AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Keira couldn’t catch her breath. Her body was trembling, and she couldn’t prevent it. Her inner muscles throbbed around his manhood, milking him in a way that seemed both foreign and natural to her.
And Cody lay in her arms, completely spent.
Time stretched out endlessly as she held him, and she smiled secretly to herself. She loved him, and now he was hers. He hadn’t said the words, but they weren’t important—they were just words. He’d shown her his love with his body, taking her to the mountaintop with him, but first letting her soar.
Keira’s secret smile slowly grew until she could no longer keep it from her face. Her breathing finally slowed, and she began to doze off. Her high school boyfriends had been wrong about her, she thought as sleep claimed her. She wasn’t frigid—in Cody’s arms.
* * *
Cody came to only minutes after passing out. Keira was already asleep, but her breathing was shallow, so he knew she hadn’t been asleep long. She whimpered slightly when he withdrew from her body, as if she missed him the minute he was gone. But she didn’t waken.
He slid quietly from the bed and made his way to her bathroom. He stepped into the shower for a minute, quickly washing himself. Then he dried off with her towel. He ran the water in the washbasin until it was hot, held a washcloth under the stream, then wrung it out and brought it back to the bed with him.
He gently placed the warm, damp cloth between Keira’s legs, and she caught her breath in her sleep. She made a little sound deep in her throat when he tenderly washed her, but it wasn’t a sound of pain, and he was relieved. He obviously hadn’t hurt her as he’d feared when he’d taken her virginity.
No, he corrected himself. You didn’t take it. She gave it to you.
When he was done, he took the washcloth back to the bathroom. There was a smear of pink on the cloth, and Cody stared at it for a long minute before he held it under the running water and washed the blood away along with everything else.
She couldn’t know what a priceless gift she’d given him. Not her virginity, but by calling his name both times when she climbed the peak. For a man whose heart and ego had been savaged when the only woman he’d loved called him by another man’s name in bed, it was healing to know that Keira was only thinking of him at that moment. She wanted him. Only him.
Cody padded softly back to the bedroom and slid in bed next to Keira. He watched her sleeping for a minute—her face so unlike the usual one she showed the world when she was awake. And there was a tiny smile on her lips. Whatever she was dreaming, it made her smile. And that made him feel damned good.
He suddenly needed to hold her even if it meant waking her. He propped himself up against the pillows, then drew her unresisting body into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he pulled the covers around them. Her curls tickled his chin, and he breathed in the unique scent that was Keira—plain soap and water and warm woman. He wanted to hold her this way forever, especially now that he knew she loved him. Especially now that she was his.
He admitted to himself he had wanted her ever since that first night. Hadn’t been able to erase the memory, even though he’d told himself time and again he had no business remembering anything about that episode other than the basic fact that it had happened. It hadn’t done any good. His body had a mind of its own. It had remembered...and wanted.
He chastised himself sternly for the thrill of exultation that coursed through him now. It was primitive. Archaic. Sexist. He couldn’t help it. Part of him was saying, Mine. No one else’s, ever. Mine.
He didn’t know why she’d still been a virgin at twenty-nine, but the reason paled in comparison to his primal male response to the fact. No other man had ever held her this way. No other man had known the soft, warm place between her thighs. No other man had ever heard her cry out in ecstasy. She’d given herself to him, and to no other. She was only and ever his.
Then and only then did it dawn on him he hadn’t worn protection when he’d made love to her. His brows drew together in a sudden frown, and he cursed under his breath. Not because it mattered to him, but because it most certainly would matter to her...when she came to her senses.
