He had to think of something else.
Her pleading eyes? Her rosy cheeks? Her luscious body pressed so tightly against his?
He was hard, ready, and in agony.
And apparently, she decided he had thought about it long enough. Standing on her tiptoes, she took his lower lip between her teeth and bit. Hard.
Chapter 48
R
estraint shattered. Well-intentioned thoughts died. The only emotions left were lust and need, and they took command.
Noah picked Penelope up and tossed her on the bed.
The hard, cheap mattress bounced beneath her.
She smiled, her objective achieved.
She kicked off her sandals. They arched through the air and smacked the wall.
He reached for his belt.
She sat up and pulled her shirt over her head.
He saw the warm, soft swell of her breasts above the constriction of her bra—and his damned zipper couldn’t open fast enough.
Penelope seemed to be having no trouble with
her
zipper. It slid right down. She kicked off her pants.
Her rose cotton bikini panties wrapped her lush hips, her waist so tiny he could span it with his hands. And he
forgot about his jeans, still clinging to his hips. He forgot about his shirt, his shoes, the removal of which were necessary for normal, naked sex.
Instead, he reached out with wondering fingers to stroke her hourglass profile. Then, like a boy, he grabbed the front clasp of her bra and popped it open.
Her breasts sprang free, beautifully round, creamy, and full, with taut brown nipples that pointed at him. Beckoned him. He cupped the richness, marveling at the velvety texture.…
She shoved his greedy hands out of the way. She pushed his jeans and underwear down to drop around his ankles.
His dick stood at attention, erect and ready to serve.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
Vaguely the idea floated through his mind that this was too fast, too violent.
Then she cupped his balls with one hand, held his erection at the base, leaned forward, and took him into her mouth.
One flick of her wet tongue zapped hot lightning on the tip of his dick. Electricity arced through him. For one mindless moment, he almost…
almost
came. Then he caught a strand of her hair and tugged.
She let him go and looked up, her big eyes wild and hungry.
“If you want satisfaction, you’d better stop
now
.”
She slid backward on the mattress and opened her arms—and legs.
He didn’t fling himself on her. Not quite.
He didn’t devour her. Not quite.
But he was on top of her immediately, mouth open, licking, tasting, kissing, sucking.…
She was as frantic as he, as needy, as voracious. She kissed his shoulder, then his chest. She ran her hands down his spine. She caressed his butt before pulling him closer to her, so his dick pressed against her belly, and she undulated against him in an ordeal of pleasure.
They were sideways on the bed. Her bra still hung off her shoulders. He still wore his turtleneck T-shirt, and his jeans and underwear hung off his ankles.
Neither of them cared.
His blood thundered in his veins.
Her breath panted against his skin.
They grappled in absolute silence, as if every ounce of energy needed to be spent in this living moment, this
now
.
Now
.
He reached between her legs, opened her. She was damp, ready.
And he needed a condom.
He needed a condom.
Where was his condom?
He carried a condom. Always.
But… the condom was in his wallet. His wallet was in his jeans. His jeans were around his ankles.
Like a teenage boy taking his first shot at sex, he writhed, groped, and fumbled, located the wallet, opened it.
The condom’s gold plastic package and the black leather of his wallet had formed some kind of bond, and he had to wrestle the package out, furious with the delay and growing more desperate by the moment.
While his trembling hands worked feverishly, Penelope stroked his hip, slid her fingers across his stomach, explored his balls with her cupped hand.
She was not helping. And she knew it.
At last the condom popped free.
He forcefully tore the package open.
She helped him don the sheath.
Finally… he slowed down. For just a second. He didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to ease inside.…
Ease… inside…
As he slid home, they groaned in unison.
Nothing in his life had ever felt as good as being joined with Penelope. It was desire incarnate. It was a reunion. It was a love story fulfilled.
He looked into her face.
Her long lashes were damp, her brown eyes swimming with tears.
Anxiously, he smoothed her hair back from her face.
She whispered, “Have you ever had something feel so good it makes you cry?”
He nodded.
Right now.
But he couldn’t speak.
“Please.” She flexed her muscles inside. “Hurry.”
That was all he needed.
He moved out and in. Out and in. And then—they were thrusting together, fierce with need. Lust rioted along his nerves. He held her tightly, trying to meld the two into one. Her scent mixed with his, forming a perfume heady and rich.
She wrapped her legs around him, digging her heels into his thighs, demanding more.
He slid his hands under her bottom, lifting her higher, getting farther inside her. All the way inside her… and it would never be far enough.
Every primitive instinct in him insisted that he possess her, imprint himself on her.
She yielded, softened, gave him everything she had.
Their sex was brilliant, swift, powerful, bright, primal.
As she climaxed, her hoarse cries echoed in his ears. Her body bonded with his. She demanded.
And he gave, a violent orgasm totally out of his control, come spurting from him in hot jolts as he drove inside her again and again.
This was mating, a bondage for them both. Forever. An eternity.
Slowly, the agony of pleasure eased.
Little by little, the ferocious tumult came to a stop.
He was gasping, sweating, collapsing with exhaustion. He eased his weight on top of her, pressing her into the mattress, wanting never to let the moment end.
Still totally attuned to her, he listened to her breathing. Heard the first hitch. He embraced her, held her, remembering those tears as they joined. Heard another hitch. Felt her body shake beneath his. He slid his hands under her head. The sheet beneath her head was damp… with her tears.
“I know I’m a selfish shit and maybe I’m flattering myself,” he said, “but this isn’t about what just happened between you and me, is it?”
She shook her head.
Thank God.
Still cradling her, he said, “Then you need someone to talk to, and you know you can trust me. Please, Penelope. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She was crying now in earnest. “Today’s the first anniversary of my baby’s death.”
Chapter 49
N
oah’s heart stopped. He slowly came up on his elbow.
No wonder Penelope had fallen apart today.
Her husband. Her mother. And her baby?
Penelope didn’t seem to be crying, yet tears slid down her cheeks in a soft, steady stream, as if so many tears had gone before they knew the way.
He toed his shoes off, kicked his pants off his ankles, strove to be less a beast of instinct and more a man with a modicum of sensitivity. Leaning over her, he stroked the hair back from her fragile face. “Tell me.”
“When Keith was killed, I was pregnant, six months along. His death… It was a shock.” She put her hand over her heart as if to contain the ache. “Some poor trucker had a heart attack, crossed the white line, hit him head-on. The trucker survived. Sent me flowers and a letter of apology from his hospital bed.” She shivered.
“Reading that was the most awful… He felt horrible. He said if he could do it over, he’d rather be the one who died than my young husband.”
“I’m sure he meant it.”
“I’m sure he did.” She stared fixedly at the ceiling, not acknowledging Noah at all. But she didn’t move away from him, either. “My father-in-law is a lawyer. He wanted to sue the trucker, said it would give the baby security. I talked him out of it. Keith had some life insurance; we had a house; I had a job.… Suing was just Ronald’s knee-jerk reaction, some kind of male power-trip need to do something.”
Since Noah was experiencing a male power-trip need to do something to help her, he could understand.
“Keith was a good guy. He had gone against his parents’ wishes to marry me. Me, a girl from the L.A. ghettos, part Hispanic, illegitimate, with no lengthy family history that reached back to the first settlers of Cincinnati. We were happy. His parents were not, although once I got pregnant they settled down a little. We were eager to have a family. Mind you, Keith and I weren’t violently in love, but I’d done that once before and—” She stopped in midsentence.
“Once was enough?” Noah suggested.
“Exactly.”
Noah thought that while Penelope might not have been violently in love, any guy who married someone so different from him probably had it bad for her. But he wasn’t going to say that. “You got the bad news about Keith and…?”
She shivered. “I was afraid for the baby. I mean, how does such a fragile being survive the storm of grief and shock I experienced? But my ob-gyn reassured me, and
showed me that the baby was fine, safe inside me. I arranged Keith’s funeral, dealt with my mother-in-law’s hysteria—”
“He was an only child?”
“Yes, and Barbara’s grief far overwhelmed mine.” Penelope’s mouth twitched in what could have been an ironic smile. “My mother… my mother couldn’t come to the funeral. She said it was because Mrs. Walters was ill and demanding. I should have realized.… She knew I needed her. She was always there when I needed her. I should have realized… But it never occurred to me how wrong it was that she didn’t come.” Penelope shivered again, and goose bumps sprang up on her skin. “I hadn’t ever found out about the first occurrence of breast cancer. Still…”
“You were in shock.” Noah helped Penelope to sit up, turned her so the head of the bed was at her back, put pillows under her for support. “There was no way for you to know, and anyway, what could you have done differently?”
“Nothing.” Her skin was chilled. “I guess nothing.”
Noah brought the covers up from the foot of the bed, pulled them over her, brought her close to give her warmth.
“We made it, my baby and me, through almost another two months. I could feel her move every day. I worried about stuff, mostly about Barbara obsessively trying to take over my child. I planned ways to combat her influence. I talked to my mom about moving to Portland, but she didn’t sound too enthused.” A frown knit Penelope’s forehead into little wrinkles that looked partially like unhappiness, but more like bewilderment. “She sort of hurt my feelings.”
“You didn’t know what was happening in her life.” He
cradled Penelope’s head in his arm, watching her, gauging her distress as if he could do something to assist.
There was nothing. In the face of such grief, he was powerless.
“I don’t know what she was thinking.” Even now, Penelope sounded baffled. “Things were going badly with her treatment. I was going to find out soon enough, so why not tell me?”
“Because you’d suffered a horrible shock and you were pregnant. And maybe she hoped for a miracle?”
“Yes. That sounds like my mother. After all, she’d managed to raise me and put me through college, and fight cancer one other time. She believed in miracles.” Penelope paused as if remembering her mother. “She said—and she was right—that financially I couldn’t make it if I moved to Portland. The housing market was bad and getting worse every day. If I sold, I was going to lose money, a lot of money. Plus, it would have been a gamble to give up the security I had with my firm. And let’s not even talk about the nightmare with insurance. Without Keith, I was on my own. I had to support myself and the baby. I mean… on my own unless I wanted to take money from my in-laws, which I did not, because—”
“You didn’t want to give your mother-in-law that kind of influence over your lives.”
“Right. And a baby is expensive. The crib and the car seat and the little, tiny shoes…” She half smiled at the memory of the little tiny shoes. “The baby kept me looking to the future, planning ahead. I was reading books on raising a child. Searching for the best care facilities. Working really hard at my job, because while I was on maternity leave, I didn’t want to be a casualty of some downsizing scheme.”
He took her hand, entwined their fingers, held his palm against hers in some futile attempt to take the weight of her grief.
“She was such an active baby. I suppose they all are, but I felt her move a month early, and in a couple of weeks, I joked to Keith, she would play soccer for the pros. She’d get her fist in my hip and her foot in my ribs, and she’d push.” Penelope writhed as if she could recall the pain. “I thought she was doing isometric exercises.”
“So she was healthy?”
“She looked great in the ultrasounds. The doctor was so pleased.”
What happened?
Penelope continued. “One of the reasons I handled Keith’s death as well as I did was because… I knew I was never alone. I had to get past the grief and focus on our child. She was there, rolling and twisting, alive inside me. Even now, it’s amazing to me how much connection I felt. She took over my body, and everything from that moment was animal instinct. So primal and so… She controlled my life. My every thought was for her.” Penelope’s tears dripped onto his arm. “My every thought… even in my sleep…”
She paused so long he wondered whether she had decided she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t tell him the whole story.
But at last she resumed talking, her voice weaker, quieter. “That morning, a year ago today, I woke up really early, and my first instinct was… ‘There’s something wrong.’ I didn’t even have to think. I knew that sometime in the night, she had stopped moving.”