The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  She pulled back just a little. Cash saw her glance at his damp briefs, but instead of going for the elastic waistband, she hesitated. And Cash loved her for it—for the surprising shyness in her, a refreshing kind of innocence that amazed him. He stripped the underwear away himself, man enough to be pleased at the way her eyes widened as she saw him up close for the first time.

  Water and rivulets of soap suds streamed down him, washing him all over. He kissed her, long and deep, sweet, life-giving kisses that dragged him up to the surface again from where he’d been buried. Her hands cupped his face, stroked back his wet hair, her touch feathering down his throat, then spreading, splay-fingered down his back.

  His breath caught just a little as one of her fingernails scratched a sore patch. She turned him around and kissed near the place on his skin, her fingertips and eyes searching for any wound, any scar. But Cash doubted at the moment that he’d be aware of even the most excruciating pain, as long as Rowena kept using her gift upon him, healing him with those determined, tender hands.

  “It’s just a scrape,” she whispered, sounding relieved. “I’ll put some antiseptic on it when we get out.”

  “Later,” Cash said. “It’s your turn.” He took up the orange-scented soap to wash her body now, but far differently than she’d touched his—stroking into her flesh needs he’d ignored, bringing to the task all the passion of a man who’d not touched a woman’s body in so long.

  A man who’d never known what it felt like to bury himself in the sensation of loving his woman with both body and soul.

  When he was finished, he turned off the shower and shoved open the glass door, grabbing one of the towels from the stack she’d laid out for him earlier.

  They dried each other, hands and towels slipping over bodies they were learning by heart. In spite of the passion rising between them, she insisted on spreading ointment on his back, his elbow, and his split knuckle, then bandaging them. Only when she was satisfied they wouldn’t get infected did she let him take her hand and lead her to the bed.

  Rowena sat down and he eased her backwards into mounds of pillows colored orange and purple, red and gold. Her skin—pale and exquisite as Miss Marigold’s finest porcelain—stood out in stark relief against the vibrant flowers blooming on her sheets. He stroked her damp hair away from her face and kissed her temple, her cheek, her throat, pausing when he felt the subtle bump of an old scar on her collarbone.

  How had she gotten it? he wondered, tracing the shape of it with his thumb. If it had been during one of the attacks Bryony told him of, no wonder Rowena’s family feared for her. It chilled him to think how close the animal had gotten to her throat.

  The thought pushed hard at the arousal pulsing through him, but couldn’t drag caution back up from where he’d abandoned it a short time ago. It was too late to turn back now. Need for her, primal, thick, beat inside him, instincts denied so long threatening to rage out of control.

  He couldn’t let them. Wouldn’t let them. Not this time. Their first time. He braced his weight on one elbow, swearing to himself he was going to take this slow, give her all the pleasure he could. A small payment for the risk she had taken, welcoming him to her bed.

  He kissed the small round scar, drowning in her scents, her taste, textures uniquely Rowena’s own. Savoring stirring the response in her he’d craved for so long. She was on fire for him, he could feel it, as she trailed her fingers across his skin, her bare legs restless, tangling with his.

  She didn’t say a thing, as if she was afraid she’d break the spell—that he might draw back, reconsider the risks, pull away from her and leave her with her emotions wide open to him, all defenses stripped away.

  But he was too far gone to be wise now. He’d denied himself too much. And the hunger in him for Rowena was so fierce there was no way he could keep from spending this night in her arms.

  Cash teased the corner of her mouth with his tongue, losing himself in the blade-edged torture of self-restraint, penetrating her lips the way he’d soon be burying himself in her body.

  She moaned when she opened her mouth and let him inside. He sank into the moment, savoring her, stroking her, his palm on the swell of her stomach, his little finger circling her navel, dipping inside.

  Rowena kissed him with an eagerness, a sweetness, that shook Cash to his bones, disarming him with her gasps of pleasure and unrestrained moans of delight. He palmed her breast, the globe so dainty against his far rougher hand, her nipple blushed and taut with arousal as he bent to draw it into his mouth. He flicked the hardened bud with his tongue, swirled around the tip once, twice, while she arched her back, begging for the sensations he could give her. He sucked her in, pulled her deep, teased her with the gentlest brush of his teeth while she cried out, her fingers tightening against his waist as if to keep him from ever pulling away.

  As if he could now that he had her, naked, wanting him. Cash dragged his mouth across the place where her heart was pounding, to the other crest in need of his care. But his own needs were clamoring, as well, his hips flexing, instinctively pushing his hardness against her hip. She moved just a little, and the brush of downy curls against him beckoned him toward his goal, threatening to unleash the beast in him that wanted to take, screamed for release.

  He fought it back and slid his hand down Rowena’s belly, sifting through the soft hair at the crux of her thighs. “Open for me,” he urged her as he dipped his fingers lower, found her silky center. She did as he asked, parting her legs for him, just a little.

  Cash bit back a groan as he slid his longest finger down, found the tiny bead he knew could make her writhe under his touch, cry out his name.

  And he wanted to hear her say it, wanted to pierce her so deep she’d never forget this night. The first night he’d buried himself inside her.

  “Cash…I’ve needed you…for so long…wanted this.” Rowena kissed wherever she could reach, his chest, his nipple, the heat of her breath ratcheting the temperature up inside him, leaving him gasping.

  She didn’t say she loved him. She didn’t have to. She pressed that truth into his skin, breathed it into his mouth, murmured it to his soul as she trailed her fingers down, feather-light, tentative, until she touched him, traced him. He felt so heavy, so hot in her grasp he feared he’d explode. The torturous seeking of her fingers made Cash grit his teeth as pleasure threatened to throw him over the brink. He nudged her legs apart with his knee and eased himself into the cove between her thighs.

  His whole body raged with the need to drive his shaft home, bury himself to the hilt in her, spill himself inside her. He imagined how damned different it would be to hear Rowena tell him the news that his baby was growing inside her.

  A baby who would be bathed in love from the moment Rowena knew it existed. What the hell was wrong with him? Some throwback to cavemen days when impregnating a woman was number one on the evolutionary scale. He still didn’t know where this relationship between them was leading. And he wouldn’t take advantage of the way Rowena gave her heart. Too completely to guard herself.

  “Protection,” he said, more gruffly than he intended. “I don’t want to make you pregnant.”

  But that was a lie, selfish sonofabitch that he was. Some part of Cash wanted to say the hell with being safe. Wanted to lay his cheek on her stomach and feel a new life they’d created together kicking inside her. As if he didn’t already have more than he could handle with the babies he’d fathered without thinking the consequences through.

  “The drawer in the night table,” Rowena directed him.

  Cash rummaged around, found the unopened box. He tore the packaging open, sheathed himself, the muscles in his arms rigid, his heart racing as he wedged his hips between her slender legs. He found the damp heat of her with the blunt tip of his sex.

  He tried to close his eyes, not able to bear the way she was looking up at him, with love so naked it terrified him. But he needed her too badly. He couldn’t even pull his own emotional barriers dow
n to deflect the impact she had on him.

  Gritting his teeth against the agonizing pleasure, he thrust his hips forward, felt her body glove him as he sank into her, inch by inch.

  Rowena gasped when he’d buried himself to the hilt, her fingers clutching his hips as if to hold him, tight inside her. But he wanted more. Wanted to hear her cry out, shattering with pleasure beneath him.

  He drew out, then thrust home, burying himself deeply inside her with far more than just his body, hard as it was. He drove into her, wanting to stay where they were forever, wanting to lose himself in her so he’d never have to face the man he hated again. The man he’d seen in the mirror every morning for the past two years. What would it be like to look at his face and find the man he saw reflected back to him in Rowena’s eyes?

  But Cash wasn’t that man. He never could be. All he could give Rowena was right now. Physical pleasure so intense it made him feel as if he were speeding, out of control. And Rowena was hurtling along with him.

  She met him, thrust for thrust, cry for cry, as generous with her loving as she was with everything else. And he could feel the climax he was building in her. Feel her limbs shaking, her head tossing. She reached for it, knew that he could give it to her. And he wanted her to have everything she’d ever dreamed of in a lover. Wanted her to fly.

  As he neared his own release, he reached between them, found her, stroked her, his fingers keeping rhythm with his hips, his voice hoarse as he urged her to come.

  Rowena clutched him tight as Cash caught her breast in his mouth, sucked hard, drawing her in. Letting her inside even thought he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  His thumb pressed hard on the nubbin of flesh as he drove himself deep one last time. Rowena cried out in release, her whole body shaking, and Cash could feel the sensation rushing through her again and again and again.

  Every muscle in Cash’s frame went rigid, and he gave a hoarse cry of triumph as he found his own release.

  It poured through him, driving back loneliness for a miraculous instant. Battering back self-doubt. He collapsed on top of Rowena, burying his face in her neck, his breath ragged, his body sated in a way he’d never known.

  He damned well didn’t cry. An ex-marine would rather be hung. It was sweat, pure and simple, that made Rowena’s skin feel damp beneath his face.

  She stroked his hair, his shoulders, kissed his ear, the only place she could reach.

  “Rowena?” he murmured against her.

  “What, Cash?”

  He lifted his face, looked down at her, her kiss-reddened lips, tumbled hair, the thickly lashed eyelids that seemed suddenly far too heavy.

  He searched for the words, but how could he tell her what she’d given him tonight?

  She feathered her fingertips over his lips. “It’s all right. You can tell me. Anything.”

  Anything…secrets like Charlie had shared with her, fears like the animals she’d healed revealed when she was near them. Charming out the pain, drawing out the things that stung or burned or scarred. Washing it all away the way his mother had bleached white the sheets she’d hung out on the line.

  He could imagine how anyone else would react if he blurted that homespun comparison out. But Rowena would understand things he was trying to say, words that didn’t even begin to measure up to the feelings clamoring to the surface inside him.

  “Rowena,” he whispered, tracing her cheek. “I feel…clean.”

  Her eyes glistened with tears, and for a moment she stayed silent, then she smiled an angel’s smile that belonged to him alone.

  “I hoped that you would.”

  “You hope too much,” he warned, knowing he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t tell her the truth. “I don’t have…whatever it is inside you that gives you that kind of strength. Even now, after making love with you, I can’t be sure I ever will.”

  She smoothed the lines etched in his forehead from burdens he’d carried alone, and he felt her touch down to his very soul. “When it comes to hope I’ve got enough for all of us.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EARLY MORNING SUNSHINE streamed across the mussed-up bed, Cash’s chiseled masculine body deliciously out of place against the splashy sunflower-print sheets. Rowena perched on the corner of the bed, her back against the footboard, her arms clasped loosely around her knees. The nightgown she’d slipped on when she’d sneaked out to start the coffeemaker drifted over her bare feet.

  She should have been amused at the contrast of Cash’s honed muscle and long limbs awash in sunflowers, and yet, something about the sight of him sleeping so soundly made her throat feel tight.

  When was the last time this fiercely responsible man had relaxed the way he was right now? Flat on his stomach, his arms bent, hands folded under his temple. He looked so young with his profile softened in sleep, his lips parted, thick, dark lashes heavy on his cheek. And as Rowena gazed down at him, she could see shades of his little girls. Charlie’s nose was exactly like his; so was MacKenzie’s stubborn little chin.

  Rowena hugged her knees tighter to her chest, the harrowing tale Cash had told her last night flashing back in her mind, the images he’d colored so vivid it was as if she had been there with him, trying to wrest his children from the gnarled metal that held them trapped.

  Cash, whose job forced him to see other cars explode, see other victims of crashes burn. Cash, faced in those few crucial moments with the terrible choice between putting pressure on Mac’s broken legs or letting her lie there while the pool of gasoline kept spreading and the odds that a spark from the engine could touch it off grew more perilous by the second.

  Cash had made love to her twice more during the night. And Rowena had sensed it was as if Cash were hoarding the feelings, the sensations in his memory, as if he didn’t trust in any kind of future where he could be happy.

  He’d been so hungry for her that it made her ache to think how long he’d been alone. Not just the two years after the accident, but longer still. When he was trying to make a life with a wife he’d never loved the way a man like Cash was designed to love a woman: tenaciously, with that steadfastness so deeply ingrained in his very nature.

  It was as if he’d been starved for touch, like the creatures she’d worked with for so long. And yet, in spite of how wonderful their lovemaking had been, Rowena sensed the minute he woke this morning, Cash would begin counting the cost. Figuring in his children, everything they needed. Knowing how little time, how few the resources he had left.

  “Hey.”

  Rowena suddenly realized he was watching her with one dark eye. “Good morning,” she said with a smile.

  Cash rolled to his side and stretched, the toned muscles of his chest rippling as he ran his hand back through his hair. Rowena wished she could just reach for him, drive his shadows away, but she knew better than to try. Tension was already curling around him. And regret?

  Rowena tried not to let that possibility sting her. “I talked to Dr. Wilcox, and Cinder and her babies made it through the night. They’re not out of the woods yet, but they’re a pack of fighters, just like the hero who saved them.”

  She saw him wince. “I’m no hero,” he said.

  “You’re my hero. For so many reasons. But I know you’re not ready to hear that.”

  Cash frowned. Rowena felt her stomach sink. “Rowena, last night was amazing. But…”

  “Why did I figure ‘but’ would be one of the first words out of your mouth this morning?”

  “You deserve to hear the truth.” Cash’s jaw worked. “Things are complicated. I’m still not sure what I’m doing here. I should be home trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to deal with whatever is happening with my kids. Who knows how Lisa coming back into the girls’ lives might affect them? And Mac needs to work harder than ever trying to walk. I’ve got to keep focused, Rowena. There’s not much left of me at the day’s end as it is. I can’t plan any kind of future…anything.”

  Rowena couldn’t deny his w
ords hurt. At least she’d braced herself for them.

  She nestled in beside him, comforting herself with the warmth of him, the strength of him so close, at least for now. “Cash, you want to know what I love about dogs?”

  “Dogs?” He frowned, an incredulous cast to his far too serious face.

  Good, Rowena thought. She’d managed to throw him off balance.

  “We just had sex.”

  “Made love,” she corrected gently. “You made love to me, Cash. I’ll never forget the way you touched me, kissed me.”

  Cash swore under his breath, looking pleased, looking uneasy. “If it was even a tenth as incredible for you as it was for me, I’d be grateful. But that doesn’t change what’s real. We don’t know where the hell this thing between us is going and you’re talking about dogs? Rowena, what the devil do dogs have to do with how damned messy life can get?”