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“No measles,” he murmured. “No chicken pox. No shingles. No cold sores.” His eyes were dancing with merriment. “If you really want to be Raintree and never have a stuffy nose again, there’s a way.”
“How? Bury a chicken by the dark of the moon and run backward around a stump seven times?”
He paused, arrested by the image. “You have the strangest imagination.”
“Tell me! How does someone become Raintree? What’s the initiation ritual?”
“It’s an old one. You’ve heard of it.”
“The chicken one is the only one I know. C’mon, what is it?”
His smile was slow and heated. “Have my baby.”
TWENTY-ONE
Lorna went white, then red, then white again. “That isn’t funny,” she said in a stifled tone, getting up to prowl restlessly around the room. She picked up a pillow and fluffed it, but instead of placing it back on the sofa, she stood with it clasped to her chest, her head bowed over it.
“I’m not joking.”
“You don’t…you shouldn’t have babies as a means to an end. People who don’t want babies for themselves should never, never have them.”
“Agreed,” he said softly, leaving his spot by the windows and strolling toward her as unhurriedly as if he had no destination, no agenda.
“It’s nothing to be taken lightly.” That was a dirty game of pool he was playing, saying Have my baby as if he meant it. He couldn’t mean it. They had known each other two days. That was something men said to seduce women, because hundreds of centuries ago some cunning bastard had figured out most women were pushovers for babies.
“I’m taking this very seriously, I promise.” His tone was gentle as he touched her shoulder, curving his palm over the slope before sliding his hand over her back. She felt the heat transferring from his skin to hers, burning through her clothes. His fingertips sought out her spine, stroking downward, gently rubbing out the tension thrumming beneath her skin.
She hadn’t known she was so tense, or that the gentle massage would turn he
r to butter. She let him urge her against him, let her head nestle into his shoulder, because everything about what he was doing felt so good. Still…She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how close that hand’s getting to my butt.”
“I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t.” A smile curved his mouth as he pressed a warm kiss, then another, to her temple.
“Don’t let it get any lower,” she warned.
“Are you sure?” Beginning at the waistband of her jeans, he traced a finger down the center seam—down, down, pressing lightly, while his hot palm massaged her bottom. That finger left a trail of fire in its wake, made her squirm and shudder and begin, at least ten times, to say No. He would stop if she said it; the decision to continue or not was hers—but the security of knowing that was what kept the single word unsaid. Instead, all she did was gasp with agonized anticipation, and arch, and cling—waiting, waiting, focusing entirely on the slow progression of the caress, as his hand slowly slid down to dip between her legs from behind. He pressed harder then, his fingers rubbing against her entrance through her jeans, so that the friction of the seam lightly abraded flesh that was soft and yielding.
He had been bringing her to this point for two days, since that first kiss in his kitchen, patiently feeding the spark of desire until it became a small flame, then keeping the flame going with fleeting touches and something even harder to resist: his open desire for her. She could recognize what he was doing, see the subtle progressions, and even appreciate the mastery of his restraint. Getting into bed with her last night—and then not touching her—had been diabolically intelligent. Since the moment they’d met, he had forced her to do a lot of things, but not once had he tried to force her response. She would have shut him down cold if he had. The spark would have gone out, and she wouldn’t have let it be resurrected.
His warm mouth moved along the line of her jaw, leisurely nipping and tasting, as if he wanted nothing more than this and had all the time in the world in which to savor her. Only the rock-hard bulge in his jeans betrayed any urgency, and she was pressed so tightly to him that she could feel every twitch, every throb, that invited her to part her legs and let him get even closer.
Then his mouth closed over hers and the last shred of restraint dissolved. The kiss was hard and deep and hungry, his tongue taking her mouth. Desire sizzled along her nerves, turned her warm and yielding and boneless. His free hand moved to her breasts, found her nipples through the layers of cloth, gently pinched them awake. He had her now; she wasn’t restraining him from any caress, and the clothing that kept his body from hers was suddenly maddening. She wanted the rest of it, all he had to give her, and with a burst of clarity, she knew she had to say what she wanted to say now. A minute from now would be too late.
The proof of how far gone she was came in the amount of willpower it took for her to tear her mouth from his. “We need to talk,” she said, her voice strained and husky.
He groaned and laughed at the same time. “Oh, God,” he muttered, frustration raw in his tone. “The four words guaranteed to strike fear in any man. Can’t it wait?”
“No—it’s about this. Us. Now.”
He heaved a sigh and pressed his forehead against hers. “Your timing is sadistic, you know that?”
Lorna slid her hands into the black silk of his hair, feeling the coolness of the strands, the heat of his scalp. “Your fault. I almost forgot.” Her tongue felt a little thick, her speech slower than normal. Yes, this was definitely his fault, all of it.
“Let’s have it, then.” Resignation lay heavy in the words, the resignation of a simple male who just wanted to have sex. She would have laughed, if not for the heavy pull of desire that threatened to overwhelm everything else.
She swallowed, struggled to get the words lined up in her head so she could say them coherently. “My answer…to whether or not we do this…depends on you.”
“I vote yes,” he replied, biting her earlobe.
