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Beth giggled. 'Not for ages. Everyone's enjoying them¬selves too much. I think they're here for the duration!'
'Then we'll have to make our goodbyes and leave them to it.'
'We can't.' Beth was genuinely shocked. "What will people think?'
'That I can't wait to have you to myself and they're damn right,' Travis answered drily. 'Come on, we're leaving.'
Sandra and Travis's mother—his stepfather had excused himself from attending the wedding due to pressure of business, much to everyone's unspoken relief—were staying at the house taking care of all the dogs until they returned from honeymooning in Italy. Travis had reserved the honey¬moon suite at a local hotel from where they would go straight to Italy the next morning. Now he took her hand, kissing the palm in such a way her legs turned to jelly. 'All right,' Beth whispered. This would be their first time together and she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Other people faded into insignificance.
The night the puppies had been born she had shyly offered to accompany him to the master bedroom, but he had taken her hands, holding her slightly away from him, as he'd said, 'Thank you for your love and trust in me, my darling, and I want you more than words can say, but we're going to do this right. I won't pretend I haven't had women, Beth, but you know that. But you're different, this is different. The rest of your life starts now and it's going to start right. I want you for my wife, the mother of my children, and that sets you apart. Do you under¬stand what I'm saying? You are worth waiting for.'
She had nodded, faintly bewildered nonetheless.
'Having said that, my nobility only goes so far,' Travis had continued wryly. 'This will be a short engagement, OK? A very short engagement.'
They drove away from the house in a shower of rice and confetti, Sandra having caught the bouquet Beth threw from the taxi cab. They sat close together in the back of the car, then-hands entwined. The evening shadows were long and a soft scented darkness enveloped the world outside the cab but Beth was conscious only of her husband and what he meant to her. Which was everything—her sun, moon and stars.
Travis had said this was the start of the rest of their lives and she believed that. All that had gone before—Keith, her first marriage, the disaster it had become—was in the past. The future was theirs, to make of it what they would, and she intended it would be good. Very good.
When they stepped out of the taxi cab the fragrance of wood smoke was lazy in the warm autumn air; the sky was velvet, pierced with stars and flooded with pale moonlight. A sense of whispering stillness pervaded the perfect night, timeless and enchanting as the sound of the car faded away.
Travis stood with his arm round her waist, his head lifted to the harvest moon. 'There will be other nights like this,' he murmured huskily as the silence of the night enfolded them. 'A lifetime of them. And one day when the children have grown up and gone and it's just the two of us again, I'll remind you of tonight. I'll tell you how beautiful you are and how much I love you, what a lucky man I am.'
'And I'll tell you you saved me,' Beth whispered back, touching his chiselled face with the palm of her hand. 'And that I love you more than life itself.'
The honeymoon suite was sumptuous and modern in shades of cream and gold, 'champagne on ice and a huge basket of strawberries waiting for them. Travis and Beth saw nothing but each other.
He undressed her slowly, relishing every long-awaited moment and she rewarded him with total surrender. As her dress fell to the floor, she stepped out of it, reaching for him and glorying in the expression on his face. "I want you to make love to me,' she told him very seriously. 'I've wanted it from the first time we met.'
Travis smiled slowly. 'Why the hell has it taken us so long when we've been of the same mind?' he drawled softly.
In the briefest moment of time the world faded away and they let their bodies speak for them, seeking each other greedily. Travis ripped off his own clothes, Beth's fingers clumsy and feverish as she helped him, and then they were both naked, taking in the scent and feel of each other as they swayed together in the middle of the opulent room.
Letting her body speak for her, Beth moved her hips against his, her breath coming in gasps as his mouth trailed from her throat to the rounded fullness of her breasts. He was already hugely aroused but the amazing control she had sensed more than once held, his mind and body alert as he nipped and caressed and tasted her until she lost the last remnants of restraint.
Drawing her over to the huge bed, he urged her down among the scented sheets and pillows and continued the sensual onslaught, murmuring such words of love and passion that she didn't try to hide the fulfillment she so desperately wanted. But still he didn't take her, kissing every part of her and creating such a raw and primitive need that her legs wrapped round his, fracturing the last shred of his constraint.
