Harlequin Superromance January 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Everywhere She Goes\A Promise for the Baby\That Summer at the Shore (42 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
NVITING
A
PREGNANT
woman up to his apartment for a nightcap had been an obvious pretext, but Karl had done it and Vivian had said yes. He hadn't even bothered to smooth out his ploy with “before I drive you back to my mom's.” They both knew a “nightcap” meant she was sleeping over.

His fingers brushed the skin of Vivian's bare arms as he helped her out of her coat, and the smoothness burned through his body. He walked over to the closet to hang up their coats before she could turn around and notice his increased heart rate.

He'd spent years practicing how to cover up his emotions so that when people looked at him they saw who and what they needed to see—and who and what he
wanted
them to see. But Vivian read
him.
Not the perfect son, not the Golden Pole overcoming tragedy for a greater purpose, not the man in a suit on a woman's arm. She saw him. He had felt her perceptive gaze the first time she'd sat next to him in Las Vegas, and in his drunkenness it had been invigorating. When she'd sat on the couch in his Chicago condo and begged for health insurance, it had been scary. Now he wasn't sure he could live without it.

He also wasn't sure how to reconcile his need for her with his opinions of her past. Tonight would surely jumble any hope he had of being rational about her, but he found he didn't care.

“Thank you.” She swept her hair over her shoulder, revealing the length of her neck. The neck he still wanted to kiss his way down. “For the dress, for the night out, for the music, for everything.”

“You look beautiful.” Bronze silk the color of her eyes glistened next to her pale golden skin. The dress skimmed over her slight figure, peaking over her nipples. She glowed like a goddess risen from the molten depths of the earth.

The copper in her eyes blazed when her mouth curved in a knowing smile and she took a step forward, slipping her hand into his. He had called her Helen of Troy. A siren. Some temptress risen from the deep to test him on his journey through life. But then he'd seen her at Healthy Food, smiling and teasing the regulars, and with his mom, taking care of her. And now he knew she was more Penelope than Lorelei. Underestimated for her cleverness and resourcefulness, like Penelope, using tricks to keep her unwanted suitors at bay. Her femininity and softness made her a tougher character, not a weaker one as a less confident man might think.

Her dress rustled when he tugged her close to him. He lifted one hand to her face and ran it down the length of her neck to smooth the stiff neckline of her dress away from her collarbone. She wasn't wearing a bra. He could sweep the dress completely off her shoulders and worship at her breasts until his body burst into lava. He could melt with her.

He bent to kiss the juncture of her neck and shoulder, just once, feeling her heart beat against his lips, and someone moaned. “I could barely pay attention to the opera, wondering what your skin tasted like.”

“Liar.” She tilted her head to the side in offering, and he didn't hesitate. When he licked the line of her clavicle she gasped and lifted herself up onto her toes. “I was sitting right next to you. You were entranced.”

“I'm a good actor.” He slid one hand down to grasp her butt. Silk slipped under his fingers as he lifted her leg up, pulling her so that his erection was settled against her belly and she had to rely on him to stand. He was beyond want; he needed her. He needed her to need him.

She righted her head and turned her eyes on him, her lips opening in invitation. He would be engulfed in flames if he didn't kiss her lips. Still...

“You don't have to do this.” He'd said similar words once before, and that night had ended with him taking a cold shower, but the words needed to be said again. “The dress, the opera—none of that has a price.”

“I want to.” She hadn't finished her sentence before he finally felt the lush softness of her lips melt under his.

* * *

K
ARL
SLIPPED
HIS
tongue into Vivian's mouth and all her reason disappeared, replaced with a blessed insanity and the knowledge that his cool lips burned. She thrust her hips forward, but he was too tall for her. She didn't want the feel of dress and wool against her skin. She wanted him—his cool skin, his fine brown hairs, his hard length and lean muscles. She moaned and shifted, meeting his tongue with hers. When she ran her tongue over his bottom teeth he grunted and lifted her leg higher, pushing himself against her but still not meeting her where she pulsed with desire.

She broke the kiss. “This will never work.”

His chest rose and fell in exertion as he closed his eyes and nodded. “I understand.” His hand slipped from her butt.

She reached around to keep it there. “No.” She smiled, and the uncertainty she hadn't even been convinced was in his eyes disappeared. “Standing. This will never work standing. Either I grow several inches or you shrink.”

He pulled back enough to sweep her into his arms. “It'll be more expedient if I carry my wife across the threshold—any threshold.”

She tilted her head back and allowed herself to be a princess, swept off her feet into the arms of a waiting prince. A fairy tale of a girl plucked from daily toils and lifted into a castle tower. There was no question of whether she deserved this—all women deserved to be swept away at least once in their lives.

A down comforter embraced her when he set her gently on his bed. She'd not been in his bedroom before. Two weeks of living in his apartment and she'd never been willing to broach the doorway and invade his privacy. Now she was too overcome by his hand running down the length of her body and hiking up the skirts of her dress to do more than notice that his pillows smelled like his shaving cream. Desire coursed through her body, and she lifted her arms over her head to give the craving an escape. All she succeeded in doing was speeding up her heart rate.

Two thunks sounded as her shoes hit the floor, followed by two more, his shoes. Then his hand skimmed up her body, dancing over her hip and stalling under her arms. “Ah, zipper.” Butterfly kisses followed the rasp of the zipper down her side. She wiggled as he pushed the dress over her head, cool air streaming in to zing newly revealed parts of her body. When she shifted to sit up and help him undress, he pushed her back on the bed and took her mouth in a consuming kiss.

“I want you undressed,” she said against his mouth. She clicked open the buttons of his tuxedo shirt and smoothed her hand over his hard chest, coarse hairs catching in her fingers. He bucked and groaned when she ran a thumb over his nipple.

He hopped off the bed, shucking his bow tie and clothes. Under his pants, where she had expected him to wear staid tighty-whities or gray boxer briefs, were lime-green boxers with pink flamingos on them. Buried deep down along with his macabre humor, her husband also had a sense of whimsy. She smiled, both at the silliness of his underwear and at the sight of the erection nudging open his fly.

He answered her smile with a wry one of his own, his hands stalled on the waistband of his boxers. “Now you know all my secrets,” he said before shedding the last bit of fabric.

The mattress bounced when Karl hopped to all fours on it and climbed such that he was above her, an unexpectedly playful smile on his face. She waited while he tilted his head to the left and the right, her body tense with desire, afraid movement would wreck the moment. “Finally, those wonderful breasts are bare and waiting for me.” He shifted back and sat on his heels, his erection
so close
to being inside her that her body clenched in anticipation.

She ran her hands up his legs. When she reached the thickening hair at the juncture of his thighs and pelvic bone, his playful smile grew wider. She kept one hand tickling his thigh while the other ran over the slight bulge of her belly to her breasts. When his eyes darkened in response, she pinched her nipple. “Are you going to do anything with them?”

“I have been waiting a long time to get you naked and under me.” His hand followed the same trail over her belly to her breasts that her hand had just made, stopping just shy of her breast. She shifted her hand to touch his, stopping when he shook his head. “I've had lustful thoughts about you while at my mother's restaurant talking to my priest.”

Finally, his fingers grazed the underside of her breast and her body trembled. Her breasts had been extra sensitive and had just stopped being tender, but the edge of pain and pleasure that his hand walked stilled her breath with anticipation. “If I want to take all night to fully appreciate the value of what I am about to have in my hand, I will.” When he slid his hand under hers and pinched her nipple, her hips bucked. “I'll make the anticipation worth your while.”

“
I'll
make the anticipation worth my while,” she said, not so far gone with desire that she didn't miss the twinkle in his eye as he bent his head and took the other nipple into his mouth. When he bit down, she amended her statement. “But you can help,” she said and felt his smile.

His thighs tightened around hers when her hand traveled from the indent of his hip to grip his erection. His answering moan sent trembles through her body, though he didn't stop his veneration of her breasts. Desire burned within her, such that she could feel the electricity between them. Even where their bodies didn't touch, the heat off his body sizzled.

When she could no longer stand the hunger, she shifted her knees in an attempt to get him between her legs and inside her.

“I know what you're doing,” he murmured as he licked his way up her neck to nibble her ear. Sometime during his attentions, her free hand had found his shoulder and was now gripping it. He ran his tongue along the outside of her ear, and she closed both hands, digging her nails into his shoulder with one hand and clenching his cock with the other. “That was interesting,” he said before shifting to catch her mouth with his. He teased her lips apart with his tongue, slipping into her mouth as she wished he'd slip into her.

The movements her hand made on his cock echoed the pulling and tormenting of her lips on his tongue, but no matter how she aroused him, she couldn't get him to reposition himself so that she could put him inside her. He wasn't so much denying her as taunting her with what she wanted.
Tantalus,
she remembered from her Greek literature class, satisfaction within sight but never within reach.

Her head lifted to follow him when he pulled away from her mouth. Her moan was intermingled with frustration and hunger for completion.

“I wonder if it will work with the other ear.” He kissed a path along her jaw. Involuntarily, when he licked the edge of her other ear, she gripped his shoulder and cock again, and he chuckled with satisfaction.

This time, she got her revenge by tickling his balls with her fingernails. Satisfaction flooded her when he stilled in his ministrations and groaned. Loudly. But as with all revenges, this one left her unfulfilled. Karl was still not inside her. She pushed at his shoulder in frustration. In response, he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that their positions were reversed.

Before she could accustom herself to their new arrangement, he was using one hand to guide her hips to where his other hand held his cock, keeping her hovering just above him. When she shifted to—
finally
—have him inside her, he raised his eyebrow at her and shook his head. Then he moved his hand from her hip to her wet folds of skin. One finger slid in and then two.

Her arms shook with pleasure before she steadied herself.

“I like to be in charge,” he said with satisfaction.

“And I'm not going to let you.”

She said the words, but didn't have the inclination to do more than reposition herself so that his fingers hit a spot to make her moan. His fingers lingered there as her body tensed around him. When he pulled his fingers out from her, her hips curled to follow them, bringing her close enough to graze against his erection.

“That's what makes it so fun,” he said before lifting his hips and filling her.

She whimpered with pleasure as her body wrapped around him. Neither of them moved for several heartbeats as they enjoyed the feeling of connection. Then Karl began to lift his hips and Vivian lowered hers until they found a rhythm. His hands found her breasts again, fondling and kissing as they moved together. She clutched his shoulders, bracing herself above him and leveraging herself down so that she felt the entire length of him as he slid in and out of her. The tip of his cock would nearly withdraw and then push back into her. She clenched around him. Their cries and grunts mingled together, echoing off the walls. Their smells blended, filling the room.

She leaned over to lick his neck and then, irrevocably joined together, she found his mouth. They kissed and came in unison.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

W
ITH
V
IVIAN
TUCKED
against
him, her butt cradled by his curled legs and his fingers absently stroking her breasts, Karl realized what he had forgotten to do. With some regret, he dragged his hand away from her breasts and lifted her hair off her neck.

“There you are.” He drew his chest away from its comfortable resting spot against Vivian's back and allowed his fingers to bump along the nubs of her neck bones. Spent and satiated, he still felt the anticipation of her presence in his life.

He rolled her onto her stomach and she responded with a drowsy, “Hmm?”

“The bones along the line of your spine.” He leaned in to kiss one. “Since I woke you that morning to inform you of our marriage—” he was willing to broach the subject again because she couldn't go back in time and undo the night they had just spent together “—I've dreamed of putting my lips to each bone of your spine and kissing my way to the small of your back.”

“Better enjoy it while you can.” She sounded both smiling and sleepy. “In a couple of months I won't be able to sleep on my stomach and then you'll have to wait until after the baby is born.”

He hoped she was too tired to feel his lips still against the last and largest of her cervical vertebrae. The baby was still unbelievable to him. The woman lying against him was carrying his child—their child. She would give birth and he would have a little stranger to nurture into a responsible adult. Knowing this—having his mother and Greta lecture him on his responsibilities regarding the child—was not the same thing as lying in his bed with his wife in his arms, able to reach around and feel the slightly thickening waist that covered their child.

Not the same thing at all.

He still didn't know what to do with himself or with the woman in his arms. Providing money for a child's care was one thing. Being a husband and a father was another. Could they build a
family
out of a one-night stand? Not a family in the sense of being related to each other—there was no escaping the connections his mother would draw on the family tree in his great-grandmother's Bible. Could they be a family together in its most elemental sense? When Vivian was pissing him off beyond all sense of imagination, could he still look at her and be thankful she was in his life? Could a random night in Vegas lead to a relationship he could rely on to be supportive, no matter what else was happening in the world?

Karl didn't take his responsibilities lightly, but could Vivian be more than just a responsibility? Could their relationship be a joy?

And could he find this joy with a woman who'd nearly and with forethought committed a felony? He understood her reasons, he just wasn't sure he accepted them yet or that they fit into his understanding of how the world should be.

“Listening to you think is exhausting.”

Lying in bed, his body heavy with sexual satisfaction and a woman in his arms, was not the time to be having these thoughts. He probably should have resolved them before bringing Vivian back to his apartment with sex in mind.

But she was here, and he had missed her presence so he shifted in the bed until he was embracing her again. His lips grazed the sensitive skin at the back of her ear. “You can't hear me think.”

She clasped his hands in hers against her chest and said, “Go to sleep so we can do this again in the morning.”

That was the most sensible thing he'd heard all day.

* * *

W
HEN
HE
WOKE
up for the second time that morning, the winter sun was streaming into his windows and Vivian was missing from his bed. He pulled on the boxers that she had found so silly, ran his hands through his hair and stumbled into the kitchen. Vivian was in her panties and his T-shirt, sitting at the bar drinking coffee and playing basketball with Xìnyùn.

“I made plenty of coffee, and I can make breakfast, too,” she said simply. He wasn't able to judge the expression on her face.

“I'd rather take you back to bed and eat breakfast later.”

“I have to be at work soon. Plus I have to go—” she paused “—back to your mom's to shower and change.” Her lips curled up in a smile and the strange look on her face disappeared. “I don't think I can work the register in my opera dress.”

“No, I don't suppose you can,” he said in the strangest morning-after conversation he'd ever had. She was his wife, pregnant with his child, and he was going to drive her to his
mother's
house where she lived.

He noticed she hadn't called his mom's house home. Even with a place to live, Vivian was still adrift. Her moorings at his mother's were tenuous, at best. He opened his mouth to suggest she return to his apartment, but said instead, “I'll find you a pair of sweats.”

Such a hollow offer, but were he to ask her to move back in, where would she sleep? Either of them crossing the expanse of his living room seeking sex was ridiculous. Yet the thought of her moving into his apartment and into his bedroom was uncomfortable in a different way. If he were to stand outside himself and watch their relationship unfold it would be like watching a movie run backward—child, marriage, moving in, first fight, sex. He wasn't sure the courtship had reached its beginning and was ready to move forward instead of in reverse.

Which hadn't stopped him from undressing her last night instead of driving her back to Archer Heights. He was a fool for her, and that knowledge was scarier than the child she was carrying.

The bird chirped, “Hit me,” and hopped back and forth on his perch.

She nodded. Vivian couldn't know what he was thinking, but he felt as if her nod was for more than just the offer of clothes to wear home.

“You're still reading the Melville stories,” she said.

The book was on the bar, the bookmark not much farther in than when Vivian had left.

When he'd kicked her out.
He should be more honest with himself.

“Between exercising your bird—”

“It's my dad's bird.”

“
Your
bird, work and visiting Healthy Food for dinner every night, I've not had much time to read.” He picked up the book and flipped through it. “I wanted to reread ‘Billy Budd, Sailor,' which I read when I was in law school. I should've skipped the other stories.”

“You're not a man to skip to the good parts.”

“No.” He gave her a wry smile. “About the good parts...I'm not going to ask you to move back in. It's...”

Karl honestly didn't know how he wanted to finish that sentence. He'd never worried before about a woman's expectations after one night of sex, but he'd never had a night of sex with his pregnant wife before, either. The rules—as he understood them—for sex with your wife didn't apply in this case.

Vivian was wreaking havoc with his life and, instead of doing his duty to the child and being done with a sexual relationship with the mother, he wanted to share breakfast with her. He still hadn't worked his way to sharing his life with her; breakfast was scary enough right now.

“I never expected happily ever after. Not when you bought me that first drink, not when I waited for you in this building's lobby and certainly not now.”

That Vivian was understanding about it only made him feel worse. She would be perfect, except for the danger that waited in the wings of their relationship. Friendship was already more than he'd planned.

Sex just complicated things further. It certainly complicated this morning after.

Blessedly, Vivian changed the subject. “You have quite the collection of bookends.” When he only nodded, she continued. “And they're all hidden away in your bedroom rather than for people to see.”

That was the point. “They're private.”

“What made you start collecting bookends?”

“My brother, Leon, gave me some for my birthday right before he died.”

If Vivian had continued to ask questions, he might have dodged her curiosity with one-word answers. Since she just sipped her coffee, he continued. “Leon gave me the hockey players.” Their mom had given him an
Encyclopedia Britannica
and Leon had so proudly bought bookends to match it. At the time, the fake-gold-plated hockey players had seemed garish and beneath Karl's teenaged dignity. Now, they were a reminder that families could be wiped out in an instant. “I took those with me to college and was the only person in my dorm with real bookends, as opposed to those bland metal ones. So people gave me more bookends.”

“And now you have more ends than books.”

“Yes.” Because she was Vivian, he offered her more information. “I have several boxes of bookends in storage. These are just my favorites.”

“When Jelly Bean is born, I'm sure someone will make her baby booties into bookends.”

“Baby booties, storks, naked babies sleeping with their butts in the air. If they make a baby-themed bookend, I'm sure someone will give it to me.”

“I'd like to make sure I get you something unique.” She cocked her head and looked out the window, innocence blanking out all other emotions on her face. “Like bookends made with her umbilical cord or something.”

Karl nearly spit out his coffee. “That was wicked.”

Vivian's sly smile broke into a full-out, self-satisfied grin. “Yeah, but you thought it was funny.” Then she stood up in her seat, leaned over the bar and kissed him on the mouth.

And suddenly the morning wasn't so awkward after all.