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For that she was rewarded with a swat on the bottom. “Come on. No reason to keep the minister waiting.”
Within thirty minutes they were married. The ceremony was simple. The preacher was a lively man who was pushing eighty, and his wife, a sparrow of a woman, served as pianist and witness. Another woman, heavyset and beaming, was the second witness, and at the end of the short ceremony, Kaylie and Zane were presented with a marriage certificate, a bouquet of roses, a brochure for Love Nest Cabins and a bottle of champagne.
“Not quite as elaborate as the first ceremony,” Zane drawled, once they were back in the Jeep.
“But more lasting,” Kaylie predicted.
“You think so?” His dark brow cocked insolently, but his gray eyes were flecked with humor.
“I’m sure!”
“So where to now?”
“Well, we could either go gambling…or…”
“Or what?”
“Or I could take you to the hotel and—” she lowered her voice suggestively and touched his thigh “—we could start the honeymoon.”
He placed his warm palm over the top of her hand. “I’m definitely in favor of option two.”
“Me, too.” Her spirits soaring, she wheeled the Jeep into the parking lot of the hotel. Blue-green pines softened the lines of a rambling, three-storied lodge. With peaked dormers poking out of a sharply gabled roof and a covered porch that skirted the main floor, the rambling building rested on the shores of the vibrant blue lake.
“This
is as close to ‘heaven’—isn’t that what you called your place in the mountains?—that I could find.”
“I guess it’ll just have to do,” Zane drawled, as if he gave a damn about the hotel. All he wanted was Kaylie.
It took twenty minutes to register and have their bags carried to their third-floor suite. Impatiently Zane slapped a tip into the bellman’s palm, then, when the young man left, locked the door behind him.
“Now, Mrs. Flannery, what was that you were saying about starting the honeymoon early?”
She laughed, the sound melodious as he wrapped his arms around her and lowered hungry lips to hers. Though his shoulder ached, he ignored the painful throb and got lost in the wonder of his wife.
Kissing her, holding her close, undressing her and feeling her clothes drop from her supple body, Zane felt a desperation that ripped through his soul.
Only hours before her life had been threatened by a knife-wielding madman intent on killing her.
The image was vivid and excruciating. What if he had lost her? What if Johnston’s blade had found its mark? His heart nearly stopped at the thought, and he pulled her roughly against him, intent on washing away the horrid images in the smell and feel of her.
The nightmare was over. They could celebrate their lives and love.
Her body was warm and soft, yielding as he caressed her bare shoulder with the rough pad of his finger. She quivered at his touch, and her mouth opened easily at the gentle prod of his tongue. Her fingers were everywhere, as if she, too, felt the urgency of their union.
Life was so fleeting, so very precious, there was no time to waste. Her fingers pushed his shirt over his shoulders, and he flinched as she tugged on his sleeves and the wound in his upper back stung.
“Love me, Zane,” she whispered, kissing the hairs on his chest, fanning the fire deep in his loins as her tongue touched his skin, rimming his nipples, lapping at his breastbone, tasting of him and causing wave after tormented wave of pure lust to wash through him.
With a groan he shifted his weight, shoving her slowly back against the down coverlet on the bed. He touched the outline of her bra with his fingers and mouth, kissing the soft curves of her breasts, kneading the white mounds until dark, petulant nipples peaked beneath the white lace. He teased those rosy buds with mouth and fingers as Kaylie writhed beneath him, arching anxiously, bucking her hips against his, silently begging for release.
Slow down, a voice in his mind protested. Take your time. But his body, and his desperation to love her, to prove that they had survived the terror of a madman’s knife, wouldn’t listen. His hands moved anxiously over her, tearing off her bra, stripping her of her underwear.
And she was just as desperate. Her hands worked at the waistband of his slacks, sliding them off his legs and kicking them aside as he mounted her.
With the first thrust, pain shot down his arm, ripping through him with a blinding agony that was matched only by the exquisite torture of her body moving in tandem with his. But he couldn’t stop, and soon, as their tempo increased and their sweat-soaked bodies fused, he felt nothing but the sheer ecstasy of her body sliding against his.
“Kaylie, love,” he cried, his voice as raw as a December night. He tried to hold back, resist, but the feel of her fingers digging into the muscles of his good shoulder and the deep-throated sound of her moans of pleasure brought him to quick and immediate release. He plunged into her with a primal cry that echoed through the room, and she shuddered against him, clawing and clinging, her face upturned in rapture, her low moan rippling through her body.
