Snowed (21 page)

At last he held her away from himself, panting hard, clearly near the edge. He looked frenzied, untamed
—
his eyes passion-dark and penetrating, his long black hair in disarray, the muscles of his chest and shoulders tensed in expectation. Watching him, she felt a surge of need deep within her belly, like a cord tugging at the place that ached to be filled by him.

“Come here,” he said. It was a whisper but held the authority of a bellow. He pulled her down to the quilted bedspread. She trembled as his warm hand stroked her, relearning her, his featherlight touch driving her wild with need. His hand slid boldly downward and cupped her. She felt the electric heat of that caress right through her thin panties.

He drew off that last barrier and touched her again. Her ragged cry seemed to make him harder, hungrier. She heard his deep-throated groan of satisfaction at finding her ready for him.

“Leah...every night I dreamed of you lying under me, needing me as much as I needed you.” Even as he spoke, he moved over her, between her thighs. With a sob of longing she raised her hips, desperate to once more experience the rapture of being deeply joined with the man she loved.

He held himself back, staring down at her with a blue-fire gaze of unashamed love and devotion. When she thought she could stand the wait no longer, he buried himself in one fierce, swift thrust. She cried out in joy, clinging to him, wishing this moment could last forever, the magic moment when their bodies and souls melded and became one.

Then she remembered his proposal. The future could hold many such moments.

As if reading her thoughts, he whispered, “Marry me, Leah.” He slowly withdrew, nearly all the way, leaving her feeling empty, bereft. She writhed and twisted, but he held her fast. “Marry me,” he growled, plunging into her once more, extracting a shuddering moan from her as she drove up against him.

“Say yes,” he commanded, capturing her thrashing head in his strong fingers and making her look at him. “Say yes,” he repeated tenderly, his warm breath teasing her lips. His mouth closed over hers, stealing her last shred of rational thought.

Soon she was moving under him, around him, sprinting toward completion. Like two halves of a whole, the lovers drove into each other with delirious urgency, caught up in the tight, hot energy of unthinking motion.

Her panting gasps gave over to piercing cries as he brought her to the brink of release. She teetered on the precipice, poised to fall, reveling in the sweet torment of near completion until, with one final lunge, he pushed her over the edge into a shattering climax. Through her own keening cries of fulfillment she heard his answering roar as her release triggered his. He surged into her, rocking her body and her heart.

They remained locked together for long minutes, unable to move, listening to their breathing slow, feeling their sweat-slick bodies gradually cool. At last he groggily raised his head. He cleared his throat.

“What practical problems?”

She blinked. “What?”

He leaned on an elbow and brushed damp tendrils of hair off her face. “I intend to marry you, Leah. Don’t give me a hard time about this.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Spoken like someone accustomed to getting his way.”

“You said it yourself. I can be as muleheaded as you.”

“I have a feeling you could put me to shame in that department.” She turned her head and ran the tip of her tongue down the smooth, damp skin of his upper arm to the crook of his elbow, tasting salt. She gasped as his throbbing response reminded her he was still inside her.

“Don’t try to distract me,” he said. “I want to hear you say yes.”

“James, I won’t give up Harmony Grits.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, that.”

She tried to squirm away from him, only to find herself trapped in his unyielding embrace. “Yes, that! What do you think, that I worked like a dog for four years to establish a successful business just so I can
—
I can
—
” The gleam in his eye made her blood pressure soar. “Maybe you should give up your life’s work, give up photography and Whitewood, to come down here and live with me.”

He shrugged. “I wouldn’t complain. I could spend my days fixing Rototillers and my nights
—
” he pinned her wrists to the bed and kissed her hotly, pressing into her “
—
being your love slave.”

“Be practical, James.”

“No.”

She sighed. “I can’t run Harmony Grits from New York. Who’s going to buy southern foods from your mansion on Lawn Guyland? It’s not even on the South Shore.”

He grimaced at her pronunciation of Long Island. “You’ve spent too much time with Kara.”

“Damn it, James
—
”

“Let’s get one thing clear.” With obvious reluctance he rolled away from her to sit on the edge of the bed. He pushed his fingers through his hair. The room was now bathed in the gloomy gray of dusk and he turned on the bedside lamp. “You can run Harmony Grits from Whitewood, from Little Rock
—
from the moon, for all I care. As long as we’re together.”

She searched his eyes. “So you won’t expect me to give up my business?”

“And give up chowchow and green tomato pickles? You must be mad.” He grunted as her elbow found a tender spot between his ribs. “Seriously, Leah, you couldn’t have thought I’d expect you to give up what you’ve worked so hard for?”

“I guess I’m just a little sensitive on the subject.”

His voice became cajoling. “You know, we could heat the carriage barn, install some strong locks.” He stroked her cheek. “It would make a passable warehouse.”

She bit back a smile imagining her inventory filling the old barn. “I’ll think about it.”

“While you’re thinking about it, we’ll set a date. Won’t Merl and Douglas be surprised.”

She groaned. Merl and Douglas. What would they think when she announced their engagement? As far as they knew, she’d met her fiancé that very day. Worse, they assumed she was his half sister.

“Don’t worry.” He smiled, reading her mind. “I’ll help you explain it to them.”

“Thanks.”

“So does that mean yes?” he persisted.

“Are you giving me a choice?”

“No.”

“Then I guess it means yes.”

He whooped in triumph and gathered her up for a kiss. A thorough, cherishing kiss. Then he hopped off the bed and disappeared through the doorway, calling, “Wait here.” She propped a pillow on the blond wood headboard and sat against it. He returned almost immediately and sat next to her. “Back before we broke up, I designed an engagement ring for you.”

Leah swallowed a soft gasp.

“Well, with a little help from a jewelry artist,” he said. “You’ll get it eventually, but in the meantime
—
” from his closed fist he produced his mother’s diamond and pearl necklace “
—
perhaps this will do.” He slipped his fingers under her hair and fastened the clasp behind her neck as she struggled to find her voice.

“James!” She fingered the heavy jewels glittering on her chest, the teardrop pearl nestled between her breasts. “I
—
I couldn’t. You can’t!”

“The hell I can’t.” He lifted the pearl, his knuckles grazing her breasts, stoking the fire she thought they’d just quenched. His loving gaze locked on hers. “It’s fitting, Leah. Mom would’ve loved you. There’s no doubt about that. She certainly would’ve wanted the wife of her firstborn to have something special of hers.”

She bit her lip and looked down at the necklace sparkling against the alabaster of her skin. “I’ve never owned...Hell, I’ve never even
seen
anything like this close up,” she laughed through the tears misting her eyes.

“Nothing less would do for the woman I love.”

She searched his eyes. “I thought you’d hate me,” she said quietly.

He scowled. “Hate you?”

“You know. Because I’m his daughter.”

The look of unadulterated love that settled over his features chased away her last lingering doubts. “Foolish woman. I think you must love to torment yourself.” He sighed. “As for being the product of James Bradburn, Sr., I’m actually more his child than you are. He raised me, after all. I even followed in his professional footsteps.”

He lightly stroked her shoulder, trailed his fingers across her collarbone. “You know, besides you, he also fathered Mark and Luke, and I couldn’t love them more. They’re incredible guys. Which you’ll discover when you meet them. But no hanky-panky,” he warned with a wicked grin. “They really
are
your brothers!”

“My half brothers.”

“Mine, too, but a different half.”

“Oh my God.” A sudden realization galvanized her.

“What!”

“Oh my God!” She straightened.

“Leah, what is it?” His black brows drew together.

“I went off the Pill two months ago.”

His frown dissolved. He stretched out languorously. “Good.”

She looked down at her exasperating fiancé, who was busy playing with a lock of her hair, twisting it around his finger. “‘Good’?” She slapped his hand away. “What’s the matter with you?”

He was fast. In a split second he pulled her down to lie beneath him on the quilt.

“James, how can you
—
”

The light in his eyes caught her up short. She’d never seen just that particular glow before. It made her heart skip a beat
—
made her want to laugh and cry and crush him to her.

And never let him go.

“Don’t you want children?” he whispered. Before she could answer, he said, “If you don’t...that’s okay.” Despite his words, she could see that the prospect of a childless marriage pained him. “We don’t have to have kids. It’s you I want, Leah. You mean more to me than any
—
”

“Of course I want children, you fool.” She almost laughed at the look of relief on his face.

“Well, then, what’s the problem? I can teach him about fill light and photographic composition, and you can teach him how to tell a jalapeño from a serrano. And I’ll let you name him anything you like.
Except—
”

They spoke in unison. “
—
James Bradburn the Third.”

“A biblical name would be most appropriate, of course, to carry on the family tradition,” he soberly advised, his fingers straying to the exquisitely sensitive skin at the side of her breast. A little moan of pleasure escaped her and his touch became bolder.

“How about
—
oh!” The nipple stiffened between his fingertips. “Umm...Hezekiah?”

“Hezekiah it is. Does that mean yes?”

Leah smiled, hoping his seed had already found fertile ground. “Are you giving me a choice?”

“Hell no.”

“Then I guess it means yes.”

James grinned in triumph. “Time to get busy then, my meek and compliant wife.” He kissed her tenderly. “Mustn’t keep Hezekiah waiting.”

###

Sneak preview! Enjoy Chapter One of...

by Pamela Burford

Available as an e-book

Lucy woke with the munchies the night the kidnappers came for her. She padded down the curved staircase to her dark kitchen, where the stove clock’s LED display informed her it was 2:23 in the a.m.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.” She flicked on the overhead fluorescent. “You made it to the big four-oh.”

She poured a double small-batch bourbon on the rocks, nuked a bag of 94 percent fat-free popcorn, and polished off a partial pint of Cherry Garcia just as the last kernel detonated. She smiled. Timing is everything.

She located the paperback thriller she was reading in Frank’s library—her library now, she supposed, at least until the marital assets were sorted into His and Her piles. The His pile would include the centerpiece of this room, the bloated, pigskin-upholstered “chair and a half” Frank had had custom-made over her dogged objections. God knew she’d never wanted the damn thing, any more than she’d wanted the puffed-up McMansion that surrounded it, yet five weeks after she’d asked Frank to move out—the hardest thing she’d ever had to do—there sat his throne in all its swinish glory.

And the sick thing was, she’d gotten kind of used to it. The chair was as comfortable as it was ugly, squatting before the fireplace like a sumo wrestler with seams. It was also absurdly comforting in the dead-ass middle of the night when every sigh and rattle of the huge house reminded her how alone she was. She called the chair Babe, after the movie pig.

The house would probably be sold, which suited her just fine, though that would be one more heartbreak for Frank—something else for her to feel guilty about. But all that would take time, and meanwhile there was nothing and no one to stop her from moving her home office up here from the basement.

Frank had dubbed this space his “library,” going so far as to order forty linear feet of “important” used books from some salvage outfit, plus the built-in shelves to display them. But it had been constructed as a sunroom, with skylights and a wall of south-facing windows and French doors. During the day this room was flooded with buttery light, in contrast to the windowless catacombs where Lucy had pounded out the first thirteen books of her Johnny Sherlock children’s mystery series.

She experienced a naughty thrill thinking about the unfinished fourteenth book languishing on her computer’s hard drive. With her contractual deadline less than a week away, every waking minute ought to be devoted to finishing
Johnny Sherlock and the Painted Poodle
. Legions of prepubescent fans were counting on her, more and more each year according to her royalty statements. And Lord knew Lucy Narby—Lucille Moss to her readers—had never missed a deadline. Dependable, responsible Lucy? It was unthinkable. Logically she should be down there right now, cranking out that sucker.

But it was 2:23 in the a.m., and the rules of logic were officially suspended at 2:23 in the a.m.

The bag of popcorn emitted a burst of fragrant steam as she yanked it open. There it was again, the stab of guilt—not over the calorie count, but the label. It was ridiculous, really. Every time she chowed down on a snack food that didn’t bear the familiar KrunchWorks logo, she felt like a traitor. Frank was nearly as devoted to KrunchWorks as he was to his family, a company man through and through. He’d forbidden her to bring a competing brand into this house, and she never had. Until now.