"Let me lie down," he whispered, "before my knees give way."
He went to the bed and stretched out, his body arching in sensual expectation, his eyes open. "Come on," he whispered, his eyes glittering, challenging. "Do it."
She'd invited him once in exactly those words. And now she took the invitation. All the things he'd done to her, she did to him. Exploring. Touching. Drawing the very tips of her fingers over skin so sensitive that he began to make odd, hoarse sounds.
"And you say I'm a noisy lover," she teased at his lips as she smoothed her body completely down the length of his and lay over him. "You're noisy, too."
He looked up into her soft, loving eyes and suddenly didn't need words; suddenly knew. His hands slid to her hips, holding them lightly to him. "That pill..." he whispered. "Did you take it today?"
"No." She smiled. "And if you miss even one-" she bent to his open mouth "-it can be very, very dangerous." She bit his lower lip. "I feel absolutely primitive. I want to bite you all over."
He burst out laughing, although it was a soundladen with passion and delight. He held her hips. "Sit up," he whispered, daring her. "I'll help you."
"I don't know how," she said.
"Shh." He sat up against the headboard, drawing her over him, facing him, her body close and warm against his as he eased her onto his hips and watched her lips part on a breath as he deepened the contact into stark intimacy.
Her nails drew sensuously against his broad, dark shoulders. She looked into his eyes as she lifted and fell, and trembled a little at the newness of what they were sharing.
"I've never done this deliberately," he whispered. "Knowing that a child could come of it, and not minding."
"Neither have I," she whispered back, catching her breath as she saw the depth of emotion in his eyes. "Becky will...like...having a baby in the house."
His lean hands smoothed her hips down against his. "It may take a while," he told her. "Sometimes it takes months. Years."
She smiled through the building passion. "I'll like that. Won't you?"
He shuddered as she moved again, his fingers biting into her "Don't. I'll bruise you."244.245.
"I don't mind," she whispered at his lips. "I'm not afraid of passion anymore. Not with you."
He took a deep breath. "Tell me this isn't some new way of showing me how grateful you are about Becky," he said, his movements beneath her growing sharper, quicker.
"It isn't," she whispered. She lifted closer, watching his face grow taut at the sensuous brushing. "It's simply a new way...of showing you...how very much I love you," she murmured, and found his mouth, and moved suddenly, sharply.
His mind exploded. He wanted to ask her, to make her say it again. But she was showing him. Her body was telling him everything she felt.
He groaned hoarsely under the flame of her twisting body, and his back threatened to give way as the frenzy of trying to get as close as possible threw it into convulsive spasms. He cried out something he didn't hear because the blood was beating in his ears. He was vaguely aware of her own voice, then the world seemed to go dark and warm and gently trembling around him, and he buried his face in her throat and shuddered.
"I love you," she whispered against his shoulder. She kissed his face, his closed eyes, his warm mouth. "I love you, I love you....""Keep saying it," he whispered, his voice weak with exhaustion. "Say it until I die. I want to hear it all the time, all my life."
She smiled against his lips. "You love me, too," she murmured smugly. "You said so. You said so, just before your body went wild. I heard you."
"Said it? God, I screamed it!" He held her closer, wrapping her up, cherishing her. "I didn't even know it, until today. I'd always wanted you, cared about you. But I didn't realize it was love until that blond jackass started telling lies about you, and I wanted to kill him. Because you were my Maggie, and he was hurting you."
She smiled, her heart bursting, on fire with new delights. "I knew it the night after you made love to me on the sofa," she told him. "All at once I realized why I'd let you. I couldn't have done it without loving you."
"I didn't even think about that. I tried not to think of you, it disturbed me so. Every time I went in the living room afterward, I'd see your body lying in exquisite positions on those cushions and I'd bend over with pain."
She laughed, looking into his pale eyes lovingly. "Me too," she confessed.
His hands smoothed over her, his eyes adoring every soft curve. "I thought my legs were going246.247.
to give way when you threw those pills in the trash can," he said dryly.
"Mine almost did," she told him. "I could hardly walk by the time I started undressing you. And you just stood there and didn't even protest." She cocked her head. "I didn't think you'd let me make love to you like that."
"I wouldn't have stopped you, no matter what you'd done to me," he chuckled. "That was so damned exciting, my heart stopped beating a time or two. I never thought I'd hold off until you stopped torturing me long enough to take me."
Her eyes widened with delight. "You really didn't mind?"
"Honey, lovemaking is give and take," he said gently. "It's as exciting for a man to be aroused as it is for a woman. I don't feel any less a man because I give you that kind of freedom with my body. In fact," he added with a wicked laugh, "I feel a lot like a man with his own private harem, intent on his pleasure. I loved it."
"I'm glad. We'll have to take turns from now on."
He eased her down onto the bed, his body still locked with hers, and moved over her, resting his weight on his elbows as he looked down into her soft eyes."Do you think it could get any better than it just was?" he whispered.
"I don't know," she replied, her voice husky with excitement.
His hips moved experimentally as he bent his dark head. "Let's see."
She closed her eyes with a faint smile. Her arms reached up. Heaven was so close, she could feel it...
The next day, while Becky was playing with the ducks near the small pond, Maggie decided it was time Gabriel heard the truth about his stepfather. Janet had been quiet since the wedding and was already talking about going back to Europe. Gabe hadn't protested; if anything, he'd been even more indifferent to his mother. It was breaking her heart, and Maggie wanted more than anything to help heal the breach between them.
"I want to tell you something," she said softly, lying in his arms under the big oak tree.
"You're pregnant already?" He grinned down at her.
She hit him. "It would be a miracle if I wasn't, after last night. But that's not what I meant." She touched his mouth with gentle fingers. "I want to tell you something. About your stepfather."
His face closed up. Grew hard, as it had in the248.249.
time before they married. "I don't want to hear it." He tried to move her aside but she clung.
"No," she said firmly. "You're going to hear me if I have to sit on you!"
His eyebrows arched. "Aren't we daring today?"
"We'll get more daring by the minute, now that we're loved and happy and secure," she returned. "So look out, cowboy, I expect to be a sexy shrew in no time. Now, listen. Your stepfather had cancer. He was dying. Your mother knew that; it's why she didn't leave him when he had his fling with your mercenary little intended."
"He what!" He sat straight up, almost unseating her. "And she never told me?"
"You wouldn't listen, as usual," she said. "She did try."
He drew in a slow breath and let it out again. "Damn. All these years I've blamed her, hated her for shielding him. She said he died of a heart attack."
"Mercifully, he did," she told him. "It was bone cancer, you see. He had very little time to live, and the woman was attentive to him, and he was reliving his youth. And it's just as well that he did," she added firmly, "because the last thingin the world you needed was to be tied to some greedy little girl with dollar signs in her eyes!"
"Amen," he said, his voice husky as he looked at his Maggie with exquisite love in his eyes. "I guess I've been blind."
"You might tell your mother that."
"And shock her to the back teeth?" he asked. "She doesn't expect me to be nice to her. I'd hurt her feelings."
She studied him quietly. "Gabriel."
He grimaced. "All right. I'll make my peace with her. I can afford to be generous now-what with my new family and all."
"This part of your new family loves you to distraction," she whispered, lifting her lips to his warm mouth. "And would love to prove it to you all over again, if she had the strength."
He chuckled against her soft lips. "I'll be sure you get two portions of everything at supper."
"You'd better eat seconds yourself," she said, smiling. "I feel primitive again...."
His mouth was moving hungrily over hers when a soft, excited young voice broke through the illusion of privacy they'd created.
"Papa! Mama!" Becky called them, hands on her hips, looking indignant. "Oh, do stop that, and come quick! The ducks have laid an egg! You have250.251.
to come and look, it's much more fun than what you're doing. Why people like all that kissing is just beyond me, anyway. Yuck!"
Gabriel got to his feet with his lips compressed, his eyes shimmering, trying not to burst out laughing. Maggie followed suit, biting her lips with the effort to remain sober.
"You bet I'll never kiss any boys," Becky muttered as she turned back to the bushes where the ducks had made a nest. "Not me, no sir. My goodness, you'll give each other germs!"
That did it. They broke up. Gabe took Maggie's hand in his and lifted it to his mouth, laughing against the soft palm. "You contagious little thing, you," he teased as they followed their daughter. "I've already come down with a bad case of you, and I hope never to recover."
"I'll guarantee that you'll be properly reinfected if you try." Maggie pressed close to his side, happier than she'd ever expected to be. Becky was kneeling beside a nest in the brush, her eyes fixed wide and fascinated on two large oval eggs that rested there. Maggie smiled at her daughter. Like the eggs, happiness seemed to be hatching all around them. She glanced up at Gabe's vibrant face and found him watching her, his eyes tender with love.Something he'd said once came back to her as she glanced toward the flowered pastures that stretched to the wide horizon. Something about the pioneers coining, claiming the new territory in a rage of passion. Her eyes turned toward Gabe, and she felt it all the way to her toes. And she smiled.