Forever After (14 page)

He gathered her to him and held tightly.  And then he kissed her again, and again, and again, until she wiggled her hips against his, searching for the answer to her need.  But Seth wouldn't let her hurry him.  He pushed her back and studied her kiss-swollen lips.  His tongue flicked from freckle to freckle on her shoulders, over the upper slope of her breast, around the plumper side, along the sweet curve underneath, and back up again until she seemed to be dying for his lips on her nipple.

The rosy bud was hard and extended.  With flickers of his tongue, he slowly wet it, and then blew across it, his breath tightening it further.  She cried out.  He assuaged her need with his lips and tongue.  While he sucked gently, his hand rippled over her stomach, along her ribs, and found her other breast.  He rolled the nub between his thumb and forefinger until she arched against his hands.

"Seth, I want you so.  Do you know what you're doing to me?"

His voice was hoarse as he stopped.  "I want to drive you wild with need."

"I do need you," she gasped.

"But you're going to need me even more."  His long fingers drifted to the nest of red hair, cupped the mound, inveigled into the dampness, unerringly finding the most secret, sensitive softness.  His name was a loud cry on her lips.

His arousal throbbed harder with her cry.  "Does that feel good?"

"Oh, Seth I can't tell you..."

"Tell me, sweetheart."  His fingers probed, provoked, aroused.

"It's incredible," she stammered.  "I never felt like I was going to explode if you don't...don't..."

"Don't?" he prompted.

"Fill me," she gasped.  "Please fill me."

Instead of giving her what she wanted, he kissed her stomach, parted her legs and knelt between them.  He watched her face as he scrolled intricate designs along her inner thighs and she writhed toward his hand.

When his lips took the same path, she almost sat upright.  "No.  I can't let you."

His eyes bored to her soul.  "Yes, you can.  I'm going to make love to you."  He pushed her shoulders back down.  Again his lips showered her upper thighs with kisses until she slackened and surrendered to the pleasure he longed to give her.  His lips and tongue found the focus of her desire--toyed, laved, loved.

Darcy shuddered as thrills pulsated within her.  She began a steady climb toward an unseeable goal.  She didn't know where she was going but she knew if she got there, it would be wonderful.  She wanted to touch Seth, needed to touch him, couldn't bear not to have his heat in her hands.  She grabbed his shoulders, twirled her fingers in his hair, breathed his name in a litany.  Her ascent became all-consuming as she floated from plane to plane, higher and higher until she could almost see the peak.  Her whole body pricked with vibrant needles until she felt suspended over a black abyss.  Suddenly she was catapulted into the sublime.  She called Seth's name to let him know the ecstasy she'd found.

Seth's breath fanned across her cheek when he settled beside her.  "How do you feel?"

She stroked his chin.  "Wonderful.  Oh, Seth.  I feel wonderful.  It was so beautiful."  She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, but intuition told her the time wasn't right.

"It will be again, bright eyes."

And it was.  Seth kissed, grazed, brushed, until Darcy was again at fever pitch, driven by a passion that matched his.  He inventoried each mole, every slope, until he knew her body as well as his own.  He encouraged her with low seductive words until she learned his angles and planes, the hardness of some parts of his body, the velvet sensitivity of others.  Seth prolonged their pleasure until a sheet of moisture glistened between them.  When they fused into one, he thrust slowly, shallowly, pulled back, then with eager descent embedded himself deeper.

Too far gone to care how wanton she was, Darcy wrapped her legs around his hips.  He filled her with hard pleasure.  She watched the sweet agony on his face as she gripped him securely, loving him with her softness.  The approaching rapture shone from his eyes as she met each drive until they harmonized into a melody of motion, instinctively pleasing each other.  As the pace quickened, the crescendo built chord by chord, until the tension burst into a crashing climax and swells of tidal wave proportion swept over her again and again, drowning her in the ecstasy of the moment.  Seth's strangled groan and spasmodic tremors increased her joy, and she welcomed his collapsed weight, replete and happier than she'd ever been in her life.

***

Seth lay beside Darcy.  Awake.  As he'd been most of the night.  He was still stunned by the touching, the caring, the explosiveness that had lasted long into the morning.

He'd thought once they'd made love, the hunger would disappear or at least diminish.  But it hadn't.  The need was back, sharper, more vehement than before.  How could that be?

Yes, she'd cuddled close to him through the night as if she belonged in the curve of his body.   Yes, she'd thrown her leg over his and murmured his name against his shoulder as she slept.  Her fragrance and the scent of their loving aroused him.  The feel of her skin against his aroused him.  Her soft sighs aroused him.  Everything about her aroused him.  And not only physically.  He felt protective of her.  When he'd seen Brad Winston so close to her...

Darcy could stand up for herself.  She'd proven that over and over.  So why did he want to protect her?

He was confused, out of sorts, uncomfortable.  Why?  Darcy was everything he could want in a woman, a man's fantasy come true.  So why was he feelings so damned...vulnerable?  Was that the word?  If he could name it, he could control it.

But the questions kept coming.  Why was he still here in the morning?  Why hadn't he slipped from her arms while she was sleeping and gone home?  Why had he needed to wake up with her?  Damn this need he didn't understand!

He shifted and moved away more forcefully than he'd intended.

Awakening, Darcy opened her eyes and smiled.  "Good morning."  Moving closer, she stroked his arm.

"We can't," he said bluntly.  "We ran out of condoms."

Her smiled vanished as she snatched back her hand and looked hurt.  "I just wanted to touch you.  I didn't expect..."  At his raised brow, she admitted, "Okay.  Maybe I did.  But you're right.  The last thing I want is to get pregnant again."

Her comment hit him between the eyes and he felt as if he was in bed with a stranger.  "Again?  You had a baby?"

"No, I..."

The unthinkable rammed him in the gut.  "You had an abortion?"

"No," she yelped, and he could see she was appalled he could even think such a thing.

"Tell me what happened," he ordered in a lawyer's voice devoid of emotion.

She looked as if she was going to tell him to go to hell, but then evidently changed her mind.  "After Gary left, I found out I was pregnant.  Six weeks later I had a miscarriage."

"He didn't even come back when he found out you were pregnant?"  Why hadn't she told him this before?  Why had she kept this from him?

"I didn't tell him."

He could hardly believe the words she'd just spoken.  This was Darcy?  The woman he'd thought was more honest than any he'd met?  What a crock!  "Let me get this straight.  You didn't tell the father you were having his baby?"

"It was my baby."

"It takes two people to procreate, not one.  And both of those individuals have rights."

"What gives you the right to judge me?"

She was trying to make him the heavy.  "You plotted to keep a child away from his father.  I've spent my adult life trying to make sure that doesn't happen to a man," he bit out, unable to keep his contempt to himself.

Darcy's green eyes shot fiery darts.  Seth could see she was furious.  He braced himself and clenched his jaw.

The sheet had slipped below her breasts.  She yanked it to her chin.  "Gary had a good time with me for a summer.  He told me he loved me or I never would have gone to bed with him.  I thought we had a future.  But every time I brought up the subject of children, he said kids weren't part of his plans.  I found out why the day he told me good-bye, the day he told me he was going back to his fiancee, to the woman he'd always intended to marry.  He said he didn't love me, that he'd never loved me.  Why do you think he would have cared about our child?"

Seth remembered his father's anguish when the judge handed down his verdict.  "What made you think you had exclusive rights to the baby?"

Her voice rose to match his.  "I was protecting myself and the baby.  Gary wanted a career on Broadway and his fiancee.  He'd only come to Hershey to work seven days a week, get experience, and save money.  He lied to me.  He never loved me!"

With the deadly calm that made Seth treacherous in the courtroom, he concluded, "The man had the right to know.  And because you chose not to tell him, you probably put yourself under needless stress.  Maybe if you'd informed him, you wouldn't have lost the baby!"

Seth's words resounded off the walls.  Darcy's expression broadcast the excruciating pain his blow had delivered.  One look into her eyes was all Seth could take.  He swore and swung his legs over the side of the bed, shoved himself up, and out of the room.

Darcy shivered.  She felt cold, abandoned, lost.  She'd suspected he'd react like this.  That's why she'd kept putting off telling him.  But she had the feeling more was going on than what she'd kept from Gary.

Did Seth feel betrayed she hadn't told him sooner?  How could she expect honesty from him when she hadn't been completely honest?  Or was there more to his reaction than even betrayal?

Last night Seth had been tender, loving, passionate, everything she'd ever dreamed of.  This morning, before she'd even mentioned the pregnancy, something had changed.  Did he regret last night?  Why?  She was no seductress, but she knew she'd pleased him.  Now that he'd chased and caught her, was the challenge gone?  Was he ready to move on and just needed an excuse?

So much for trust.  It would never grow if they didn't work this out.

She hopped out of bed, grabbed her pink satin robe from the closet, and belted it tight.  Descending the steps, she heard sounds in the kitchen and headed that way.  Seth was scooping coffee into the coffee maker and his back was to her.  He'd pulled on his slacks but his upper torso was bare.

A wave of love and desire made Darcy's legs feel shaky.  She stood in the doorway, not knowing how to approach him.  She reminded herself she'd never run away from anything and she wasn't going to start now.

Crossing to him, her bare feet soundless on the yellow blocked linoleum, she laid her hand on his arm.  "Seth?"

When he turned slightly in acknowledgement, she glimpsed sadness there, possibly disappointment.  But he banished it, his eyes becoming cold grey chips of glass.  He poured the pot of water into the back of the dripolator then set the Pyrex container on the heating unit. 

Flicking the switch, he said in a monotone, "I thought I'd get breakfast started.  Do you want eggs or just toast and coffee?"

Huh uh.  She wasn't going to let him pretend nothing had happened.  "Neither.  I want you to understand me and I want to understand you."

At that he faced her, his expression grim.  "Look, Darcy, I think we'd better forget what we said upstairs.  We've got the here and now.  The past isn't important."

"Oh, don't be an idiot," she exploded, frustrated by his cool analysis.  "Your past made you what you are, my past made me what I am.  We don't have a here and now unless we can talk about them."

His hands slipped into his back waistband and he looked out the window instead of at her.  He'd always been in control of his emotions.  But Darcy had an effect on them, too much of an effect.  As always, her candor threw him off balance.  "I don't want to talk about the past.  There's no point."

"Okay, so don't talk about your past.  But I want you to listen to mine.  Will you?"

He rubbed his fingers up and down his chin.  Then he inspected her.  Her hair was sleep-tousled around her face.  He'd heard redheads shouldn't wear pink, but she looked deliciously feminine in the robe that outlined her curves all too well.  Her eyes were imploring and her lips, capable of nuances of laughter and shadows of frowns, were pale and tightened into a line as she waited for his answer.  She was the best thing to come into his life since he could remember.

His fingers reached out involuntarily and untangled a wave behind her ear.  "Okay.  Let's go sit down."

Seth followed her to the living room, all too aware she was naked under the pink satin.  When she sat on the loveseat, he made sure he was at least six inches from her.  Darcy curled one leg under her and met his gaze without hesitating.

"I'm listening," he said gently.

She toyed with the sash of her robe.  "I told you I was close to my dad.  After Mom died, our relationship became even more special.  There was nothing too big or too small that I couldn't discuss with him.  I remember telling him how disappointed I was with my first kiss.  I was seventeen and because the earth didn't spin, I thought there was something wrong with me.  But he explained that with the right man, the earth would move and I'd know in my heart the kiss was everything it could be."

She sighed.  "I was more occupied with engines than with boys.  I could understand cars much better."