Cherry Adair - T-flac 03 (35 page)

Delanie turned her head a fraction and laid her closed mouth against his. He nuzzled her lips with his own, making no attempt to deepen the kiss. Nevertheless a buzz of arousal hummed across her skin as he moved his head slowly from side to side just grazing her mouth. The tip of his tongue painted a feather-light trace of moisture across her lower lip. Delanie's breath sighed as he blew softly to cool down the heat he was generating.

She could have told him the ploy wouldn't work. She was already experiencing internal combustion.

Supersensitive now to the lightness of his touch, and the soft puffs of cool air, Delanie opened her mouth just wide enough to take his upper lip between her own. She sucked gently and felt a rush of heat as his answering groan caused her lips to buzz.

Stroking her cheek with his fingertips, Kyle reversed the action, alternately nuzzling softly, and tenderly sucking at her lower lip. Delanie almost came up off the ground.

Kyle kissed her eyelids, her temples, her nose, chin, below her eyes. Her eyebrows. Varying from smooth and dry, to cool and damp. He nipped and soothed, until it was impossible to tell one insanity-inducing action from the other. Finally he lifted his head, eyes glittering, and whispered, "Feeling cool yet?"

She was hot enough to explode. But God, this was amazing. Slow, thorough… incredible. "Oh, sure."

There was nothing cool about what he was doing to her. Even her brain felt hot. And she wasn't going to move until she absolutely
had
to.

His chuckle brushed her throat. Her lips missed his. He took small tender bites from her neck, alternating with soft cool breaths that made her shiver and moan and long to squiggle about.

Her chest felt cool, and she realized he'd lifted her T-shirt at some point. Sneaky man. She waited vainly for him to touch her breast.

"Ah—?"

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Kyle brushed a maddeningly lazy kiss on the curve between her neck and shoulder. "Got a bus to catch?"

"I'm five minutes past
ready
," Delanie grumbled brokenly.

"The room's paid through tomorrow." Kyle rubbed a slow finger across her mouth and continued feasting on her neck. Delanie dampened his finger with her tongue, then sucked the digit into her mouth and sucked on it to pay him back. He groaned and lifted his head long enough to peel the thin, cotton T-shirt over her head.

When he came back it was to her mouth. God she was ready.
More
than ready. He French-kissed her deeply. Maddeningly, frustratingly slowly. The tip of his tongue ran lightly against the roof of her mouth, then traced a line across her teeth.

Delanie slid her tongue against his. Leisurely. Take that.
Stroke
. And that.
Stroke
.

She was excited far out of proportion to the actual physical contact. Just the anticipation of where he would touch her next was driving her crazy. It seemed they kissed for years, a century, before she felt the brush of Kyle's hand on her breast. She wanted him to hurry. She wanted him to slow down. She felt boiling hot, and freezing cold. Her nipples were so hard they hurt. Kyle's fingers gently soothed, then made the small erections feel a hundred times more sensitive when he licked and blew across them just as he'd done an eon ago across her mouth.

"I'll… pay… you back for… this."

He bit down gently. "I'm banking on it, sweetheart. I'm banking on it." The low, soft register of his voice made her shiver and ache. He stroked and kissed and petted her breasts, and with each new torment his hair brushed across her bare midriff.

Delanie reached out unerringly to curl her fingers around the ridged length of his penis through his pants.

He removed her hand. "Na-ah. No touching, I'll go too fast. This one is strictly for you."

"No fair. I want to play, too."

"You will. Later. Much later."

She tangled her fingers in the rich black silk of his hair and pressed his mouth to her right nipple. "Here,"

she told him firmly, then took his hand, and slid his fingers down the front of the thin, cotton fatigue pants she wore, so that he finally,
finally
touched her. "And here."

Kyle curled unhurried fingers to cup her while he paid attention to her nipple.

Nerve endings on fire, unable to keep her body still, Delanie tried to get a grip on her spinning senses.

She could barely draw enough breath to lodge a complaint. "Kyle! Damn it. The world has ended.

Dinosaurs are back on the planet. The stars have aligned. The polar caps have melted—"

Kyle's laughter was strained. But he
finally
shifted his body over hers and effectively shut her up with a languid, succulent kiss.
Then
he slid inside her like a benediction, inch by agonizingly,
dillydallying
inch.

And holy Hannah, did he know how to make a good thing last. And last and last. Delanie was a limp noodle when Kyle was done with her.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"I'll mail you a check," Delanie managed, more than twenty minutes after they'd made love. She lay cradled, okay
glued
, to his side, his arm beneath her head, her cheek on his chest.

He was playing with her hair as he said a weak, "Huh?"

"I don't have any cash on me."

"Ah, the ten bucks."

"I moved."

"You did?" Kyle sounded surprised. "I thought it was the earth."

Delanie smiled. "That, too." The hair on his chest was crisp and springy. She ran her fingers through the mat and followed it down to his groin. They both still wore not only their pants, which were at half-mast, but their combat boots as well.

Too exhausted to do anything other than touch, Delanie trailed her hand back to safer ground. She rested her hand over his heart. Kyle draped his arm over her hip and trailed his fingers back and forth over the dip of her belly button.

Tell him
, she thought.
Tell him now while we're physically close
. When she didn't have to look him in the eye.
Coward
.

"I can practically hear your agile little mind ticking away. What are you thinking about?" Kyle asked against her forehead. God, the man's intuition was terrifying.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, leaving a pulsing silence inside the confines of the tent.

"I was pregnant," Delanie said so low and strained he almost missed it.

He rose on his elbow to stare down at her. "What?" A strange sensation unfurled inside him, almost of sweet anticipation. "You were pregnant?" His heart started beating again in a triumphant rhythm. "We have a child?"

Delanie sat up and pulled on her T-shirt, covering her rosy breasts. "No." She drew the fatigue pants up to her waist and curled her legs under her like a mermaid.

Kyle closed his eyes, inhaling sharply. He didn't give a flying continental fuck that his family jewels were exposed. He opened his eyes to pin her in place. "You had an abortion?"

Her chin jerked as if he'd administered a blow. "What the hell difference would it have made to you?

You weren't there."

"I would have moved heaven and earth to be with you."

He listened to the water drip off the canvas, the silence inside the tent absolute, before she said roughly,

"The doctors called it a spontaneous abortion."

He held her prisoner with his gaze. There was a look in her eyes he'd never seen before and found hard
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

to interpret. Anger?

No. Guilt. And bottomless pain.

He wanted to hold her so badly his throat ached. But before they could comfort each other, she had to purge that pain and bone-deep sorrow. She held her eyes steady. Her chin tilted belligerently, daring him to… what?

"And you didn't care because you hated me that much?" he asked softly. Not believing it for a moment.

Oh, jungle girl, what in God's name am I going to do with you
?

"Do you blame me?" Her breath shuddered, but Kyle held himself still. For both their sakes it was better not to touch her right now. He pulled up his pants and moved a few feet away, his fist clenched on his knees.

"I thought about having an… having an abortion. I was so angry. Angry at you. Angry at myself. Angry that my
family
was angry. My head knew it was the most practical solution, the most logical—But my h-heart—In the end I couldn't do it." Her throat moved convulsively and she blinked rapidly, obviously struggling to hold back tears. She whispered brokenly, "I loved her too much, and God took her away."

Her eyes filled.

Hell with it.

He reached out and pulled her into his arms. "How much you loved her had nothing to do with it," Kyle told her gruffly. Her face felt hot and damp against his neck. His own throat felt tightly restricted as she cautiously slid her arms around his waist, as if doubting her welcome, then held on tightly.

He buried his face in her hair, his damp eyes squeezed tightly for their shared loss. "You had a right to do whatever was necessary for your family's survival," he said, his hand gentle on her back as she rested her head against his chest.

"You were gone. And all I could think about was that I would have another mouth to feed, another person dependent on me. Another eighteen years before…" She laughed brokenly. "What an irony that my guilt at the
thought
of it has been a bigger burden than the baby could ever have been."

His fingers spanned her back. God, she felt frail under his hands, her bones delicate, her skin soft. He was so used to her roaring like a lion, it was always a shock when he touched her and rediscovered she wasn't made of steel.

"My arms still ache to h-hold her."

Kyle held her safely in his arms and let her cry for both of them.

Delanie felt raw inside and out, relieved she'd finally told him about the baby. Sharing the burden with Kyle had made it easier to bear. She rested her swollen face against the steady beat of his heart. It felt so good, so achingly wonderful to have his large hand stroking her back through her shirt. Her eyes stung and she squeezed them shut, trying to memorize his scent and touch. Something to recall later. She shifted and he immediately released her.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She felt cold without his arms around her. Not that he could move too far away. The tent was crowded to capacity and she could feel the heat of his body as he sat beside her.

She surprised herself with a yawn. "Talk to me."

"Want a bedtime story?"

"Hmm. With a happy ending. Tell me about your family."

"Okay, but lie back and close your eyes. It's been a hell of a day, and you need to get some rest."

Delanie curled on her side and shut her eyes. "Talk."

"I've been damned lucky. My family's terrific. We've always been close."

Delanie heard the smile in his voice seconds before she felt his fingers sifting absently through her hair.

She wanted to purr.

"Your dad's a widower?"

"Yeah, Mom was killed the day after my seventh birthday. Drunk driver. God. I just remembered… We still had chocolate birthday cake in the fridge on the day of her funeral."

"I'm sorry," Delanie said softly into the silence. "Forget it. Talking about family isn't always the most cheerful of subjects, is it?"

"Actually, I have lots of terrific memories of my mother. Not enough, but great memories nevertheless.

She'd frosted my seventh birthday cake with white sailboats on a navy blue ocean, and we all had blue tongues at my party." Kyle grinned. "She was something else. Loved sewing our Halloween costumes, no matter how crazy we wanted them to be. She always claimed she'd popped out all us kids one after the other so she and Dad could get all our teenage years over with as quickly as possible and enjoy their old age in peace."

Kyle lay back and slid his arms under her neck, bringing Delanie's head to rest on his chest. She heard the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, and rested her hand on his hard, flat stomach.

"She loved all of you."

"God, yes. There was never any question of that. But it was the love she had for my father that I'll always remember. Of course as a little kid I thought all that kissing was gross."

"And your father never remarried?"

"No. But he dates now and then."

"No woman's touch?"

"Oh, sure. My grandmother moved in with us after our mom died. She was awesome—tough as an old boot, with a mushy heart. She ruled us with the proverbial velvet glove." Kyle stroked Delanie's cheek. "I loved that old girl. She died last year."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"And your brothers and sister?"

"You'll meet Michael later. He's the oldest. Navy all the way. I've never seen anything that ruffles him.

He's rock solid. Then there are the twins, Derek and Kane. Derek's a rancher. I'm damn grateful I met you first. Derek is charm personified, not to mention he's okay looking."

Okay
looking? Delanie smiled. "And Kane?"

"They're twins. So same looks, but completely opposite dispositions. Claims he's a photographer."

"What is he?"

Kyle shrugged. "Let me put it this way, he takes pictures in some very strange places."

"And what about your sister?"

"Marnie," his voice softened. "She'll love you, and you two will get along famously. My little sis is one of the nicest women I know. She had a bad heart as a kid, and we tended to spoil the hell out of her, but she's come through with shining colors… God. She must've had the baby by now…"

Delanie forced herself not to stiffen. Women had babies all the time—

"Sorry," Kyle murmured. "I didn't think—"

"That's okay. Tell me more."

"Later. Your turn. Tell me about this vast family of yours."

Delanie shrugged. "Not a whole lot to tell. My mom has three sisters. So, three aunts and their assorted families. Lots of cousins. It's like wrangling greased eels." She chuckled. "Trust me, there's never a dull moment."