Unfinished Business (24 page)

Alex heard the sound of his door slowly opening and was about to lean over and reach for his revolver off the night-stand when his night vision stopped him.

Christy
.

Inwardly cursing, he swung his legs out of the bed and stood wondering what the hell she was doing creeping into his room. He reached out and switched on a bedside lamp.

Then wished that he hadn’t.

She was standing in the middle of the floor wearing . . . hell, he didn’t know exactly what she was wearing . . . but he couldn’t help the way his gaze automatically became glued to it. Nor could he help the way the outfit was stealing his very breath.

It was sheer black and stopped midway down her thigh. There were splits on the sides and in the center, and the top portion was transparent. The tips of her nipples were hard and had puckered against the sheer fabric. Desire, potent and turbulent, suddenly engulfed him, and he took a step forward. Then just as quickly, he reined in his control and brusquely took a step back.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice husky, his gaze still transfixed on her.

She paused near the foot of the bed. “I would think that would be obvious.”

Alex frowned. Obvious, hell. Nothing was obvious when it came to her. “Well, it’s not, and I would appreciate it if you told me what’s going on.”

“It’s our wedding night.”

Alex tilted his head. She had spoken those four words like they explained everything. He drew in a deep breath. Didn’t she know what he was going through? There was no way things could be like they’d been before. In the past he’d had enough control to take her into his arms, kiss her, and give her pleasure while denying his own. That was then. Now he wasn’t strong enough to do that. He loved her and wanted her so bad it hurt, and he was afraid that if she pushed too much, he would push back and lose control.

“I want you to leave, Christy. Go back to your room.”

“No.”

He lifted a brow. “No?”

She lifted one back. “No. I’m staying.”

Alex breathed in deeply. This was sheer, unadulterated madness. “Have you lost your mind?” he asked her, clenching his hands by his sides.

She lifted a chin. “No, I have all my senses.”

“Then use them, dammit.”

She frowned and lifted her chin another notch. “I am.”

“Apparently not. You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Why? Are you afraid I might tempt you to do the very thing you vowed not to do?”

Alex’s hand reached out and clenched the bedpost. He needed to hold tightly on to something. “I don’t have time to play games with you.”

“And I don’t have time to play games with you,” she countered.

Alex drew in a deep, furious breath. He watched as she made a move toward him, and when she did, her outfit parted in the center, deeply underscoring the darkened area between her legs. “Stop! Don’t move!” he all but shouted. If she took another step and exposed herself any more his control would snap.

She followed his command and went still, remaining where she was. A taunting smile touched her lips. “Are you sure you don’t want me to move?”

Alex’s jaw hardened. From somewhere deep down he was losing his ability to think straight, and she wasn’t helping matters. He reached out and snagged his shirt off the back of the chair and tossed it to her. “Dammit, cover yourself.”

She caught his shirt and defiantly threw it down on the floor and met his gaze. “How about uncovering yours?”

Alex’s eyes flashed fire. Christy’s chin lifted yet another notch. “You’re the one who claimed we had unfinished business between us, Alex,” she said, reminding him in an irritated voice.

His glare sharpened. “I was wrong.”

His tone made it perfectly clear that he actually believed that. He stood by the bed wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting black shorts. Her gaze fixed on his chest and how a thick line of hair tapered off beneath the waistline of those shorts. Taking a deep breath, she forced her eyes upward to his face and studied the stony lines that were etched there. “Well, I happen to think you were right,” she said, trapping his gaze.

“It’s too late now.”

His bold declaration, the same one she’d made to him several times, made Christy’s heart thud heavily in her chest, but she refused to give up or back down. And more than anything she wanted to break through his control. “I’m glad you told me there’s nothing between us, Alex. Now I have no qualms in remaining here,” she lied, ignoring his frown and strolling around the foot of the bed to stand on the opposite side of it from him.

She watched him raise a brow as he tried to keep his gaze steady on her face and not on her nightgown. “Remaining where?” he asked in a deep, husky voice.

“Remaining here. I’ve decided that waiting for Rasheed to give me an exclusive isn’t good enough. My boss expects me to have a story when I return to work. You can go on ahead in the morning without me. I promise to be careful and not put Rasheed at risk and—”

“Dammit, Christy, you aren’t staying!”

She hadn’t seen him move, but in a blink he had dived across the bed and pulled her down, tumbling her into the bed with him. In one smooth sweep she was on her back and he was looming over her. The fury in the eyes staring down at her blazed through her. “You don’t tell me what to do, Alex Maxwell.”

As she had hoped, her words made him angrier. Steam was all but coming out of his ears. “I said you aren’t staying, Christy,” he growled.

She met his gaze levelly, all the while tasting the victory that was within her reach. “And I say that I am staying.”

“I won’t let you.”

“There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“The hell there isn’t.”

And then in another blink, a mere fraction of a heartbeat, he leaned down and devoured her mouth in one frantic sweep. Her lips parted under the onslaught of his and he began lapping her up like a hungry man.

His control broke and need overtook Alex’s senses and ripped his mind to shreds. He locked his arms around Christy and brought her breasts fully against his chest, molding her thighs to his and enduring the softness of her belly pressed against the hardness of his aroused body.

Intense desire, he was discovering, was a hell of a lot stronger than mind control. And her tongue was tangling with his in a frenzy that was eating away at his restraints and increasing his desperation to know her as no other man had known her. He wanted to brand her. Claim her. Make love to her all night.

He thought about lifting his head, to get a moment of air, but all he could do was change the angle of the kiss, deepen it, duel with her tongue some more as he felt a pool of desire slide through every vein in his body as they succumbed deeper and deeper to passion. His hands on her hips urged her closer. He could feel her and knew she could feel him. Urgency tore at him. It was a compulsion, an aching, spiraling need.

When it registered that breathing was no longer an option but a necessity, Alex pulled back, his breath coming out in deep, hard gulps. He looked down at Christy; the rate of her breathing wasn’t much better. For a moment they just stared at each other. He was fully aware of her, everything about her—especially her skimpy nightgown—and fought an urge to draw her back into his arms, reclaim her mouth in another scorching kiss. Instead he reached out and framed her face with his hands. She had stripped away every vestige of control that he had, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. He was defenseless to fight it.

“I can’t let you stay here in Vanuatu, Christy,” he said huskily, gazing deep into her eyes. “If anything were to happen to you I couldn’t survive the loss.”

She searched his dark eyes and a warm feeling rushed through her, overwhelming her, enthralling her. “And I couldn’t take it if anything were to happen to you, either, Alex.”

It was as if her words sent a sudden surge through him. A groan erupted deep in his throat and he leaned down and captured her lips, kissing her like he was addicted to her taste. She returned his kiss as if she was addicted to his. She felt his hardness even more against her stomach. Heat seared through her, and she knew it had to be affecting him, too. Her senses were reeling and sooner rather than later he would discover what she already had: kissing wasn’t enough.

The moment he made that discovery the tenor of their kiss changed and he pressed her closer to the fit of him. She felt his palms open, and his fingers began a slow, seductive movement on her, arousing her even more. The thin material of her gown was no match for the heat of his touch.

He pulled back slightly and captured her gaze in his. “I want you,” he said as the sound of desire rumbled from deep within his throat. “But if we make love there’s no turning back, which means there won’t be an annulment. Do you understand?”

Christy couldn’t stop the shiver that raced through her as she nodded her head. “And if we make love,” she countered, sliding her hands over his chest and noticing that his breathing was as ragged as hers, “I’ll be a woman sharing the highest degree of intimacy possible with the man she loves. Do
you
understand?”

It was as if her declaration of love unfurled an explosively powerful reaction from him. The planes of his face shed their hardness, and the desire that had been glowing in his eyes intensified. Alex drew in a deep, shuddering breath. He thought he understood what Christy had said but wanted to make doubly sure that he had.

He searched her eyes. “Are you saying that you love me?”

She tilted her chin. “Yes.”

Alex raised a brow. “Since when?”

“Since always. I never stopped loving you, Alex, and I understand why you did what you did that night. I had unrealistic expectations, for you to feel the same way about me that I felt about you. But that night doesn’t matter anymore, because although it took me a little longer than planned, I am what I’ve always wanted to be.”

“And what did you always want to be?”

“Your wife.”

Her words, uttered softly but with so much meaning, seized the last of Alex’s control and ripped it. He had wanted her love, had fought for it, and now to know he had it back was almost too much. “I love you,” he whispered, overwhelmed and overfilled.

She smiled up at him. “And I love you, too, Alex.”

He met her gaze and saw the love she claimed shining within their depths and his heart broke free. They still had a lot to work out, a lot to deal with—her brothers, for one thing—but they would deal with it. Together they would deal with anything.

Leaning down, he buried his face in her neck, needing to breathe in the scent he had begun associating with her. She pulled his face up and held his gaze. “Alex, make me yours,” she said quietly.

Her words unleashed an explosion of need and desire and he pulled back enough to remove her gown, tossing it aside. And then his hands were all over her, sliding over her nakedness.

“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” he asked as he stood and removed his shorts, not taking his gaze off her naked body. She was so incredibly beautiful.

“No, tell me,” she whispered.

“What we’re going to do goes beyond sex, Christy. It will be lovemaking in its purest form. It will be perfection.”

Then he was back on the bed and his own naked body stretched out beside her. And before Christy could utter a single word, he began using his mouth and his hands all over her, loving every part of her body, getting reacquainted with the taste of her breasts, his tongue tormenting as well as providing pleasure.

Their legs intertwined and he wanted her to feel him, know how much he wanted her, needed her. And then he moved atop her, bracing his weight on his elbows, and looked down into her face. “I promise you won’t regret loving me again,” he whispered.

He leaned down and gently kissed her lips before moving lower to kiss her neck. Then he was back to her chest, tasting her breasts, wreaking torment of the sweetest kind, and making her cry out.

“Alex!”

But he didn’t stop there and she felt his mouth moving lower, his breath hot against her skin, his lips and tongue drawing circles around her navel, tasting her, nearly pushing her over the edge. She whimpered and felt her inner muscles crave the pleasure he had given her time and time again.

“Not yet,” he whispered, lifting up his head to meet her eyes. “I want to cherish you here,” he said, reaching down and touching the most intimate part of her.

Christy writhed under the significance of his words and felt him nudge her legs apart just moments before his mouth settled intimately on her as his tongue penetrated her feminine folds. He used his finger to part them as he sought out the swollen, throbbing flesh tucked behind them.

Of its own accord, her body lifted off the bed, and his mouth clung to her; his tongue pressed deep inside of her, drawing circles, stroking, claiming, and filling his mouth with the taste of her. She gasped out his name. Her hands clutched the side of his head; one part of her wanted to make him stop, but then another thought if he did stop she would die.

Just like before, worshipping Christy with his mouth was touching him deeply, and as he continued to taste the fruit of her desire, inciting passion of the most tantalizing kind between them, heat was igniting within every part of his body.

“Alex!”

He felt her body explode, he tasted it, and it was only when the last shudder had ripped through her that he lifted his head and looked at her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing ragged, her face filled with the sweetest signs of passion that he’d ever seen. He leaned up and kissed her rounded belly again and knew one day his child would expand it, a child who would be created from their love.

He pulled himself up, settled his weight on her still-trembling body, adjusting to the fit of her. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. Look at me.”