Wanted: Wife (12 page)

“Oh
Andy
. . .” I purred, wrapping my legs around him.

“Jesus—
tu m’excites,
” he growled and rising up, thrust into me.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had this much sex, my randy Andy taking me with a masculine possessiveness that left me breathless and thoroughly overcome. Was it the third or fourth time? Or even fifth? I wasn’t sure. Richard and I usually had sex every night when we were on vacation, but Andy set a whole new . . .
Richard
. My breath caught at the thought of him, luckily just as Andy nipped my earlobe, a definite precedent for that. I wouldn’t think of Richard; I couldn’t. Not in that way, at least. I would focus on my anger and his betrayal, and on the exquisite revenge this lusty adventure would grant me. But in the meantime . . .

Andy lowered himself to me, the soft hairs of his chest tickling my breasts as he slowly swivelled his hips, filling me like Richard could only dream of. I let my hands slide down the twin slopes of his rump, smooth to my fingers, flinching under my touch. I palmed them, squeezing.

His eyes flared. “Minx,” he rasped, and biting my neck, thrust
hard
.

I almost shot through the roof. But I couldn’t; I was thoroughly impaled. And enjoying it so much I allowed myself another orgasm. Andy did as well. I delighted in the way he went a little swoony, his eyes at half-mast, his exhale long and slow. I smiled with satiety and recovered confidence, firm in the resolve I could do this. And I was still smiling who knows how long later when I turned to curl next to him—only to find he was gone.

From outside I could hear a dog barking. Bucky, of course. “Andy,” I called toward the bathroom as sunlight streamed through the windows. “I think the dog wants you.” When he didn’t answer, I raised up on my arm. “Andy?” I looked toward the screen door. “Andy—”

A gunshot reverberated from outside and I bolted from the bed. I was half-way to the door when I realized I was naked. Grabbing my robe, I barely tied it around me before I ran into the yard and around the house to the front. Not a hundred feet away I found Andy, shirtless and barefoot, his jeans half-zipped, a smoking rifle in his hand. Bucky was sniffing a mound of something most definitely dead in front of him.

“Bucky—stop,” Andy said, nudging him away.

Okay, two things were running through my head, both alternately horrifying and eye-opening: how perversely sexy Andy looked with a rifle in his hand, and the bald fact there
was
a rifle in his hand.

“Andy! What the hell?” I said, coming up to him. I bent over a dead raccoon, its eyes bulging, its tongue hanging, a bullet hole neatly centered through its forehead. “Oh God,” I whispered, recoiling.

He uncocked the rifle, half-opening it. “Bucky had him cornered, and he was ready to lunge, so I couldn’t chance it. Especially since they trapped a rabid one not far from here last week.”

“But how could you tell?” I asked, just as Bucky’s head swivelled around to look at Andy. “Was he foaming at the mouth?” I glanced at the animal. “Doesn’t look like it.”

“Doesn’t have to be. This one’s a male, and they’re not supposed to be out during the day. Females, maybe, looking for a meal for their kits, but this one should’ve been sleeping. Besides, he was skulking the chickens.”

“Oh,” I said, staring at the poor pathetic creature. Suddenly, and for whatever reason, I felt an affinity. “How dare he? Didn’t he know it’s our job to wring their necks?”

He eyed me wryly. “I detect a slight note of indignation.”

“Moi?”
I pointed to my chest.
“Non . . .”

“C’est Malin,”
he said, his mouth crooking. He set the rifle against a post. “Look, sometimes I’ll have to kill things. It’s not that I enjoy doing it, but when you’re living this close to the wild, a lot of times you can’t help it. Later on, I’ll probably kill a deer so we’ll have something to eat over the winter.”

I laughed. “Kill a deer! Christ, Andy, haven’t you ever heard of a place called a supermarket? They have all kinds of meat already dead for you.”

“So it’s better if they get so overbred they get hit by a car? Something’s going to get them either way, you know. It might as well be—
no
, I said!” He yanked Bucky off the carcass again, the dog hunkering down with a whine. “That’s the way it is here. You just do what you have to do.”

The way he said it gave me a little chill. “I bet if there were lions out here you’d want to kill them, too.”

“I don’t think you’re getting this,” he said, his cheek twitching.

“Just never knew I married the Great White Hunter, is all.”

“Trust me, when you catch a herd of them munching on the tomatoes you’re about to harvest, you’ll be yelling for the shotgun, too.”

Now I was truly horrified. “So it’s just blast away at anything trying to survive out here, right?” I looked around. “Why don’t you show me where the salt licks are, then? Or your tree stand? Shall we rub ourselves with musk to get them all fired up, too?”

He cast a gaze up and down my body. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

I started to say something, then quickly demurred, my face going crimson. I gathered my robe closer around my neck.

He sighed. “Come here,” he said, pulling me to him.

I laid my head against his chest, his richly masculine scent evidence for the logic of his conclusion. He ran his fingers through my hair.

“Sore?” he asked, kissing the top of my head.

I felt an erotic twinge at the bald intimacy of his question. “A little.” I glanced at him, a bit abashed. “But I’m not complaining.”

“That’s good.” He tipped my chin to him. “You’re a beautiful woman, Julie, and as you may have already suspected, I find you pretty hard to resist.”

“And here I was thinking it was my scathing wit.”

“That came first. And then . . .” His hands slipped to my behind. “There was this.”

I was struck by the irony. “Yet you didn’t even so much as hold my hand until we were married.”

“Yeah, well . . .” His fingers flexed against me. “I didn’t want to influence your decision. I wanted the idea of our marriage to stand on its own merit.”

I looked at him squarely. “
This
,” I said, sliding my hands up and down his torso, “is pretty damn meritorious. You’re one hot little package too, you know?”

He reddened slightly himself. “So . . . I guess we can pretty much agree we’re attracted to each other.”

God, he was so cute
. “You can say that.”

He leaned back against a post, taking me with him. “Even though we may have nothing in common?”

I pushed up on my toes, brushing my lips against his. “Seems like we’ll have a lot of time to find out. We’ve already taken a big leap.”

“By getting married,” he concluded, kissing the corner of my mouth.

“By falling seriously in lust,” I said, kissing him right back.

His arms tightened around me as he proceeded to set every vein in my body on fire. I could feel him hardening beneath me, his breath coming short as he trailed kisses down my jawline, my neck, toward my breasts. As I arched back to allow him easier access, my addled mind managed to fire a few pain synapses to my nether region, reminding me that, amid all that heating up, I’d better cool it down for a spell. As if on cue, Andy reacted.

“Jesus,” he said, flushing, “I think we need a swim. Come on.”

I pulled back as he hauled me toward the lake. “Wait—my suit’s in the house.”

He looked back, adding blithely, “You’re joking right?”

Although it couldn’t be much past six, whatever morning chill there was had already dissipated, the day rising warm and brilliantly sunny. Which only caused me to realize: all the better for Andy to zone in on every single flaw my body possessed. Now, I was no prude by any stretch of the imagination, but and the thought of being naked under the magnifying glass of full sunlight was suddenly enough to make me want to hide under the bed. Not that he’d give me a chance. As soon as we hit the dock, so did his jeans. Andy stood stunningly naked before me.

He reached for the tie of my robe. “C’mon.”

I took a step back. “What if someone sees us?”

“Like who? We’re in the middle of the woods. And even if they could, who gives a damn?” He came closer. “I sure as hell don’t.”

“If I looked like you I wouldn’t give a damn either.”

“If you looked like me,” he said dryly, “you wouldn’t be standing here.” He tugged the tie, the robe falling open. “Now come on. The swim will do you good.”

I knew it would. And I knew I was being silly. So I tossed my hair over my shoulder and let my robe fall, Andy’s gaze gliding down me as it slid to the dock.

“Merde,”
he breathed. He grabbed my hand and we jumped in.

The water was deep, over my head, though not so deep I didn’t touch muck before shooting back through the chilly depths to the sun-warmed surface. Andy met me as I popped through the water, grasping my waist and pulling me toward him. Instinctively, my arms hooked around his neck, my skin goose-fleshy as it met the slipperiness of his chest. He lay back, paddling slowly as I lay atop him—my own personal raft.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, his wet eyelashes sparkling in the sun.

“Freaking c-cold, I said, shivering.

He stopped. “Let’s swim out to the float,” he said, looking to it about fifty yards away. “You
can
swim, right?”

I thought of the thousands of laps I had clocked in the pool at the Y. “I can swim,” I said, pushing off him. “And I won’t even say anything as corny as ‘Race you.’”

“A foregone conclusion,” he said, diving in.

There’s something to be said about swimming in the buff, about gliding through the water without the hindrance of Lycra or fashion statements. I felt liberated and decadent and slick as an eel, my body cutting through the lake like hot through cold. I was so enjoying the sensation, my normally competitive self didn’t even care if Andy was beating me, not that he made a big deal about it. Six feet from the float he cut behind me and once again clasped my waist.

“You swim well,” he said, twisting me around to face him. “You damn near beat me.”

“You’re just saying that,” I said, wrapping my legs around his waist. I lay back against the water to catch my breath. “Like I could beat a sailor.”

“Not every sailor can swim,” he said, his hand on my belly, his fingers swirling the little pool that had collected.

“Well, it’s pretty damn obvious this one can,” I said as he turned me about, one foot braced on the float’s ladder, my body stretched out before him.

Off in the distance I could hear birds calling. The sky above me was clear blue and poofed with the occasional cumulous. Beside me the lake lapped against the wood, the top of it warm, slightly tea-colored, and fragrant with something I’d yet to identify. As I kept my gaze skyward, I was achingly aware of Andy’s taut belly nudging my most intimate region, how his hand skimmed over me, past my black curls wavering like water rushes, around my hips and up my sides to my breasts, his fingers circling the hard peaks of my nipples.

“What do you want from me, Andy?” I asked, in spite of my own reasons.

He palmed my breasts, wet and bobbing, before he lifted me from the water onto the float. As I lay back atop it, the water draining from me down the slats, he hefted himself from the lake to my side, one arm flung over the other to cage me.

“I want you to be my wife,” he answered, water dripping from his body to mine.

“How do I do that? How will I know what you want?”

He shifted, bracing himself on his elbows. “We’ll work it out.”

I sat up. “Do have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” I wrapped my arms around my legs, dropping my head to my knees.

After a long moment, he said. “If you’re saying my ideas are ridiculous, then you’re saying I’m ridiculous. That’s never a position I like finding myself in.”

I lifted my head. He was looking toward the shore. I’d insulted him, something I figured didn’t happen very often. “That’s not what I meant. You could never be ridiculous. But your method does confuse me. Why did you pick a wife this way?”

He turned to me, impassive. “What you’re really asking is why I picked you. That’s simple. I wanted you.”

Not really what I wanted to hear. “There has to be more to it than that.”

“Not really. I took one look at you and saw everything I wanted, right then and that quickly.” He shifted, his shoulders blocking the sun. “Call it desire, call it lust—call it whatever you want. But it didn’t take a minute before I knew I wanted you on your back and myself inside you.”

My mouth went dry; the only thing ridiculous now was the memory of his reticence. “But what about all that talk about partnership? About our marriage being a business relationship?”

“That hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s probably more important than ever. It forces me to look beyond the attraction to the long term.” His eyes darkened. “And it gives me some protection if I can’t.”

I’m not sure I knew how to take this. “You mean after the spell breaks so you can get out?”

“Not only me. You too.”

“And that’s all there is?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Huh.”
Was I really hearing this? “So all you really wanted to do was fuck me?”

He shrugged. “Well—
then
.”

“And now?” I asked, my hackles fully up.

He kissed my shoulder, grinning. “Now I’d much rather fuck with your head.”

I slapped his chest. “Andy!”

“Okay! Okay!” He laughed, falling back. “I’m joking!” “No you’re not,” I said, looming over him.

“You’re right,” he said, a finger trailing my jaw line, “I pretty much still want to fuck you, too.”

Suddenly everything faded into the background, and there was only Andy and my hand pushing against him. He stretched back atop the float, his body still slick and gleaming, as I threw my leg over him and laid my body atop his. I savored his solidness, his arms around me in a seemingly unbreakable clutch. But I wouldn’t kiss him. I lifted myself and slipped down, lower and lower, until I faced the obvious evidence of his admiration. I grasped it and took it fully down my throat.