Bad Boy of New Orleans (17 page)

She thought she must have fainted. His lips were beside her ear, calling her name.
Saying he loved her, and now she was his. Would always be his. She felt herself being
lifted in his arms, weightless, her head falling back, still spinning in electrical
arcs.

"See me, Micah. Look at me now." She opened her eyes, coming slowly back to reality.
He stood there, naked and proud. His physique was tough, hard, nothing soft or immature
about it. A man of rough, coarse hair, with muscles that were heavy and thick. Not
pretty in the least. But how very manly he was, how eloquently strong.

She found the strength to lift her arms, asking him in.

He came to her, laying by her side at first. Gently, so surprisingly tender, he traced
the shapes and curves beneath his fingers, learning her in repose, even while the
heat anchored in his body pressed impatiently into her hip.

"Chance," she whispered, reaching for him, touching him. In a fluid, swift motion,
he was over her. His chest pressed into hers, then lifted. Just high enough so he
could stroke her breasts, dip, and touch his mouth to them by turns.

The edge of passion that he had stoked then soothed had begun to mount again. Nothing
had ever approached the magnitude of this. No, not even the night when they had lain
naked and all too young.

The aching began again; the deepness burned within her. She craved to hold him closer.
That close to her heart, that much a part of her.

"I want you inside me," she whispered. No, she had never said those words before.
How easy they were to say now, how natural. She pulled him over her with a sudden,
urgent strength. "Please, Chance."

She reached for him to guide him within. He caught her hand.

"No, not like that." His fingers slipped through hers.
"Together."

He slid inside, their clasped hands leading him home. So full. So warm. So incredibly
right. How had she lived without this? She never could, never again.

"From now on, Micah," he whispered, looking down into her face,
"always,
together."

Just short of his ultimate destiny, he stopped. She let him take her hands. He spread
them wide in surrender as he held them firmly apart upon the bed.

The texture of crisp cotton rubbed against her back. The rough hair of his chest played
across the smoothness of her breasts. The beginnings of his heavy beard scratched
a light burn over the skin of her cheeks, the delicious rawness of her chin. But it
was the feel inside, the internal holding that pinned her, bound her to him, and beneath
him.

She wound her legs around the backs of his, silently pleading for the rest. She raised
her hips up in entreaty. He fixed her with a satisfied, meaningful pout, and made
a small retreat.

"Love me, Micah."

"I do," she cried.

"Say it." His breathing was growing harsher; his thrusts harsher too.

"I love you. Oh, Lord, Chance. I could never stop loving you."

"I'm going to marry you, Micah Sinclair. And you're going to have our children. Our
future starts tonight."

Faster. Harder.

"Please, Chance. Come in me.
Now... please now."

He filled her then, spending himself into her womb.

Time expanded, contracted with only the rain and the walls to listen as they whispered
their intimate vows. Still buried inside he grew large again... and yet again.

They had forever. They had each other. They had now.

* * *

Micah stretched languorously. Preparing for the evening had been quite an unnerving
experience, she'd wanted to look just right. But now, rumpled, sated, her hair mussed
and her makeup smudged, she felt as though she must look at least a hundred times
better. The night of loving had brought them closer in a way nothing else ever could
have.

"How do you feel?"

She laughed a sensuous sound, pleased with herself, her nudity. The ache of too much
satiation between her thighs.

They snuggled and whispered intimacies and made the sounds of morning lovers.

"I'll be right back." She nipped his shoulder playfully then bounded off the bed.

"You'd better be, or I'm liable to come looking for you. If I have to get out of bed,
there's a penalty attached, of course."

"Oh?" she teased, deliberately wriggling her rear end as she sauntered toward the
door. "What if I want to stop in the kitchen and make some coffee?"

"Coffee? Hmmm. Maybe I could grant you a pardon if there's coffee involved."

Micah stopped beside the dresser. Turning to Chance, the sensuous woman retreated
a bit back to the discreet woman of the day before.

"Do you have something I could wear around? I feel a little awkward walking through
your house stark naked."

"Okay, just so you don't make it a habit. I find that I definitely prefer you naked.
Look in the dresser. The T-shirts are under the—"

Reaching deep into the drawer, Micah's fingers contacted the cotton cloth beneath
a stack of briefs. She pulled it out, with a strange surge of proprietary excitement
at wearing one of Chance's underthings against her skin.

A folded sheet of paper that had apparently been wedged at the bottom caught under
her fingers as she lifted the shirt. She couldn't help but be curious about what Chance
had obviously meant to hide in there, knowing the lingerie drawer was where she kept
most of her own personal letters or cards. But it wasn't polite to pry.

Glancing at the folded paper as she moved to put it back, she stopped. Dead. This
paper was familiar. A too terribly familiar sheet of ivory with a scroll of raised
letterhead at the top. Someone's personal stationery.

She felt as though her stomach had just been brutally jabbed with a sharp elbow. In
the distance she could hear Chance's voice, sounding urgent.

"Wait a minute, Micah... don't look in... here let me get that."

He was throwing the covers back, rising naked from the bed, as she turned to him slowly,
in what surely was a nightmare she would be waking up from any minute.

In the nightmare she didn't try to hide the stricken look that was etched in bold
relief across her face, or the stinging tears she couldn't stop from flowing in shimmering
streams from her accusing eyes.

His face was ashen, nearly as stricken as hers felt as he came to her. She jerked
away the moment he touched her arm, the exact same moment the note fell from her nerveless
fingers and sailed blindly to the floor. The IOU lay there between them, sharp as
a razor blade, slashing her trust in two.

Chapter 12

They stood facing each other. Naked. Too vulnerably naked in the cold, startling light
of day.

Once his body demanded he breathe again, Chance could hear the tight, rasping sound.
It sounded loudly disproportionate between his ears. This couldn't be happening. Not
after all he'd gone through, waiting, hoping. He couldn't bear to lose her again.
Not now, not after knowing what it meant to hold her again, filling up the gaping,
empty void that life had been without her.

"Micah. Listen to me. Please—" He reached for her hands. Needing something, anything,
of substance, to assure himself she was still there.

She eluded his grasp as though he were poisonous.

"How
could
you, Chance? You made me believe in you. That you were being honest with me, that
I was doing something
all on my own.
You knew how important that was to me! You knew—" She snorted with disgust, the anger
and hurt too entwined for him to separate. "You couldn't have let me down more, Chance.
Not even if you planned it."

She was waiting, looking at him anxiously. She wanted an answer, something to explain
away the obvious, because she was being torn up inside too. He could lie, tell her
some glib excuse she might be all too ready to accept rather than the awful truth.

He braced himself, the armor of self-protection slipping for once, just when he needed
it the most.

"You were never meant to see that, Micah."

"I suppose not. After all, you wouldn't want me to know you were just as guilty of
gambling as Jonathon. That you were no better than him—"

"That's enough! Call me anything vile you can think of. But don't you
dare
ever compare the two of us again." The anger felt good, familiar. It muted the horrible
feeling of vulnerability threatening to overwhelm him.

"No? Then you tell me what's the difference. You gambled with him.
Him
of all people—"

"That's right. Him, of
all
people. Tell me something, Micah. How else was I supposed to learn how you were doing,
get some kind of idea as to how fast your marriage was going down the tubes? What
was I going to do? Call you? Say 'Hey, babe, how's tricks? Got a divorce on the agenda
anytime soon? Let me know when it's final and we'll tie the knot as soon as you're
free." He ran a hand through his rumpled hair in agitation. He hated the way she just
kept staring at him: Wide-eyed, hurt, and distant. If only she'd say something, anything.
The silence was too accusing.

"In a way, I'm glad you know that I played poker with him. You probably would have
found out eventually... only I wish I'd been able to tell you in my own time."

"Your own time? And when would that have been, Chance? Ten years, twenty? Maybe just
a note you could leave for me after you were dead too?"

He shook his head, not really sure of the answer himself. "When I felt our relationship
was strong enough to handle it. Please, Micah, try to understand. The way I saw it,
that was my one link with you. Twisted as it was,
ma cherie."

"Don't call me that," she snapped.

For a moment he wasn't sure if she was going to slap him or scream at him. Maybe fall
on the floor and sob. Or worst of all, just turn around and leave. Her chest was heaving,
making her breasts pout temptingly. The morning air, the stimulation of fury was causing
her nipples to contract, and he remembered all too vividly his mouth suckling her
there what now seemed so long ago.

Before he could stop himself, his eyes traced the defiant stance she presented. His
own body reacted to the challenge, the knowledge of her hidden secrets, and the power
he possessed in making her yield. He longed to make her yield now, spending their
anger in a heated frenzy rather than in the lonely isolation of words and more words—hurtful
things that could never be taken back.

"You're disgusting," she said. "How can you stand there looking at me so hungrily,
after something like this?" She began to yank on her own clothes, so sensuously discarded
the night before. "Get dressed, would you?"

He was tempted to keep them off, just to unnerve her. Remind her of their night together.
Only the important thing now was to undo the damage, to somehow put it right again.
Antagonizing Micah would only defeat that purpose. Scowling, he reached into the bottom
drawer and got out a pair of faded jeans.

He noticed Micah kept her eyes averted. Just past his shoulder. He moved so that she
had to meet his eyes, so that she could see how deeply he hurt for her, how very much
she meant to him.

"I love you, Micah." He bent down swiftly and retrieved the paper, held it up between
them. "See this? It's nothing. Let it go. What we've got between us is too good, too
right. And Jonathon's not going to take that from us again."

Very deliberately he tore the paper, the sound of it rending the silence of the room.
It was now in halves, then quarters. He tore and tore until there was nothing but
shreds. Then he turned his hand upside down and let them fall, littering the small
space between them, floating on the gulf that he was trying desperately to bridge.

Sadly Micah shook her head. "Do you actually think it's that easy, Chance? That by
tearing the evidence up, it doesn't exist? No. It's still there between us. Even now
my mind's firing questions, demanding to know things I'm afraid to ask. Things that
are bound to point out just how different we really are."