Man of Ice (19 page)

Only then, only when he felt her body convulse in the final spasms of completion did he drive fiercely for his own fulfillment. It was as before, spasms of aching pleasure that built and built and suddenly blazed in his taut body in an explosion of heat and light, making him mindless, shapeless, formless. He was part of her, as she was part of him. There was nothing in the world, only the two of them. Only…this…!

* * *

He saw the ceiling without seeing it. He was lying on his back, still trembling from the violence of his satisfaction. He could hear Barrie breathing raggedly. He could feel the dampness of her body where it lay so close and so far from his.

“They say that muscular contractions that violent could break bones without the narcotic of ecstasy to make them bearable,” he remarked drowsily when he had his breath back.

She didn’t say anything. She was lying on her stomach, half-dead with pleasure and so miserable that she wanted to hide. Sex. Only sex. He hadn’t said a word, all the while, and now he was treating her to a scientific explanation of sexual tension.

He rolled over onto his side and looked at her. She averted her face, but he pulled her against him and tilted her chin up.

“Well, do you still want to leave me after
that?
” he asked. “Or would you like to try and convince me that all those outrageous, shocking things you whispered to me were the result of a bad breakfast…Barrie!”

She’d torn out of his arms in a mad dash for the bathroom, and only barely made it in time. She knelt there, her heart breaking in her chest, her eyes red with tears, while she lost her breakfast and everything in between.
The monster!
The monster, taunting her about a response she couldn’t help! And where had he learned such skills anyway, the licentious, womanizing…!

While she was thinking it, she was saying it.

Dawson wrapped a towel around his waist and with a resigned sigh, he wet a facecloth and knelt beside her. When the nausea finally passed, he bathed her face and carried her back to bed, tucking her gently under the sheet.

“I want my clothes.” She wept. “I can’t leave like this!”

“No problem there. Because you aren’t leaving.” He picked up her clothes, opened the window and threw them out.

She lay in a daze, watching him perform the most irrational act of their long acquaintance. She actually gasped out loud.

He calmly closed the window. Below there was a loud squeal of brakes. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “That lacy bra probably landed on some poor soul’s windshield and shocked him into panic,” he mused. “You shouldn’t wear things like that in your condition, anyway. It’s scandalous.”

She held the sheet tucked against her while she struggled with the possibility that Dawson’s mind had snapped.

He laughed softly as he stood over her, the towel just barely covering his lean hips. Her expression amused him. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Her hand clenched on the cool cotton fabric. “I didn’t bring a change of clothes,” she said stiffly. “And now even my underwear—my underwear, for God’s sake!—is out there being handled by total strangers! How am I supposed to leave the room, much less the hotel?”

“You aren’t,” he replied. His eyes slid over her soft, faintly tanned shoulders and he smiled. “God, you’re pretty,” he said. “You take my breath away without your clothes.”

She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure it would help the situation.

He sat down beside her with a rueful smile. “I guess I can’t expect you to understand everything at once, can I?” He smoothed back her hair and his eyes were tender on her pale face. “While you’re struggling with your situation, I’ll have them send up something to settle your stomach. How about some strawberry ice cream and melon?”

Her favorite things. She hadn’t realized that he knew. She nodded slowly.

“And some hot tea.”

“The caffeine…”

“Cold milk,” he amended, smiling.

She nodded again.

He picked up the phone, punched room service and gave the order. Then he went to his suitcase and pulled out one of his nice, clean shirts and laid it on the bed within reach. “I don’t wear pajamas,” he said. “But that will make you decent when room service comes.”

“How about you?” she asked uncomfortably.

He gave her a rueful look. “No guts?” he chided. “Don’t want to be seen with a naked man, even if you’re married to him?”

She flushed.

“And you were calling me a prude.” He got up, tossed the towel onto a chair and pulled on his slacks.

“Better?” he asked when he’d fastened the belt in place around them.

Better. She stared at him with pure pleasure, her eyes drifting over his broad, hair-covered chest down to his narrow waist and lean hips and long, powerful legs. He even had nice feet. She loved looking at him. But that was going to get her in trouble again so she averted her eyes to the bed.

He knew why. He sat back down with a long, heavy sigh and smoothed his big, warm hand over her bare shoulder. It was cool and damp to the touch. Her face was too pale, and a little pinched.

“Go ahead,” he invited. “Look at me. It doesn’t matter anymore. I suppose I told you all there was to tell last night. I don’t remember too much of what I said, but I’m sure I was eloquent,” he added bitterly.

She lifted her eyes warily to meet his. She didn’t say anything, but her face was sad and resigned and without life.

He grimaced. “Barrie…”

She burrowed her face into the pillow and gripped it. “Leave me alone,” she whispered miserably. “You’ve had what you wanted, and now you hate me all over again. It’s always the same, it’s always…!”

He had her up in his arms, close, bruisingly close. His face nuzzled against her soft throat through a cushion of thick wavy dark hair. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I love you more than my own life! Damn it, isn’t that enough?”

It was what he’d said last night, but he was sober now. She wanted so badly to believe it! But she didn’t trust him. “You don’t want to love me,” she whimpered, clinging closer.

He sighed heavily, as if he was letting go of some intolerable burden. “Yes, I do,” he said after a minute, and he sounded as if he were defeated. “I want you and our baby. I want to hold you in the darkness and make love to you in the light. I want to kiss away the tears and share the good times. But I’m afraid.”

“Not you,” she whispered, smoothing the hair at his nape. “You’re strong. You don’t feel fear.”

“Only with you,” he confessed. “Only
for
you. I never had a weakness until you came along.” His arms contracted. “Barrie,” he said hesitantly, “if I lose you, I can’t live.”

Her heart jumped. “But, you aren’t going to lose me!” she said. “I’m not going to walk out on you. I didn’t really mean it. I thought you wanted me to go.”

“No!” he said huskily, lifting his head. He looked worried. Really worried. He traced her soft cheek. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I could lose you when you have the baby.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake…!” she exclaimed, stunned.

“Women do still die in childbirth,” he muttered uncomfortably. “My mother…did.”

She was learning things about him that she would never have dared ask, that she hadn’t known at all. She searched his eyes slowly. “Your mother died in childbirth?”

He nodded. “She was pregnant. She didn’t want to be, and she tried to have an abortion, but my father found out and made so many threats about cutting off the money she liked to spend that she gave in. She went into labor and something went wrong. They were out of the country, on a trip she’d insisted on taking even that late in her pregnancy. The only medical care available was at a small clinic. It was primitive, there was only an intern there at the time.” He sighed heavily. “And she died. He loved her, just as he’d loved your mother. It took him years to get over it. He felt responsible. So would I, if something happened to you.”

Her fingers twined around his. It was humbling to realize that he loved her that much. He didn’t want to get rid of her at all. He’d gone to the other extreme. He was terrified that he might lose her.

“I’m strong and healthy and I want this baby. I want to live,” she said softly. “I couldn’t leave you, Dawson,” she added firmly. “Not even to die.”

He looked down into her wet eyes and his face was strained, taut. He looked so stoic and immovable that it shocked her when he traced her mouth with a finger that wasn’t quite steady.

“You’ll learn to trust me one day,” she said softly. “You’ll learn that I’ll never deliberately hurt you, or belittle you, or try to make you feel less of a man because you care about me. And our child will never be mocked or spoken to with sarcasm.”

His hand stilled on her face. “And you won’t leave me,” he added with a bitter laugh.

She smiled. “No,” she said gently. “I have no life without you.” She took his hand and slid it under the cover to lie on the soft, bare swell of her stomach. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “We have a future to think about.”

“A future.” His hand flattened where she’d placed it. “I guess I’m going to have to stop living on bad memories. It’s hard.”

“The first step is to look ahead,” she told him.

He shrugged. He began to smile. “I suppose so. How far ahead?”

“To the nearest department store,” she said with sudden humor. “I can’t spend the day without underwear!”

He pursed his lips and for the first time since she’d arrived, he looked relaxed. “Why not?” he asked. “Are you sore already?”

She stared up at him uncertainly.

“Are you?” he persisted, and his hand moved insinuatingly. “Because I want to make love again.”

“It’s broad daylight,” she said pointedly.

His broad shoulders rose and fell. “It was broad daylight a few minutes ago,” he reminded her. His face was solemn. “You kept your eyes closed. Don’t do it again. I won’t make any more snide remarks about it. I’m sorry I made you ashamed of wanting to watch something so beautiful.”

She wasn’t sure how to take this apparent change in him. She searched his pale eyes, but there were no more secrets there. He wasn’t hiding anything from her.

“I know,” he murmured ruefully. “You don’t quite trust me, either, do you? But we’ll work it out.”

“Can we?”

The knock at the door interrupted what he might have replied. Barrie quickly slipped on his shirt and buttoned it while he let the waiter in, signed the bill and handed the man a tip on his way out.

“Take that off,” he murmured when he’d locked the door again, nodding toward the shirt.

“I won’t,” she replied.

“Yes, you will. But we’ll let your stomach get settled first,” he conceded. He picked up the small dish of homemade strawberry ice cream and sat down on the bed, lifting half a spoonful of it to her lips.

She was surprised, and looked it.

“You fed me when I had the wreck,” he reminded her. “Turnabout is fair play.”

“I’m not injured,” she replied.

“Yes, you are,” he said quietly. “Right here.” He put the spoon into the hand holding the small crystal goblet and with his free hand he touched her soft breast through the shirt. He felt its immediate response, but he didn’t follow up. He lifted the spoon again to her mouth. “Come on,” he coaxed. “It’s good for you.”

She had a sudden picture of Dawson with a toddler, smiling just like that, coaxing food into a stubborn small mouth and she managed a watery smile as she took the ice cream.

“What are you thinking about?” he wondered.

“A little mouth that doesn’t want medicine or spinach,” she said quietly.

He understood her. His eyes darkened, but not with irritation. He took a long breath and held another spoonful of ice cream to her mouth. Eventually he smiled. “I guess I might as well learn to change diapers and give bottles, too,” he mused softly.

“No bottles,” she said firmly. “I want to nurse the baby.”

His hand stilled halfway to her mouth. He searched her eyes, shocked at the way the statement aroused him.

She could tell from the tautness of his body and the darkness of his eyes, from the faint flush across his cheekbones what he was feeling. She felt her own breath catch in her throat. She could see him in her mind, watching as she nursed the baby…

“You’re trembling,” he said unsteadily.

She moved restlessly and a self-conscious laugh passed her lips. “I was thinking about you watching me with the baby,” she said shyly.

“So was I.”

She let her eyes fall to his hard mouth, tracing the firm, sensuous lips. She caught her breath as a wave of hunger swept over her body.

“Good God.” He whispered it reverently. He set the goblet aside carefully, because his hands weren’t steady. And when he turned back to her, she had the shirt open. She pulled the edges aside, red-faced and taut, and watched him as he looked at her hard-tipped breasts.

Shakily her hands went to his face and she tugged as she lay back on the bed, dragging his mouth to her breast. He suckled her hungrily, fiercely, pressing her back into the mattress with a pressure that was nothing short of headlong passion.

“I’m too hungry. I’ll hurt you,” he warned off, as he gave in to it.

“No, you won’t.” She drew him closer, arching under the heat of his mouth. “Oh, Dawson, Dawson, it’s the sweetest sensation!”

“You taste of rose petals,” he growled. “God, baby, I don’t think I can hold it back this time!”

“It’s all right,” she repeated breathlessly. Her hands helped him get the fabric out of the way. She moved, fixed her body to his, helped him, guided him into sudden, stark intimacy. It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.

He felt the ease of his possession and lifted his head to look into her eyes as he levered above her, softly kissing her. “I’ll let you…watch,” he whispered, shivering as he felt the tension building in his loins. “I don’t mind. I love you. I love you, Barrie. I love you…!”

She watched his face tauten, the flush that spread to his cheekbones as his eyes began to dilate and the movements quickened into fierce, stark passion. He lifted his chest away from hers, his teeth clenched.

“Look…” he managed before he lost control completely.