Diamond Spur (22 page)

I he sound of the surf outside on the beach was suddenly dim compared to the beat of Jason's own heart. Kate's voice made him tingle. He remembered that husky note in it from the first time he'd made love to her, and the memory was already causing him some problems.

He lifted his chin and his dark eyes went over her soft curves like hands, masculine appreciation in his smile.

"Will you?" she repeated.

"Will I what?" he murmured.

She cleared her throat. "Help me change."

"Is that all you want?" he asked bluntly, his eyes alive with sensuality.

She shifted again on the bed. "No."

He sat down beside her, pushing back her unruly hair. "We can't," he reminded her. "Now stop tempting me."

"I never used to think I could," she confessed as his lean, deft fingers worked the buttons of her jacket to unfasten it. They were exciting even through three layers of fabric, their touch warm and knowing.

"You don't know the half of it," he murmured. He helped her out of her jacket, and then the white blouse under it. He hesitated at her bra, his eyes narrowing on its obvious inadequacy to hold the blossoming curves under it. "Isn't this thing too small?" he asked curiously. He hadn't seen that many women in bras, but this lacy thing didn't look big enough to give any support.

"I'm pregnant, Jason," she said gently.

His bewildered gaze lifted to her face. "What does that have to do with it?"

"My breasts are swollen," she explained softly, amazed that it didn't bother her at all to discuss intimate things with him. Well, they were lovers, after all, and they were married. He scowled. It still didn't register. She reached behind her hesitantly and unfastened the lacy garment and slowly peeled it away.

His eyes stared down as if he were mesmerized, darkening with that intent, fascinated stare as he studied her full, soft breasts with their pretty pink and mauve contrasts. "See how many veins there are?" she whispered. "These little changes make it possible for me to nurse him...." "My God." He made it sound reverent. His lean fingers went to the dark aureole of one swollen breast. He touched it, very lightly, watching it stiffen. "You're darker here than you were."

"Yes." She tried not to tremble at his intimate caress, but she couldn't help it.

He looked up into her eyes. "Do you want to nurse him?" he asked unexpectedly.

Her face colored. "I want to," she whispered.

His lips parted on breath that was coming hard and quick as his hand grew bolder and openly caressed her. "You're trembling," he whispered back. "Does it excite you when I do this?"

"More...than you realize," she managed huskily.

He sat up, his hands going to the elastic waistband of her skirt, which allowed for her

thickened waist. "I want to look at you," he said quietly, searching her eyes as he hesitated. "I've never seen a pregnant woman." "Not even...her?" she asked, muted anger in her tone because she was jealous even of that shadowy figure in her past. He scowled. The memory came down between them like a wall, and he started to draw back, but she suddenly sat up.

She forgot immediately what her original intention had been because the tips of her breasts brushed his hard, hair-matted chest, and knocked the thought right out of her head.

She caught her breath at the feel of him. Her hands went to his muscular arms. They were cool and his skin was a little rough, but he felt so good to touch. She drew her fingers down to his elbows and back up again, and she swayed helplessly against him, her breasts touching and then not touching, brushing, the tips growing harder. She wanted to be closer than this. She wanted all of him.

He felt himself shudder. She was seducing him. He didn't want this, he didn't want to risk the child. But her breasts were warm and hard-tipped, and every time they brushed his chest, his body reacted more.

He caught Kate's upper arms with the vague thought of pushing her away before things got out of hand. And then her head fell back and she looked at him. Her green eyes were half-closed, misty and soft with desire, her full lips parted, waiting, her body moving with helpless sensuality. His eyes went to her taut, swollen breasts, and his reason deserted him. God, her breasts were exquisite!

She reached up to his cheeks and pulled his face down as she arched. "Please," she whispered, her voice odd, soft, shaking. "Please. Jason, kiss me there...!"

Yes, he thought, his lips already parted even as he bent to her body. His hands held her as he nuzzled against one perfect breast and took it, hard tip and all, right inside his hungry mouth.

She moaned at the wave of pleasure that his mouth was giving her, and the sound made him even more reckless. He took her deeper into the warm moist darkness of his mouth and felt the softness of her like silk against his tongue.

His hands were moving. He only vaguely realized that they were against her skin now, having gotten everything else out of the way. His mouth went down her, onto her soft belly, where his child lay. He pressed his lips warmly there, and onto her hips, and her long, elegant legs. She was still moaning, her body fluid in his grasp. He was going out of his mind and she was pushing him over a sensual cliff. He couldn't stop. His body was already thrusting against her hip, so fevered that he was in agony.

He found the snap and the zip of his Bermuda shorts and stripped them off while his mouth slowly teased the inside of her silky thigh. She made a new sound, a different sound.

"Jason," she whimpered, blind and deaf and dumb to everything except her sudden, overwhelming need to join with him, to lock her body with his and know him in every way there was. "It's so sweet, it's so sweet, Jason...!"

His mouth traveled, open and warm, back up to her breasts while his hands touched her, probed and explored and excited her. Then his lips found her mouth, and locked with it, and she felt his hard body moving over her soft one.

She arched, on fire, burning up. She had to have him. Her feverish eyes didn't even see him. She clutched at his broad shoulders, her voice shattering, her body eager and taut, trying to fit itself to his.

"Oh, God, honey, you'll make me hurt you...!" he ground out. Her urgency was throwing him more out of control by the second. He'd never dreamed how sensual she could be, how passionate. "Now," Kate cried. Tears ran down her cheeks at the intensity of desire he'd aroused in her. "I can't bear it, now, please now, Jason, don't stop...!" He went over the edge. His mouth ground down into hers as his body intruded powerfully in one smooth, hard thrust. She moaned, but not in pain. Her nails bit into his back, and her hands went trembling to the base of his spine to dig in, pulling him, holding him. Her hips arched and arched, and she made noises he'd never heard come out of a woman's throat. It shouldn't have happened so quickly, but her mind barely registered that. She was part of him. He was filling her...! He gave himself to her. Completely, in a feverish, passionate giving that robbed him of anything except the raging, thrusting need to possess. He pushed down against her in an unconscious rough buffeting, the sound of the surf overshadowed by the rasp of their breathing and the sound of skin sliding against damp skin. He whispered things to her as the tide became red and hot. He whispered things he'd never

said to a woman, intimate things, secret things that she only vaguely heard. His mouth slid over hers and his tongue matched the quick, hard rhythm of his body as passion turned to insane urgency, and all at once everything exploded in a sweet, blind rush of heat and color and light that went on, and on, and on....

Jason felt her softness a long time later, when consciousness came filtering back. She was gasping for breath, as he was. Kate's warm body was wet with sweat, her heartbeat matching the frantic throb of his. "Kate?" he whispered at her ear. His voice sounded unsteady. "Kate, did I hurt you?"

"No," she whispered back. Her lips brushed at his throat, his chin, his shoulder. Her eyes rubbed there, and there were tears in them. She wept softly. "Darling," she whispered brokenly.

Jason felt the heat stab through him. She'd never used endearments, not even the first time he'd made love to her. Such a surge of tenderness welled up in him that it became terrifying. He kissed her soft face with lips that cherished, possessed. It had been like dying. He'd never dreamed of such a surrender. It had been that. He'd given himself to her, he'd given up control. And as he realized that, and that she knew it, his lips grew cool and he began to feel a stirring of stark fear.

"What is it?" she whispered.

She'd felt the mood swing. That bothered him, too. She saw too deep, knew too much. He wanted her obsessively, and now she knew it. Would she use that against him? He lifted his head to search her soft eyes. His own were very dark and quiet. She touched his mouth, her whole look one of wonder. "We're like...one person, aren't we?" she whispered, letting her eyes run boldly down the length of their intimate contact.

Heat surged through his body at the question. Yes, they were. In ways he didn't like to consider, ways that had nothing to do with the physical intimacy they were sharing. And then he thought about the baby. And he froze. "Kate...the baby," he whispered roughly. She stopped breathing. In that mad, wild joining, her only thought had been to get as close to

Jason as possible. Tears stung her eyes as she realized what they might have done.

"I didn't think," she whispered tearfully.

"Neither did I," he said half angrily.

He lifted himself slowly away from her, his body throb

bing at the way she intently watched him unlocking his hips from hers. She grimaced and he

drew in a harsh breath before he jerked off the bed and went into the bathroom. She heard water

running, and he was back with a warm wet cloth before she had time to miss him.

Kate laid still while he bathed her gently, his dark eyes almost black with concern. There were

streaks of blood on the cloth.

She wept, but after a minute he laid the cloth aside and pulled her against his wet, hair-matted chest, holding her gently. "It's just a little," he whispered. "Do you hurt at all? Is there any pain?" "No," she said. She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I just wanted you so

much...."

He pressed her cheek against his chest and kissed her dark hair. "I wanted you, too, honey," he confessed quietly. "But we can't do that again. We're too violent with each other. I can't seem to be tender with you when I'm that aroused. I'm sorry. We'll have to wait until it's safe, Kate. Even if that means separate beds."

Safe. He meant that the baby came first, and perhaps he was right. But Kate felt him slipping away from her by the minute, even after that exquisite closeness. She wondered how she was going to hold him without the lure of desire. She knew Jason wanted the baby, and part of him wanted her with the same desperate passion she felt for him. But hers was tempered with love, and his wasn't. And if she lost the child because of her hunger for him, she'd have nothing at all. Only an empty marriage with a man who felt trapped.

She closed her eyes with a weary sigh. At least, she thought, she'd have her memories.

He felt that sigh and wondered how he was going to survive nine months of keeping his distance. His loss of control shocked and frightened him. Did he have no pride with her, no restraint at all? If he let

her, she could take him over, and he wasn't risking that. She'd already told him that she wanted her career more than marriage. If it hadn't been for the baby, she'd never have married him in the first place.

He stroked her dark hair quietly, worried. He couldn't put the child at risk again. He'd just have to get himself together. If that meant keeping Kate at arm's length, so much the better. She was his first and only weakness. He couldn't let her discover how vulnerable he was, or she might turn it against him. The one lesson life had taught him so far was that trusting women was dangerous. It was a hard lesson to forget, even with a women he...cared about. He didn't love her, of course. That kind of weakness was something for men with no pride, no manhood. He wouldn't love her. But he'd protect her and take care of her, and when the baby came, she'd forget all this career nonsense and stay home with him, where she belonged. He laid his cheek against her head. Yes. She'd be his, once the baby came.

After a minute, she stirred, moving away from him. It was still new, and strange, to have her clothes off with a man. Not that he was any better dressed. "Are you sure I haven't hurt the baby?" he asked as she got up and reached for her briefs and bra. "I'm not hurting or anything," she said gently. "I think it will be all right, Jason. Really, I do. Don't worry." "How can I help it?" he asked, his voice deep and quiet and moody. "I shouldn't have touched you."

While she was digesting the sting of that bitter pill, he moved away to pull on his undershorts and Bermuda shorts with brief, quick movements. She took advantage of that diversion to get dressed herself.

He turned away to light a cigarette, and she pulled out the red and white polyester dress she'd brought with her. It was sleeveless, ankle length, and one of those one-size-fits-all things that was very comfortable to walk around in.

She pulled it over her head, and Jason glared at her when he turned and saw it.