“I love you, Rachel,” he whispered, his voice low and rough as he pulled her into his arms.
Her mouth opened beneath his as she melted against him. Her breasts were cool and soft against the searing heat of his chest. Her back arched as his hands roamed the gentle slopes and ridges. Her tongue met his in urgent play as each tried to telegraph feelings to the other.
Bryan eased her down on the cushions of the glider. His mouth trailed little sipping kisses down the column of her throat to her left breast, where he drank his fill of her, rolling the tight bud of her nipple in his mouth, sucking at it and teasing it with his teeth. He wrapped his fingers in the hem of her skirt and dragged the garment up between them, baring her silky legs to his touch. She moved restlessly beneath him as he tugged down her panties just enough so he could tease her.
“Oh, Bryan, please,” she whispered brokenly, desperation consuming her whole.
“Please, what?” he taunted, nibbling at the corner of her mouth. His fingers slid into the dark silk at the apex of her thighs again and again, only to withdraw without touching the burning core of her desire.
Driven by a deep need and an even deeper fear, he wanted her as wild for his love as he was for hers. He wanted to possess her completely, body and soul, with nothing held back, not feelings, not words.
“Show me,” he whispered darkly.
Fire leapt in his veins as her small hand guided his, showing him exactly how she wanted to be touched. He complied willingly, growling his satisfaction as Rachel squeezed her eyes shut and arched up into his caress. He stroked her to the brink of completion, then pulled away.
Rachel braced herself up on her elbows and stared at him, her swollen breasts rising and falling with her hard, shallow breaths. Bryan kneeled on the cushions of the glider with one knee planted between her bare thighs, the other foot braced against the ground. She’d never seen him look more purely male. His bare chest gleamed in the fading light with the sweat of passion restrained. The button of his jeans was undone, and his manhood strained against the blue fabric.
Sitting up, she reached out with trembling hands to lower his zipper. She leaned forward, pressing hot, open- mouthed kisses against his quivering belly as she freed him. Her hands closed around his hard, hot shaft, caressing him reverently. She wanted him with a need that went beyond desire. She needed him in a way that went straight to the heart of her, to the essence of what made her human. At that moment she would rather have died than deny herself the chance to join with this man in this elemental, mystical act.
Driven by his own desperation, Bryan forced her back down on the glider, his body arching over hers like a bow. He paused at the threshold, the tip of him nudging insistently against her sweet warmth. Bracing himself on his arms, he stared down at her. He had thought it would be enough to know that she loved him. He had thought he could go without hearing the words, but he couldn’t. He needed to hear them now.
“Tell me you love me, Rachel,” he whispered hoarsely.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide and dark, stark with sorrow and pleading. She was frightened and he knew it, but he was more frightened.
“Say it,” he demanded, his whole body trembling with the tension of holding back.
“Bryan, don’t-”
He tangled his fist in her hair and arched her head back as he lowered his mouth toward hers. He halted, inches from kissing her. “Say it. Please, Rachel.”
Rachel looked up at him, her heart aching. Lord, how she loved him! It wasn’t just her own heart she was trying to protect, it was his as well. She didn’t want to hurt him. But as she looked up into the tortured expression in his eyes, she knew she was hurting him. Her silence was tearing him apart. He was a good man. He was a dreamer, and there was no room in her future for a dreamer. But there would always be a place in her heart for Bryan and his magic.
Tears welled up in her eyes and slid in a stream down her temples.
“I love you,” she whispered, her lips trembling as she leaned up to kiss him. “I love you.”
Bryan clutched her to him, a storm of emotion sweeping through him as he eased his body into hers. He made love to her with everything he was feeling-passion, tenderness, anger, and pain. He held her and kissed her. When the end came, he told her again what was in his heart. And she clung to him and cried.
“Hush, sweetheart, don’t cry,” he whispered, holding her close, pressing kisses into her tear-damp hair. He inched over onto his side and cuddled Rachel against him. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
Rachel smiled sadly against his solid chest. Don’t fall in love with a dreamer, the song went. But she had. She couldn’t regret it. She wouldn’t have traded what she and Bryan had just shared for anything. She only regretted that the world didn’t work the way people like Bryan wanted it to.
“I’m all right,” she said, dredging up a smile for him. Tenderly, she brushed his hair out of his eyes. “You need a haircut.”
“Do I?” he mumbled, marveling at her strength.
She looked so soft and fragile, but under all that exquisite loveliness was a core of steel that would get her through whatever she had to face. It killed him to think of that hardness taking over her life, obliterating the young woman as she sacrificed her happiness and her dreams on the altar of responsibility. If only he could make her see that she didn’t have to give up life’s magic, that loneliness didn’t have to be a part of her penance for past sins committed against Addie. If only he could make her see that his love for her wasn’t going to fade away like a rainbow in the mist.
“I love a maiden fair with sunlight in her hair. Her name is Rachel,” he sang softly, toying with the tendrils of spun gold that curled around her face. “My love for her is true. Whatever shall I do? She-aargh!”
The glider gave a sudden lurch backward. Instinctively, Bryan’s arms tightened around Rachel, pulling her off the thing with him as he fell with a thud to the ground. She gave a squeal of surprise and landed on him, forcing the breath out of him.
“I’ve heard of the earth moving, but this is ridiculous,” he said, coughing and squinting against the pain as he tried to suck air into his lungs.
“Are you all right?” Rachel asked. She sat up and tugged her sweater on over her head.
“Nothing wounded but my pride.”
Bryan’s attention was riveted on a spot behind the bench. He fumbled for his glasses and pulled them on, squinting into the darkness as his sixth sense hummed inside him.
Rachel’s suddenly startled gaze followed his. “Did you see someone?”
“No,” Bryan said evenly. It was what he hadn’t seen that was important, but he knew Rachel wouldn’t want to hear about it.
He stood up, straightening his clothes, then offered Rachel a hand. “I guess that was just a sign that it’s time for us to go back to the house.”
Rachel scooped up their wineglasses and they walked back across the yard arm in arm. Rounding the corner of the house, they stopped in their tracks at the sight that greeted them.
There was a woman sitting on a stack of suitcases on the front porch. She was a thin, birdlike creature with a wild nest of gray hair on her head. The tip of her cigarette glowed red in the dim light of the porch.
“Bryan!” She shouted his name and popped up off her perch like a jack-in-the-box. “There you are! I must have rang the bell a hundred times! A hundred times!”
“It’s broken,” Bryan mumbled, momentarily stunned. He mounted the stairs in a daze.
“My stars, it’s good to see you, sweetheart!” The woman had a voice like sandpaper, and her cigarette bobbed up and down on her lip as she spoke. She threw her arms around Bryan in an exuberant hug which he started to return, but he quickly jumped back as she burned a hole through his shirt.
He plucked the smoldering fabric away from his skin, pain putting a brittle edge to his grin. “Aunt Roberta! It’s so good to see you!” he said with genuine affection, but his brows pulled together in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
Roberta cackled like a crazed chicken and waved a hand at him. “Making the rounds of my nieces and nephews. I wrote you, sweetheart. I know I wrote you.”
“You did?” Bryan searched his brain for any memory of such a letter but came up blank.
Roberta’s glassy green eyes took on the same kind of absent look as she shrugged her thin shoulders. “I meant to.”
Rachel cleared her throat discreetly, drawing both their attention. Bryan looked at her as if he had never seen her before, then jumped to introduce her.
