Man of Her Dreams (12 page)

She began to move on him. He arched up to meet her. The old bentwood chair rocked beneath them, adding a unique extra sensation to the proceedings.

Their loving was hard and fast, almost desperate in its intensity. At first Ry held Maggie as she rode him, then, still buried deep inside her, he lowered them both to the floor of the porch. Maggie gasped at the feel of cool smooth wood against her back. She gasped at the feel of Ry driving into her, seeking the same blinding flash of pleasure she felt rushing toward her. When it came, it took her breath away and filled her head with a brilliant white light that made the lightning around them seem dim by comparison.

Ry felt her go rigid beneath him, felt the waves of completion tighten her body around his. That was all it took to send him shooting over the edge.

It might have been five minutes or it might have been an hour before he got his breath back, before reality burned off the haze of sexual desire that had totally fogged his brain. Resting on his elbows, he looked down at Maggie. She was breathing hard, her head turned toward the yard where the rain had let up already and now fell in a soft, steady shower. Her eyes were nearly closed, her love-bruised lips were parted slightly, her cheeks glistened with tears.

Tears.

“Oh, Lord,” he whispered under his breath. “What have I done?”

He reached up to brush the moisture from her cheek with the back of his hand. Maggie sighed but didn't turn to look at him. Easing out of her and off of her, Ry rose to his feet, zipping his pants. He turned away from her, running his hands back over his wet hair. “Sweet heaven, what have I done?”

Maggie stared up at him, bewildered. What had he done? He'd just made her the happiest, most sexually satisfied woman on earth—possibly in the universe. She wanted to say so, but she wasn't capable of stringing that many words together yet.

Ry, on the other hand, while he might have been satisfied, did not look happy. In fact, he looked distinctly
un
happy. Maggie never took her eyes off him as she sat up and tugged the bodice of her gown back into place. He stood staring out at the rain-spattered night, head bent, hands clamped at his waist, one leg cocked slightly to the side. His expression was that of a man who had just made the worst mistake of his life.

A cold knot of fear clenched in Maggie's stomach like a fist. She pushed herself to her feet, grabbing up Rylan's dinner jacket to huddle into against the chill she hadn't noticed when they'd been making love. She wanted to go to him, to touch him, but uncertainty held her back. Instead she managed to put all the questions in her heart into one word.

“Ry?”

He flinched. Lord, he could hear the tears in her voice. She sounded weak and frightened and hurt. This was his worst nightmare come true. This was the very thing he'd been fighting his libido to avoid. He damned himself to hell and gone. How could he have been such a bastard? Now he would lose her, almost certainly. Hell, he deserved to lose her.

Maggie took a hesitant step closer. “Rylan?”

“Maggie, I'm sorry,” he said in a tortured whisper. “I'm so sorry.”

“Sorry?” She tried to swallow down the panic fluttering in her throat. She pulled his coat tighter around her, shoving the sleeves up to expose her hands.

For a moment he said nothing. He stood there listening to the rain on the tin roof and calling himself a fool. “I should never have let that happen.”

“Don't say that!” Maggie grabbed his arm and yanked on it, meaning to turn him to face her. Of course she couldn't budge him, but she surprised him into doing her bidding. He looked down at a face blazing with feminine fury. She imagined she looked slightly ridiculous swallowed up in his jacket. A lock of fire red hair fell across her forehead. She raked it back angrily and smacked a fist against Ry's bare chest. “Damn you, Rylan Quaid, don't you dare say we shouldn't have made love!”

Confusion clouded his stormy eyes.

She shoved up the coat sleeve and smacked him again. “Don't you dare tell me you didn't want me!”

Ry caught her fist before she could hit him again. “Didn't want you? Maggie, what the blue blazes are you talking about? I wanted you so bad, I took you without a thought in my head. I wouldn't blame you a bit if you never wanted to see me again after that performance. Cripes almighty, I acted like I hadn't been near a woman in years! That wasn't at all how I meant for the evening to end.”

It was Maggie's turn to be confused. Her hands dropped to her sides and immediately disappeared inside the coat sleeves. “You
did
want me?”

Hitching his hands to his hips, Ry snorted. “I thought I made that more than obvious.”

Maggie shook her head as if the action might make all the pieces of the bizarre puzzle fall into place. “You wanted me. I wanted you. What are we arguing about?”

“Maggie, I hurt you! And, heaven above, I didn't even have the decency to wait until I got you in the house!” He took her face in his hands and stared down at her with such remorse in his eyes, it made Maggie's heart ache. “I hurt you. Lord, baby, I am so
so
sorry.”

His apology touched her in a way nothing else ever had. This big tough man who seldom showed any emotion other than orneriness was afraid he might have hurt her.

“Oh, Ry,” she whispered, slipping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to the sweat-dampened curls on his chest. “I'm all right. I'm better than all right.”

Ry wrapped an arm around her and stroked his other hand over her hair, holding her now as tenderly as he wished he had earlier. “But I was so rough with you. I know I hurt you, Maggie. I saw the tears on your face.”

“Sugar, ladies cry when they're happy too.” She smiled up at him. “Don't you know how much you pleased me, how much I needed you?”

He scowled, seeming determined to rake himself over the coals some more. “I took you on the front porch. On the damn front porch, for cripes sakes!”

“Did you hear me complaining? I distinctly remember uttering nothing more than sighs and moans of ecstasy.”

“I lost control.”

“Finally.” She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh of supreme relief. “Praise the Lord.”

“Carter Hill wouldn't have made love to you on the front porch.”

“Sugar, I have serious doubts Carter Hill could find his way out of his shorts without a map. You didn't have any trouble with that—for which I am
extremely
grateful.” Loving him more than ever, Maggie lifted her hand to his cheek where his beard was beginning to shadow his cleanly shaven skin. “Oh, Rylan, don't you know what it does to me to know you wanted me so badly you lost control?”

His broad shoulders lifted in a self-conscious shrug. “No,” he mumbled. He had been so sure she would think he was a lout, an uncouth, uncivilized lout.

Maggie arched against him like a cat, running her flattened palm over his chest. She gave him the most sultry, seductive look in her repertoire. “It makes me
so
hot, Rylan.”

“Jeepers cripes, Mary Margaret, you say the damnedest things.” An embarrassed little grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he blushed under the soft glow of the porch light.

Maggie chuckled and shook her head. He was so cute. This was the same man who had growled some very naughty words in her ear as he'd made love to her. Now he was blushing because she was admitting how excited that made her.

“Well, it does,” she said. She let her hand trail down his side and started bringing it back up again, dragging her fingers along his leg.

Ry sucked in his breath. Damn, but she turned him on. And she enjoyed doing it, too, the little minx. He gave her a roguish smile, totally abandoning the sudden shyness that had brought ruddy color to his cheeks only a moment ago. “Do tell. Why don't we go inside and discuss this further?”

Maggie's eyes were smoldering as her gaze locked with his. “Will you show me how you meant for the evening to end?”

“As many times as you want.”

Maggie had never felt more cherished in her life. Ry had indeed planned an ending for their evening—a very romantic ending. He had turned down the covers of his bed and placed a rose on one pillow. He had a bottle of wine and two glasses sitting on one nightstand and a trio of candles in brass candlesticks on the other. All this, not because he was a romantic sort of man—he wasn't—but because he had thought she would want it.

Seeing all the preparations, she smiled—not just with her lips but with her heart as well. If Ry had taken the time and trouble to do all this, surely it meant he cared deeply for her. If he wanted her as badly as he had on the porch and cared enough to put a rose on her pillow, surely it was possible he was beginning to love her. She thought of how jealous he'd been when the other men at the party had paid attention to her, and her smile deepened another notch.

“You did all this for me,” she stated, turning to face him at the end of the bed. While she'd been in the bathroom trying to restore some order to her hair, Ry had lit the candles. They combined their light with that of a small brass lamp in the far corner to bathe the room in a soft glow.

Ry slipped his jacket from her shoulders and tossed it to a nearby chair. “I wanted it to be special for you, Maggie.”

He was willing to admit that much. He wasn't willing to admit even to himself that
he
wanted to be special to her as well. In fact, he would have flat-out denied it. His rationalization was that in order to get Maggie to agree to be his wife, he would have to treat her the way she expected to be treated, the way an admiral's daughter expected to be treated.

“Making love with you would be special any way,” Maggie said, a little nervous at having divulged that much of herself. It was one thing to love Ry and keep that secret locked in her heart. It was quite another to admit it to him when she was still uncertain of where she stood with him.

She reached up to tug his damp shirt back off his shoulders. It joined the jacket on the chair. Giving in to compulsive need, she ran her hands down his chest, then wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. “I've wanted you so badly for so long.”

He didn't ask how long. She would have to have said forever. For as long as she'd been a grown woman, he'd been the man of her dreams.

Ry was becoming too caught up in desire to question anything she said. She was so soft in his arms. Her scent drifted up to tease his nostrils: perfume and woman, rain and lovemaking. There was a sense of rightness at having her in his house, in his bedroom, that went way beyond his convenient excuse of practicality, but he ignored it in his typically hardheaded fashion. He concentrated on Maggie instead.

After a rather pleasant search, his fingers found the zipper hidden in the side of her dress. He lowered it, then peeled the dress off her, uncovering her inch by inch, kissing his way down her body until he was on his knees and the gown was a puddle of teal silk and sequins on the blue rug. Maggie's hands tangled in his hair as he rid her of her garter belt and stockings, then eased her lace panties down her hips, once again letting his lips trail behind his fingers. She leaned into him, her breath catching as his tongue explored the delicate territory between her legs. Then she was in his arms again.

He kissed her hair as his hands roamed over her back and down to her hips. He lifted her and fitted her against the hardness that strained the fly of his trousers and whispered hotly in her ear. “You taste so good, Maggie. So sweet.” Then his lips found hers and shared that taste with her.

Their loving this time was slow and sweet. The urgency had burned off leaving behind a glowing core of desire, a fire that burned long into the night.

Ry worshiped Maggie's body, kissing, caressing, praising with words and without. She was so womanly, it made him ache just looking at her. Her breasts filled his hands, dusky peach nipples pouted for attention from his mouth. His teeth nibbled at her nipped-in waist. His fingers traced the graceful swell of her hips, slipped beneath to squeeze her well-rounded derriere.

Maggie took equal delight in discovering the secrets of Ry's big body. He had the kind of physique other men joined athletic clubs in search of. All six feet four inches of him was thick, solid muscle, liberally dusted with rough dark hair. She found he liked to have her hands and mouth on his upper body, while other parts of him were less tolerant of teasing.

“Mag-gie,” he said in a warning tone as her fingertips grazed his inner thigh.

“Don't you like that, Rylan? Maybe you'll like this better.”

He growled, grabbed her hands, and pinned them above her head pressing her down into the mattress with his body. Nose to nose, their gazes locked, full of dares and promises to make good on them.

“Do you know what I'm going to do to you if you don't stop teasing me?”

“What?” she questioned breathlessly. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but she felt her entire body grow hotter as Ry dipped his head and whispered his intentions in her ear, not sparing any erotic detail. Tiny shivers of anticipation graduated to full-fledged trembling. “Mmm…” She moaned. “Is that a threat…or a promise?”

Still holding her hands and her gaze, Ry slid into her welcoming warmth, reaching deep enough to make her gasp.

“Let me touch you,” Maggie begged, trying to free her arms as Ry eased out of her.

“No.” His next thrust was a little stronger. Maggie's body arched to meet him.

“Ry, let me go.”

“No.” He repeated the process again.

“You devil.”

He chuckled.

She groaned.

“Rylan…”

“No.”

“Oh—ooh—Rylan…yes, yes, yes.”

“Ah—yes—oh, Maggie.”

         

The candles had gone out. It didn't matter. The approaching dawn was turning the sky outside his bedroom window pale pearl gray. Enough soft, misty light spilled in for Ry to study the woman lying in his arms.