He smiled. “Well, a guy can hope, Hope.”
One brow lifted as she unwrapped the condom and slipped it between her lips. Then, before his astonished eyes, she put it on him with her mouth. “Oh, God,” he groaned as she broadened his horizons and gave him a whole new experience.
By the time she straddled his lap, he was very close to the point of no return. She positioned the head of his penis, then slowly sat until he was buried deep inside her. Through the thin layer of latex, her hot flesh surrounded his erection as if she’d been custom-made for him. She shuddered and he felt every ripple of her tight passage. She grabbed his shoulders and leaned back. Her lips were parted, her breathing shallow, and her head fell to one side. Her cheeks were flushed pink. The hunger in her clear blue eyes focused on him as if he were the only man who had exactly what she needed.
She sighed his name and he placed his hands on her back. He kissed her breasts, and when she squeezed her tight muscles, he had to fight to keep from coming before she did. He tried to think of something else while every cell in his body was focused on her. On the way she felt inside. On the warmth of her contracting muscles. On the sharp pain and dull ache twisting his groin.
She straightened and pressed her forehead to his. He breathed the air from her lungs as she moved up and down, touching him with a slow and steady rhythm that built a fever for more. He grabbed her behind and brought her down hard, moving her faster.
He didn’t think anything could feel as good as the inside of Hope, but with the next push, it did. It got a whole lot hotter. And wet, like her mouth, only better. Heat swept across his flesh like a raging fire. Hope moaned and squeezed him tight, pulsing, constricting around him. The strong contractions of her orgasm wrung a release from him that twisted his vital organs and left him without air in his lungs.
He came deep inside where she was hot and slick, and even as he pumped into her one last time, he knew why it suddenly felt so damn good.
The condom broke.
Hope rested her head on Dylan’s shoulder while the music from her CD player filled the silence, broken only by their gasps of breath. She hadn’t thought sex with Dylan could get better than it had been the other night. She’d been wrong about that. Perhaps it was better now because she was more relaxed. More at ease with her body and his. More comfortable acting like herself.
She waited until her breathing returned to normal before she spoke. “I think you’ve ruined me for any other man.” When he didn’t say a word, she pulled back and looked into his face. He didn’t look like a man basking in afterglow. “What’s wrong?”
“Hop up,” was all he said.
As soon as Hope rose to her knees, he grasped her hips and stood her in front of him. Without a word, he grabbed his jeans and headed to the bathroom.
Hope stared after him until he was out of sight. The bathroom door shut, and her own afterglow bubble popped like a balloon. She stood in the middle of her living room, suddenly feeling very naked and exposed. What had happened? What had gone wrong? What had she done?
She grabbed her dress and slipped it over her head. She didn’t know what had happened or what she’d done. Everything had been wonderful until afterward. Until she’d made that crack about him ruining her for other men. Maybe that was it. Maybe that had sounded like a commitment to him.
Hope tied the dress behind her neck and glanced toward the hall. That had to be it. She’d made him angry. He’d probably leave now. The thought of him walking out her front door left her cold.
The CD stopped and the toilet flushed. Dylan appeared in his black jeans, but he didn’t look any happier than when he’d left. “Are you taking birth control?” he asked.
“What?” Her gaze locked on the grim line of his mouth. She shook her head. “I mean, no.”
“Shit!”
Hope jumped. “What?”
“What?” He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. “Didn’t you feel the condom break?”
She thought for a moment. Thought of the exact second when everything suddenly felt a whole lot better than it had. “Oh,” she said.
His hands dropped to his sides. “When are you due for your period?”
He was worried about pregnancy. Something that she hadn’t thought about for so long, it never entered her head. “Not for a long time,” she assured him.
“How long?”
“I’m not pregnant.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Take my word for it.”
He moved to the couch and sat with his elbows on his knees. His bare foot landed on her balled-up panties. “Jesus, what a mess.”
“I’m not pregnant, Dylan.”
“You don’t know that, Hope. At this very minute my DNA is swimming upstream, millions of happy little tadpoles gearing up to knock at ground zero.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Fuck!”
Hope tried not to take it all too personally, but she didn’t succeed.
“I can’t have another illegitimate child whose mama lives in another state. I just can’t do that again.”
He shook his head and looked up at her. “I won’t do that.”
Hope tried not to let her surprise show on her face. She didn’t know if he realized what he’d just told her. “Trust me. I’m not pregnant.”
“How do you know?”
It was no big deal, she told herself. It didn’t matter, but just when she’d begun to feel comfortable with him, telling him would bring up every insecurity she had about her body. “There is no ground zero.”
His gaze lowered to her stomach, and he drummed his fingers on the back of the couch. “What do you mean?”
Hope moved to the fireplace and stared at the cold stone mantel. She stood with her back to Dylan, her toes curling in the bearskin covering Hiram’s bloodstain. She didn’t know exactly how to tell him. It shouldn’t matter, but for some men, it did. “Remember when I told you that the scar on my abdomen was from a tummy tuck? Well, I lied about that. When I was younger, I had a condition that was so bad, I missed a lot of school. Doctors were afraid it might spread to my other organs, so when drug therapy didn’t work, I had to have surgery that left me unable to have children.”
“Cancer?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “No, endometriosis.”
“Jesus.” He sighed. “Why didn’t you just say that? You made it sound like you were one breath away from death.”
“Have you heard of endometriosis?”
“Sure. My mother had it and had to have a hysterectomy when I was about sixteen.”
“I was twenty-one.”
He rose and went toward her. “That must have been rough.”
She shrugged and looked down at the bobcat on the hearth. “I felt so much better afterward, it was worth it to me. I had so much more freedom. I didn’t have to spend half a month dreading the other half. I thought that if I ever wanted children, I would adopt. Having my own biological child was never an issue for me. Maybe because I thought it wouldn’t matter to a man who loved me.”
“It shouldn’t.”
She knew better. “But it does.” She felt him move behind her.
“I gather it mattered to your ex-husband,” he said, crowding her personal space with his big, solid body and intimate questions.
She’d never talked to anyone about what had happened in her marriage. She really didn’t want to talk about it now, but he rested his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. She looked up at him and he was looking back through patient green eyes, like he was prepared to wait all day for her answer. “He thought it wouldn’t matter, but it did,” she said.
