And Babies Make Four (17 page)

“No,” he said, bending toward her. “There’ll be no more lies between us.”

Desire, heavy and urgent, began tightening his body. He lifted her hair away from her neck and bent
his head to kiss away her tears, and trail hot caresses down the slender column of her throat. She moaned, and shivered as he found the betraying flutter at the base of her neck. “I want you,” he growled, his arms tightening around her slender body. “I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone before. But I’ve got to know this is what you want, too.”

He lifted his head, his gaze pouring like liquid fire into her eyes. “No lies,” he breathed. “Can you still love me, even after what I told you?”

He’s offering me a choice, she thought through her haze of passion. As much as he wanted her physically, she knew that if she told him this wasn’t what she wanted he would drop his arms and walk away. She’d go back to her old life without any regrets for a brief affair in an isolated jungle valley. Without any regrets … or memories. And as she looked ahead at the long, cold years she’d spend with Hayward or some other equally civilized husband, she knew she’d cherish this memory of passion, and fire, and hopeless, helpless heartache.…

She brushed the edge of his sensitive mouth, the lips that had so recently kissed away her tears.
So much sorrow. So much pain
. Without taking her eyes from his, she unknotted her towel, and let it fall in a hush to the ground. “We’re wasting time,” she whispered huskily as she pressed her soft breasts against his chest and twined her arms around the corded muscles of his neck. “Forget the hell in our pasts. Come on, Jolly-mon. Take me to paradise.”

A feral sound issued from his throat. Lowering his
lips, he kissed her with a savage sweetness that seared away the frost inside her. Their hands roamed over each other in an orgy of discovery, exploring by touch, stroke, love. Tangled together they slid to the ground, falling, into a waist-high bank of indigo and cream flowers that arched over them like a secret bower. The scent of crushed blossoms mixed with the smell of sex, driving her closer to the edge of madness. Wild, she arched against him, and gave a small moan of disappointment when she realized he was still wearing his jeans.

His throaty chuckle was as seductive as his kisses. “This ain’t a free ride, sweetheart.
You
take them off.”

His dark eyes challenged her, daring her to seduce him. She reached up for his belt, but hesitated, shivering at a sudden chill wind of doubt. She’d spent so many years rigidly denying her emotions. Maybe, now, she wouldn’t be able to show him the depth of her love, to satisfy him in the way she so desperately wanted to. “I don’t know … oh, Sam, what if I can’t give you what you need.”

He cocked an amused eyebrow. “For a bright lady, you’ve got some crazy ideas.
You’re
what I need.”

“But—”

He covered her words with a deep, plundering caress. “You,” he murmured as he left her lips and moved to her breast, suckling her tight peak until she moaned aloud. “You,” he breathed as he skimmed love bites down her stomach, making her arch in lush, aching pleasure. “You,” he whispered finally as he
spread her legs, and claimed her intimately with an erotic, openmouthed kiss.

She exploded like a star. She cried aloud, gripping the flowers beneath her, crushing them. Gradually the world collected back around her. She smelled the sweet scent of the demolished flowers and heard the gentle rush of the nearby waterfall. And she saw him hovering over her, watching her with a tenderness that nearly destroyed her all over again.

“I need you, beautiful, loving Noel,” he whispered hoarsely, his jaw pulling taut as he fought for control. “Come on, sweetheart. Take
me
to paradise.”

His loving gaze burned away the last of her doubts. With only their gazes touching she reached for his belt, and stripped away the last barrier against their love. She had a scant moment to feel the strength of his need, and think how beautiful he was, before he filled her aching center with one powerful thrust. Gasping at the intimate invasion, she felt her body instinctively close around him, and knew her love had shattered the last of his iron control. She gently stroked back his damp hair, suddenly feeling as if she was the more experienced one. “No more lies,” she whispered. “I was born for you, my love, my mate.”

And with a hunger and joy as old as Eden he claimed her body and soul, forging their two lost and lonely hearts into a single burning flame. He thrust into her again and again, driving them toward oblivion, melting the cold emptiness of her past with the white-hot glory of his passion. She writhed beneath
him, crying out his name as his love overwhelmed her. But just before she toppled over the edge into oblivion, she felt an icy chill of premonition, warning that she’d pay for her happiness, like her mother before her.…

The jungle glade was emerald still. Evening shadows had begun to drift through the trees, staining the leaves and tangled vines with a lazy, indigo darkness. And in a hidden bower of ferns and scattered star blossoms, a pair of contented lovers lay in each others’ arms, watching the slowly setting sun.

Noel sighed, and snuggled closer to the soft mat of hair on Sam’s chest. Her body still burned from the places he’d touched her, loved her, claimed her. She’d been a wildcat in his arms, totally shameless in her desire for him. Grandmother would be appalled, she thought, smiling.

“What’s so funny?”

His words rumbled through him like burnished thunder. She’d thought he was asleep, but when she turned her head to look at his face she caught a glint of blue under his long eyelashes. “I was thinking about my Bostonian ancestors,” she answered with a mischievous grin, “and how shocked they’d be by my behavior.”

“They’re not the only ones, sweetheart. Where’d you learn those moves?”

“Undergraduate comparative religion. We studied the
Kama Sutra
.”

“
Kama
what?”

“
Sutra,
” she repeated. “An ancient text on lovemaking.”

“Ancient text …?” He rested his arm behind his shaggy head and looked up at the evening sky, chuckling. “Only you could turn a college textbook into an erotic experience. You’re incredible.” He stretched with lazy contentment. “Of course, I wasn’t so bad myself.”

She shrugged. “You were okay.”

“Just okay?” he replied, his eyes widening. “What about ‘Take me, Sam. Take me like you’ve never taken anyone be—’ ”

“All right, you were better than okay,” she interrupted. “You were … adequate.”

“Adequate!”

He suddenly circled her with his arms and expertly spun her around, so that she was pinned spread-eagle under him. “Here’s what you do with adequate,” he murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers.

She gave herself up to his kiss, drinking in his strength, his passion, his joy at being with her. All were precious. She surrendered to him, saving up every sensation, every moment, against the time when they wouldn’t be together anymore.
I won’t have him forever, I know that. But until then I can love him, and maybe help him forget the ghosts of his past
—

Suddenly he pulled away from her, lifting his head like a wolf catching a scent. “Did you hear something?”

Only my heart, she thought, feeling it pound like a jackhammer against her ribs. “No. What was it?”

“Can’t be sure. Probably nothing. Still …”

With a single, fluid motion he rose to his feet. She watched him pace the perimeter of the small glade, mesmerized by the almost unholy grace of his stride, the powerful beauty of his lean, lionlike body. My mate, she thought, and shivered as a wave of primitive pride rose up inside her. Even after I leave this island, there’s a part of me that will always belong only to him.
Even after I leave
 …

Suddenly she realized how difficult that was going to be. She loved him, but he’d never spoken of loving her, or of seeing her as anything more than another woman in a long string of affairs. Donovan wasn’t the kind of man who made commitments—she’d known that from the start. She had no right to feel any regrets. Unlike her mother, she’d walked into this affair with both eyes wide open. But as she looked into her heart, and discovered too late how completely she belonged to him, she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

“I don’t hear anything now,” he said as he started back toward her. “But we’d better get back to camp, just in case. There might be some animals out here that I don’t know about.”

She nodded and stood up, quickly wiping the incriminating tears from her eyes. “We should also be getting back to PINK and Einstein. We’ve left them alone for a long time. They’re probably worried about us.”

“Fat chance,” Sam commented as he reached her
side. “Those little Machiavellian cyber-punks were the ones who sent me after you in the first place. Of course,” he added roughly as he put his hand under her chin and gently tilted her mouth up toward his, “guess that means I owe the little guys a vote of thanks.”

She melted against him in a frenzy of passion, molding her body to his body, her heart to his. Mouths open, their tongues joined in a wild dance, devouring each other with a hunger that only grew stronger. She gave herself to him completely, kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
Because there isn’t a tomorrow, not for us
.

Too soon he raised his head, staring down at her with a tenderness that turned her knees to water. “Damn,” he breathed, smiling shakily. “Keep that up and we’ll never get back to—”

All at once he stopped, lifting his head like he was testing the wind. “There it is again. That sound.”

“I didn’t hear—” She broke off as she caught the faint sound of a high-pitched, all-too-familiar wail. “Oh God, it’s Einstein’s warning siren. Sam, he’s in danger!”

“How much of a head start do you think they have?” Noel asked as she peered through the Jeep’s windshield at the deepening twilight and steep, badly rutted mountain road.

“Don’t know, but any distance gives them a hell of an advantage.” Sam palmed the wheel, narrowly avoiding a pothole that could have tipped them over on their side. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that now. He’d already made too many. “Damn those computers. Why didn’t they tell us that PINK was pregnant?”

“I don’t think they were certain until a little while ago,” she explained. “They think of the twins as an equation—the Eden equation—and I don’t think they wanted to tell us until they were sure of the solution.”

“Well, I wish to hell they’d told me,” Sam cursed, shifting the car roughly into a lower gear. “This is all my fault. I should have been at camp, protecting the
equipment. If Einstein loses his family because of me—”

“It’s
not
your fault,” Noel stated. “You said yourself that defiling the sacred lands was a death sentence on this island. You couldn’t have known that the Deveraux were desperate enough to risk that. Besides, if you’d stayed at camp we wouldn’t have …” She bit her bottom lip, giving him the sweet, slightly crooked smile that always struck straight to his heart. “I don’t regret it, Sam. Not a minute of it.”

Neither do I, God help me
. He swung his gaze back to the road ahead, but his thoughts were consumed with the woman beside him. He’d never known that he could want someone this much—with this constant, aching yearning that had as much to do with giving love as getting it. Loving Noel had healed something deep and essential inside him, something he’d thought he’d lost forever on that lonely, rain-slick road. For the first time he could think of the accident without the killing pain, knowing that the Gina who’d loved him would forgive him, and want him to move on with his life. For the first time he looked forward to tomorrow, knowing that Noel would be part of it.
His Noel
.

He remembered how he’d watched her eyes when they’d made love, her beautiful sea-green eyes that revealed her sweet, vulnerable soul. He’d felt an almost unbearable joy as he’d seen her ice wall melt, knowing that his love had freed her of her own troubled past. She’d fit against him like she was made for him, for his hands, his hips, his … He gripped the
wheel, fighting a surge of desire as he remembered how they’d taken each other to heaven again and again. No—
paradise
. A paradise of love, laughter, and the chance to build a bright future on the ruins of the past—

And exactly what future would that be?
an inner voice chided.
The one where she gives up her successful career and moves into a third-rate bungalow with a glorified beach bum
—

“I think I see a light ahead.” She interrupted his sober thoughts.

Sam pulled the Jeep to a halt. Standing, he leaned on the top of the windshield, narrowing his eyes as he searched the immense rock face of the mountain. At first he saw nothing—then he saw a single red taillight appear some fifty yards above them up the steep road, where a vehicle had driven out from behind a limestone outcropping. “It’s the Deveraux, all right. That busted taillight on their truck is almost a trademark.”