Their Baby Miracle. Lilian Darcy
want this…me…my body, then there’s been something very wrong with your signals, since yesterday.” She drew in a deep breath, felt her breasts lift, saw his tongue lap against his lower lip. His jeans strained at the front. He stepped closer to her, but not close enough.
“I’m talking about the ranch,” he said.
“You think this is about—” Anger tightened her scalp. She dragged in a shaky breath and tried again. “You think I’m trying to sell you the ranch, right now, with this? That’s— That’s—”
“No! Hell, no, Reba!” Another step, urgent, that brought him toe to toe against her. He slid his hands up to her elbows. “I just wanted you to consider whether doing this—making love—” the word melted on his tongue like syrup “—would feel different if you knew my decision on the purchase.”
Again, she didn’t hesitate. “If you’ve made a decision, I don’t want to know. Because it wouldn’t make a difference. Okay?”
He nodded, touched her hair, her neck, let his hand trail lower, and bent his head to her mouth. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” he said, on a soft growl. “Wouldn’t make a difference to me, either.”
For the first time, she held him. She ran her palms up his strong back, and learned the pattern of his muscles, on either side of his spine. She helped him wrench the unwanted T-shirt up and over his head, put her tongue to her fingertip then, looking down, touched the moisture to his nipples. They hardened into little beads as it evaporated, and she felt a coil of pleasure and satisfaction deep inside.
She could do this to a man. She could do this to Lucas Halliday. And she wanted to do a whole lot more.
“Tell me what you like,” she said, branding him with kisses between every phrase. “Show me. Touch me in all the places you want. With your hands. With your mouth. Teach me, Lucas.”
“Hell, haven’t you ever—?”
“Yes. Yes, I have. But not like this. Nothing like this.” She reached for the front of his pants, fumbling a little as she snapped them open. She began to ease the zipper down, and he took a hissing breath. “Did I catch you?” she asked.
“No. Keep going. Yes, like that.”
She did, even more slowly, feeling the straining ridge of cloth and man pushing at her hand. When he was free, she slid trousers and underwear down in one movement. She dropped low in front of him and let her mouth explore the texture of his thigh on the way. She knew exactly where he wanted to be touched, but kept that pleasure from him, stringing it out.
He couldn’t stand it, pulled her back up and hauled her toward him so that they were pressed together from her breasts to her knees. His thigh eased between her legs, and she knew how hot she must feel to him, how full and ready.
“Take off your boots and your jeans,” he said. “Let me look at you.”
The old bed creaked as he sat and levered his own boots off. He kicked them beneath the bed, beyond the hem of the quilt, and she did the same. Then he watched while she shimmied her jeans down her hips, and she could tell he liked everything he saw.
“I didn’t…uh…come equipped for this,” he said, reaching for her. “If we need to set limits, can we set them now?”
“It’s okay. The timing is— No limits.” She brushed his mouth with hers, lifted his hands and brought them to her breasts.
“None?”
“Anything that feels good. Anything that’s a part of this.”
“Touching you, Reba, that’s everything.”
They kissed until her bones softened to liquid, and she no longer knew where her body ended and his began. His mouth was everywhere. She gripped him the way she’d have gripped a bolting horse, only who was bolting, who was out of control? Him, or her?
She leaned back on her hands and he knelt in front of her, on the braided woollen rug, trailing his lips down her jaw, her neck, to her breasts and beyond, to her sweet core. She bucked and twisted and sank into the bed, clenched her fists against the flood that swept her away, then felt him slide higher and seek entry. She was so swollen and ready that he slipped into her in a single movement, and a sound wrenched out of him, making his body vibrate against her chest.
“Reba, you’re so beautiful, so strong. The way you moved just now…”
He thrust and she rocked, clinging to him, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back. She loved his weight on top of her and the almond smell of his hair in every breath she took.
Their climax came freely, and ebbed in a series of aftershocks that jerked both their bodies like whips. Reba didn’t know what to say, whether to say anything at all, so she kissed him again, touching her mouth to his softly, as if each kiss was a word of tenderness or thanks.
“Hey…” he finally whispered.
“Hey,” she answered back.
Chapter Four
“Y ou okay?” Lucas asked. He was watching the way Reba winced and shifted in the unforgiving, creaky office chair, his eyes bright with perception, as usual—perception and suspicion.
And, yes, okay, she didn’t feel very comfortable right now. Who could, with this tightness coming and going? The pregnancy book she’d bought talked about false contractions—irregular, tight rather than painful, normal and nothing to worry about. This was apparently them, and normal or not, she didn’t like them.
There wasn’t a lot of tenderness in Lucas’s question, she noted. The hard, calculating shell of a successful business man appeared to be back in place, making Reba question the other qualities she had thought she’d discovered in him last September, as well as the heat and exhilaration and happiness she would have sworn they’d both felt, the first time they’d made love.
“My back’s a little sore, that’s all,” she answered him, playing it down. “I’ve been on my feet a bit too long tonight.”
As soon as she’d waded through this confrontation with Lucas, she would ask Carla about the way her body felt and the way it should feel. She would consult the doctor, give in her notice to the steakhouse management tomorrow, spend the next three months flat out in bed, if she had to.
“You’re looking after yourself, I hope,” Lucas said. “You’re getting the proper prenatal care?” Again, it sounded like an accusation, rather than a sign of his concern. Where was the man who’d lain in bed with her, so hungry and so tender?
Reba lifted her chin. “The doctor thinks I’m doing great, especially considering the one I lost.”
“Is that what happened? Is that possible?”
“Yes!” Her scalp prickled with anger, and acid rushed up into her throat. She carried a child fathered by a stranger, it seemed. “I lost this baby’s twin, although I didn’t realize I was still pregnant for another month and a half. Good grief, Lucas, you couldn’t possibly believe I staged it, could you? Staged any of it? How could I?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes, as if totally at a loss, and images of last year flashed through their minds, once again. September and November, Indian summer and winter’s first chill. They’d known too many different emotions together, in too short a time…
Reba sat in the Indian summer shade on the bank of the creek and watched Lucas casting his line for trout. He stood in the water in thigh-high wading boots borrowed from her father, with his legs braced wide against the current. The muscles in his back rippled and tightened as he whipped his body back then forward to make the cast.
For half a second, the nylon filament caught the sun and made a scribble of light against a background of cool green shade, then the delicate fly silently hit the water and the line disappeared. Lucas’s whole focus arrowed to the task of working the rod and