Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (31 page)

Shaken, she realized that it was on the tip of her tongue to say yes to marrying him. She loved him, even after everything. She couldn't imagine her life without him. The past eighteen months, she had felt an empty, aching place in her heart that had not been filled until he had held her again.

"You really don't hate me?" Even loving him, she could not stand the thought of marriage to a man who hated her.

"No."

But he didn't love her either. Could she live with that? She didn't know. Her indecision must have shown on her face because he started talking again, saying things to convince her.

"You realize that when we get married, you can move back to Portland. Jenny can go back to her old high school."

She wiped at moisture that had somehow gathered across her lower lashes. "Jenny would like that."

"I'll help you put her through college as well."

She choked out a laugh. He was even willing to buy her cooperation if rational argument didn't do the trick.

"I don't expect that. Jenny's not your responsibility."

His mouth firmed into a now familiar grim line. "When we get married, your sister becomes my sister and since you are her guardian, she also becomes my ward. That makes her my responsibility. You've carried the burden alone long enough."

She swallowed a sob trying to crawl up her throat. How could he be so kind and so cruel at the same time?

"Have you thought about staying home with Aaron?" he asked.

She had and then dismissed it as impossible. The reality of her sister returning to school next year had been weighing heavily on her. She would have to find outside day care for Aaron and she didn't relish the prospect. She just shrugged.

"If you want to work, I'll support that decision, but if you want to stay home either half-time or full-time, I'll support that as well. Isabel went to half-time after maternity leave. She seems to like it."

With each word, Marcus embellished the already tantalizing lure of marriage to him.

He pulled the blue blanket from her nerveless fingers and inspected it. "This is nice. My mom used to quilt. I've still got the one she made me for my high school graduation on my bed."

Remembering the log cabin pattern beautifully done in fall colors, she thought his mother must be very talented. The quilt had looked like the kind that won a blue ribbon at the state fair and got auctioned off later for hundreds of dollars.

And despite his pain-filled childhood, Marcus must still have very tender feelings for his mother to keep the quilt out.

She nodded toward the crochet project in his hands. "I'm making that for Aaron's big boy bed."

For the first time that evening, Marcus's humor shone through in an engaging grin.

"It'll be a while before he's ready to come out of the crib, won't it?" he teased.

She smiled, some of the awful tension of the past few hours draining from her. "Yes, but it could take me a while to finish this. I only work on it in spurts."

"I don't want to be a father in spurts, Ronnie. Please make a family with me."

She shook her head, not in denial, but in helpless confusion.

He was begging. Marcus, the man who had told her the first time they made love not to get sex confused with tender emotions. He wanted to make a family with her, and Heaven help her, she didn't know if she was strong enough to deny him.

"I need time to think about it." When he looked like he would argue some more, she did her own begging: "Please."

"While you're thinking about it, think about this." He tossed the unfinished blanket aside, grabbed her waist in both of his large hands and pulled her with one swift movement into his lap.

His lips slammed down onto hers with passionate intensity, and every thought of protest flew from her mind like a flock of pigeons going south for the winter. She could taste a curious mixture of male hunger and residual anger in his kiss. She pressed her hands against his chest, intending to separate their bodies.

She didn't want to kiss him when he was stül angry with her, when she was still angry with him.

But then his tongue pressed erotically at the softened juncture of her lips and she wanted nothing more than to open her mouth to his sensual exploration. Instead of pushing him away, her fingers clenched in the fabric of his shirt, and she met his questing tongue with her own as her anger turned into something far more dangerous—passion.

Her breasts ached and her already hardened nipples pressed against the silky confines of her bra. She rubbed herself against him, wanting his touch. Needing it. Growling low in his throat, he seemed to know exactly what she needed as he let go of her arms to work on the buttons of her cot-ton shirt. He only undid enough to slide his hands inside and cup her aching flesh. He squeezed gently and rubbed his thumbs over her engorged nipples simultaneously.

Mewling in both desire and frustration because her bra was a thin but persistent barrier to his naked touch, she ground her bottom against his erection and pressed her tormented flesh against his hands.

Laughter rumbled in his chest, but he didn't stop kissing her to give vent to it. She didn't know what he thought was so damn funny anyway. She wanted him naked and in her arms.Now . Working with feverish intensity on his shirtfront, she managed to get his buttons undone and shoved the fabric off of his shoulders.

Her hands greedily caressed the curling hair on his chest, and his entire body gave a convulsive shudder as her fingertips found the hardened nubs of his tiny male nipples.

As he pulled his mouth from hers, his head fell back against the couch, but his hands continued to knead her breasts. "You turn me on so fast, baby."

"Good." She'd hate to be this out of control by herself.

Licking a trail from his collarbone to his chin and back again, she stopped to place sporadic kisses against the heated flesh of his neck.

He unsnapped the front closure on her bra with unusually clumsy movements, and then the calloused skin of his masculine hands gently rubbed her hardened nipples and the swollen flesh of her breasts. It felt so good she wanted to cry.

She lifted her head and met his blue gaze, unfocused by desire. "Marcus. I want younow ."

"Yes!"

And then clothing starred flying and she ended up on the carpet next to Aaron's toys, while Marcus shucked his jeans. He stood above her, outrageously masculine and so aroused that even knowing his body as well as she did, she felt a frisson of purely feminine anxiety at the thought of taking him into her own.

He must have seen the worry in her eyes because he smiled with reassurance. "You know I'll fit."

"Yes." It was hard to get the one word past the dryness in her throat.

He came down on top of her, letting his hardness nestle in the juncture of her thighs. His thick erection pressed against her swollen flesh.

He groaned and rubbed himself against her. She whimpered and tried to take him into herself.

He held back. "Not yet," he said, as he reached for something in his jeans pocket.

Then he knelt between her legs and tore open a foil packet.

"You brought a condom with you?" she asked, even as aroused as she was, shocked by his sensual arrogance.

He nodded and she saw the calculation in his gaze.

"You planned this," she accused, as he slid the condom in place.

He didn't answer but came back down on top of her, adjusting himself so that his mouth was in line with her breasts. His lips closed over one turgid nipple and her worries burned up in the heat of the response he drew from her body. He suckled her while gently rolling her other nipple between his thumb and forefinger until she was begging him to take her.

"You want me?" he demanded, his face set in the almost cruel lines of masculine arousal.

"I want you.Now , Marcus,please.1"

She didn't care that she'd begged him. She just wanted this burning ache assuaged.

He pushed her thighs apart, almost roughly, and then set his erection against the opening to her flesh. She tipped her body up and groaned as the tip of his penis penetrated her aching body. Then with a feral shout that deafened her, he pushed forward and seated himself in her in one long thrust.

She stopped thinking after that. She could only feel. The rough carpet beneath her. The hard and fast thrust of his flesh inside her, the sensation of his lips on hers, the hot slide of his tongue in her mouth, and then everything began to splinter around her. She cried out against his lips, the sound muffled by the possession of his mouth over hers, and convulsed around him, her body rigid with pleasure that was close to pain.

His muscular body shook against her and she felt him grow even harder, longer and thicker before he came too.

He collapsed, his head falling into the curve of her neck. They lay there panting for several seconds.

"I'm too heavy for you." He sounded exhausted.

"I don't care." And she didn't. This closeness felt too good to let go.

He moved his head and she felt a tender kiss against her temple. It was so gentle, so completely nonsexual even though their bodies were still intimately connected, that she felt tears prick her eyes. She blinked, unwilling to let them fall.

And then her gaze focused on the clock in the corner. Stiffening, she pressed against Marcus. "Oh, my gosh. It's almost nine.Marcus! Jenny could be home any second ."

Even though she knew it was necessary, her body rebelled when Marcus withdrew from her. He jumped up, grabbing his clothes as he went. She followed, a slight ache in her feminine flesh reminding her what they had just shared. She swept her clothes up off the floor and stopped with him outside the hall bathroom.

"You use this one. I've got another off my bedroom."

He nodded, his expression going remote. "I guess we won't share a shower this time."

Blushing in memory of what they had done in their last shower together, what she had said, she swallowed. "Not this time."

She turned to go into her bedroom.

"Ronnie."

"What?"

"The sex is good, too."

She spun around to face him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He reached out and cupped her neck, his thumb caressing the underside of her chin. "It means that our marriage will be a passionate one."

She tried to glare at him but failed miserably. "I haven't said I'll marry you."

"You will." With that, he released her and strode into the bathroom, shutting the door in her bewildered face.

Had it been planned? Had he seduced her to remind her what she'd be giving up physically if she refused to marry him? He should realize that she could never forget. She hadn't forgotten for eighteen long months and she doubted her body was any more capable of forgetting the craving he'd fostered in it now. How could she forget? She loved him.

Marcus returned to the living room ten minutes later, his hair still damp from the shower. There was no sign of Ronnie, or her sister. The living room looked like a tornado had rolled through, though. If Jenny came in and saw the mess, it would embarrass Ronnie.

He had no doubt his little prude would assume her sister knew it had been caused by two adults having just made passionate love on the carpet.

He started picking up toys that had gotten scattered and tossing them into a dark green plastic laundry basket already half full of baby toys. He spied the unfinished blanket on the floor, partially under a chair, and picked it up along with the crochet hook. After rolling it in a bundle, he shoved it into the bag she'd taken it from earlier.

The room looked pretty good. Now, he needed some coffee.

Round one with Ronnie on the marriage question hadn't gone too bad, but now he faced round two.Getting to know the future sister-in-law . He had no doubt that Jenny's opinion would hold some sway with Ronnie in the marriage decision.

He could only hope that the teenager wanted to move back to her old stomping ground enough to encourage Ronnie in the right direction with him.

He walked into the kitchen and started looking through cupboards for the coffee. He found it in the shelf above the coffeemaker. Typical. He'd just gotten it going when he heard a key scrape in the lock on the front door.