Magic (15 page)

Bryan’s control broke with a snap that was almost audible. In the next instant, Rachel found herself on her back, staring up at him as he peeled away the last of her clothes. He stood and shucked his pants. Notes flew from the pockets like confetti as he flung the trousers aside.

He settled himself beside her then, his gaze flowing over her with a heat that seemed scorching in its intensity, and his hand followed the path his gaze had burned along her skin. He caressed her breasts with exquisite care, teasing them to a sensitivity that was nearly unbearable. Only when she began to beg him did he lower his head and take one taut peak into his mouth. At the same instant he swept a hand down over her quivering belly to the apex of her thighs and eased a finger inside her.

Rachel’s hips leapt off the floor, arching into his touch in rhythm to the tug of his mouth on her breast. She moaned, but didn’t recognize the sound as her own. The sensations building inside her were incredible and overwhelming as they intensified. The coil of desire tightened in her belly with each hard pull of his mouth on her nipple, with each deep stroke of his finger. When his thumb moved to rub against her most sensitive flesh, she was certain she would explode, but still the feelings built. She tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged, frantic in a way she had never experienced.

“Bryan, please,” she said with a gasp. “I want more. I want all of you. Please.”

He needed no more invitation than that. His own body, so long denied, was screaming for release. He knelt between her parted thighs, struggling to draw breath as he looked down at her. She was everything a man wanted in the woman he loved—open to him, eager for him, her hips arched up toward him in invitation. Grinding his teeth, he fought for some measure of control, reached for her hand, and closed it around his throbbing shaft.

“Guide me, Rachel,” he whispered.

He kissed her as she led him into her body, his tongue delving into the dark warmth of her mouth as his maleness slid into the tight warmth of her womanhood. He groaned as she took him into her measure by measure, her breath catching at each small thrust until he was fully embedded inside her.

Again Rachel felt that sense of coming home, which seemed odd considering she was on the verge of shattering into a million shards. She thought she should have been terrified, teetering on the brink of something she knew instinctively would be overwhelming, but she wasn’t. With Bryan she felt safe. He would be there to catch her. He would be there to gather the pieces together again. He might not be there over the long haul, but he was there now. Oh, was he there now!

“Oh, Bryan,” she moaned in rapture, rolling her hips into his. “You’re so …”

“I know,” he managed to say through his teeth, gasping as her body tightened around him. “Am I too …?”

“No. It’s wonderful.” Oh, so wonderful. But it was nothing compared to what she felt when he began to move.

He eased nearly out of her, then thrust deep and hard. His chest heaved like a bellows as he levered himself above her on his arms and repeated the process. Sweat beaded on his forehead and chest as he struggled with the effort to hold back. It had been so long, and he wanted her so badly. He could feel his climax rushing toward him like a freight train. He eased out of her again and reached between them as he began what he knew would be his final thrust, teasing her already sensitive flesh as he buried himself inside her.

Rachel bit her lip, fighting back the cry of completion as her hips strained upward against his and he took her over the brink. The explosion that rocked her went on and on. Her consciousness dimmed as she clutched at Bryan’s back. He had collapsed against her, spent, and she hung on to him as the sensation of floating filled her with a sweet golden bliss.

This was making love. This was magic.

Magic, she mused, a tender smile curving her lips. Maybe there was such a thing after all.

Bryan rolled onto his back, holding Rachel to him so that she ended up sprawled on his chest. Their bodies were still joined, and he savored every aftershock of the shattering climax she had experienced. He ran a hand over the pale silken curtain of her hair.

“I’d break into song, but I think I’m beyond words,” he murmured.

He pressed a kiss to her temple and hugged her tight, a fierce sense of rightness surging through him. Fear came close on its heels. He felt so certain about this love growing within him for Rachel, but did Rachel feel that way about him? Had she merely given in to the feelings overwhelming her? After the day she’d had with Addie and with the prospective buyers for the house, had she simply not possessed the strength to fight the attraction? Or had she needed a chance to escape it all for a few glorious moments? Perhaps the thing that frightened him most was that he wasn’t so sure he cared what her motives had been. The love he felt for her was growing so that he was ready to accept her on whatever terms she wanted.

The seed of love was there in her heart. He knew that. Or was it just what he wanted to believe?

“Rachel,” he murmured, his heart pounding. “If you’re going to regret this, tell me now.”

Rachel lifted her head, brushing her hair back behind one ear. She stared down at him, her heart aching at the vulnerability she saw in his eyes. “No,” she whispered. “No regrets. I have too many of them already. I don’t regret making love with you, Bryan.”

She regretted that it wouldn’t last. She regretted that her future wouldn’t include him and his crazy magic tricks and his contagious optimism. But she wouldn’t regret anything that passed between them. She would take what time she had with Bryan and make the most of it, and she would cherish the memories afterward, but she wouldn’t regret a minute of it.

Bryan looked up into her dark eyes and smiled sadly. It didn’t take a mind reader to see what she was thinking. He barely had to make use of his special gift, the gift that had slowly been returning to him in the time since he’d met Rachel and become a part of her life. She still didn’t believe in the magic they shared, but she would. Come hell or high water, she would. He would see to it.

“What?” she asked, startled by the sudden fierceness of his expression.

“I was just thinking,” he said, willing himself to relax. He pulled Rachel’s head down to his chest and stroked her hair as he might stroke a cat, rhythmically, absently, soothingly as he dredged up the courage to tell her what was in his heart.

“The first time I went to bed with a woman after my wife died I went into the bathroom afterward and threw up for half an hour. She was a nice lady, a colleague of mine, pretty. She … expressed an interest, and I … needed to.” He forced the words out, still uncomfortable with the memory. “It seemed harmless enough. We were taking care of each other’s needs. But when it was over, I felt so empty and so disgusted with myself, it literally made me sick. I told her I had the flu, but she knew better. I decided then and there that there wasn’t going to be a next time until I could honestly call it making love.”

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t get too comfortable?” Rachel asked with forced lightness. She pulled away from him a bit, raising her head, bracing herself.

For once Bryan didn’t grin or answer with a joke. He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m telling you I love you, Rachel. I’m telling you I’m feeling something I didn’t expect to feel again for a long, long time.” He rolled her beneath him again and stared down at her with undisguised hunger in his eyes. “I’m telling you I want to take you upstairs and make love to you until the sun comes up. What do you have to say about that?”

Say? She was supposed to say something? With her heart in her throat and her brain suddenly numb, she was supposed to think of something to say? She swallowed hard and raised her head as his mouth descended toward hers, and whispered just before their lips met. “I’m praying for an eclipse.”

Flowers. What a lovely dream. There were flowers everywhere. Rachel sighed and burrowed deeper into the soft mattress of the old bed, a smile curving her mouth. There were flowers of every kind and color, delicate wild blossoms with the softest, sweetest scents clinging to their petals. She could feel them against her, cool and dew-damp. They rained down on her and fluttered over every exposed inch of her skin like a hundred silken kisses. And Bryan was the magician responsible for this wonderful illusion.

She couldn’t see him in her dream, but Rachel knew he was the one responsible, just as she knew he was the one who had left a rose on her pillow every night since she’d come to Drake House.

Bryan. Her smile widened and she purred in almost feline appreciation as she stretched on the bed. As he’d promised, he had made love to her all night. While the rain had fallen outside the windows of her turret bedroom and the cold wind had howled, Bryan had warmed her with kisses and caresses. He had awakened in her a woman she had scarcely realized existed, a woman of uninhibited passion. He had taken her to heights she had only imagined and set her soul free from the past and the future.

The future. A cloud scudded across the surface of her dream. Now that she knew what real love was, it hurt worse to think of a future without it, but she pushed the thought aside. She had vowed to take no regrets with her when she left for San Francisco, so she concentrated instead on her dream and the flowers.

“Rachel.” His voice came to her through the soft fog of sleep. “Rachel.”

Stretching, she raised her eyelids to half mast and rolled onto her back. The light in the room was dim, but one thing was clear—it was snowing. She could see Bryan through the flakes falling down all around her. He was standing beside the bed, wearing his Jeans, his glasses, and a wickedly sexy smile. She wondered why he didn’t look cold, bare-chested in the snow.

Snow? Her drowsy brain struggled to function. They were in Drake House. It couldn’t possibly be snowing, not even in this strange place.

“Bryan?” she asked, coming more fully awake. She pushed herself up in bed, looking around, puzzlement creasing a little line between her eyebrows. “What in the …? Flowers!”

She laughed out loud in delight when she realized what he was doing. He was showering her with flowers! The petals covered the bed in multicolored drifts—pink and blue and violet and yellow and white. They clung to her skin and hair and to the ivory lace bodice of her nightgown. The cloud of fragrance rising from them was intoxicating.

Bryan dropped the last of the blooms and joined her on the bed, scooping her into his arms and rolling through the fragrant cloud, laughing as petals stuck to the lenses of his glasses. He leaned down and kissed her with enthusiasm and rising passion.

“Since you keep accusing me of bringing you flowers, I decided I might as well go all out,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. “Mmmm … they smell almost as good as you do.”

Rachel scooped up a handful and rubbed them down his bare back. “Where did you get them?”

He smiled as he rose up above her, but his gaze was hot as he lowered the thin straps of her peachy-pink negligee, baring her breasts. “Magic,” he said, his voice turning low and velvety as desire flared anew in his eyes.

As Rachel had done, he scooped up wildflowers in his hands and caressed her with them, crushing them as he cupped her breasts. He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking at that tender bud of flesh and the pansy petal that clung to it. His hands swept down her hips, tugging her nightgown up out of his way.

He turned onto his side and admired the view as he showered a handful of flower petals down on the bare skin of her belly and thighs. Sliding down on the bed, he blew gently across her abdomen, sending the buds skittering. With a purposeful look on his handsome face, he parted her legs and settled himself between them, planting kisses on the petals that clung to her inner thighs.

Rachel raised herself up on her elbows, her hair tumbling around her as she watched him, wrapped in sensual fascination stronger than any narcotic. With gentle fingers Bryan parted her most tender flesh and caressed her intimately with the bud of a wild rose. She gasped at the feel of velvet brushing her, cool and damp against her heat. He caressed her again, then lowered his head and tasted her, kissing her softly at first, hesitantly, increasing the pressure slowly, opening his mouth over her and stroking her with his tongue until she was sobbing at the intensity of her pleasure.

He kneeled then, and lifted her into his arms, pulling her against him and kissing her deeply. His lips trailed to her ear, where he traced the danity shell with the tip of his tongue and whispered, “And they taste almost as good as you do too.”

Rachel purred and arched against him. A languid smile lifted one corner of her mouth as she reached between them and undid Bryan’s zipper. She tugged the denim down his lean hips, scooped up two handfuls of flowers, and encased his manhood in cool soft petals, wringing a gasp from him. She stroked him with them as she planted kisses across his chest. Then it was her turn to gasp as he lifted her against him. She dropped the flowers, her hands going up automatically to his broad shoulders as he pulled her hips to his and joined their bodies once more.

The light in the room was considerably brighter when Rachel awoke for the second time. Bryan’s tousled head was on her breast, one of his long, hairy legs was thrown across both of her considerably smoother ones. He was humming the Notre Dame fight song in his sleep.

“Bryan,” she murmured softly. “Wake up.”

He grumbled and growled, finally lifting his head and pushing his glasses up on his nose. “What time is it?”

Rachel reached to the nightstand for his wrist-watch and peered at it, shaking her head. “Three-ten, Bryan Hennessy time. Do you ever intend to set this thing correctly?”

“Oh, sure,” Bryan said, hauling himself up to lean back against the ornately carved headboard. “I’m sure I wrote myself a note to do it.” He scratched his kneecap through the sheet, looking puzzled. “I wonder what became of that note.”

“It’s quarter to seven,” Rachel said, consulting her travel alarm.

Time to get up and face the day, she thought. Her gaze roamed over the tangle of sheets and flower petals, and she smiled. With a night like this last one to remember, the day wasn’t going to be quite so hard to face.