The Captain's Baby Bargain. Merline Lovelace

Alicia up on her increasingly unsubtle hints that she was ready to move in with him. Permanently.

      This was the only woman he’d ever loved. The one he’d ached for with the fumbling, frantic passion of youth. The one he’d promised to share his life with. There wasn’t room in his heart for anyone but her.

      “I’ve missed you, Suze.”

      “I’ve missed you, too.” Tears dimmed the luminescent green of her eyes. “So much I hurt with it.”

      His palm slid to her nape. His other hand came up to ease off her ball cap. With it out of the way, he tugged at the squishy elastic band that held her hair. The wind-tangled strands came free and framed her face.

      “There,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ve been aching to do that since the moment we walked into that McDonald’s.”

      “Gabe...”

      It was half sigh, half plea. Heat roiling in his belly, he tightened his hold on her nape.

      “I’ve been aching to do this, too.”

      He fully intended to keep the kiss gentle. To stoke her hunger carefully, slowly, until it matched the fire now smoldering in his blood. But she fitted herself against him with a familiar intimacy that sparked searing pleasure at every contact point. Her mouth, her breasts, her hips. All straining against him. All filling him with a raging need that made him whip an arm around her waist and haul her even closer.

      * * *

      Swish reacted instinctively. The feel of him against her, of the hard press of his mouth on hers, shattered the dam. Hunger, hot and urgent, poured through her. Panting, gasping, her lungs burning, her lips frantic under his, she hooked her arms around his neck. The last shreds of sanity screamed at her to pull back. Now! While she still could! But the rest of her, every atom of the rest of her, wanted Gabe with a ferocity so intense it seared her soul.

      She wasn’t sure who attacked whose clothing first. She might’ve yanked up his black T-shirt to get at the hard, tanned muscles of his chest. Or maybe he whipped her tank top up and off. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. She was too busy heeling out of her half-boots to think about it.

      She kicked the boots away at the same instant his hands went to the zipper of her jeans. He shoved them down over her hips. She shimmied the rest of the way out. She hadn’t bothered with a bra. She never did when not in uniform. So all she had on when he scooped her up was the thin layer of her black lace hipsters.

      “That way,” she gasped, pointing to the arch that led to the two bedrooms. Unnecessarily, as it turned out, as Gabe was already halfway there.

      The master bedroom suite echoed the same eclectic style and bright colors as the living room. Red, yellow and turquoise pillows in varying shapes accented the sage-colored comforter. The collage of desert sunrises and sunsets arranged above the headboard picked up the same colors.

      Gabe didn’t so much as glance at the gorgeous display. He almost dumped her on the bed and dragged off her panties before stripping off the rest his own clothes. Boots. Jeans. Jockeys.

      Jaw taut, nostrils flaring, he turned back to her. His eyes, those green-brown eyes flecked with bits of gold, raked from her neck to her knees. Suze could see herself reflected in the dark irises. Her arms flung up beside her head in wild abandon. Her breasts bare, the nipples already hard and aching for his touch. Her stomach hollowing as the muscles low in her belly clenched in greedy anticipation.

      Then, just as she opened her legs to welcome him, he turned away. She lay frozen, unable to move or think or understand why he reached for the jeans he’d just discarded. She whipped her arms down and pushed up on one elbow. She was all set to torch him like one of the commercial high-pressure propane flamethrowers her fire protection troops used when he faced her again, a crumpled foil packet in his hand.

      “I have no idea how long I’ve carried this in my wallet,” he said with a wry grimace. “A year maybe.”

      Which implied, she thought on a surge of primal satisfaction, he hadn’t delved into his secret stash for prissy missy Alicia Johnson.

      She dismissed as totally irrelevant the possibility that Alicia might have supplied the necessary protective measures herself. The only thing that mattered to her now was that Gabe, her Gabe, apparently hadn’t initiated a sexual encounter.

      Until now.

      “Let me.”

      Her heart stuck in her throat, she rolled onto her knees and held out her hand. She squeezed every ounce of pleasure she could out of tearing open the packet and sheathing his now rigid erection. The veined shaft rising hard and pulsing from its nest of wiry chestnut hair triggered atavistic instincts as old as time. This was her mate. The man she’d given her heart to years before she gave him her virginity.

      She’d never looked at another man during their years together. Never wanted another man’s hands on her. At least, not until the hurt and the loneliness had got too much to bear. Even then, she’d taken only one other man to her bed.

      The experience had left her so empty, so heartbroken that she’d never repeated it. But word had gotten back to Gabe. How, she never knew, not that it mattered. His raw fury had leaped from the email he’d sent asking if it was true.

      The anger still simmered, she discovered. Not as raw. Not as livid. But she could see it in his eyes when he tunneled his hands through her hair and tipped her head back.

      “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about you doing this with someone else?” he asked, his voice low and rough.

      “I can guess.”

      “That damned near killed me, Suze.”

      “I know,” she said, her throat tight. “I was sorry then. I’m sorry now.”

      The reply did little to take the edge off his hostility. He toppled her back, splaying her on the sage-green spread, then followed her down. His body was rock hard, his muscles taut and his tendons corded as he kneed her legs apart.

      She welcomed him, craving a cleansing as much as he did. Yet for all his seeming anger, he took time to make sure she was primed. His fingers found all the triggers. Started the pinwheels spinning and the juices flowing.

      She didn’t have to tell him that she was wet and ready. He knew her body’s responses as well as she did. Better. She was panting when he positioned himself between her thighs. Groaning when she lifted her hips and rose up to meet his thrusts. She ground her mouth against his, more than matching his savage hunger.

      Her climax slammed into her with almost zero warning. One moment she was straining against his hips. The next, she arched her spine, groaned deep in her throat and exploded.

      She had no idea how long she drifted on those dark, undulating waves of pleasure before she realized he was still rock hard and buried inside her. When she pried her eyes open, the worry in his green-brown eyes melted her heart.

      “You okay?”

      The question was as tight and strained as his body. Swish slicked her palms over his taut shoulders. “More okay than I’ve been in three years.”

      The reply didn’t seem to reassure him. Still frowning, he propped himself up on his elbows and framed her face with his palms. “I didn’t mean to be so rough.”

      “Do you hear me complaining?”

      “No, but...”

      “We need to get that old hurt out of our systems, Gabe. We’re halfway there.”

      “Halfway?”

      “Yep.”

      She gave the muscles low in her belly a tight, hard squeeze. A flush rushed into Gabe’s cheeks, and she squeezed again. Reveling in his response, she rolled onto her hip, then up to her knees.

      “All right, fella. My turn to get rough.”

      *