The Marriage Pact (Hqn) (22 page)

He broke the contact only when he’d carried her out of the kitchen and into the dim corridor beyond, dragging in a breath. “Where—”

Hadleigh nearly laughed. Her childhood room had been upstairs, tucked at a slant under the eaves, across the hall from Will’s, as Tripp might recall, but some months after her grandmother had passed away, feeling cramped and needing a change, she’d redone the main-floor bedroom, by far the largest of the three, and moved in.

“There,” she said in a whisper, inclining her head toward the set of double doors just beyond the entrance to the bathroom.

Tripp gave a small sigh—possibly of relief—and strode in that direction.

The room was spacious and sparely furnished. There was the antique brass bed she’d bought at an estate sale, sporting one of her favorite quilts, the sturdy dresser and long, low bureau, both old, whitewashed and artfully distressed in a combination of shabby-chic and Country French. Colorful hooked rugs graced the gleaming hardwood floors, and Hadleigh’s greatest indulgence, a working fireplace constructed of old brick worn to a distinctly Tuscan shade of yellow ochre, loomed between two tall windows.

A faint spill of moonlight illuminated the space.

Tripp, still holding her in both arms, looked around, seeming a little disoriented, as though he’d suddenly found himself not merely in another room, but in another house entirely. Whatever he’d expected to see, Hadleigh deduced hazily, this wasn’t it.

He shook his head once, like a man trying to get his bearings, then crossed to the bed and sat Hadleigh down on the edge of the mattress. A moment later, he was crouching in front of her, gently removing her shoes and then her socks. Instead of standing up again, or joining her on the bed, Tripp remained where he was and began to massage her right foot, pressing into the arch with both thumbs.

Hadleigh made a crooning sound, closing her eyes and pressing her palms deep into the bedding. “Now
that,
” she whispered, “feels
way
too
good—”

Tripp’s chuckle was hoarse. “That’s the general idea.”

“Who would have thought a person’s
feet—
” Hadleigh leaned farther back, keeping her eyes closed, gasping with startled ecstasy when Tripp took hold of her other foot and proceeded to rub both the right and the left simultaneously. “Oh—Tripp—”

“Let go, Cinderella,” he said quietly, a smile in his voice.

With a comical cry of resignation, Hadleigh stopped trying to sit upright and flopped down on the bed, landing with a bounce. “What,” she half whispered, half purred, “does it
look
like I’m doing?”

Tripp laughed. “Now that you mention it,” he replied, pausing the massage magic long enough to take off his jacket, rummage briefly in a pocket and set something on the bedside table, “it does look a lot like you’re letting go.”

Hadleigh’s arms flew out from her sides, spread-eagle, and she wadded handfuls of quilt in her fingers so she could remain anchored in the everyday world and
because if she didn’t, she might start tearing off her clothes.

She was fully dressed, except for her shoes and socks, of course, and she was
burning,
aching everywhere. The danger that she might climax, and violently, before Tripp even got through fondling her toes and arches was deliciously real.

If that happened, there could be no lingering doubts—she, Hadleigh Stevens, was a weirdo, someone with a
foot
fetish,
for heaven’s sake, and God only knew what else. It stood to reason, after all, that if Tripp Galloway could make her feel like this just by rubbing her feet... Well, what would it be like when he really got down to business?

Some part of Hadleigh wanted to scramble for that tiny room in her head, once again take refuge there. Yes, she would be lonely and wistful, full of sad yearning, like a fairy-tale princess imprisoned in a tower—but she knew
how
to feel lonely and wistful.
Sad yearning? No problem. What Hadleigh
didn’t
know how to feel, what she wanted to pull back from almost as much as she wanted to fling herself, body and soul, into the very heart of the fire, was this wild, reckless passion. It was divine.

It was terrifying.

Tripp finally released his grasp on her feet, having reduced them to the consistency, it seemed to Hadleigh, of wafting smoke. He worked the snaps on his shirt, shrugged out of the garment, consigned it easily to the same oblivion that had swallowed his jacket.

The room was lit only by moonlight, but that was enough to see Tripp’s magnificent upper body, his powerful shoulders, well-sculpted chest and the distinct musculature of his midsection. A faint, wheat-gold shimmer dusted his flesh, narrowed to a V at his navel and disappeared into the low-riding waistband of his jeans.

Hadleigh marveled, shocked into silence by the sheer beauty of this man’s form, his bearing, the simple fact of his presence. Of course she’d seen Tripp without a shirt on many times. He’d been her brother’s best friend, after all—and he and Will had often stripped to the waist to shoot hoops out in the driveway on hot summer afternoons, and certainly at the community-center pool or one of the local swimming holes. Not to mention the legendary water fights in Gram’s yard, which invariably drew kids from all over town and finally morphed into epic battles involving buckets and hoses and squirt guns.

Oh, but
this
was very different. Hadleigh was no longer an adolescent girl, awkward and never quite sure how to stand or sit, what to do with her too-long legs or her bony-elbowed arms, for that matter, and Tripp was unquestionably a
man,
not a mischievous youth.

And here they were, alone, in her bedroom.

Yikes,
Hadleigh thought, and then,
Hallelujah!

Tripp reached out, without a word, and Hadleigh gave him her hands.

He pulled her gently to her feet, still the consistency of jelly, thanks to him, and Hadleigh’s knees buckled instantly.

Tripp caught her with ease, held her up. His eyes glinted, and one corner of his mouth tilted slightly upward. “Okay, Cinderella,” he said gruffly. “Decision time. We make love. We don’t make love. Check one.”

Hadleigh answered by hauling her T-shirt off over her head.

With an audible catch in his breath, Tripp let his gaze stray from Hadleigh’s eyes, pause briefly and tantalizingly on her mouth, and finally rest on the rounding of her breasts above the delicate lace of her bra. A low, taut exclamation escaped him, and he ran the tip of one index finger over the contours of her breasts, leaving tiny trails of invisible fire leaping along her nerves.

Hadleigh, admittedly under a spell and yet never more sure of who she was and what she wanted, boldly unhooked the front catch on her bra, letting her firm breasts spill into Tripp’s view.

That time, he actually groaned.

Then he caressed Hadleigh and chafed her nipples with the pads of his thumbs until
she
was the one doing the groaning.

When Tripp bent his head to suck lightly at one of the nipples he’d so deftly prepared, Hadleigh gave a little shout and leaned back in pure surrender.

The sensations Tripp wrought in her, with skillful flicks of his tongue, with the warm, loving greed of his lips, made her feverish with need, frantic and impatient, even desperate.

When he’d finished enjoying her breasts—temporarily, she hoped—Tripp kissed Hadleigh, and something broke inside her, some reservoir of passion and femininity and glorious joy, too long contained.

Tripp, seeming to sense the torrent he’d released in Hadleigh, a primal flood of physical and emotional power that could not be stopped, managed, between hungry kisses, to get rid of the rest of her clothes as well as his own. Somewhere in this process, which was as elegantly graceful as a waltz, he put on a condom.

Although neither Hadleigh nor Tripp spoke, they tacitly agreed that this first time together, they would simply give in to the demands and directives of their bodies, separate and yet somehow already one. They’d simply surrender and ride the torrents and whirlpools, eddies and undertows, wherever they took them.

Tripp lifted Hadleigh off the floor, and she instinctively clasped her long legs around his hips, tipping her head back and closing her eyes, giving herself up to him, trusting him in a way she would never have trusted any other man.

He supported her easily, his arms strong around her, nuzzling her breasts, reaching the nearest wall in a couple of strides, bracing Hadleigh against it, cupping her buttocks in the palms of his hands and kissing her long and hard and deep, kissing her breathless. She whimpered, crazed with the need for him, all of him.

“Last chance,” Tripp whispered after suckling at her earlobe and then the corresponding breast.

Hadleigh writhed against him, searching with her hips, with her softest and most vulnerable place, her breath coming in swift, shallow pants. “Now, Tripp,” she pleaded.
“Now.”

With a long groan and a powerful thrust, Tripp took Hadleigh, claiming her, conquering her and being conquered himself.

The first climax seized her instantly, a long, ceaseless clenching in the depths of her femininity, perhaps even her soul. She responded without reservation, without shame, without thought, a wild creature, her body flexing against Tripp’s, over and over again, her cries throaty and primitive and tremulous with a triumph that was at once new in that moment and older than the stars.

She sobbed his name, and he soothed her, murmuring to her, kissing her neck, her eyelids, the corners of her mouth. But even as Tripp consoled Hadleigh with tender words, with caresses, with more kisses, he gave her no quarter physically. Instead, he drove deeper into her, and harder, and the pleasure grew keener and then keener still, with every movement of their bodies. As soon as one orgasm began to ebb, and Hadleigh thought she might catch her breath, another fiercer one took its place.

By the time Tripp’s control finally broke, and he surrendered at last, shouting her name, Hadleigh was spent. Her fingers buried deep in his hair, she let her softness and warmth encompass him, and wring the last measure of release from him.

Chapter Twelve

H
ADLEIGH
AWAKENED
FROM
a sated sleep, in the darkest hour of the night, aware that Tripp had left her bed. He was a shadow, groping for the clothes he’d discarded earlier, doing his best to be quiet.

She felt a brief and poignant pang that might have been sorrow or joy, she couldn’t tell which; Hadleigh felt no need to identify and catalog it. “Leaving?” she asked, very softly.

Tripp turned, looked down at her, still shirtless, zipping his jeans. “I have horses to feed,” he said.

Hadleigh was amused—at herself. What had she expected him to say?
It’s been real—see you around. Don’t call me—I’ll call you?
“Need any help?” she asked.

Tripp, standing near the bedside table, leaned over slightly and switched on a lamp. In the glow, she saw a grin spread across his all-too-sensual mouth. He’d worked wonders with that mouth earlier in the evening, in the frenzy of their lovemaking. “I wouldn’t mind some company,” he said mildly.

Hadleigh, naked and tender in certain places, tossed back the covers, had second thoughts and covered herself again, blushing. “Give me fifteen minutes to shower and dress.”

He smiled again. “I’ll make coffee,” he said. With that, he left the bedroom.

Hadleigh was grateful—she’d been anything but shy during the night, that was for sure, and while she didn’t regret a single thing she and Tripp had done together, which was plenty, she needed a little solitude, time to put herself back together.

The moment Tripp was gone, she bolted from the bed, grabbed underwear and socks from the appropriate bureau drawers, chose a comfortable pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt from the shelves in her closet, then made a dash for the master bath. Like her bedroom, this space was her own creation, boasting a garden tub, two-sink marble countertop and an oversize shower equipped with a number of strategically placed sprayers.

Juxtaposed with the other rooms in that modest house, she supposed the spiffy bed-and-bath suite would seem a little incongruent to the casual observer. She’d needed a change after her grandmother—her last remaining blood relation—had died, and, when the will was read, Hadleigh had been stunned to learn just how much she’d inherited.

Okay, Gram had been the frugal type, a dedicated saver, but Hadleigh hadn’t expected to have much left over after the final expenses were paid. She’d known that the quilt shop and the house were both mortgage-free—had been for years—but as it turned out, Gram had been tucking money away for decades. She’d not only banked most of the settlement she’d received when her son and his wife, Hadleigh and Will’s parents, were killed in the car accident, she’d invested both her grandchildren’s monthly social security checks in mutual funds. When Will was killed in action, his military life insurance policy had bolstered the family coffers even more; Hadleigh had assumed the bulk of that had gone toward her own college tuition, plus books, her dorm room and food.

She hadn’t had a clue what was really going on.

For all those years, without a word of complaint, Gram had supported both Will and Hadleigh out of the often-skimpy profits the shop brought in, diligently selling fabric and notions, pattern books and a good many of her own creations, plus
teaching quilting classes whenever possible. Just as Gram had taught her.

Remembering always choked Hadleigh up, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, and that bright, cold morning after was no exception. While she’d never know precisely how many sacrifices Gram had made to see her grandchildren through to adulthood, she could make a pretty good guess.

When Alice Stevens’s friends, mostly middle-aged women like herself, widows or divorcées, had gone on trips together, pooling their funds to charter buses and heading out to destinations like Branson, Missouri, or Reno, or the Grand Canyon, or even Disneyland, she’d always stayed behind. The others would plead and cajole, but Gram refused every time, albeit with a pleasant smile. She had no business gallivanting around the country, she’d tell anybody who asked, because she had a store and two mischief-prone kids to look after, in case they’d forgotten.

There were plenty of other economies, too, both large and small. Gram, a fine seamstress, had sewn all her own clothes and many of Hadleigh’s. She’d diligently clipped coupons out of the newspaper and kept a hawk’s eye out for sales, worn the same two or three pairs of shoes, the “sensible” kind, of course, for years, raised a bumper crop of backyard vegetables every summer, canning plenty for winter, and never, as far as Hadleigh could recall, splurging on so much as an extra tube of lipstick or the red-hot bestseller everybody in her garden club was raving about.

Oh, no—not Gram. She owned one lipstick, purchased at the discount store, and used it up completely. All the books she read came from the public library, stacks of them. She’d declared that it wouldn’t kill her to wait her turn for the potboiler du jour. She’d probably gone to a grand total of three movies since the day Will and Hadleigh moved in with her, and if anyone asked, she’d surely have said it was foolish to pay good money when there was popcorn in the pantry and plenty of programs on TV.

Except that Gram had
loved
movies.

With a sigh, Hadleigh stepped into her fancy shower.
All of that’s over and done with,
her grandmother would have said.
There’s no changing anything now.

Besides, even if she and Will
had
understood how much Gram was denying herself back then and lodged a protest, that stubborn old woman would’ve gone right ahead and done things her way anyhow.

The insight made Hadleigh smile, and her thoughts shifted to Tripp and the night just past. Even over the running water, she could hear him in the kitchen, talking to the dogs, opening and shutting the back door, taking crockery from the cupboard.

She’d been living alone for quite a while now, and it was just plain nice to have somebody else around. All the better if that somebody was Tripp Galloway.

Damn, but the man’s good in bed.

Good
out
of bed, too.

That reflection brought on a kind of visceral instant replay, and delicious tingles raced under Hadleigh’s flesh from one nerve ending to the next.

Whoa! Back, girl,
she silently told her wanton self, enjoying another rush of tiny thrills.
You heard the man. There are horses to feed.

She finished her shower, wrapped herself in a towel, stepped over to the sink and brushed her teeth. She hadn’t shampooed her hair because then she would’ve had to blow-dry it, too, and that would have taken more time than she wanted to spend. So she just combed out the tangles, twisted it into a knot on top of her head and secured it with a clip.

After dressing quickly, Hadleigh applied a light coat of mascara and some pink lip gloss—heavy makeup, for her—and walked to the kitchen at what she hoped was a sedate and dignified pace.

Knowing Tripp would be there, love-rumpled and sexy, she could hardly keep herself from breaking into a sprint. Mustn’t seem too eager, though!

Except she
was
eager—way,
way
beyond eager, in fact.

She froze in the doorway, stricken by the sight of him, even though she should have been prepared. He seemed to fill the room with his presence.

She noticed that his beard was growing in, a golden stubble, impossibly sexy.

Honestly, if he’d made a move toward her—any move at all—Hadleigh would have gone hurtling into his arms. It was a memorable moment, the kind that freezes time, stops the universe in its tracks, starts it going again with a wild lurch. And yet, conversely, everything seemed so...well,
normal.

On the counter, the coffeemaker chugged away and two mugs waited to be filled. The dogs, back inside, coats dewy from their backyard foray, stood side by side, chowing down on separate bowls of kibble. Looking at them, a person would think they’d been together from puppyhood on.

Tripp grinned that crooked little grin that always made Hadleigh’s stomach flutter as though it had just sprouted wings and might take flight a heartbeat later. “You’re beautiful,” he told her, husky-voiced.

Hadleigh was ridiculously flattered—she knew she was attractive enough, but beautiful? Not quite.

Melody
was beautiful.

So was Bex.

She,
however, fell somewhere between presentable and pretty.

“Is that a line?” Hadleigh asked, with a mischievous rise of one eyebrow and a crooked grin of her own, before making a production of gesturing down at her well-worn jeans, grubby sneakers and old T-shirt.

Tripp laughed. “No,” he replied. “I don’t use lines. They’re too cheesy—the sort of thing you’d expect from a paunchy guy wearing a slew of gold chains and a two-tone hairpiece.”

“Well,” Hadleigh mused, after pretending to consider the situation from every angle, “you’re definitely not paunchy, and I can’t image you in any kind of jewelry, let alone a toupee.”

“That’s good,” Tripp said. “Because if you
could
imagine those things, I wouldn’t give two hoots in hell for our chances.”

She was still hovering in the doorway, like a damn fool, pretty much unable to move in either direction and damned if she’d let Tripp Galloway know it.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“We head out to the ranch, feed the horses and then I make you some breakfast?” Tripp suggested, with a twinkle.

“That isn’t what I meant.” Why couldn’t she move?

“What
did
you mean, then?” Tripp responded. He was enjoying this, the wretch.

Suddenly, Hadleigh felt thirteen again, gawky and awkward, with knobby knees, pointed elbows and a mouth full of braces. She felt heat surge into her face and locked her back molars together, refusing—
refusing—
to answer.

Tripp crossed to her, took hold of her shoulder with one hand, raised her chin with the other. “This is important, Hadleigh,” he said, sounding grave now, his eyes tender and a little wary. “I don’t want to screw it up by moving too fast.”

She stiffened. Maybe she wasn’t experienced at these things, a hot-to-trot hoochie-coochie mama, like the women Tripp was probably used to dating—hell, sleeping with
—
but she knew a brush-off when she heard one.

At her expression, Tripp narrowed his eyes.
“What?”
he asked, sounding beleaguered.

What, indeed?
she thought. She and Tripp were consenting adults; they’d spent half the night having seriously incendiary sex. And while that might have meant happily-ever-after in Hadleigh-world, or some fairy tale, this was
reality.

Tripp looked pained, instead of angry, as Hadleigh had half expected him to be, and he was still holding her chin. “I said I didn’t want to screw things up between us,” he reminded her reasonably. “But I’m guessing you heard something else entirely.”

“You think we’re moving too fast?” Hadleigh practically choked on those words, words she’d had no intention whatsoever of saying at any point in time.

Tripp sighed heavily, shook his head. “No,” he answered. “It’s been a long and winding road to get here, though—to get to right now, this moment, I mean—and if I have any say in it, we’re not going back to square one.”

“Okay,” Hadleigh said, confused and unable to hide the fact. “So is there a plan?”

He grinned again, and it was like seeing the sun suddenly come out on an otherwise cloudy day. “Does there always have to be a plan?”

“I just like to know what to expect, that’s all,” Hadleigh told him.

Tripp inclined his head, and his mouth was very close to hers, so close that the faintest pulse rose to her lips. “Fair enough,” he said. “You can expect a lot of kissing. Like this.” He kissed her softly, but in a way that sent a charge of anticipatory energy surging through her like diffused lightning, and drew back long before she was ready. “And you can expect me to make love to you every chance I get,” Tripp went on, his voice barely above a murmur, his eyes dancing. “Shall I tell you more? Maybe run down the list of all the places I plan on having you?”

Hadleigh went hot all over, so hot she thought she might actually faint from the rush. “Umm, no,” she managed, cheeks blazing. “I’d rather be surprised.”

At that, he threw back his head and gave a shout of delighted laughter. When he’d recovered, he kissed her again, lightly and briefly, like before. “We need to get going,” he told her.

“Because the horses are hungry?” she asked, slipping her arms around Tripp’s neck.

Tripp groaned as their bodies pressed together. “That and one other thing.”

“What?” Hadleigh teased in a sultry whisper.

“We’re out of condoms,” Tripp replied with another groan.

This time, it was Hadleigh who laughed.

* * *

T
RIPP
LIKED
HAVING
Hadleigh with him, watching her gamely schlepping flakes of hay to various feeders in the barn, speaking gently to each and every horse, scratching behind their ears when they acquiesced to lower their big heads over the door of their stalls so she could reach them.

The construction crews hadn’t arrived yet—it was still early—but the place would be swarming with them soon enough. He tried not to think about the plumbers and the roofers and the electricians and the painters. For now, it was just him and Hadleigh, the two dogs and the horses, and he liked it that way.

He could imagine Hadleigh living here, sitting across the table from him at meals, sharing his bed at night.

No need to imagine that, he reflected silently, wryly amused. After last night, he’d never have to wonder about that particular experience again, because he
knew
how it would be, making love to Hadleigh. It would be like nothing he’d ever felt before; it would turn him inside out, send him soaring, drive him right out of his mind—
and
make him want her all over again, practically the instant she’d called out his name, dug her fingernails into the muscles of his back and thrust her hips upward, the better to take him in. She sighed when she reached that last climax—Hadleigh was a multiple-orgasm kind of woman—and her whole body quivered. A moment later, she’d make a long, sweet crooning sound, and her body would tremble again as she descended, ever so slowly, from the heights.