Maggy's Child (30 page)

Then her glance swung to Nick, and she mentally amended that. Still, she felt a lightening of her spirit and realized that it was because she was at last beginning to forgive herself.

“Remember this place?” Nick asked softly. Lost in her
own private ruminations, she hadn’t realized that he’d once again pulled off the street.

“The warehouse,” she said, as a quick sweep of her surroundings told her where they were. The warehouse where she had parked with Nick after the debacle in the Pink Pussycat and tried to stanch the blood pouring from his nose. The warehouse where he had kissed her for the first time.

“I told you, memory lane,” he said with a flickering grin and pulled the truck around to the back, where he parked far away from the single yellowy light that was attached to the warehouse roof and provided the only illumination.

He unfastened his seat belt and reached over to unfasten hers. Then he lifted her carefully, gently, onto his lap.

M
aggy could have stopped him at any time, but she didn’t. It was as if their journey to Parkway Place had been a trip back through time as well. For however long the feeling lasted, she was the young Magdalena Garcia again, and she was wild about Nick.

When he kissed her mouth, she wrapped her arms around his neck. When his lips slid down to the underside of her chin, she tilted her head to give him greater access. When his hand moved across her silk blouse to cover her breast, she shivered and arched her back.

His hand was warm and strong, his hold on her possessive. He rubbed his fingers across her nipple, and the sensation of pleasure was so intense that Maggy’s toes curled in their shoes.

She kissed him then, quite of her own volition, her lips finding his and opening over them, her tongue sliding into his mouth. He responded, but no more, letting her escalate the kiss. Maggy could feel the growing tension in his body as he held himself in check, waiting for her to set the pace.

Nick would never force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. The knowledge had always been there, a fact of which Maggy was absolutely certain, but now it emerged to give her a new sense of freedom. She was half lying across his lap, her nape resting on the arm that curved around her, her knees tucked against his side. The
back of her head pressed against the driver’s side window, but she wasn’t even aware of the hard cold glass. The steering wheel brushed her shoulder, but she wasn’t aware of that, either, any more than she felt the slight soreness around her ribs when she moved.

Every atom of her being was focused on Nick.

“You smell good,” Nick whispered in her ear as he caressed her lobe with his lips.

“White Linen,” Maggy replied, her brain still able to function though her voice was less than steady.

“What?” He didn’t seem to be quite as lucid as she.

“It’s the name of the perfume I wear.”

“Oh. You must dab it behind your ears.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I can tell.” His mouth was nuzzling the tender spot directly beneath her ear, which meant that his nose would be in just the right position to get the full effect of the expensive perfume that she applied every day as automatically as lipstick. Always before, she had done it for herself, just because she liked the smell. From this night forward, she would do it for Nick.

“The scent makes me dizzy.
You
make me dizzy,” he said.

“Do I?” It was a mere breath, stopped by his mouth moving to cover hers again. He kissed her, his lips warm and ardent, his tongue growing more insistent as it explored her mouth. He tasted a little of cigarettes and a lot of beer, and the latter taste triggered a memory that she had long ago almost forgotten: when he had kissed her that first time, here in this very parking lot, he had tasted of beer, too. The recollection was suddenly crystal clear, and as it unfolded in her mind Maggy felt a rush of warmth, along with an odd sensation of bonelessness. He was kissing her gently, considerately, holding himself in check, and he was thrilling her down to the ground.

Her hand roved up over the smooth cotton of his shirt to the vee opening. Her fingers touched his neck, found
the warm hollow at its base, and slid down to discover the uppermost reaches of the wedge of black hair that covered his chest. Below that, the buttons of his shirt waited. She toyed with one, unable to make up her mind what she should do. His breathing suddenly rasped in her ear. Then his hand was brushing hers aside, and he was undoing the buttons himself.

“Touch me,” he whispered, taking her hand and pressing it against the hard masculine flesh he had partially bared. With her hand flattened over his heart, Maggy could feel its thudding beat. He held her hand there, and for a moment, just a moment, she started to panic at being constrained even in so small a thing. But then he took a deep breath and withdrew his hand.

Her hand stayed where it was.

His skin was warm and faintly moist, his pectorals firmly defined and covered with crisp black hair. She moved her fingers cautiously. When nothing frightening happened she grew bolder, sliding her hand from one side of his chest to the other, feeling the dips and valleys, the tensile strength of the muscles that underlay the hairy warmth of his skin.

Her exploring fingers found his left nipple, rubbed across its surface, felt it spring to pebbly attention. Entranced, she glanced down at her handiwork, and flicked her pink-painted thumbnail back and forth over the stalwart nub.

Watching too, he gave what sounded like a strangled groan and grabbed her hand.

“Bad idea,” he said in a tone that was completely unlike his normal one.

“Really? Why?” She was all melting innocence as she looked up at him, but she knew what she was doing to him perfectly well, and he knew she knew. It was there in the hot gleam of his eyes, in the almost grim set of his mouth. She was teasing him, toying with him, trying to
rouse his passion, and he was willing to let her without any intention of making her pay the usual price.

“Because you’re really, really turning me on.” He returned her hand to the relative safety of his shoulder. She grinned in delight. He grimaced at her. Even as she was deciding what other naughty delights to sample, he dipped his head to hers again.

For an instant, the merest instant, there was nothing at all gentle about his kiss. He kissed her as if he could never get enough of her, as if he were starving for the taste of her mouth. He kissed her hotly, he kissed her passionately, he kissed her as if he meant to take her straight to bed.

Maggy stiffened. And then, before instinctive fear could do more than lift a cautionary head, his kiss deliberately gentled.

The gentleness did it, because she knew how dearly it cost him. He was holding himself on an iron leash for her. Maggy absorbed the thought and measured the depth and breadth of the emotion that prompted it. As she did, she felt a nearly forgotten fire flicker to life inside her, growing in nanoseconds to a heat so intense that it threatened to melt her bones.

She curled her arms around his neck and kissed him back with sudden wild excitement. Pressing her still-covered breasts to the bareness of his chest, she closed her eyes as the pleasure of it made her feel light-headed. She threaded her hands through his hair, and the sensation of his crisp curls twining around her fingers was intoxicating.

The place between her legs throbbed. The throbbing demanded immediate attention. She pressed that part of herself against him too, and to her mingled pleasure and frustration encountered the hard bone of his hip.

With an instinct as old as the human species, she rubbed herself against that unyielding surface.

“Jesus H. Christ!” His groan sounded pained. His
mouth slid from her lips down the length of her neck, nibbling and sucking and licking over her yielding flesh. At the same time, so swiftly that she was taken by surprise, his hands were on her bottom. He cupped her cheeks through the soft knit pants, squeezing and kneading as he shifted positions behind the wheel so that he was stretched out along the seat as much as possible. With his hands on her rump he pulled her on top of him, maneuvering her so that she was lying full against him, her breasts on his chest, her legs between his bent knees. Her hands clutched at his hair as he kissed the throbbing pulse at the base of her neck.

His hands slid under her armpits, lifting her above him. His mouth moved down the front of her blouse, over the swell of her right breast, and stopped at the crest. For a moment his lips rested there, pressing into her and parted against her but not moving. Maggy felt the heat of his mouth through two layers of cloth and tingled all over. Her breasts engorged in fierce response, and her nipples hardened until they were stiffly erect, straining to experience more fully the promise of his mouth. He bit down on her nipple, sending a bolt of erotic pleasure rocketing clear down to her toes.

Maggy moaned, and her fingers tightened on his scalp.

He bit her nipple again, sucked on it, drew it inside his mouth. The sensation of his hungry lips nuzzling at her breast, along with the hot wetness of her blouse and bra against her erect nipple, was so exquisite that she felt a sudden clenching in her loins.

His mouth left her breast to travel up over her throat as he slid her back down his body. At the friction of her body against his, Maggy moaned again, the sound blatantly sexual, and, as such, shocking to her own ears. Nick glanced up, and the hot green glitter of his eyes made her melt inside. With a sound that was a cross between a curse and a growl he pulled her head down to his.

He kissed her wetly, deeply, his hands once again seeking
for and finding her rump. He stroked the soft roundness, and then his hands molded her shape, fingers meeting in the crevice between the curving halves. His grip on her bottom tightened, and his palms flattened over her cheeks, pressing her down, so that she could feel the steel-rod bulge in his pants against the apex of her thighs.

“I want you. Christ, I want you.” The words were growled into her mouth, and Maggy swallowed them with her kiss. Her head was spinning so that she was incapable of conscious thought. Her body was quivering with need, wonderful, glorious, burning need.

She wanted him. The realization burst inside her like a rocket on the Fourth of July.

The hands that had been cupping her buttocks slid down between her thighs. Without ever touching bare skin, they caressed the weeping heart of her through her pants, running back and forth over her quivering flesh until, mindless, she opened her legs and moaned for more. He was sweating, his tongue in her mouth, his heart galloping against her breasts.

With one hand he continued his erotic game, rubbing between her legs. The barrier of the cloth between his fingers and her body added to the excitement. His other hand she completely lost track of, until suddenly it was between them, squeezing her breasts, tormenting her nipples anew.

Time rolled back. Everything was as it had been before. It was as if she were a teenager again, and Nick was the neighborhood stud she had panted after for years. She wanted him—and he was obliging, making her crazy with his hands and mouth and body.

Maggy was on fire. Her legs writhed helplessly as his hard thighs slid between them, parting them so that now her legs lay along the outside with his bent between them. The sensation was mind-blowing. Her arms locked around his neck in a stranglehold of desire. The kiss she
gave back to him was avid and hungry and begging all at the same time.

When his hand left her breasts, she felt the loss almost as a physical pain—until that same hand turned up again, this time sliding down inside the waistband of her pants.

The feel of his warm, strong fingers stroking down the softness of her belly, discovering the silky edge of her bikini panties, and sliding inside, was so unbearably exquisite that she trembled all over, gasping her pleasure into his mouth.

Suddenly his hand was deep inside her panties, covering the silky triangle of curls, stroking and squeezing as it reawakened her to the shattering imperative of a woman’s desire.

The aching within her intensified until she was squirming with it, her thighs quivering, her breath coming in great wheezing gulps—and then he found the tiny pulse point from which her greatest pleasure radiated, and touched it.

Maggy dissolved in a hot sea of bliss.

As she melted in his arms, his kiss turned fierce, demanding. His hold on her tightened, keeping her still, and his fingers slid inside her body, penetrating deeply, invading her. She gasped, and still his fingers moved in and out while his body suddenly thrust upward, ramrod stiff.…

“No!” Maggy shrieked the protest into his mouth, fighting against the imprisoning arms, the tongue that threatened to gag her, the fingers that impaled her. His iron-hard pelvis ground into her again, and she knew that he was just moments away from throwing her onto her back and mounting her. “No, no, no!”

“Jesus!” It was part curse, part prayer. Unbelievably to Maggy in her moment of extremity, the hand that violated her withdrew abruptly, and the arm that imprisoned her pushed her away. Still in the grip of that unreasoning fear, Maggy scrambled to her knees, scooting back along the seat to hug the passenger door as he dragged himself
into a sitting position. Then, after a brief, glittering glance at her, he opened the cab door and almost fell out into the dark parking lot. Crouched at the far end of the bench seat, Maggy watched tensely as he sucked in great gulps of cold air.