Authors: Patricia Coughlin
Borrowed Bride (17 page)
He rocked into her, his pounding pace and rigid expression signaling that whatever had gone before, he was now beyond teasing, beyond waiting.
Yes, now, Gaby thought, wrapping her arms around him, instantly catching his fever. She was like a volcano. All pent-up heat and energy. She rose with him, arching, reaching, wanting it harder, faster, hotter. They slammed together and pulled apart, their sweat-slick bodies straining, grasping together for something just out of sight.
“No,” Connor growled as her eyes fluttered shut. “I want you to see. I want you to watch. I want you to know this is me loving you.”
His tone was sharp and insistent.
“I know who you are,” Gaby assured him gently, lifting her hands to caress his face. “Connor, Wolf, my nemesis.”
He smiled at that, understanding mingling briefly with the heat in his gray eyes before giving way, as everything else they were or had been gave way, to the magnitude of that moment. Still she kept her eyes open and locked on his, her hands on his face.
Only when the rushing pleasure inside her came faster and faster did she drop her hands to his broad shoulders, holding on to him as the storm inside drove her higher, its primitive, lusty rhythm beating just beneath her skin, until there was nowhere higher left and all she could do was let go and feel herself falling, endlessly, helplessly, falling and glorying in it.
She felt the wild, rippling contractions of her muscles as she climaxed and then heard his rough gasp of pleasure as he found his own release, and a feeling came over her like that which comes with a safe landing following a very rocky flight.
Connor collapsed on her, feeling spent and boneless and as though he might never breathe normally again. Damn, he thought, he'd climbed mountains that had taken less out of him. Beneath him he felt Gaby gulping air, too, and he reluctantly summoned the energy to roll to his side beside her. The last thing she needed was the strain of his added weight on her lungs.
He placed his hand on the gentle swell of her stomach, fingers spread. “That was...”
He stopped, stymied, realizing that if there was a word big enough, magnificent enough, to hold all he wanted to say, he didn't know it.
As it happened it didn't matter.
“Yes,” agreed Gaby. “It certainly was.”
And that was that.
Connor stared at her in amazement as she lay there with her eyes dosed, a contented smile on her lips. She could have waited while he struggled to find the word he was looking for. A lot of women would have. A lot of women he'd known would also right this instant be pressuring him for details, asking if he was happy and if it had been good for him orâthe absolute worst on his list of postcoital downersâif he was sure he didn't think she was too fat. Instead, Gaby had surprised him all over again.
Yes, it certainly was
, she'd said. Period.
, she'd said. Period.
And just like that, for the first time in his life, he fell in love.
As a feeling it was a bit daunting. Hell, he thought, watching with fascination the way she breathed, it was downright scary. There were times in the past when he'd wondered if maybe he was in love with Gaby. As crazy as it seemed, he'd wondered if maybe that was why no matter how hard he tried he couldn't shake the invisible hold she had on him. He'd been driven back then to figure out exactly what the feelings she incited in him were...other than forbidden. It had seemed to him that naming them was the first step to getting rid of them.
But he hadn't loved her, he realized now. He couldn't have, because until the past few days he had never truly known her. That only made it all the harder to understand. It was nothing as simple as envy. A casual observer might think differently, but it wasn't in him to want her just because she belonged to another man, especially Joel.
He'd known Joel a long time before Gaby came into their lives, through cheerleaders and prom queens and girls-most-likely-to... and they'd never even come close to clashing over any of them. He'd also never craved Joel's fancier house or more expensive car or even his happy family, so why would he have suddenly started craving his best friend's woman?
It didn't make sense to him, yet he couldn't deny that the connection between Gabrielle and him had been there right from the first instant they met. Their gazes had collided in a silent storm of heat and eerie recognition that swept away their polite smiles and had them both throwing up a protective wall that had stayed up until...until a few minutes ago, he thought ironically. When it had come down with a vengeance.
That connection had been real and it had been mutual. Connor knew that in his heart, although he would never again even attempt to make her admit it.
Real and unexplainable, right up there with UFO sightings and déjà vu. Which, as far as he was concerned, left the matter hanging out there in a sort of mystical realm he didn't even want to try to figure out. Whatever was between them was real. Pure and simple. That was good enough for him, he thought, leaning forward to kiss Gaby's hair, avoiding the question of whether it would be enough for her.
Connor's lips on her hair roused Gaby from the drifting, half-asleep zone where she'd been languishing. She happily rolled to her side so they were lying face-to-face and opened her eyes to look at him, thinking what she sometimes thought when she looked at Tobyâthat she could easily go on looking at him forever, infinitely fascinated with each small nuance of him.
He brushed the hair from her face, touched her cheek and her breast and smiled. “You're beautiful,” he said.
“Not really.”
“Really.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.” At her quizzical look, he added, “For simply saying thank you and leaving it at that. For not feeling obligated to recite a litany of every perceived flaw on your body.”
She shrugged. “What's the point? I'm laying here naked, in full sunlight. I've had a baby and I'll turn thirty in a week or so. I figure this is what I've got to work with, and you've seen it all.”
“Damn right,” he said, the smile becoming a full-fledged grin. “And liked every minute of it. I like your attitude, too, lady.”
“Yes, well, I guess whatever else you say about traumatic experiences, they have a way of putting things like stretch marks in perspective.”
She believed that. Just the same, her hand unconsciously drifted to cover the pattern of shiny threadlike lines on her hip, a souvenir of her pregnancy. Connor intercepted her halfway and brought her hand to his mouth instead, planting a warm, open-mouthed kiss in her palm.
“I've already seen them,” he said. “I love them, too.”
“Too?”
“Yeah. I also love yourâ” he ran his insolently appraising gaze over her body “âsmile.”
“What a coincidence,” she drawled, opening her eyes wide with mock surprise. “It so happens I love yourâ” she narrowed her eyes assessingly, doing a very credible imitation of the way he had just perused her body by sliding her gaze slowly, slowly over his, then concluding with a satisfied leer “âsmile, too. I also love yourâ” she leaned closer “âears.”
He looked startled. “My ears?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, blowing gently in his ear. “They're so... sexy.”
“Let me see if I've got this right. You're saying I have sexy ears?”
“That's right. And your jaw, that's sexy, too.” She kissed his jaw, a slow, lazy, meandering kiss that started at the bone just below his ear and ended somewhere beneath his chin. “And your Adam's apple,” she said, kissing that, too. She felt the rumble of his amused chuckle beneath her lips.
“Now, that much I knew,” he said. “I've always thought my Adam's apple may just be my best feature.”
“Oh, no. Your best feature is situated a bit lower. In fact,” she continued as her fingers fell to the top button on his shirt, “I'd say that...”
Instantly his hands covered hers, stopping her.
“Why do you do that?” Gaby asked.
“Do what?”
“Stop me every time I go to take off your shirt. I know you're not shy, Connor.”
“Does it matter if my shirt is on or off?”
“I suppose not. Although now that I think about it, it does somehow make me feel even more naked with you still half-dressed and apparently determined to stay that way.”
He let go of her to drag his fingers through his hair. “I wouldn't exactly call wearing a shirt being half-dressed.”
“All right, how about too dressed? You're too dressed. Is that better?” She purposefully moved her hands to the button once again.
“Gaby, wait.” This time he simply laid his fingers lightly atop hers. “It's not about the shirt. It's just...I have...scars.”
“That's why you won't take your shirt off?” she asked, staring at him in disbelief. “Do you actually think I'd care about something like that ... that I would want you less because your body isn't perfect?”
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe not?” she countered, her voice rising in direct proportion to her displeasure.
“All right,” he said. “Definitely not.”
“You got that right,” she said. “This wasn't about scoring with a perfect 10.”
“What a relief,” he muttered.
“If it was, I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation and just hung around outside the stage door of some male strip club. And besides,” she added as he appeared to be searching for an appropriate response to that, “I've seen your scars before, remember? In fact, as I recall, DeWolfe, you used to wear them like badges of honor.”
“You haven't seen these,” he said quietly.
“It doesn't matter. One scar is pretty muchâ”
He cut in. “Gaby, the scars on my chest are from burns. They're from the explosion.”
She went silent, letting his revelation sink in. “I see.”
“Do you?” he countered, sitting up and grasping the front of his shirt, yanking on it and sending buttons shooting in all directions. “I kept my shirt on because I didn't want you to see this for the first time when we were about to make love. I knew you would ask about it and I didn't want to have to tell you. I didn't want to have to see the look on your face when you saw them and realized that I'm a walking reminder of everything you want to forget.”
Gaby stared at his badly scarred chest, at the patches of puckered skin, at the varying shades of red, enough to comprise their own scarlet rainbow. She stared and didn't flinch or look away until she lifted her gaze to meet his, finding it shuttered and unreadable.
“I know what you said about wanting to meld the past and the present,” he said. “This just didn't strike me as the best time to start ... if such a thing is even possible,” he finished grimly.
“How ...” she began, and halted. “I didn't know...”
“That I'd been burned?” he finished for her, releasing the edges of his shirt so that it fell closed, leaving visible only a narrow ribbon of scarred flesh.
Gaby nodded. “At least not badly enough to leave those scars. I thought you had...”
A cynical smile edged his lips as she halted once again, her expression awkward. “You thought I'd walked out of there scot-free and left Joel to die.”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “No, I knew you wouldn't have left him, that you would have done everything you could to save him if it was possible. I just thought you had somehow been standing in the right place when it happened, near a door or something and that you lucked out....”
“Again,” he interjected, his drawl heavy with sarcasm.
She refused to deny it. “Yes, again.” She shook her head. “I never even thought to ask how badly you were hurt. I guess I was too wrapped up in my own pain. I'm so sorry, Connor.”
“It doesn't matter,” he said, smiling for her sake. Toby might not recognize a manufactured smile when he saw one, but his mother did.
She rested her hand on his shoulder. “It does to me. Tell me about it, Connor.”
“There's nothing to tell. The whole ceiling came down on us. Somethingâa support beam, I thinkâlanded on my chest, pinning me to the floor. By the time I managed to move it off me, the place was filled with smoke. I tried...” He stopped and lay back down beside her. “I got out somehow, but I don't remember doing it. I woke up in the hospital andâ” he shrugged “âyou've seen the results. My own fault really. They tell me it would have healed better if I hadn't checked myself out of the hospital early.”
“Why did you?”
“For the funeral.”
“Of course.” She closed her eyes, wincing. “And after all that I told you to go to hell. God, what a bitch I must have seemed to you.”
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