After Dark (26 page)

    "Everything you've done for
the past fifteen years has been for Will, hasn't it?" Johnny Mack shook
his head, as if trying to deny the obvious. "Because he was mine."

    "Yes, before he was born I loved
him because he was yours. But the moment I lifted him into my arms for
the very first time, he became mine, too."

    "He should have been
ours."

    Lane nodded. "Yes, he should
have been. But in a strange sort of a way, he is ours."

    "Don't you see, Lane, that you
and I should have been together back then. We should be together
now."

    When he reached for her, she held
up her hands in a Stop gesture. "I dreamed of your making love to me
for so many years. Since I was fourteen. Even after you left town and I
married Kent, you were the only man in my heart."

    "I should have taken you
with me."

    "But you didn't. And every time
Kent touched me, I wished it was you. And eventually all the love I'd
felt for you turned into hatred."

    He stared at her, his eyes wide
with disbelief. "You don't hate me, Lane. God, honey, you can't really
hate me."

    "I hated you because you
left me. I hated you because you'd gotten Sharon pregnant. I hated you
because I blamed you for my having to many Kent And I hated you because
you never called, you never wrote." Lane lifted her loosely curled
fists and slapped at Johnny Mack, her hands haphazardly striking his chest.
Tears streamed down her face, over her nose and into her mouth. "I
hated you because…" She gulped down her sobs and continued the halfhearted
flogging, her arms moving slower and slower as she cried harder and harder.
"… because I loved you so much and you never came back for me."

    Lane shivered when Johnny Mack's
arms wrapped around her. He pulled her closer, slowly, carefully, with
the utmost tenderness. When he lowered his head to press his lips against
her temple, she crumbled, allowing her body to collapse into his. Longing
for comfort, she gave in to the weakness of being a woman in need of a
man. Her man. And even if it would be only this once, for now, for this predawn
moment, he was hers. Completely.

    Later she might regret her compliance.
But despite her doubts and fears, she was willing to risk everything
just to belong to Johnny Mack. When his lips caressed the side of her face,
sweetly, gently, she felt the heat rise within her. Warmth spread through
her like a hot summer sun. And moisture coated her feminine folds as
her body prepared itself. A clenching sensation tightened and released
between her legs, and she ached with a need like none she had ever known.

    Johnny Mack kissed her eyelids,
her nose, her cheeks, her chin and finally touched her lips with his. Like
the flutter of a butterfly, so soft, his tender touch erased her tears.

    "I would never force
you," he whispered against her mouth. "I want to make love to
you. More than I've ever wanted anything in my life. Will you let me, Lane?
Will you let me love you?" His big fingers speared through her hair
as he grasped the back of her head, claiming her with a certainty that mocked
his plea for permission.

    "I might disappoint
you," she admitted. She had never truly enjoyed sex with Kent, and often
she had wondered if that fact had been as much her fault as Kent's. Perhaps
she was one of those women who couldn't… But with Johnny Mack it would be
different, wouldn't it?

    Cupping her face with his hands, he
gazed deeply into her eyes. "Will you trust me not to hurt you?
"ill you give yourself to me and allow me to love you the way I want
to do?"

    She sucked in a deep breath.
"Yes." Her voice trembled.

    "Then, don't worry, honey. You
won't disappoint me. You couldn't."

    His kiss began with seductive
little licks and nips. When she responded, he progressed to the next level
and took her mouth with his. Wet. Warm. Possessive. And when she sighed,
he slipped his tongue inside, and she gloried in the mating dance he
initiated. While she still quivered from the heated kiss, his lips moved
down her throat and over her chest. His mouth covered one nipple through
the thin barrier of her cotton gown. Lane's knees buckled.

    4 T want to see you,'' he said, his
voice a husky growl.

    And without waiting for her response,
he tucked his index fingers under the narrow straps and eased them down
her arms and bunched her gown at her waist. He looked at her boldly. She
blushed. Would he think she was beautiful? Or would he be disappointed?

    After an indrawn breath, he groaned.
"I used to wonder about your breasts. When we were together, I tried
not to look at them, but they were so full and round that it was all I could
do not to touch them."

    He lifted her breasts in his
hands, as if weighing them, then flicked both nipples with the pads of his
thumbs. Lane keened when a sensation of pure lust shot through her. She
didn't know how much more she could take. He had done nothing but kiss her
and rub her nipples, and already she ached with longing.

    While he lowered his head to take
one tight peak into his mouth and suckle, he ran his hand up under her
gown and traced a path from thigh to hip. When Lane tossed back her head
and moaned her pleasure as his lips tormented one breast and then the other,
he clasped her buttocks in both hands and dragged her up against his swollen
sex. The thin barrier of her gown was no protection from the strength of
the coarse denim or his iron-hard erection.

    Before she realized what he was doing,
he slid her gown down her hips. It fell to the ground, circling her ankles
like melted lemon sherbet. After encouraging her to step forward, he
slid one hand between them and splayed it over her flat belly. She grabbed
his shoulders to steady herself and was glad she had when his hand moved
lower. His fingers forked through her pubic hair and delved farther,
seeking entrance. When he pushed two fingers inside and used his thumb
to massage her intimately, her thighs closed around him, holding his
hand in place. Tension spiraled tighter and tighter inside her.

    "You have no idea how much I
wanted to do this back when you were sixteen and I first noticed that you
weren't a kid anymore," he told her. "It was always you, Lane.
You were the one I wanted. The one I knew I could never have. The one I
wasn't good enough for."

    "Oh, Johnny Mack, if only I'd
known how you felt. I thought you didn't want me."

    "I wanted you the most. Always."

    As if he had come to the end of his
patience, he lifted her off her feet. "Is your father's cruiser
still in the boathouse?"

    "No, I sold the boat,"
she said breathlessly. "Over a year ago."

    Holding her securely in his arms,
he took her lips in a ravaging kiss. When he allowed her to breathe again,
he said, "I can't tell you how many times over the past fifteen years
I've dreamed about making love to you in that boat. That was my fantasy
back when we used to spend so much time down here by the river."

    "You've actually thought
about me?" Was he lying, simply telling her what he thought she wanted
to hear? Or had he actually dreamed of her, as she had of him?

    "Lady, you honestly don't
know, do you?"

    "What do you mean?"

    Without responding to her question,
he carried Lane beneath the nearest willow tree and laid her on the ground.
The grass-cushioned earth beneath her was dew-laden, but she barely noticed.
Not when Johnny Mack straddled her. His open shirt skimmed over her hips, and
the coarse denim of his jeans scraped along the outer sides of her
thighs. It was in that moment she realized that she was totally naked.
And he wasn't.

    "You were my fantasy,"
he admitted, his eyes hot with desire as they raked over her face and breasts.
"You were everything I wanted and the one woman I knew I could never
have. You were way too good for me and I knew it. But I wanted to be good
enough, to be worthy of you."

    "I can't believe you ever
felt that way about me." Her heart beat erratically. Joy overladen
with regret and fear burst inside her, like fireworks exploding into
the sky.

    "When I got rich and started
living the good life in Houston, I thought about you. I pictured you
happily married to some great guy, and I figured you'd have two or
three kids. Not once did it ever cross my mind that you would have married
Kent." Johnny Mack gazed into her eyes. "I never came back because
I thought you were better off without me."

    Lane stroked his stubble-rough
cheek. "You were my fantasy, too. I knew you were fooling around
with a lot of women, and I was so jealous of them. I desperately wanted
to know what it would be like to be one of your women." Lifting herself
up just enough to bring her breasts into contact with his hairy chest, she
wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him down to her. "I dreamed
that I would be the one you'd truly love. I wanted you to be mine forever."

    He grabbed her hand, jerked it
away from his face and dragged it down his body. She knew his destination,
even before he laid her hand over his sex.

    "If you want me, Lane, then take
me."

    His eyes glittered like black diamonds,
the need that rode him hard showing plainly in his expression. Big,
dark and dangerously male, he waited. Despite how much he wanted her,
he was giving her the power to make the next move.

    With unsteady fingers, she unzipped
his jeans and gasped when his large, erect penis surged toward her. Without
hesitation, she caressed him, her fingers wrapping around the long,
hard length of him.

    "I want you, Johnny Mack. I've
always wanted you."

    His smile created havoc inside
her, like the aftereffects of a bomb blast. A lethal combination of
masculinity and sensuality made him irresistible. He smelled of sleep
and body musk and night air. He looked like a dark angel come to earth to
entrap her and capture her soul. And he felt like molten steel beneath
her fingers.

    Without saying a word, he forcefully
loosened her grip around his penis, lifted her hand and laid her arm across
the cool, thick blanket of grass on which she lay. His fingers skimmed her
body, paraded over her breasts, down her belly and to the apex between her
thighs. He spread her legs apart and lifted her hips just enough to allow
him a full view of his objective. Unsure and suddenly nervous, Lane
squirmed when he lowered his mouth to her mound.

    "Easy, baby. Easy." He kissed
a spot just above her pubic hair and nuzzled her belly with his head.

    Giving herself over to him completely,
trusting him to take care of her, Lane surrendered. She was his in every
way a woman could belong to a man.

    With her body open to his pillage,
he spread kisses along one inner thigh and then the other. Sensation after
sensation of pure, undiluted passion rippled through her. And when
his tongue touched her intimately, she lifted her hips and dug her heels
into the moist soil at her feet. For one brief moment she wondered what
he thought of her, naked, aroused and abandoning herself to sexual pleasures.
But then his lips sucked and his tongue laved and all coherent thought
left her mind.

    His fingers reached upward and
found her tight nipples. She moaned deep and loud as he plucked and caressed.
The tension built higher and higher until she flew apart, into a million
shards, shaking with an orgasm unlike anything she had ever experienced.
As the aftershocks of release tingled through her body, Lane opened
her eyes and looked up into Johnny Mack's smiling face. And she realized
that he knew the truth.

    "You never climaxed when
Kent made love to you, did you?"

    Unable to speak, she simply shook
her head.

    "Then, I'm the first man who's
ever made you come." He spoke the words triumphantly, inordinately,
masculinely pleased with himself. "I want you to come for me again."

    "What?"

    She tried to rise from the ground,
but before she did more than lift her head, Johnny Mack attacked, zeroing
in on the flesh that seemed too oversensitized to react. But within minutes,
he had brought that numb flesh back to life, and Lane wholeheartedly accepted
the pleasure that was forthcoming.

    As she climaxed for the second time,
Johnny Mack lifted his head, shrugged out of his jeans and brought his big
body up and over hers.

    "I don't have a condom,"
he moaned into her ear.

    "I don't care."

    "Do you know what you're saying,
what we're risking?"

    "Yes."

    He lifted her hips and surged into
her. His shaft thrust deep and wide and filled her to the hilt. The mating
began in a frenzy of need beyond enduring, of a hunger born from starvation.
He rode her fast and hard. She responded with equal fury. And when he came,
jetting his release into her receptive body, he growled with animalistic
pleasure, and she held on to him while her body shook with fulfillment.

    He rolled over onto the ground beside
her, his breathing ragged, and then pulled her up and on top of him. For
one long, endless moment they stared at each other, but neither spoke.
She laid her head in the crook of his shoulder and curved her back, snuggling
against him. He draped her in his embrace, holding her securely against
his damp body.