The Next Mrs. Blackthorne (Bitter Creek Book 6) (24 page)

“That wasn’t nobility or responsibility or even political self-preservation. That was me wanting to spend the rest of my life with you. Believe it or not, I was thinking dynasty,” Clay said with a self-deprecating smile. “I had visions of little girls with your golden curls. And little boys who looked like me.”

“Kate has your gray eyes. And your dark hair. And your height. It’s always been hard for me to look at her without thinking of you.”

“She’s you,” Clay said, smoothing his hand over Libby’s head and then twirling a curl around his finger. “Her fearlessness, her sense of adventure, her willingness to tackle anything—she got all that from you.”

“I suppose, like any child, she’s both of us,” Libby conceded.

“The best of us,” Clay amended.

“We were lucky. Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,” Libby said, her lips quirking.

“I don’t need to have more children,” Clay said. “I just thought it would be something we would both enjoy.”

“I always wanted a little boy. And I would love to have another little girl,” Libby said.

“How do you think Kate would feel about a sister or brother?” Clay asked.

A tiny V appeared between Libby’s brows. “I think she’d be ecstatic if we got married. I’m not sure what she’d think of us having children.”

“She’ll be too busy with her own family, if she ends up marrying Jack, to worry about us,” Clay predicted.

“Oh,” Libby said in a startled voice. “I just realized we’re probably going to be grandparents about the time you’re thinking of us becoming parents again.”

“Like I said, kids are something I’d like, not something I have to have. What I have to have is you. In my life.”

He put a finger under Libby’s chin and lifted her face so he could kiss her. Libby enthusiastically returned the kiss, and it was some minutes later before they continued their conversation.

Libby’s nose was pressed against Clay’s skin, and she inhaled the scent of him, something dark and masculine. She slid her hands into the hair on his chest and said, “A month ago you were engaged to Jocelyn Montrose and planning to spend the rest of your life with her. What’s changed between us to make you want me in your life?”

“When Jocelyn left, I was forced to take a hard look at why I’d gotten engaged to her in the first place.”

“Aside from the fact she’s stunningly beautiful?” Libby said sardonically.

“She is beautiful,” Clay said. “And intelligent and charming. And marriage to me is the repayment she deserves for the sacrifice she’s making for my family. But I can’t do it. You see, I don’t love her, and I never have. The person I love is you.”

Libby inhaled sharply.

“Last year, when I was in Jackson Hole, when we spent so much time together, it gave me a glimpse of what life might have been like if we’d been able to marry when you got pregnant.”

Clay swallowed hard. “It would have been so easy to forgive and forget, to reach for happiness together, even at that late date. But, as you may have noticed, Blackthornes aren’t too big on forgiving. I chose to get mad all over again. I walked away from you and right into Jocelyn’s waiting arms.”

“I’m supposed to believe you’re suddenly not mad anymore?” Libby asked.

“Having you shove me out the door, figuratively, was a big wake-up call,” Clay said. “I realized the last place I wanted to be was on one side of any door with you on the other side.”

“How do I know your anger won’t come back to haunt us?” Libby asked.

Clay considered for a moment before he answered. “I can’t promise it won’t. I only want a chance for what your father, and my pride, took from us. The chance to enjoy the good times and survive the bad, just like any other couple. I care enough for you—” He cleared his throat and corrected, “I love you enough to be willing to compromise and work out our troubles together. The question you need to ask is whether you still love me enough to do the same.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Libby murmured, as she kissed Clay’s shoulder, tasting the faint hint of salt.

“Life with you would never be simple,” Clay said, kissing her temple in return. “But it would be worth the effort to spend my life with you.”

“I don’t know, Clay,” Libby said. “I’ve been hurt so much, I’m not sure—”

“Give me a chance, Libby.” Clay leaned down and kissed her mouth, urging a response, which Libby gave without thinking about what it might mean to him.

She broke the kiss and looked up into his eyes. “What happens to us if this doesn’t work out? What happens if we try to recapture the magic—”

“That’s where you’re making your mistake,” Clay interrupted.

Libby arched an inquiring brow. “My
mistake
?”

“We don’t try to recapture the past. We carve out a future for ourselves starting here and now.”

Libby stared at Clay, afraid to voice the thought that came to mind.
What are we together without our past?
It was memories of her summer with Clay that had kept her enthralled. Now Clay wanted her to forget the past? “I don’t think it’s possible to forget the past,” she said, as she shifted so she was sitting on his lap, her legs hanging over the arm of the chair, her arms around his neck. “Moreover, I don’t think I want to. I have a great many lovely memories, along with the not so lovely ones.”

“How about forgetting the bad and remembering the good?” Clay asked with a smile meant to charm.

Libby was charmed, but she shook her head and said, “It’s all jumbled up together. I’m not saying we can’t go on from here. But what happened between us in the past is part of why I love you. And fear you.”

Libby watched Clay’s brow furrow with concern and hurried to explain, “If I allow myself to care, you have the power to hurt me again.”

“If we’re being honest, I think some pain is inevitable,” Clay said. When Libby opened her mouth to protest, Clay quickly kissed her. “Think about it. I may say something in all innocence that you take in a hurtful way. The question is whether we’ll be able to discuss the things that disturb and worry us about each other and change and compromise.”

He made it seem so easy. “Why didn’t we talk like this twenty years ago?” she asked.

“You were scared and hurt. I was angry and hurt. We’re older and wiser now, and the wounds we inflicted on each other have had time to scab over.”

Libby noticed he hadn’t said the wounds had healed. Would they ever? Could they ever? “What would it take to heal those wounds?” she asked.

“Living happily ever after,” Clay said.

Libby listened for cynicism in his voice, but didn’t hear any. “I didn’t think you believed in fairy-tale endings.”

“I want to believe,” Clay said.

“That isn’t quite the same thing, is it?” Libby said.

Clay shrugged. “Close enough.” He slid his arms beneath her, scooted forward and stood up, heading for the bed.

“I’m not tired,” Libby said archly, as Clay set her down on the bed.

He grinned and said, “I’m glad to hear it.”

Libby laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Does that mean I don’t have to play by the rules?” Clay asked as he unbuttoned Libby’s jeans, slid the zipper down and began tugging them off.

Libby lifted her bottom when Clay got that far and he slid the jeans down off her legs, leaving her in a pair of peach-colored bikini underwear that would have matched her bra, if she’d still been wearing it. He laid his hand on her flat belly and said, “I wanted to touch you here when you were carrying our child.”

Libby felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, Clay. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s a dream I can still realize, Libby. I’m going to hold you to those kids.”

“Your turn,” she said, scrubbing at the tears with the backs of her hands. “Take off those jeans.”

“You aren’t going to take them off for me?” Clay asked.

“No,” she said with a saucy smile. “I want to watch you strip.”

Libby sat up in bed with her legs crossed and watched as Clay reached for the snap on his jeans, flicked it open, then slowly pulled the zipper down. He skinned off his jeans to reveal black, thigh-length jockey shorts, which cupped him very lovingly and left very little to the imagination.

“Come here,” Libby said, patting the bed beside her.

“I’d rather be here,” Clay said, pulling Libby’s legs straight, shoving her back onto the bed, and putting himself prone on top of her, supporting his upper body on his elbows. “I’m not too heavy?”

“No.” Libby welcomed Clay’s weight. She put her arms around his shoulders and ran her hands up into his hair. “Do you realize we’ve never made love in a bed?”

“I remember having my bare butt in the grass more than once,” Clay said with a grin.

“You could have stayed on the blanket,” Libby said.

“It would have cramped my style.”

Libby laughed. “Maybe we should grab a blanket and head outdoors.”

“I’ve grown to like my creature comforts,” Clay said as he settled his hips more firmly in the cradle of her thighs. His hands played with her hair as he leaned down to kiss her deeply. He raised his head and kissed first one breast, and then the other. “You’re so beautiful, Libby. So perfectly formed.”

Libby blushed. If he thought her breasts were perfect, she wasn’t going to argue with him. Or point out the silver stretch marks on her belly from her pregnancy. She gave herself up to the moment, breathing in the scent of him, feeling the weight of him, tasting the uniqueness of this particular man, with whom she’d fallen in love once upon a time.

Clay lifted his head from the breasts that had stolen his attention and looked down at her with stormy gray eyes. “I want to make love to you, Libby. I want to put myself deep inside you and—”

Libby kissed Clay to cut him off. What he said sounded wonderful. It was a fantasy she’d imagined for many years coming to sudden life. All she had to do was say yes, and her dreams would become reality.

“Let me love you,” Clay murmured against her lips.

“We agreed—”

“We made the rules,” Clay said. “We can change them. Say yes.”

“Yes,” Libby whispered. She wanted the dream to come true. Whatever the future held, she would handle it.

Clay’s sudden smile lightened her heart. “I don’t know where to start,” he said, his smile becoming a grin of delight.

Libby laughed. “Kissing is always nice. Touching is way up there with my favorite things—”

Clay took possession of her mouth as his hands moved upward along her rib cage toward her breasts.

Libby’s body arched toward him, as she reached to caress his shoulders and back.

“We don’t need these anymore,” Clay said, making short shrift of her bikini underwear.

“Or these,” Libby said, returning the favor as she shoved Clay’s briefs down over his buttocks far enough for him to kick them down and off.

“Are you protected?” Clay said.

“Does it matter?” Libby asked.

“Not to me,” Clay said. “So long as you don’t mind getting married sooner, rather than later.”

“I don’t remember hearing a proposal,” Libby said. “Did I miss it?”

He stopped and looked deep into her eyes. “I love you, Libby. Will you do me the honor of becoming the next Mrs. Blackthorne?”

“That was hard to miss,” Libby said.

“You haven’t answered me.”

“Ah,” Libby said, responding to Clay’s touch in a particularly sensitive spot.

“Was that a yes?” Clay asked.

“Ah,” Libby said, as she reached between Clay’s legs to return the favor.

There was no more discussion as Libby concentrated on touching Clay’s body and enjoying his caresses in return. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be adored, to have her body treated as something precious, to have a man touch and taste as though she were the most special person in the world.

And she’d forgotten how it felt to find such pleasure in touching a man, feeling the play of muscle and sinew beneath firm male flesh, and the wonderful coarseness of Clay’s beard as he rubbed his face against her breasts. And then there was the aphrodisiac she found most arousing of all—Clay’s so evident desire for her.

Libby was almost embarrassed by how wet she was when Clay slid a finger inside her. His grunt of satisfaction made her smile to herself. It was plain that she wanted him, that there was no reason to wait any longer to join their bodies.

Clay met her gaze as he lifted her with both hands for his thrust. Libby rose to meet him, crying out as he sank to the hilt within her. His mouth caught her cry, and Libby arched toward him, wanting to give, wanting to receive.

Could it possibly have felt this good when she was sixteen? How could she have forgotten this enormous pleasure? Clay was doing things with his hands, with his tongue, with his body, that aroused her beyond bearing. She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t catch up.

“Clay!” she cried.

“Come with me, sweetheart. Come on, love.”

Love words in the midst of lovemaking. Clay hadn’t used them when they were young. Maybe he hadn’t known how. Maybe they’d seemed silly then. Libby relished them now. They raised her higher. They made her feel cherished.