The Wedding In White Page 14

  "What?"

  "I can feel every cell of your body from the waist up, Nat," he said in a strained tone. "And I've gone hungry for a while. You aren't up to a passionate night. Not yet."

  "That last bit sounds promising," she murmured.

  "I'll make you a promise," he replied. "When you're in a condition to appreciate it, I'll make you glad you waited for me."

  "I already am, Mack," she whispered. "I love you more than the air I breathe."

  For a few seconds, he didn't say anything. Then he turned, and his mouth found hers in the darkness in a kiss that was hard and hungry and passionate but so tender that it touched her heart. But after a few seconds, when one of his legs slid against hers almost involuntarily, he stiffened and abruptly rolled over onto his back beside her, groaning as he laughed.

  "I knew this was a bad idea," he sighed.

  Her body was tingling with delicious sensations. She pulled herself into a sitting position, grimacing with discomfort. "Well, there goes that brilliant idea," she murmured, holding her rib cage as she eased back down.

  "What brilliant idea?" he asked.

  "I was going to see if I could—" She stopped dead when she realized what she was about to say. "I mean, I..."

  There was a highly amused sound from beside her. "If you got on top, Nat, I'd still have to hold you there, and after the first few seconds, I wouldn't be gentle. We'd reopen that wound and the pain would be vicious."

  She swallowed. "Just a thought. Forget I mentioned it."

  He laughed tenderly, bending to kiss her briefly. "I'll try," he said softly. "Thanks for the thought, anyway. But this isn't the time or the place. First we get married," he continued. "And then we can make all sorts of discoveries about each other."

  Her heart was still racing. "It's exciting to think about that."

  "For both of us," he admitted. "But we'd better quit right now, while we're ahead." He bent and brushed his mouth softly over a hard nipple, lingering to taste it with his tongue.

  She caught her breath and he lifted his head to look at her in the soft glow of the small night-light.

  "I like that," she whispered.

  "Me, too." He was hesitating. This was a bad idea. One of the worst he'd ever had. But he was bending to her body while he was thinking it. His mouth covered her breast again, very gently, and one lean hand smoothed down her body to ease her gown up. He traced her upper thigh with slow, expert movements, making lazy and exciting forays inside it under the gown.

  She started trembling. Her hands hesitated on his shoulders while she let her mind go blank except for the pleasure he was giving her. It had been so long. While she was thinking it, she said it.

  "So long," he breathed urgently. "Yes, Nat. Too long!"

  Her hands went between them to his broad chest and caressed him with delight, enjoying the thickness of hair and the warm muscles under it.

  She felt his body tense and his hand move to a much more intimate exploration. She tried to catch his wrist, but it was too sweet to deny. She gave in, moaning as she felt the most exquisite sensations pulse through her.

  She was drowning in pleasure. It was so intense that she barely felt him take her hand and guide it down his body. He'd unsnapped his pajamas and she was inside them, discovering the major difference between men and women with a fascination that was going to make her die of embarrassment sooner or later. For the moment, though, it was exciting to touch him that way. She couldn't have dreamed of doing that with anyone else.

  He shifted restlessly, enticing her slow tracing to grow in confidence as he groaned aloud at her breast.

  "It won't hurt you, will it?" she whispered shakily.

  "What you're doing?" He shivered and his mouth grew hungry at her breast, making her moan, as well. "I'm in agony. No, don't stop!" he said quickly, catching her hand before it withdrew. "Don't stop, baby," he whispered, moving to cover her mouth with his. "I love feeling you touch me! I love it!"

  She opened her lips to speak, and he invaded them as his hand moved into a more intimate exploration, one that caused her whole body to spin off into a realm she'd never known existed.

  She was moving in a helpless rhythm, helping him, enticing him to continue. Her eyes opened and his was there, seeing her pleasure, watching.

  "This is how it feels when a man and a woman go all the way," he whispered huskily, and before she could question the blunt statement, his touch became urgent and invasive, and she seemed to explode into a thousand pulsating, white-hot fragments under his fascinated scrutiny.

  She clutched his shoulders, shivering in the aftermath, her open mouth against his bare shoulder. Seconds later, she was crying. Her chest hurt again, but her whole body felt as if it had been caressed to heaven.

  "Mack," she whimpered. "Oh, Mack!"

  He was kissing her, soft, undemanding caresses all over her face and throat, down to her still taut breasts and back up again. She could feel his body against her without a stitch of clothing in the way. And only then did she realize that her gown was lying on the floor somewhere.

  She didn't remember the clothes being removed. She only remembered the throbbing pleasure that even in memory made her tremble.

  "When we have each other, we're going to set fires," he whispered into her ear.

  "I want to," she breathed into his lips. Her hands smoothed his cheeks as she looked at him with caressing eyes. "I want to right now." Her hips moved against his, feeling the hard thrust of him that he made no effort to hide.

  "So do I. More than you realize," he replied tersely. "But we're not going one step further than this until you're completely healed and we're married."

  "Mack!" she groaned.

  "You can't take my weight," he said. "Even if you lie over me, it would be more violent than this when I went into you. And once I started, I'd lose control."

  Her gasp was audible. Word pictures formed in her mind and made her flush in the dim light.

  "You're still a virgin," he continued huskily. "No matter how much I arouse you, it's probably going to be uncomfortable. But I want you to know what it's going to feel like when you adjust to me. I don't want you afraid of me on our wedding night."

  "As if I could be...after that," she whispered, pushing her face into his throat. "Oh, it was...glorious!"

  "Watching you was glorious," he said roughly. "But we have to stop. I won't take my pleasure at the expense of your pain."

  He got up abruptly, pausing to help her into her gown before he picked up his pajama trousers. He turned toward her deliberately, watching her avert her eyes.

  "Are you afraid to look at me?" he asked gently.

  She grimaced. "I'm sorry. It's...difficult."

  He laughed, but it wasn't mocking laughter. "All right, chicken." She heard his pajama trousers snap, unusually loud in the room, before he climbed into bed beside her and drew her demurely to his side.

  "You're going to stay with me all night?" she whispered breathlessly.

  "All night, every night, if I have to put a chastity belt on you to protect you until we're married," he said wickedly. "And I may. I want you excessively."

  She nuzzled her face against his shoulder. "I felt like that, too. I didn't expect to. I've never known what it was to want someone until you started making passes at me."

  "I couldn't help it," he sighed. "I'd reached the end of my patience."

  "What do you mean?"

  He kissed the tip of her nose. "Later. I've got work to do tomorrow. We both have to get some sleep. Okay?"

  She sighed, as close to heaven as she'd ever dreamed of being. "Okay, Mack."

  She let her sated body relax and curled into him, closing her eyes. He gathered her as close as he dared and pulled the covers up.

  "And don't brood over what I just did to you," he murmured firmly. "It's part of the courtship ritual. We'll restrain ourselves until it's legal. In the meantime, you and Vivian can plan the wedding."

  She moved drowsily. "Are you real
ly serious?"

  "Deadly," he said, and he wasn't laughing. "I wanted you when you were seventeen and I want you now. Somewhere in the middle, I fell in love without realizing it. These past few weeks have been the purest hell I've ever known. I don't want to go through them again."

  "Neither do I." She touched his face in the darkness. "I'll be the best wife in the world, I promise I will. I'll take care of you until we die."

  He swallowed hard. "I'll take care of you, too, Natalie," he whispered. "And I'll never stop loving you. Not even when they lay me down in the dark."

  She pressed her mouth against his bare shoulder and her hands clung to him. "Not without me, you don't. Where you go, I go. No matter where."

  He couldn't manage another word. He kissed her forehead with breathless tenderness and wrapped her close in the darkness.

  The wedding took a lot of planning. It had to be small, because Natalie didn't recover as fast as she'd hoped to. But it had to be big enough to accommodate everyone who wanted to see them married, and that meant having it at church. They settled on the local Presbyterian church, and Natalie decided to have a traditional white wedding gown and to let Vivian be maid of honor. Mack decided to have two best men so that both his brothers could stand up with them. It was unconventional, but very much a family affair.

  With Mack in a dark suit and Natalie in her elegant puffy-sleeved white silk dress with a long veil and a bouquet of white roses, they were married. They exchanged rings and when Mack lifted the veil to look at her for the first time as his wife, tears rained down her face as he bent and kissed her more tenderly than he ever had before. They looked at each other with expressions that brought tears to the eyes of some of the matrons in the congregation. Afterward, there was the mad dash out the door—done leisurely to accommodate Natalie's still slow pace—and the rice and ribbons. It was traditional in that respect, at least, and in the reception in the fellowship hall with the cakes and punch.

  "You made the most beautiful bride in the world, Nat," Vivian said as she kissed her warmly after the ceremony. "I'm so glad things worked out, in spite of me."

  Natalie laughed warmly. "We both have a lot to learn about life. Besides," she added, "every bad experience has a silver lining. Look at what mine has produced. And not only for me," she added wryly.

  Vivian wrinkled her nose as she smiled. "Imagine me, in nursing school," she chuckled. "But the nurses in Dallas said I was a natural, and I think I am. I love the work, the equipment, everything. I daresay if I study hard, I'll make a decent nurse."

  "You could make a decent doctor, if you wanted to," Mack added as he joined them to slip a possessive arm around his new wife. "We can afford medical school."

  "I know that," Vivian said. "But I'm not really keen on spending ten years in school, just the same. Besides," she said with a grin, "everyone knows that the nurses are the real power in hospitals!"

  Natalie laughed. "You certainly would be."

  Mack kissed his sister's cheek. "You've changed a lot in the past few months," he pointed out. "I'm very proud of you."

  Vivian flushed with pleasure. "I'm proud of you, too, big brother. Even though it took you so long to realize that marriage isn't a trap."

  He searched her face quietly. "I was afraid that it might be too much responsibility for Natalie to take on. But uncertainty is part of life. Families band together and get through the bad times."

  "Indeed they do," Vivian seconded. "I'm so glad we all had a second chance. Look what wonderful things we've done with it!"

  "And the most wonderful is only a few hours away," Mack whispered in Natalie's ear a few minutes later as they were preparing to leave on their brief honeymoon to Cancun.

  Natalie pressed her hand against his cheek and felt him lift and turn it to press his lips to the palm. "I've waited a long time for you," she said cheekily. "You said you'd be worth it."

  He chuckled. "Wait and see."

  They had Vivian and the boys drive them to the Medicine Ridge airport, where they took the Learjet to Cancun. They were booked into a luxury hotel on the long island just off the mainland, with one of the most beautiful sugary white beaches in the world. It looked like paradise to Natalie.

  "It's so beautiful," she kept repeating after they'd checked in and were standing on their private balcony. "It looks like a picture postcard!"

  "You can't swim just yet," he reminded her. "But would you like to go and walk on the beach?"

  She turned to him and smiled softly. "Would you?"

  He pursed his lips and gave her lithe body in the peach silk dress a long and ardent scrutiny. "I think we both know what I'd like to do," he mused. "But I'll humor you."

  "It would be nice to look for shells," she said. "And besides, it's not dark yet."

  He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's not dark. I mean, it's broad daylight." She hesitated, because he wasn't getting it at all. She flushed a little. "I couldn't possibly take off my clothes in the light and do... that...in bed with you looking at me!"

  Chapter 11

  He stared at her with utter astonishment. "My God!"

  He looked as if she'd thrown a pie in his face. She put her hands on her hips. "My God, what?" she demanded. He sure was acting funny.

  He took the tourist booklet out of her hands and put it on the round table inside the sliding door. He pulled her to him, very gently, and bent to her mouth.

  It was the first time he'd kissed her with intent, as a lover instead of a fiancé. Despite their intimacy her first night back at the Killain house, she hadn't dreamed there were such deep levels of intimacy in a simple kiss, until she felt her knees buckle and her body begin to burn with sensations she'd never felt.

  She held onto his arms as his big, warm hands began a slow, teasing exploration of her figure that rose to just under her breasts, and around them, without touching them at all. After a few seconds, her body began to follow them, to entice them and finally to plead for the teasing touch that he denied her. When it came, when she felt his hands close around them, she moaned harshly and caught his wrists to hold his hands there.

  It was like that night he'd touched her so intimately and taught her the sensations her untried body could feel with him. He'd taken her to heights that she'd dreamed about and moaned hungrily over in the time before the wedding. He hadn't come very close to her in the meantime, apparently dead serious about abstaining until the rings were in place. He had continued to share her bed, but with the hall door cracked open and a resistance to all her flirting that made her reel. He was affectionate, gentle, even tender—but there was nothing indiscreet or urgent. Until now.

  She never felt him ease her down on the bed. Each caress was followed by one that was more enticing, more teasing, more provocative. Her world narrowed to the needs of her body. She'd gone hungry for him in recent days. She ached to have him against her. She wanted his hands on her bare skin. She wanted his eyes on her. She wanted utter, absolute possession. She arched her back and ground her mouth into his, her hands trembling as they locked behind his head and guided those expert lips to her breasts. They were bare, although she didn't realize it until his mouth fastened hard onto a taut nipple and began to suckle it. She made a sound that she didn't recognize and twisted up to prolong the sweet agony of the contact. It had been so long. Too long. Ages too long!

  In the tense, lazy minutes that followed, she was all too eager to shed her clothing, because her body was hungry for his mouth and his hands. They felt warm in the faint chill of the air conditioner, but she was blind to the light that flowed in through the Venetian blinds as he ripped the cover off the bed and pushed the pillows after it. His body moved lazily against hers between urgent unfastening and unbuttoning. He managed to get the fabric out of the way and follow it with two pairs of shoes in a blind, throbbing heat that had both of them out of their minds with desire.

  "I thought I'd go mad before the ceremony," he said against her breasts. "I ached like a boy before
his first time. All I could think about was that night we lay naked together in your bed, and you let me satisfy you!"

  "I thought about it, too," she groaned, clinging to him. "I want it again. I want you!"

  "I want you, too," he said huskily, suckling her a little roughly in his ardor. "More than you realize!"

  He lifted away from her for a minute, his expression barely controlled, tense. He looked at her nudity with raging desire while he gauged her readiness for what was to come. He traced a torturous path down her taut body and touched her blatantly, his eye narrow and glittery.

  "Yes, you're ready," he breathed.

  She wondered how he knew, but before she could ask, he was moving her closer to him with an expertise she couldn't begin to match.

  He rolled onto his side, pulling her between his long, powerful legs. His hands settled on her slender hips, moving her against the hard thrust of him in an arousing rhythm as he played hungrily with her soft, parted lips.

  One of his long legs eased between both of hers in a teasing motion that was even more arousing than the play of his warm hands on her bare skin. She shivered and tried to get closer.

  "Don't rush it," he said tenderly. "I have to be slow, so that I don't hurt you too much. Let me show you what I want you to do."

  He guided her with his hips until she was right up against him in an intimacy they'd never shared unclothed. Her eyes widened as she felt him in the most intimate place of all. She jerked a little at the unfamiliar closeness.

  "That's it, sweetheart," he coaxed, both hands on her hips, drawing her over him tenderly so that he moved slowly against the faint barrier she could feel.

  Her hands bit into his hard arms. She stared at him, fascinated at the play of expressions on his taut features as his body began to invade hers with the advent of a sharp, unexpected pain. He hesitated, and his hand went between them, working magic on her tense muscles.

  She began to shiver with the onrush of pleasure, diverted from the pain. He was so blatant with his ardor that she lost the last vestiges of fear and began to move with him, hungry, greedy for more of the fierce pleasure he was teaching her.