With These Four Rings - Book Five: Wedding Bonus (Billionaire Brides of Granite Falls 5) (25 page)

She wound her arms around his waist, and gazed up at him with her captivating brown eyes, the eyes that had kept him alive eight years ago when he’d been attacked by that rhino. “I’ll always have your back, Mass. I’ll try to be as protective a pussycat as Jabari was.”

Massimo tucked the urn under his arm and hugged her. “You already are,” he said, his mind wandering back briefly to three days ago when Shaina had defended him against Galen, and then soothed him afterward. She had the uncanny ability to calm him and take his mind off his troubles, even when she wasn’t trying. “Jabari liked you, you know, from the first day he met you.”

“I liked him, too. He was special.” She gasped softly. “Mass, look,” she whispered, pointing into the bushes. “It’s a giraffe. Two—a mother and baby.”

Mass followed her gaze, and sure enough giraffes were grazing on the leaves of an acacia tree. “I think it’s a tower, darling. I see…three, four, five heads. There may be more.”

“I don’t see…” She pushed out of his embrace and moved up the path toward a clearing in the trees. “Oh yeah, you’re right. I see about eight, including two more calves. They’re so quiet, you’d never know they were there if you didn’t look hard enough.”

Mass stood behind her, just barely touching her, but trembling from the smell and heat of her body as he remembered making love to her in the small dark hut last night. His usually vocal wife had taken him in almost complete silence, sinking her sharp teeth into his chest and his arms as she climaxed several times throughout the night. During their last session, he’d turned her onto her stomach on the narrow cot and taken her from behind, forcing her to bite herself when she came. She got a taste of her own medicine and some of his for a change.

“They’re making sounds, I assure you. It’s just too low for the human ear to detect. If we were giraffes, my chest and biceps wouldn’t be aching this morning, and neither would your arm.” He rolled up the sleeves of her cotton shirt and kissed the dark area on her arm where she’d bitten herself in her throes of passion.

She rolled her sleeve back down. “Our neighbors were just feet away, Mass. I had to stifle my screams. But I think the proximity of the huts, along with the cramped space and the pitch-black darkness intensified the ecstasy for both of us.”

“I can’t argue with that, my love. Mating with you is always intense, no matter where or under what circumstances, but last night was definitely one of the most passionate rides of my life. Perhaps it’s because we were so close to nature—no soft beds, silk sheets, or fluffy pillows to distract us. Just a man and a woman with a fierce desire for each other.” He snaked his hand around to her front and spread his palm over her belly. “I hope I didn’t hurt our baby.”

She chuckled softly and placed her hand over his. “If he likes to watch like his father, I’m sure he enjoyed it.”

Massimo bit back his ripple of mirth. “I almost forgot about the foul language that comes flying out of that sweet mouth of yours—one of the many things I love about you.” He dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “So you think it’s a boy, huh?”

“I hope so. We’ve already broken the curse.” She sighed and folded her arms around her stomach, trapping his to her body. “I miss Aria.”

He nuzzled his nose against her neck. “Me too, but if she were here with us, we wouldn’t have had last night, and we wouldn’t be enjoying this predawn hike. You see how excited she gets on driving safaris. She’s not old enough for walking. Her excitement would have scared away the giraffes, and the baboons,” he said, pointing to his right at a troop of baboons swinging from the branches of a strangler fig tree. “You never want to sneak up on, nor piss off a baboon.”

She snickered softly. “I know, but I still miss my baby.” She paused and cocked her ears. “The jungle is coming to life.”

“It never sleeps, love.” Despite the painful event that had brought him back to Kenya so soon, Mass felt a bottomless peace as birds chirped out their morning greetings to their neighbors, and the rumble of the waterfalls from the Mara River, just up ahead, impregnated the air. A lion’s roar in the distance heralded his reigning status as king of the jungle. Years from now, each time he saw a male lion or heard one roar, Mass would always wonder if that was the king that had attacked Jabari.

Kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, was the nature of the jungle. Jabari had encroached on the lion’s territory. He couldn’t blame the lion for defending his home and his family from intruders.
He
would have done the same thing.

He’d defended his mother’s memory by attacking his half-brother. Mass knew he would have hurt Galen badly, perhaps put him in the hospital or the grave, if Shaina hadn’t placed herself between them. His body tensed spontaneously.

“Will you see him when we get home?” Shaina asked.

Mass closed his eyes briefly. How was it that she could read his thoughts, understand his moods so easily without him uttering a word or her seeing his expression? They were indeed one. “I don’t know.”

“He said he was sorry and wanted to talk.”

“Which could be interpreted in any number of ways. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that what people say and what they mean are often two different things. His text was as cryptic as he is. I don’t trust him, especially because he sent it just hours after we fought. Nobody cools down that quickly. He wants something, and I bet I know what it is.”

“You don’t think he—”

“Let’s not talk about him anymore. Come on.” He untangled himself from her. “I’m getting hungry. I know you must be, too, with a little Andretti growing inside you. It’s an hour and a half before sunrise, which gives us just enough time to get to the escarpment and enjoy our breakfast, without hurrying. I don’t want you to miss it.” He took one last glance at her before taking the lead again. “You sure you don’t want anything to eat before we continue?”

“I’m fine, baby. I’ll let you know if I get hungry.” She placed her hand in his and fell into step beside him.

They hiked silently again, following elephant and buffalo trails—waiting patiently as they grazed—then moving on to observe zebras and elands playing on the lush green meadow along the way, and leopards on mounds, scouting for food that was in high supply because of the great migration season. At the summit of a small hill, they pulled out their binoculars and looked out along the flat plains at a pride of lions enjoying the prey they’d probably killed during the night.

“It looks like a wildebeest,” Mass said.

“Poor bastard had no idea that when he crossed the Mara River from Tanzania, he’d never leave Kenya.”

“The circle of life, my dear. The circle of life.” No time was it more true for Massimo than at the present with the remains of his beloved Jabari clutched against his chest as he carried him to his final resting place, and his wife walking beside him, carrying their unborn child deep in the secret safety of her womb.

“Oh my gosh! Mass. I’ve never seen anything so indescribably beautiful.”

He had
. Shaina was the most indescribably beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

Massimo set his coffee mug down on the flat surface of the plateau, picked up the urn and the folded blanket he’d brought with him, and went to stand behind Shaina who was leaning against the narrow trunk of an acacia tree. He set the urn at her feet and wrapped his arms about her as they gazed off into the woodlands that extended to the banks of the Mara River, separating the borders of Tanzania and Kenya. A herd of buffalos and zebras picked their way carefully through the crocodile-infested water—hoping to reach Kenya, while hippos just floated lazily in the cool comfort of the water, and pearly clouds like bales of silk hovered overhead.

Even though nature was putting on a spectacular parade for human viewing pleasure, Mass knew that the phenomenon that had triggered Shaina’s outburst was the vast array of colors, ranging from soft pink to the deepest cerise—with orange, yellow, purple and blue in between—splattered across the horizon, melting sky and earth and water together. The sun was about to make its initial appearance above the horizon—the moment Mass had been waiting for.

“He snaked his hands up under Shaina’s shirt and undershirt, and hooked his thumbs into the elastic waistline of her safari pants.

She stiffened and turned her head. “What are you—?”

“Shh. Don’t take your eyes off the sunrise, or you’ll miss it.”

She shivered as he pulled her pants and her panties down to her ankles. He bent down and, lifting one of her legs, he freed her foot from the restrictions of the garment. On his way up, he used one hand to position the folded blanket against the tree trunk and the other to rid himself of his pants. He’d come commando, and his erection gave him a hearty
good morning
slap on the stomach.

“Mass,” Shaina called in a broken whisper as he pushed her chest against the trunk cushioned by the blanket, and spread her legs apart.

God, she was so damned desirable. “Keep your eyes on the horizon,” he told her again as she looked back at him, her eyes wide with disbelief, passion, and apprehension. “Hold this.” He placed the urn in the crook of her arm and pressed his chest into her back, trapping her between him and the tree. He didn’t want her coming before him, so giving her something to think about other than the fiery sensations surging through her body should do the trick. He spread her cheeks with one hand and with the other, positioned the tip of his hard shaft to the slick hot opening to her body.

She quivered and moaned at the delicate contact and the soft morning breeze kissing their hungry sexes.

Massimo pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the ground. “You can make as much noise as you want, pussycat. There’s no one around to hear you. But whatever you do, do not drop this urn.” Before she could respond, Massimo held her hips and sliced up into her body.

She screamed long and hard as he pushed his way to the core of her. When he could go no deeper, he wrapped his hands around her waist and began to ride her, slow and carefully at first, and then more forcefully as the juices began to flow from within her and her body began to thrash and buck as she tried to race to an orgasm.

Massimo wasn’t having that. He eased off and took a long shuddering breath as he glanced down to see his shaft, coated with her slick juices, buried halfway inside her, and the twin hills of her backside begging to be plundered again. His gaze shifted to the scar on his right side, and the memories sent fire and ice rushing through his system.

“Watch the sunrise. Tell me when it’s about to come up,” he murmured in a hoarse voice as he began to slide in and out of her again.

Her moans and groans of ecstasy, her calling out his name, mingled with the melody of birds singing in the treetops, and the distant roar of lions was a bubbling cauldron of natural aphrodisiac for pleasure, and the best remedy for sorrow Massimo had ever experienced.

“It’s coming. It’s coming,” Shaina screamed.

“Don’t you drop that urn,” Mass commanded. She was quivering so hard, he had to hold her tight to keep her from collapsing to the hard rock they were standing on. Without missing a stroke, he shifted his gaze from the sweet spot where their bodies were intimately joined, and gazed over her shoulders at the rising sun.

Sure enough, it was coming. They were all coming together. The sun, Shaina, and him.

The next second, the sky erupted with a burst of light so pure and white it blinded him for an instant. He continued to thrust deeply into his wife as iota by iota, the majestic ball of white fire emerged in a blast of heat, melting all his sadness, his pain, his cares into oblivion. At that moment, Massimo sank his teeth into the back of his wife’s neck and flooded her womb with his essence while the glorious sunrise of a new day, a new beginning bathed them in light.

His groans of passions, mingled with the piercing cries of his wife, echoed across the Masai Mara Lands as Mass and Shaina collapsed into the trunk of the acacia tree.

The urn fell to the ground and cracked open at their feet. The wind danced around the ashes for a few seconds as if whispering “Welcome Home, Son” to Jabari’s remains, before scooping the tiny atoms and whisking them across the Serengeti-Mara Plains.

Jabari was home where he belonged.

Overcome with emotions, Massimo buried his face into Shaina’s back and wept.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Summers Residence, Granite Falls – Friday afternoon…

Bryce inhaled sharply and pushed the doorbell of the New England style house in the upscale suburban neighborhood of Granite Falls. It wasn’t Mount Reservoir, but it was nice. He held his breath as the sound reverberated inside.

Less than a minute later, the door opened and he was staring into the faces of Gerald and Ruth Summers—the parents of the woman who’d murdered his first wife, almost ten years ago.

Kaya, bless her sweet heart, squeezed his fingers and pulled him out of his trance.

“Come in. Come in.” Ruth Summers swung the door wider and beckoned to them while her husband stood behind her with his jaws clenched and his eyes slightly narrowed as if warning Bryce that this was his turf and he was prepared to defend it if needs be.

With Kaya beside him, Bryce stepped through the door and into a living room furnished with a black leather sofa and two matching chairs, glass-topped lamp and coffee tables, knock-off oriental vases, a stereo set, an old jukebox, a grand piano, and a host of other trinkets the family had apparently collected over the years. It reminded him of his grandmother’s house—warm and cozy. Yet Bryce felt anything but. As a matter of fact, it was a chilly. The AC was set too low.