The Parent Plan Part 2. Paula Riggs Detmer

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СКАЧАТЬ her sake, he told himself. Not because he was hoping against hope that this time his will would prevail against the pill keeping her safe from his seed.

      Yet it felt as though all the demons of hell were riding him hard, urging him to love her so completely she wouldn’t have the strength to leave him. Helpless against a building need, he found her mouth again, this time to plunder and possess. Instead of retreating, she rose to meet him, her hands linking behind his neck to tug him closer. His breath mingled with hers, great warm gasps of desperate need, and soft, eager cries poured from her throat, exciting him into a fever only she could break.

      Shaken, he ended the kiss, only to have her begin her own seduction of his mouth. His control teetered on a hot, honed edge, then shattered at the first tentative touch of her tongue against his lips. With a sound that was both anger and surrender, he opened his mouth and welcomed her pillaging tongue.

      When he couldn’t stand the torment any longer, he dragged his mouth from hers in order to concentrate on the warm, sweet treasure at the base of her neck. She tasted of bath soap and smelled delicious, exactly as a woman should.

      His woman, he wanted to shout as he felt her fingers skimming his shoulders. As she arched her neck and pressed her breasts against his chest, flames licked at him, hotter than the man-made hell where he’d spent most of his life. In her kiss was the promise of release he craved—not only from his physical torment, but also from the talons of guilt and regret that never stopped clawing at him, no matter how desperately he tried to make his life count for something.

      Karen writhed under him, her hands seeking and desperate, her strangled cries escalating. Again and again he filled his mouth with her, then tried to slake his pain and anger and shame by worshiping her breasts. Warm, full breasts tipped with hard little nubs so eager to be suckled, so temptingly sweet, even through the silky flannel of her gown.

      “Yes, oh yes!” she urged, her voice thick with a passion that spurred his own onto higher ground. “Faster. Go faster.”

      “Easy,” he managed to say between burning kisses, his body riding a dangerous ridge between pain and pleasure while he groped with the hem of the nightie.

      “No, I want to feel you inside me,” she urged, twisting and bucking like a wild thing.

      “Oh, baby, you feel good,” he murmured, pulling her down onto the bed. He leaned over her and brought their hips closer together. She gasped when his engorged body probed hers, and he felt her welcoming heat through a thin layer of fabric.

      He groaned with impatience and triumph as his fingers found the warm, sleek skin beneath the flannel. “Help me,” he grated, his voice sounding thick as molasses.

      Between kisses, she helped him free her from her gown. With one snap of his powerful wrist, he sent the thin material whooshing halfway across the room. His other hand shook a little as he skimmed his palm over her rib cage, over her belly where a few silvery lines attesting to her pregnancy still remained, to the soft nest of springy curls between her thighs.

      He palmed her first, and felt her shiver. Burying his face between her breasts, he slipped one finger past the swollen folds protecting the tiny nubbin nestled just inside. He massaged the hard kernel of acutely sensitive nerve endings and felt her shudder, then come alive, arching, tearing at his hair, bucking against his thigh.

      “Soon,” he whispered, trying to gentle her the way he gentled a skittish mare, but she wouldn’t allow restraint. On a groan of surrender, he slipped two fingers into the warm, moist sheath and felt the tremors shaking her. She was so slick, so hot, her readiness like a rare and precious gift that he would treasure always, especially in the dark nights ahead.

      Panting, her breath coming in little sobs of need, she moved against his fingers. Gritting his teeth, he forced his mind off the hot, throbbing pressure in his groin and concentrated on stroking her into readiness.

      Inarticulate cries broke from her as she moved faster and faster, her hair a tumble on the pillow as she arched her head backward. Awash in the musky, womanly scent of her, driven nearly to breaking, he strained to feel the first tiny shivers deep inside her, where his body craved welcome.

      When he felt the spasms take hold, he drew back, his knee nudging her thighs wider. Bracing himself, he plunged downward, filling her. She cried out, her eyes flying open and her hips thrusting upward to take him deeper. Moaning, her breath came in rasping gasps now. She gripped his buttocks with hard, desperate fingers and urged him to move with her.

      Pain tore at him, mingling with a rising urgency until finally he felt the hot tension inside her give way, and she cried out. He thrust harder, seeking desperately to escape the black prison cell where his sins had confined him.

      His heart thundered in his ears, mingling with the guttural cry of his own release. At the same time, he heard Kari call his name and wrap her arms and legs around him. Once, twice, he felt himself convulse into her, until he was at once depleted and sated.

      Later, as she slept in his arms, he let his eyes drift closed and told himself they could work things out. He wasn’t sure he could stand it if they didn’t.

      Chapter Seven

      Waking to a predawn gloom, Karen found herself alone. A quick check of the clock told her that it was past the time Cassidy usually awoke. Even so, she felt a pang of disappointment that he hadn’t lingered long enough to kiss her awake. Still, she took heart in the fact that he’d made love to her so thoroughly she felt utterly cherished. No matter how fierce his need to control his life might be, there was still a part of him that she could reach. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

      Shivering in the morning chill, she hurried down the hall to Vicki’s room where she discovered her daughter snuggled into her bright coverlet, her small heart-shaped face as peaceful as an angel’s. Something poignant and sad passed through her as she bent to kiss her daughter’s temple. Today Vicki would find out that life wasn’t always warm puppies and frisky colts.

      After slipping into the slippers she’d left by the bed earlier, Karen headed toward the kitchen and the aroma of fresh-perked coffee. Double-strength and black as the road to hell, she thought as she poured herself a cup. Moments later she was standing by the kitchen window, staring out at the still-darkened buildings, while she waited for the caffeine to wake up her tired brain.

      There should be a light in the barn, she realized with a fuzzy frown. Although it was still too early for the hands to begin showing up, Cassidy had a rule about checking things out early. By the time Billy and the others arrived, he would have his gelding fed and saddled, and the day planned out for each man.

      No doubt he was waiting to break the news to Vicki before he started his day, she decided, taking another greedy sip. It wouldn’t be easy for either of them, but she trusted Cassidy to break the news gently. That realization made her sigh. The tenderness he showed their daughter never failed to move her. And dammit, it made her ache inside because she wanted some of that tenderness for herself.

      A few seconds later, her cup gripped in one hand, she approached Cassidy’s office. The polished pine door was ajar, and light from within spilled into the shadowed hall in a long, thin wedge. Like the man himself, the room was unpretentious and spare. Everything had a purpose—his accounting books, breeding logs, a top-of-the-line computer that he hated but used with precise skill.

      The desk itself was a one-of-a-kind treasure, a massive slab of western pine fully eight feet long, crosscut by some gigantic saw blade long ago and darkened by age and hard wear. One corner, СКАЧАТЬ