Maggy's Child (34 page)

He had a great body. That was the thought that took on shape and substance in Maggy’s mind as her gaze ran over him. Dreamily she registered the linebacker’s shoulders that loomed above her, the strong brown arms that held her, the wide, heavily muscled chest that pillowed her head and tapered down in a classic V-shape to a muscle-ridged abdomen that in turn disappeared beneath the briefs. The briefs were almost more interesting than his bare flesh, she decided. The soft cotton of which they were made clung lovingly to every curve and hollow of his body, providing no concealment for the growing bulge that was tenting his underwear.

Her face turned away from his scrutiny, Maggy smiled a secret smile as she watched him get hard. He wanted her badly, there was no hiding that. But Nick, her Nick, would suffer the tortures of the damned before he would do anything about it. Whatever the cost to himself, he would put what he perceived as her needs first. He always had. Her eyes traveled down past his briefs, over hairy thighs and powerful calves, to large, thoroughly masculine feet. And retraced their journey.

The swelling in his briefs had not abated. Maggy regarded it thoughtfully. Evil as the notion probably was, she couldn’t resist the sudden temptation to tease him, just a little.

She rubbed her cheek against his chest. He stiffened.

“Feeling better?” It was a barely audible murmur, uttered as he dropped his arms from around her.

“Ummm.” Maggy wriggled closer with wicked pseudoinnocence, her hold on him tightening. When his arms still failed to return to their previous position, she whispered, “Hold me, Nick.”

She thought he complied rather slowly, but he complied.

Once again Maggy rubbed her cheek against the curls that covered his chest, closing her eyes, enjoying the tickling sensation of his chest hair against her soft skin. Her hands moved against his back lightly scoring his flesh as she tested the strength and resilience of the underlying muscles.

Nick shifted uncomfortably. Maggy bit back a grin.

Maggy’s eyes opened, though her lowered lashes and bent head concealed the fact from Nick. He couldn’t see the gleam in her eyes as she evaluated the state of his briefs. He was so hard and swollen now that she could see the tip of his erection peeking out at her from beneath the elastic of his underwear. Some people might accuse her of being cruel, she supposed, and the dreaded epithet
cock-teaser
flitted through her mind. But it was so wonderfully liberating to feel free to play, to have sexual fun with a man. Nick would not begrudge her her enjoyment at his expense, she knew. In fact, he would applaud it, if it helped her heal.

Her bare legs lay against his. The T-shirt she wore had ridden up almost to the point of indecency, so that she could feel the heat and hair-roughened abrasiveness of his legs against her own. She moved her thigh over his experimentally and felt his legs go taut. She watched the bulge in his briefs swell until it was obvious that only the stretched-to-the-limit confines of the cotton was keeping it from standing stiffly erect.

“I’d better let you get back to sleep.” If there was a
hint of desperation in Nick’s voice—and there was—Maggy refused to let it sway her.

“Don’t leave me, Nick.” Her voice was a piteous murmur. She thought she heard him grit his teeth, but his arms came back around her, though his embrace felt almost cautious.

Smiling to herself, Maggy relaxed, letting the full weight of her body rest against him. She felt more and more content, like a cat curled on a radiator and ready to nap. Here, in Nick’s arms, was where she belonged. His nearness, the solid strength of his body against hers, the warmth of him, his scent, were as intoxicating as a fifth of the finest whiskey. The very stillness of him held her in thrall. It told her how urgently he desired her—and yet he would do nothing, make not so much as a single overture, that he didn’t feel she was ready to welcome. The knowledge chased away the last vestiges of her fear. With him, she need only go as far as she wished.

His chest hair tickled her chin, so she wrinkled her nose and blew it aside. The satin-over-steel texture of his skin fascinated her, so she tested it with her fingers, slowly stroking his well-developed pectorals. The tactile pleasure of simply touching him was amazing. How could she have forgotten how good a man’s chest beneath her fingertips could feel? Her movements lazy, almost somnolent, she let her fingers slide over his rib cage, rub back and forth across his rock-hard abdomen, dip into his belly button. As she conducted her tactile perambulations, his briefs appeared ever more strained, and the amount of erection that peeked out at her grew ever larger.

She knew perfectly well that she was pushing him to the brink, and she reveled in the knowledge. Because she knew she could stop what she was starting at any time. Nick would never force her—and Nick would never blame her.

He tolerated her exploring fingers without moving, without the slightest verbal response, but he lay rigid as a
board against her, his arms taut as they curved around her shoulders, his heart thudding in ever-increasing intensity beneath her ear.

He was sweating, just slightly, his body growing damp where she touched it. Maggy had always heard that sweat tasted salty, and she decided to find out if that was true. Turning her head, she pressed her lips to his chest, and touched the surface of it with her tongue.

The kiss was butterfly light, delicate as a dewdrop.

“Don’t,” Nick said sharply, sliding his hand between her mouth and his chest.

“Nick?” she questioned, peering up at him.

“Shit,” he said in disgust and began to tremble.

S
he was driving him crazy. The feel of her against him, her soft tits pressing against his chest with only the washed-thin cotton of one of Link’s old T-shirts between them, the silkiness of her thigh lying atop his, the weight of her head on his chest. Everything about her, her sweet, seductive scent, the pale luminosity of her skin against the bronze of his, the way her cascade of auburn waves looked as they tumbled over the bareness of his chest, the pale, delicate profile, the touch of her hands …

Oh, God, the touch of her hands.

That had been when he had first known he was going to lose it: when she started touching him with those slim white fingers, scoring his flesh with pink-painted nails that looked as luscious as candy. There was only so much he could stand, after all. He had all the normal impulses. He was a red-blooded American man.

But he loved her, desperately, fiercely, with a grand wild tide capable of sweeping mountains out of its path. Too much to let anyone else hurt her. Too much to hurt her himself.

Damn it, she was scared of sex. She’d gone nuts in the truck, screaming at the end as if she’d forgotten who he was, as if he were some stranger bent on rape.

Nick felt grim as he remembered. Hell, she had cause. She’d been through more than any woman should have to bear in twenty lifetimes, and he was not going to add to
her burden. He was going to be loving and gentle. He was going to take his time with her, coax her over the bad memories, make her happy and unafraid before he started panting after sex. He was going to do it that way if it killed him.

Which, at the moment, it seemed it just might.

But not before he killed Hamilton Drummond right along with that bastard Lyle.

She had entrusted him with her secret, the secret she had never told anyone. He knew that she was scared of sex, knew why she was scared of sex, and granted that she had reason.

So what was he doing? he asked himself with disgust. Lying here in this damned over-warm bed with her, holding her tenderly as she recovered from a nightmare so hideous that it had waked her screaming from a deep sleep, trying his damnedest to think of everything in the world but making love to her while his damned dick got big and hard as a telephone pole.

Whoever said that men kept their brains in their pants must have known his dick.

It knew only what it wanted, not what it couldn’t have.

The spidery touch of the tip of her nail rasping over his belly made him clench his fists in her hair, but gently, so she wouldn’t feel it. He controlled his breathing—in, out, in, out—in an effort to control his bodily urges.

In, out—
don’t think about that candy-tipped finger in your belly button
—in, out—
don’t think about how you’d like her fingers to go just a few inches lower
—in, out—
don’t think about how hot the touch of her soft, sexy mouth against your chest is making you get …

Jesus, he couldn’t stand it. In self-defense he pushed his hand between her mouth and his chest, but it was already too damned late.

His balls were aching, and his dick was so hard that it could drive nails. He fought against the overwhelming
need to yank her T-shirt over her head, flip her onto her backside, and bury his aching member between her thighs—and he won, by the skin of his teeth.

But the effort of it made him tremble like a horny seventeen-year-old.

“Shit,” he said, gritting his teeth. There was no way she could miss his reaction, no way to keep her from realizing exactly where his mind had been wandering while she clung to him for comfort.

Magdalena looked up at him then, tilting her head so that her eyes met his. Those great beautiful brown eyes shone like soft warm velvet through the veil of her long black lashes, so innocent, so concerned. If he’d been in his right mind, he might have wondered if she didn’t look just a little
too
innocent.

“Are you cold, Nicky?” she asked.

Cold. Hell, no. Not hardly. The pit of a volcano had to be colder than he felt at that moment. The realization drove every other thought—like the sudden suspicion that she was deriving a great deal of amusement from his distress—from his mind.

“A little,” he lied through clenched teeth as another long shiver racked him.

“You should get under the quilt, then,” she said, smiling openly now, and her hand flattened over the tortured muscles of his abdomen as she spoke …

And slid down to touch with the tip of a slim forefinger the superheated head of his dick.

“Sweet Jesus,” Nick groaned and grabbed her hand away.

“You used to like me to touch you,” she said, entwining her fingers with his. He held tightly to her hands so that he wouldn’t completely lose his head. She was teasing him, he was sure of it now, and that was a good sign. He just had to keep his self-control. The last thing on earth he ever wanted to do was to scare her. But this
particular game had to stop—now. He was too close to the edge.

“Magdalena, baby,
querida
, I still like it. I do like it. So much so that if you touch me that way again, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.” He clenched his teeth and tried not to crush her hand. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to be responsible. And maybe I don’t want you to get out of here.”

“Christ, you’re killing me,” he muttered through teeth clamped so tightly together that they ached. He knew he should roll off the bed now, that very instant, but was totally unable to move.

“Am I?” She slanted that sleepy, innocent smile up at him again. He realized then that it was totally fake, that the little witch knew exactly what she was doing to him, that she was doing it
deliberately
. His heart tripled its beat. Lifting her head from his chest, she shook her hair back from her face so that it swirled around her shoulders in a gorgeous auburn cloud, and pulled her hand from his. Her gaze ran openly over him, from his face to his feet and encompassing everything in between.

Then she touched his dick again.

“Magdalena, for God’s sake!” he groaned as her hand slid down inside the waistband of his briefs, but he made no move to stop her. He couldn’t. He was paralyzed, literally, with the force of his desire.

“Make love to me, Nicky,” she whispered as her hand closed over the huge, granite monolith that threatened to explode at any second. “I want you to. Please.”

“Magdalena …” With a last desperate burst of true nobility, he battled the urgency of his desire.

Her hand moved, warm and velvety soft as it slid along his shaft. “Please.”

He gritted his teeth as his balls clenched and his loins boiled. With the best intentions in the world, he couldn’t
hold out any longer. Hell, only for Magdalena could he have held off as long as this.

“I love you,” he said, guilt and tenderness roughening his voice as his shoulders came off the bed in a lunge. He caught her under her armpits, turned, laid her down, and yanked his briefs and her T-shirt out of the way in the same series of frenzied movements. “Love you, love you, love you.”

“I love you, too,” she whispered, opening her legs for him.

The sight of her lying there naked and willing and unafraid, her skin creamy satin against the white sheets, her eyes wide and luminous and smiling as she reached for him, completely stopped his breath.

He wanted to go slowly, to make it good for her, to excite her to the point where she could think of nothing but him.