Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (20 page)

He wanted this woman under him and he wanted it yesterday. "You're going to feel so good."

She shuddered and a needy sound escaped her lips while her legs parted in a blatant invitation as old as time. He was really, really glad she'd already climaxed on the balcony because he didn't think he'd last more than a few thrusts after eighteen months of celibacy and the highly erotic foreplay that had brought about her shocking orgasm.

He'd never seen a woman climax from having her breasts stimulated before. True, he'd been rubbing himself against her, but how much sensation could she have received through two layers of denim and her panties?

"What are you thinking?" she asked, her voice sounding croaky.

"How sexy you are. That I probably won't last worth a damn." He would not have admitted that weakness to any other woman.

She bit her lip, her legs shifting, but not closing. "I thought you might not like what you see. I've changed."

He nodded, moving toward the bed, toward her, stopping when his shins hit against the end of the mattress. "I told you I liked it. Even more now that I can see everything."

She had the sweetest curve on her tummy and her hips were fuller. He didn't understand it. His mother had always lost weight when she was stressed, but Ronnie had filled out some even though the last eighteen months had to have been hell with her sister in the hospital and trying to start a new life here in Seattle.

Regardless, he really did like her new look. He wanted to feel every inch of her lusher body, getting to know each new curve completely and putting his brand on her with his hands and his mouth.

But not right now. Right now, all he could think about was getting inside her.

The basic mating act.

He came down on top of her and shuddered at the impact of her warm, welcoming nakedness against his skin. It felt so good that he wasn't sure he'd even make it inside her. She moved restlessly under him, spreading her thighs wide to make a place for him there. He felt the tip of his penis against the entrance to her femininity. The soft, wet warmth beckoned him and he wanted to surge inside in one strong thrust.

He stopped himself just in time and asked the question that needed asking. "Birth control? Do I need to protect you?"

He wasn't going to get into a discussion about safe sex, not when he'd spent the last eighteen months celibate and had the distinct impression she had too.

Her breath caught and she tipped her pelvis toward him. "Yes. I didn't think. Do you have something?"

He reveled in this further proof that she hadn't been sexually active since she'd left him. She'd gone off the Pill and hadn't had any reason to go back on. He reached across her, his sex brushing against the silken smoothness of her stomach, and yanked open the drawer of the nightstand.

He grabbed a small foil packet and handed it to her. "You do it." His hands weren't steady enough.

She arched up toward him, letting her body caress his excited flesh while she concentrated on opening the condom and nulling it from the wrapper.

"Okay," she said when she had it open.

He lifted up until he was kneeling above her and she gently rolled the condom in place.

His head fell back at the touch and he groaned. "Aw, honey. That feels so good. It's been so long. Too damn long."

"How long?"

His head snapped back up at the question and he met her eyes, her gaze wary. She was scared of his answer. He could see it in her eyes.

He smiled with as much reassurance as he could muster with his flesh ready to explode. "Eighteen long, lonely months, baby."

She gasped in shock, but he wasn't up to discussing his celibacy at the moment. Moving his body back over her, he took her just the way he'd been longing to do, with one smooth thrust. She gasped again and he tensed.

"Did I hurt you?" It cost a lot just to ask the question.

"No. It's just a little tight, that's all. You're a big man, Marcus."

He would have laughed at that boost to his masculine ego, but he didn't have the breath. He lowered his mouth and took hungry possession of her lips while he thrust his body into hers in one pounding drive after another. When she came again, her body contracting boa constrictor fashion around him, he exploded inside her with mind-blowing intensity. Then, he collapsed on top of her, his muscles no longer able to bear the weight of his body.

He vaguely thought he was probably crushing her, but she didn't seem to mind. Not if the stranglehold she had around his neck was any indication.

Tears ran wet and warm down her temples and into her hair, as Veronica lay crushed under Marcus's welcome weight. Common sense made a bid to reassert itself and tell her what a stupid thing she had just done, but her emotions and her body weren't listening. They felt sated for the first time in so long that she didn't want to think what she'd just experienced could have been anything less than the best choice she could have made.

He lifted his head and wiped at his own cheek, then touched her temple. The light from the doorway cast his face in shadow and she could not read its expression.

"You said I didn't hurt you." His voice washed over her with masculine concern.

She shook her head against the pillow, unable to speak at first. She blinked, stemming the flow of tears. "You didn't."

"Then why are you crying?"

"I missed you."' The words were bald, but the truth.

She had spent eighteen months away from him, and not one day of that had gone by that she hadn't physically ached for his presence.

"You left me." He didn't sound accusatory. He didn't even sound angry. He sounded bewildered. "Why?"

"I didn't think I had a choice."

"You didn't trust me."

"I didn't know you." How could you trust a man you didn't know, particularly a man who had told you that all he had to give you was sex?

He shifted and she could feel his still semierect flesh move inside of her. "How can you say that? You knew me more intimately than any woman ever had."

She stared at him, bemused. Did he truly believe that? "Marcus, I don't even know your parents' names, if they are alive or dead, if you have siblings. You hide all the intimate details of yourself behind your atrocious sense of humor and overwhelming sensuality."

A sensuality that had given her the courage to strip naked and wait for him in bed although he'd taken long enough "saving the steaks" that she would have been excused for believing he'd had second thoughts.

He kissed the corner of her mouth and moved his hips again, and the semi state of his erection altered to a much more solid reality. She murmured in protest when he withdrew from her body, but the sound died in her throat when he opened the nightstand drawer again and went about changing condoms with swift efficiency.

He came back to her, pushing her thighs apart to enter her once again, this time inch by leisurely inch.

He smiled with sensual promise into her eyes. "My mother's name is Sharon and my father's name is Lionel Marcus Danvers the fourth."

She sucked in her breath and ground her hips in a circular motion against him. 'Tell me later…"

Then she was lost once again in the whirlwind that always carried her away when he touched her. His thrusts were agonizingly slow and overwhelmingly deep. He kissed and caressed her until she panted with her need for fulfillment and then he gave it to her in a series of hard, body-jarring thrusts until her mind splintered and her body convulsed in wave after wave of sensual release.

She dozed after that. She didn't know how long, but when she woke up, the bedside lamp was on. Marcus sat next to where she lay on the bed, wearing a pair of black knit boxers and nothing else. She scooted into a sitting position, dragging the sheet with her, so that it covered her chest.

He helped by pulling the pillows into place behind her to support her back and then smiled and winked, giving the sheet a significant look. "Good idea. If you don't keep yourself covered, I think we'll miss dinner again."

He picked up a tray from the nightstand and put it between them on the bed. Dinner. The smell of grilled steak and the tangy odor of Italian dressing made her stomach rumble with hunger pangs.

His brow rose mockingly. "Worked up an appetite, did you?"

She blushed and nodded just before he fed her a bite of her salad. Dressing clung to her lips and she flicked her tongue out to lick it off. His eyes dilated with remembered desire and she felt warmth unfurl inside her.

It didn't matter how many times they made love; she would always want more. Her love and need for this man were insatiable. She would have pushed aside the dinner if the experience of being fed weren't so enjoyable in its own right.

She was chewing a bite of well-done steak when he said, "I have a half brother and a half sister, neither of whom are particularly fond of me."

Swallowing hastily, she asked, "What?"

Still disoriented from sleep and the drugging desire he sparked in her, she didn't understand what he was telling her at first and then it clicked. His family. "What are their names?"

"Lionel Marcus Danvers the fifth and Patricia."

"Your brother must be older than you."

"Yes, by several years."

"And your sister?" She still couldn't quite grasp that he was telling her about his family.

He'd always been so closemouthed on the subject, acting as if talking about his family ties was tantamount to sharing state secrets.

"She's older as well."

"So, you're the baby. Is that why they don't like you? Did your parents spoil you rotten?" She smiled when she asked the question, reaching out to caress the line of his jaw.

His eyes did not reflect her gentle amusement. "No."

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. He seemed to be waiting for her to ask him more questions, so she did. "Isn't it awfully confusing to have so many males in your family with similar names? I mean, I assume your father goes by Lionel. What do they call your brother? Junior?"

He did laugh at that, a deep, rich chuckle. "Lionel would have a fit if anyone called him by such an undignified title."

"Lionel?"

"My father is called Mark."

So, his mother, clearly the second wife because his siblings were only half relations, had claimed a place on the family tree for Marcus by giving him his father's middle name. "I still think it must get confusing."

"Since I'm rarely there, it isn't a problem."

"You told Sandy that you had been home to see them recently. Some kind of family emergency," she probed.

"Mark had a heart attack. My mother needed my support."

"Mark?" Now she was confused. She thoughtMark was his dad.

"My father."

"You call your father by his first name?"

"Actually, I address him as little as possible."

Dinner forgotten, she stared at the stark lines of his face. "But why?"

He didn't answer and after several seconds of complete silence, she convinced herself he wasn't going to.

She turned her head away, hurt and yet not surprised. "None of my business. I know. A casual bed partner doesn't rate discussion of the intricate relationships within your family."

Marcus grabbed her shoulders. "You're more than a casual bed partner, damn it. You always were."

"Is that why you told me not to get sex and love confused the first time we were together?"

She couldn't fathom why he wanted to rewrite their history, maybe to make their separation all her fault, but she wasn't having it. She carried enough guilt without taking responsibility for their lack of true intimacy as well.

"That's all it was—at first."

She knew that. She reallyknew that, but it still hurt to hear him say it.

"But everything changed. I started wanting you to spend the night, but you never would. I was thinking about asking you to move in with me and then you left. Without saying good-bye."

The pain and confusion in his voice so closely matched her own, and she turned her head to meet his gaze. His eyes were dark with emotion and fixed on her in almost desperate intensity.