding the cradle motionless as she had. And this time when he set it into motion, his face was as serious as it had been on the porch.
“I love you, Elizabeth Richardson, soon to be Sinclair. I want very much to marry you and give you babies. As many babies as this cradle can last to rock to sleep through the years. And I probably should warn you…” he said.
The tears that had threatened before were back, making it difficult to see his face. It didn’t matter, of course. Nothing mattered but the gift he had given her tonight.
Far more than she had ever asked for. And until he had offered it, more than she had even known she wanted.
She did, she realized. She wanted it all.
“Warn me?” she questioned.
“I may not be much of an operative,” Rafe said. “Not anymore. But I am one hell of a carpenter.”
Author Note
I hope you’re still enjoying my Men of Mystery/Phoenix Brotherhood stories. I certainly want to do more of these in the future. My next Intrigue will be a little different, but something I’m very excited about. I’ll be back in August 2003 with the first book of the Colorado Confidential series. Don’t worry, though, that story has its own sexy and daring ex-agent. Please look for my story, the start of something dark and dangerous in Colorado.
Gayle Wilson
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4299-9
RAFE SINCLAIR’S REVENGE
Copyright © 2002 by Mona Gay Thomas
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