Chapter Sixteen

J ack woke with a start, unsure if he had dreamed the words or if Megan really had said them. Either way was trouble. When he opened his eyes, Megan’s face was mere inches from his, her expression expectant. Before he could say anything, she cupped his cheeks and touched her lips to his—not with her usual damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead urgency, but with endearingly gentle determination.

His arms automatically tightened around her. “This isn’t wise, sweetheart,” he whispered, even as his lips moved of their own volition across her jaw toward her ear. “You’re just restless and edgy right now.”

“No, I’m horny,” she said, her hands gripping his hair to better direct his exploration of her throat. She tossed back her head to expose her neck, and arched into him with a shiver.

When in hell had she removed all her clothes?

“I want you, Jack. I want to feel you inside me.”

It sure as hell didn’t get any more direct than that, did it? And she hadn’t called him Wayne, so she was fully aware of what she was asking. Having as little willpower as a bear in a honey hive when it came to Megan, Jack locked his mouth over hers before she could change her mind.

She rewarded him with a soft sound of approval and released his hair to slide her hands up under the hem of his shirt, not stopping until she reached her target. Jack knew she was particularly fond of his chest, since she’d told him often enough.

Being quite fond of hers, too, he covered one of her breasts with his free hand, surprised at how full it felt—until he remembered why. He handled her gently, letting his thumb brush softly across her distended nipple, which proved to be very sensitive. Megan’s soft sound of pleasure turned into a full-blown moan as she arched into his touch, her legs moving restlessly against his as her fingers curled into the muscles of his chest.

Her response encouraged Jack to continue reacquainting himself with her beautiful body, all while drinking his fill of her equally delightful mouth. She obviously had the same thought, as one of her hands left his chest in search of a more interesting target.

Jack chased after her, actually surprised she’d waited as long as she had. “Slow down,” he whispered into her mouth. “We’ve got all night, sweetheart.”

She skillfully dodged his attempt to capture her hand and had her fingers wrapped around him before he could even rear back. Jack sucked in his breath and released a shuddering sigh.

Marauding Megan was back.

Lord, he loved her for knowing exactly what she wanted and not being afraid to go after it. Obviously liking what she found inside his long johns, she made another interesting sound, which Jack answered with a shout when her fingers feathered over his scrotum.

“Take off your clothes,” she murmured, wiggling around to tug at his shirt with her other hand.

He immediately sat up and pulled his shirt off over his head, then reached down and slid his long johns off without Megan’s help, as she was still locked on her target, determined to drive him mad. Just as soon as he was free of his clothes, Jack grabbed both her hands and wrestled them over her head so he could kiss her again.

He should have remembered that this in no way disabled her. Now that they were both naked, her toes became her new weapons of choice. She ran one foot up the length of his leg and somehow managed to wiggle halfway beneath him so that he settled between her thighs.

Locking both of her hands in one of his without breaking their kiss, Jack slid his free hand down between them and had just found her sensitive little bud when he was poked—several times and rather sharply—in the belly.

“Holy hell!” he yelped, scrambling back so suddenly he fell off the bed of boughs. He stared at Megan’s naked, moving stomach. She looked like she’d swallowed a basketball, it was so perfectly round—except when the tiny creature inside was doing calisthenics.

Dammit to hell, he couldn’t make love to her with their baby in there!

Megan burst out laughing. “I wish you could see your face right now,” she chortled. She stopped caressing her wiggling belly and reached out to him. “Come on, Jack. You’re going to get frostbite.”

He couldn’t stop staring at her belly. “We can’t…I’m not going to…” He finally looked at her. “Our kid will know what we’re doing, Megan. He’ll feel me when…when I’m…” He trailed off to a whisper, shaking his head because he couldn’t even say it out loud in front of the baby.

She laughed at him again. “Of course he’ll feel us. He’s supposed to. Having his parents make love is reassuring to him. Come on,” she said, wiggling her fingers as she reached out to him. “Show our baby how much you love us both.”

Jack wiped a hand over his sweating face. He couldn’t do it now if God Himself held a gun to his head. He climbed out of the snow and back into bed, pulling her down beside him so they were spooned together with her back to him.

She gave a frustrated huff, then started snickering. He threw a leg over hers to make her quit squirming. “Go to sleep. You need your rest. We don’t know if we’ll have to walk out of here tomorrow or not.”

Her entire body expanded, then deflated with a heavy sigh. “You are such a nerd.”

Megan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of all the parochial, nonsensical notions—imagine not being able to make love because the baby might feel it? Did he honestly think pregnant women didn’t have sex? And now that she’d made up her mind to do it with him, she wasn’t about to not do it for another few months, that was for sure.

Megan stared into the fire, listening to Jack’s breathing slowly even out again. How was she going to get him past this foolish notion? He said he loved her, so by God, he needed to prove it! Besides, she liked making love; she was a healthy woman who appreciated an athletic romp in bed with a sexy man, especially when that man was unequivocally into her.

And for the first time in five months, Megan was beginning to believe Jack truly did love her. Didn’t he realize a sweet bout of lovemaking was just what she needed?

He was so clueless.

She smiled despite herself. Surely he was trainable. Her mistake tonight had been asking him to make love. He was a guy, wasn’t he? And didn’t guys have sex on the brain 24/7? She should have just quietly pulled down his long johns and climbed on top. He wouldn’t have felt the baby in that position, and by the time he’d realized what was happening he would have been way too involved.

She grinned. He was sleeping now, wasn’t he?

Megan decided she better give him another few minutes, just to make sure he was in deep dream sleep. She became almost giddy with anticipation. Was Jack about to have the best damn erotic dream of his life, or what?

Five minutes later she carefully removed his arm from around her, got up on her knees facing him, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that he hadn’t bothered to put his long johns back on. Talk about a blatant invitation!

She crawled to the woodpile and tossed a few sticks on the fire, watching to see if Jack woke up. The fact that he didn’t gave her hope. She crawled back over to him, peeled the edge of the sleeping bag off his hip, and softly sucked in her breath.

He was so beautiful, so perfectly, ruggedly male. He had a series of raised scars crossing the left side of his ribs, which he’d told her were from an encounter with a young bear when he was twelve. And the ugly mark on the right side of his stomach just above his hip bone he’d said was a souvenir from his military days. Megan suspected it was a bullet wound, since she knew there was an even more wicked scar on his back, implying the bullet had gone clean through. There were several other gouges and nicks on his beautiful body—some substantial, some not—that spoke of a hard and at times death-defying life.

She was finding it harder and harder to stay angry at him for breaking her heart. After all, what would she have done if their roles had been reversed in Canada? How brutal might she have gotten if she thought Jack’s life was in danger?

Honestly? She would have done anything, said anything, to protect him because she had loved him that much.

“You look like you can’t decide whether to castrate me or jump my bones.”

Megan’s gaze snapped to his, and she had to smile. “I don’t want to castrate you.”

“That’s good.” He lifted a brow in inquiry. “So does that mean you were going to take advantage of me in my sleep?”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry for panicking earlier. Now that I’ve thought about it, I seem to recall my parents making love while my mother was carrying me. It got a bit bumpy on occasion, but I remember having this warm, fuzzy sense of being totally immersed in their love.”

Megan put her hands on her hips. “You can’t possibly remember something like that. You weren’t even born yet. Nobody can remember anything that happens before three or four years old.”

He propped his head up on his hand. “I think we remember quite a lot, only it becomes so ingrained in us that we simply don’t retain much of the details. I can still hear my mother singing to me. I remember how she smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, how she used to rock me for hours when I was sick, how she constantly flipped her hair behind her shoulder when it got in her way, since she wouldn’t braid it when Dad was around because he liked it loose. I remember every minute of my life from conception to nine years old like it was yesterday.”

Megan’s heart broke all over again, this time for a little boy who’d had his mother ripped from his life far too soon. She instinctively hugged her belly.

Jack suddenly flopped onto his back, throwing his arms wide. “You might as well have your wicked way with me. I promise not to wake up until it’s over,” he said, closing his eyes and letting out a loud snore.

Now? He expected them to make love now , after practically bringing her to tears? Megan crawled back into bed and snuggled up against him with a sigh. She was going to have to sit this man down for a good talk one of these days, and explain that sad tales of his childhood were not exactly a turn-on.

He gently pushed her shoulder. “Hey, I thought we were going to make love.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

He pushed her again, a little harder this time. “You can’t just change your mind for no reason.” His pushing hand started caressing her arm. “I thought you were horny.”

“I was, until you started talking about your childhood.”

He was silent for several seconds; then she yelped in surprise when he gently spun her around, picked her up, and sat her straddling his hips. “I’ve had a wonderful life, Megan. And now it’s time we start making our baby’s childhood just as memorable,” he said, kissing her deeply.

Oh, what the heck. They were both naked, they were in a cozy little nest in front of a roaring fire, and Jack was obviously ready. So why not?

He started chuckling—while he was kissing her!—and Megan sat up with a growl. “Now what?” she snapped.

“I was just thinking this has got to be the longest foreplay in the history of our relationship.”

“Foreplay? You call the last hour foreplay ?” She wanted to smack him, but she pointed her finger at his face instead. “You are one second away from taking another swim in the lake, buster. Do you think you can possibly stay focused for ten minutes so we can actually do this?”

“Ten?” he repeated in surprise. “All this work for ten measly minutes?” He grabbed her pointing finger, gently bucking her off him and turning so he was looming over her. “I’ll tell you what. You can have your ten minutes, but then I’m taking another…” He cocked his head in thought. “Another thirty minutes for myself.” He lowered his mouth to within inches of hers. “You want to go first, or shall I?” he whispered, inching even closer but not quite touching her lips, apparently waiting for her answer.

Megan reached down and wrapped her fingers intimately around him, grinning when he jerked in surprise. “I’ll go first.” She used her other hand to push his shoulder, sending him onto his back, and rolled with him until she was once again straddling his thighs. “Pay attention and see if you can’t learn a little something about foreplay, will you?”

“Yes ma’am!” he said in a half-shout when she started fondling him in earnest.

She lovingly tortured him for several minutes, until she could see beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead and the cords in his neck bulging. Deciding he was one second away from losing control when his hands balled into fists at his sides, Megan finally took pity. She wiggled forward until she was directly over him, braced her hands on his sweating chest, then gently lowered herself down over his shaft.

They both moaned, the sound mingling with the crackling fire to drift off into the stillness of the night. “Oh God, that feels good,” she whispered, moving slowly as she adjusted to the fullness, then quickening the tempo. “It’s been way, way too long,” she ended with another moan.

His hands went to her hips, his fingers gently kneading her flesh as he slowed her motions, moving his own hips to alter his angle and depth. His actions increased her pleasure, and Megan tilted back her head and closed her eyes, savoring the feel of him moving inside her. He brought one hand to her feminine center and used his thumb to caress her sensitive bud while he continued to guide her gentle rocking.

“Go on, sweetheart,” he softly petitioned. “That’s my girl. Go visit our beautiful place.”

Megan felt herself tightening, spiraling inward, deep into the depths of the magical place he always took her. She crested with a shout of release, her entire body convulsing in waves of blinding heat. Time stopped and the physical world receded as she floated in a wondrous landscape of colorful, energized light.

“Come back to me, Megan,” she heard from a distance. “That’s it, sweetheart, come back so we can go there together.”

Megan suddenly found herself back in Jack’s embrace; he was stroking her hair, gentling her with soothing whispers as wave after wave of energy continued pulsing through her.

“That’s my girl,” he whispered in her ear. Megan realized he was sitting up, she was still straddling him, and he was still embedded deeply inside her. “Was it as beautiful as ever?” he asked, calming her with caresses to her body and tender kisses to her face.

“You weren’t there with me.”

“I’ll go with you next time, I promise.”

He lifted her off him, then turned them both until she was lying on the sleeping bag. Kneeling between her legs, he pulled her backside up onto his thighs, and Megan realized that the baby wasn’t in his way in this position.

He slowly entered her, his gaze locked on her face with such intensity, waves of heated awareness washed through her again. “Beautiful Megan,” he whispered, slipping deeply inside her, then pulling nearly out, then sliding even deeper. “I see our magical place every time I look in your eyes.”

She reached out, wanting to hold him, but he took her hands and set them over her head, wrapping her fingers around a fir bough. “Lie still,” he tenderly commanded, grasping her hips, “and let me watch you blossom. I’ll go with you this time, I promise.”

He set a gentle and thoroughly mesmerizing rhythm, and Megan felt herself focusing inward again, sensing she wasn’t alone this time. Jack definitely was present; she could feel the power of his energy threatening to take her into a storm of such intensity that she cried out.

“Shhh,” he soothed, even as he quickened his pace. “You can let go, sweetheart. You’re always safe when you’re with me,” he said, touching her intimately as he continued his gentle assault. “Come with me,” he commanded, thrusting deeper.

The storm he had conjured sucked her into its swirling vortex, and Megan was suddenly floating through a wondrous landscape of shimmering light. And this time Jack was right beside her as they explored the beautiful world together. The colors were intensified tenfold, the warmth more penetrating, the sense of wonder intoxicating.

“We can’t stay,” Jack whispered, cupping her head in his hands and kissing her deeply. “We’ll come back again soon, I promise. But you need to sleep now.”

She reluctantly let him lead her back, not wanting to leave such euphoric beauty where she felt so warm and safe—and so loved. She yawned, cuddling into his embrace.

“That’s it, little one, let me hold you in my arms. Dream with me, Megan, and let me introduce you to our son.”

She snuggled against him with a sigh of profound contentment. She didn’t know how he did it, but every time they made love, he carried her off to this beautiful place that existed only when she was with him, and then she would wake up in his arms, feeling utterly and completely loved. It had happened the very first time they’d made love, and had only intensified over the next month. If she didn’t know better, she might wonder if Jack really did possess some sort of magical power that…

A beautiful woman suddenly stepped out of the shimmering ether, carrying a baby in her arms.