body. The way you feel, the way you look.” The warm tip of his tongue trailed across her bikini line. “The way you taste.”
When his mouth dipped more and he kissed her there, tenderly at first then more boldly, she arched and reached to knot her fingers in his hair.
He knew her weakness. Knew how to make her fly.
She hadn’t had many lovers, but she knew enough to be certain his style was natural, a talent that was as innate as soaring and hunting were to a hawk. When he touched her, loved her, her cares evaporated into mist. Where they were didn’t matter. She only longed to feel his hard heat pressed close.
She wove her fingers through his silky hair. “When are you going to take your clothes off and join me?”
His only reply was the skilled attention of his circling tongue.
She sighed.
No one had a right to be this good.
The spiral climbed quickly and she wet her lips. “Alex…come up here.”
His hands wove up her stomach and sculpted over her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers rolling until the concentrated sensations were so bright and powerful she could have wept. Her head lolling to the side, she groaned as her core compressed tighter around a deepening pulse.
Then, for two suspended beats, there was that eye-of-the-storm calm before her climax ignited and flung her to the stars. Biting her lip to stem a cry, she gripped the quilt at her sides as her mind and body exploded with raw pleasure that seemed to go on forever.
When finally the contractions wavered and began to die, drained, elated, tingling and never more sated, she didn’t have the energy to move. She was barely aware that he’d left her until she dragged open her eyes.
He stood watching her, telling her with his eyes that she was his. Only his.
She held out her arms to him. He kicked off his shoes, discarded his clothes and extracted a condom from his wallet. When they were protected, he threw back half the quilt and scooped her up in his arms.
“This will be our room,” he said, laying her on the cool sheet and nuzzling into the sweep of her neck.
When his body covered hers, she jumped, still so sensitive as he slid partway in and began to move.
He pressed a lingering kiss to her brow. “You will wear my ring.”
Looping her legs around his thighs, she ran her fingertips over the hot damp mound of his back. “I can’t think now.”
“I don’t want you to think. I want you to feel.”
He thrust again, bumping her closer to a second orgasm. “My ring, Natalie.”
Whether it was his bone-melting heat sliding against her or the dark-chocolate voice at her ear, in that moment he convinced her. This was their house, their new beginning. She did feel, and she felt wonderful. So utterly right she was dizzy with the magic of it.
She groaned as that spiral rose higher, squeezed tighter.
“Yes,” she murmured.
Please, just…
Yes.
His mouth slanted over hers.
As fireworks flared again, she held him close and let the tidal wave swallow them both whole.
Chapter Six
After returning to work for a couple of hours, she and Alex spent the night together. The next morning Natalie headed home.
Not that she liked referring to Constance Plains in those terms. But she’d grown up there, had built her first dreams there. Constance Plains was where her mother lived and where a piece of Natalie’s heart would always remain. Going back was hard, but also somehow cathartic.
In a strange, sad way, going home was sacred.
On the final isolated stretch of highway, zipping past the landscape of scattered gums and kangaroo grass, she selected a favourite CD. But even cranked up urban couldn’t drown out the concerns that had tumbled through her mind since the weekend’s astounding run of events.
Her gaze drifted to her left hand holding the wheel. The setting was dazzling, any girl’s dream engagement ring, a cushion-cut single white diamond of who knew how many carats. Alex had been so persuasive about her wearing it. In hindsight she’d never stood a chance of refusing him. His reserves of sex appeal and charm exceeded any man she’d met or was ever likely to meet in the future.
Truth was she was attached to Alexander, hopelessly drawn to his intensity, as much as air was sucked into a fire or rain was absorbed by the sea. More and more he consumed her, but he also made her feel…connected.
As a smile touched her lips, a ray of morning sun caught the rock and the diamond flashed, shooting a stab of light back from the steering wheel. Squinting, Natalie shielded her eyes at the same time a truck roared up out of nowhere, its monster horn blasting as it passed.
Instinctively she yanked the wheel. The car swerved, fishtailing and skidding to the shoulder of the road. Foot to the floor on the brake, she pictured her heart hammering in her chest as every speck of mortal strength rushed down her rubbery legs and the car jolted to a stop. Dumping a head-tingling breath, she dropped her forehead on the wheel.
Remarkably she didn’t think about her near collision. She could think only of the incredible moment Alex had slipped that ring on her finger.
Alex cared for her. He sincerely wanted her to be the mother of his children. But he didn’t know anything about her. Didn’t know she could never give him a legitimate heir. On top of that, his marriage proposal had a side agenda: publicly recanting the engagement might do his dealings with Mr. Zhang more harm than good.
Then again, she’d had a side agenda, too—a baby who might someday, in some measure, look upon her as a mother.
Dragging her brow off the wheel, she studied the stone on her third finger again. Today May Wilder would learn that her daughter had agreed to marry, and that her fiancé hadn’t the faintest idea about her past.
Was she leaving it too late to pull out?
Releasing a shaky breath, she rolled her tense shoulders and swung back onto the highway. Thirty minutes later her Rav 4 veered into her mother’s drive, on either side of which sat a sagging chain mail fence.
May must’ve heard the engine. By the time Natalie walked from the cracked cement drive to the house, May was standing on the porch, wiping her hands on a red-striped tea towel.
A heartfelt smile lighting her face, her mother flipped the towel over her shoulder and extended her arms. Relishing the comforting warmth, Natalie burrowed her face in her mother’s shoulder, wishing her father were here, too.
After a long moment, May pulled back, her grey eyes glistening with unbridled love and pride. “You look so well, Tallie.”
Natalie smiled. “So do you.”
But
