She reached up to silence him with her lips on his. Finally releasing his mouth, she said, “You said something disgustingly similar the first night I woke up next to you.”
“You were a virgin.” He nibbled at her neck. “God knows how you had maintained that status.” He nibbled at the other side of her neck. “Actually, it scared the hell out of me.”
“You never told me that.”
“What if I had hurt you? The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, sweet. I just wanted to make love to you. Twenty-four hours a day.”
“You did,” she commented idly, loving his smile. But he didn’t really mean that smile. They were both trying to prolong a pleasure that could have erupted too easily and been lost. Part of the sweetness of marriage was knowing each other that way, and that well. There was a time for a fifteen-minute love session, and a time for lovemaking that took hours. “Kyle…”
She didn’t want to wait for hours. She wanted him at that moment more than life. He shifted over her, crushing her swollen breasts to his chest. Her hands were feverish up and down his back, the longing an insistent rhythm, a bittersweet anguish of need. His skin was so warm, both familiar and brand-new, his arousal like fire between them.
For one last instant, he drew back to look at her. The teasing in his eyes had been replaced by an intensity that burned as he surveyed the restless color in her cheeks, the luminous gold in her eyes, the moonlight burnishing a gold on the cream of her skin. For a moment, they were both still, and Erica felt a shiver that trembled all through her. Suddenly she was unsure. They both knew what was to happen; it wasn’t that. It was the sudden fierce possessiveness in his eyes, a need so stark it seemed almost desperate… Instinctively, she reached up to touch his cheek in the darkness. “Kyle, you didn’t force me here. I wanted to be here, with you…like this.”
“God, I need you. I don’t know how to tell you, Erica…”
There was no more play, no more languid, sensual climb. The urge was to join, a mutually primitive drive as basic as breath…as love. Their mating was how she had always understood their marriage at core. He was the stronger, with powers distinctly male, his control dominant and deliberate in love as it was in life…but it was when he lost his control that Erica burst inside.
She complemented him perfectly. Her powers were distinctly feminine. She could cloak his strength inside her softness, take his fierce drive within her. She gave him everything; it was her nature. She drew from him his strength, his power, his control, his protection. Her trust was total, and had been from the beginning; she felt cherished in his keeping, which was the reason he was able to take her so high, the reason she felt freed in loving…
He brought tears to her eyes, a cry from her lips…and then he simply held her, their bodies still joined, their hearts beating in the same triumphant rhythm, gradually slowing at the same pace.
The night finally settled silence on both of them. Erica’s cheek rested on his shoulder, her limbs were entwined with his, and the cool sheet cocooned them in a private world. Kyle slept. She thought again, her eyes wide open in the darkness, that their mating was their marriage. Their lovemaking had always worked; at the worst of times, other emotions had intruded, but he had never failed to demand-and receive-the most from her, knowing her secrets. A woman’s body was created with secrets, none of which she could keep and be a woman. That he understood, and she understood, too, that her loving him was right, so enmeshed in her nature that it was as instinctive as desire, as wanting and needing and breathing.
It would not just…smash. If there was really so much terribly wrong with their marriage, their loving should not have worked. It made no sense. Kyle’s touch was loving, had never failed to be loving through their whole crisis together. She held on to that long into the night.
Chapter 11
It was just past three. Erica could not remember a Wednesday so quiet. Kyle had sent the men home, this time for good. Whatever still had to be finished on the new building they could do themselves. An hour before there had been shouts of congratulations and satisfaction, and then sounds of engines starting as the men left.
Now there was no one but herself, not even a sign of Morgan or Kyle. Erica had grown so accustomed to the sounds made by hammers and saws and power tools that the quiet seemed strange. She’d stood in the doorway for an age watching the men take off in their trucks. They were mostly college students. It wasn’t a town that had an abundance of summer employment for school kids, beyond those whose parents needed them on their own farms. They had been a good group. They had complained loudly that Kyle was a slave driver, and he had complained loudly that they didn’t know a nail from a screwdriver, which they had vigorously and in detail protested when Erica was not supposed to be within hearing range.
She’d offered to make lunch for the entire group more than once, but they’d preferred to cart their girlfriends to the site, eating sandwiches sprawled on the grass, preferably as nearly naked as possible. They worked the same way, though she guessed the heat wave was not so much a factor as their vanity. They wanted to get the darkest tan possible to impress the girls. On the job, though, they had caved under to Kyle, put their all into the work, and what good-natured complaints had been shouted did not take away from the essential respect they had shown him.
He’d earned that. She’d never seen him fail to earn the respect of the people he worked with, but the kids were still something special. They were amateurs, and they made mistakes, but Kyle had developed a sense of pride in them as they learned. It was their building; she knew they felt that way as she walked toward it now. The anticipation and frenetic pace of weeks had finally peaked.
Lord, she was proud of him.
The lemon sun shimmered on the new windowpanes, on the rough grayish siding that blended right into the wooded area beyond. Kyle had known exactly what he wanted and had done it, and the new building was a fine, tasteful structure that still had the scent of newness to it, the stuff of which dreams are made. She opened the door, imagining a customer doing it, imagining a hundred customers doing it. Teak and mahogany, catalpa and pine, oak, of course, even wicker from willows… First, the customer would see finished products, from sculptures to cabinets, each fashioned from the wood that most suited its form and function.
A compact, well-lit office was just beyond. Erica walked through, imagining the finished floor where there were only bare boards now, seeing in her mind’s eye displays on the walls where there was nothing yet, imagining samples of wood, the unique tools of the trade… Her sandals clicked on the floor as she walked through.
Kyle was standing at the very back of the building, staring out the window with his hands on his hips and his head high. He turned when he heard her footstep. There was no smile on his face, but a look of satisfaction was in his eyes. The moment’s triumph and his dreams were emblazoned there. She caught her breath when he so naturally reached out his hand for her.
She covered the last few steps with a radiant smile and took his hand.
“You see my lumberyard, don’t you? That’ll be part of it, in the long run.” He pointed out the window. There was, of course, nothing there. A cleared space where a good-sized truck could back in to unload supplies. The drive was gravel, not asphalt yet. A rather scruffy stand of poplars was beyond that, and then a nice little stand of oak, hickory and maple.
“I see it.”