The Bride Wore Blue Read online

  “Hazzard.” She sighed and rolled into him, tangling those glorious silken legs with his and urging him closer.

  He raised his head and met dark eyes glistening with desire, shimmering with need. Imploring, impatient, the look she gave him teamed with her body’s restless rhythm, urging him to complete the act he’d started.

  “We’ve got all night, Maggie. There’s no rush.” To prove it, he brushed his thumb slowly across her parted lips. She caught the fleshy pad of the tip between her teeth, nipping him lightly before enticing it inside her mouth, where her tongue stroked with a rhythm that matched the one her hips had set against his.

  “Then again,” he ground out as she rolled to her back, urging him to cover her body with his, and made a place for him between her thighs. “I could be wrong.”

  He dropped his head to the silken hollow beneath her jaw and clenched every muscle in his body when she rocked her hips against him. “Have mercy, Maggie. I wanted to make this slow for you.”

  “Make it slow later,” she whispered urgently, and reached between them to find him, clasp him in her hot, elegant hands and guide him to her welcoming heat. “Right now…just make it happen.”

  He was more than willing to oblige her. Not so willing to drag himself out of the sensual fog enveloping him and take care of the business of protecting her. Not willing—there was nothing he wanted more than to have nothing between them—but bound by responsibility to do it anyway.

  Separating himself from the delicious contact of her body, however, was not an option. He banded an arm around her waist and dragged her with him to the edge of the bed. With haste and decided lack of patience, he reached down and groped around on the floor, found his jeans and wrestled a packet of protection from the pocket. He was shaking so badly from the effort to maintain control that she smiled crookedly and took it from his fumbling fingers.

  “You’ll pay for this,” he promised as he tugged her back to the center of the bed. He groaned as with an agonizingly evocative touch, she rolled the condom into place. “You’ll pay dearly.”

  “I seem to recall hearing that threat from you before.”

  His breath stalled when she nudged her cleft against the tip of his straining arousal. “When I get done making a panting fool of myself over you,” he gritted out, “I’m going to make so good on that threat you’ll be begging for…mercy.”

  Lacing her fingers behind his neck, she brought his mouth down to hers and whispered against his lips. “Anything you say, Hazzard. Only, please…say it later.”

  He couldn’t have said anything at that point if his life had hung in the balance. She’d drained him not only of the power of speech but of every cognizant thought in his head but one: making her his.

  He took her mouth with a deep, probing kiss, his tongue delving in and out in a sweet, enticing prelude to his body’s slow penetration of hers.

  Making a cave of his arms around her head, he knotted his hands in her hair and tried to hold himself together as he sank deep. She was wet heat and sweet salvation as her body stretched to accommodate him, then clenched to welcome him home.

  Until that point—when she clutched and caressed and called his name in a breathless cry of exultation and greed— he’d clung foolishly to the conviction that he still had a fighting chance of pulling out of this tailspin of mindnumbing, pleasure-induced oblivion to tend to her needs. In truth, he’d never had a prayer. The moment she slid those long, supple legs along his, wrapped them around his hips and locked him against her, he surrendered completely to the pleasure of her body, to the wonder that was her own drugging passion.

  He wanted to bury himself so deeply inside her he’d never find his way out. Yet the wild, delicious friction of sliding into her lush heat compelled him to withdraw slowly, relishing the burn, anticipating the molten sensation of his return.

  Watching her face, feeding his flames, he plunged back into her with a series of hard, swift strokes that careened him straight over the edge of control. His breath hissed out of his body in a tortured groan when he ignited, then burst into a brilliant arch of white-hot flame. Burying deep, crushing her to him to extend the contact and the force of his devastating climax, he rode with the most excruciating pleasure he’d ever known. And in the moment when he exploded inside her, he died…an exquisite, glorious death, happily drawing his last breath before being born again to draw his first in the wonder of this woman’s arms.

  Maggie ran her hands in a lazy, contented glide along the damp planes of Blue’s muscled back. His weight was glorious and heavy above her, his breathing labored, his heart pounding like thunder against her breast.

  “For the record, Stretch…” His ragged breath fanned her cheek before he nuzzled, with tender exhaustion, beneath her jaw. “Even though it was your fault, that’s the first and the last promise I’ll ever break to you.”

  She pressed a soft smile against his throat. “Do you hear me complaining?”

  With great effort, he managed to brace himself on his elbows above her. His tousled blond hair, mussed beautifully by her hands moments earlier, fell across blue eyes still clouded with latent passion and raw regret.

  “But I promised you so much more.”

  She raised a hand to brush the hair from his eyes. “Like you said, we’ve got all night.”

  With a contented groan, he rolled to his back, taking her with him, reversing their positions. As she looked down at his beautiful face, his gaze searched hers with a look of telltale guilt that made her heart swell.

  “You all right?”

  She blinked slowly. “I’m fine. In fact, I’m terrific. And you…” She sucked in her breath, stunned when she felt the sure, swelling length of his arousal growing against her belly. “You have amazing recuperative powers.”

  His smile was slow, sly and seductive. “I told you I was going to make it up to you. Consider this the first installment in an effort to make it worth your wait.”

  Her body’s reaction to his velvety promise was instant and electric. Heat infiltrated the night and her blood with a quick, aching anticipation. Sensation tingled along her skin, making her aware of the cool drift of the night breeze through the window, the warm, musky scent of sex clinging to the sheets and her skin, the hot, hard body of the beautiful man beneath her.

  She bit her lower lip to keep from crying out when his huge, caressing hands slid down the length of her back, cupping and kneading her buttocks before drifting lower. Watching her face, reading her need, he gripped her thighs in a gentle hold and urged her to part them.

  “Open up, Maggie. Let me show you how special you are to me.”

  She swallowed hard and gave herself over to him, spreading her legs until she straddled his hips, her knees digging into the mattress at his sides.

  His fingers spread wide along her thighs as his hands traveled to her hips and urged her to sit up, astride him. “Let me see how beautiful you are.”

  With a slumberous stretch, she obeyed again, the drowsy, sexy look in his eyes convincing her his requests were motivated not by his need to control but by tenderness and a longing to please her.

  She felt open and exposed yet as wanton as a woman in love when he lay silent beneath her, his gaze and his hands devouring her body in the soft night shadows.

  “So beautiful. So special, Maggie mine,” he murmured as he raised his hands to the wild tangle of her hair and with widespread fingers raked it away from her face. “Tell me how to touch you. Tell me what you like.”

  “Anything.” The huskiness of her admission told them both the power he held over her. His eyes flared with the fire of desire. “Anything you want to do,” she confessed shamelessly as she closed her eyes and rocked against his hips. With her back arched, her hair trailing down her back, she showed him with her motions, urged him with her sighs, that all she needed was him beneath her, him inside her to make her come alive.

  A groan of passion too powerful to suppress ripped from his throat as he reared up and,
with the grip of his strong hands circumferencing her ribs, lowered his head to her offered breast. He consumed her with rough, open-mouth kisses, suckled her with a hunger born of her compliance, then pleasured her with a selflessness inspired by her giving.

  He drew her deeply into his mouth then pulled away, teasing, tempting, tormenting her to a restless yearning that had her crying his name.

  “Are you wet for me, Maggie?” he demanded, raking his teeth across her nipple as he reached between their bodies and sought his answer.

  He groaned his pleasure against her distended nipple. “Sweet, sweet woman,” he growled as he eased a finger inside her slick heat and finessed her to yet another plane of need.

  She moved against his questing caress, moaned when he found the swollen, sensitive nub of her femininity with his thumb and gave in to his velvet whisper. “Come for me…come for me.”

  Pleasure coiled, swelled and exploded inside her with a wrenching series of powerful, shimmering detonations that stole her breath, robbed her strength and left her limp and spent against him.

  He wrapped her in his arms, cradled her face against his chest and rocked her until her trembling subsided. When she could find the strength, she dragged her hair from her eyes, then looped her arms around his neck, cuddling closer. “You…you sure know how to make good on a promise,” she managed on a breathless sigh of contentment.

  He chuckled and, gathering her tighter against him, shifted, lifted, then settled her on her back beneath him. “Promises,” he corrected as his mouth tracked in a maddeningly slow path down the length of her body. “Multiple promises,” he murmured as he gently bit her hip point, then moved to the inside of her thigh before cupping her hips in his hands and tilting her to his mouth. “Multiple pleasures for my lady.”

  With exquisite attention to her needs, he proceeded to fulfill those promises…as she proceeded to come apart for him again in what proved to be a night of untold pleasures.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Blue’s voice drifted into her slumber on a hazy cloud of contentment and exhaustion.

  She burrowed her face deeper into the pillow, then sighed with pleasure when she felt his hand stroke slowly up and down the length of her bare back. If she’d been a cat, she’d have purred when his mouth followed everywhere his hand had been.

  “Wake up, Stretch, I want to show you something.”

  She cracked an eye open, realized it was the middle of the night and tried to pull the sheet over her head. “Whatever it is, can’t it wait until morning?”

  “Not this time. Come on. You’ll be sorry if you miss it.”

  With a resigned groan, she rolled to her back so she could look at him. If he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her, she’d have spilled right off the side of the bed.

  “Has anyone ever suggested that you take up an enormous amount of sheet space?” she grumbled good-naturedly when he made room and pulled her back toward the center of the mattress.

  His face above hers was sober and sincere. “Not lately, no.”

  Those few words relieved her much more than she wanted to admit as he slung a long, hairy leg over her thighs and drew her closer.

  “As a matter of fact. Not for a very long time.” He hesitated then, his blue eyes probing. “And you. Has anyone suggested that you lay claim to your own side of the sheets very nicely, Ms. Adams?”

  She held his gaze, knowing he deserved an answer, feeling compelled to give him one. “Only one. And it’s been a long time for me, too.”

  Over a year, in fact, she calculated. While it had been only six months since she’d shared her co-op with Rolfe, it had been much longer since she’d let him share her bed.

  She didn’t want to think about Rolfe now. Forcing his memory from her mind, she focused on Blue.

  He was truly beautiful as he smiled down at her, his expression rich and warm and open. She stretched up and touched her mouth to his. “What was it you wanted to show me?” she asked huskily as her hand drifted to his chest, then wandered lower.

  He laughed, retrieved her questing hand and gave her a scolding scowl. “Something you haven’t already seen tonight. Something you’ll always remember.”

  “I’ll always remember that.” Her catlike smile had him groaning before he kissed her quickly and rose from the bed.

  Offering a hand, he tugged her up with him. “Grab your robe and slip on some shoes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “No questions,” he insisted as he pulled up his jeans and toed on his deck shoes. “Hurry, or we’ll miss it.” His words were muffled beneath his sweatshirt as he dragged it over his head.

  “This better be good,” she grumbled as she wrapped her robe around her and hunted up a pair of shoes.

  Coming to her side, he pulled her flush against him. “I thought you’d decided to trust me.”

  “That was before I accepted that you were certifiably insane. What kind of a man drags a woman out of a warm bed at…two in the morning?” she groused when she brought his wrist close to her face and checked his watch. “Are you really going to make me go outside?”

  “You’re whining.”

  She yawned sleepily and dove for the bed. “Your fault.”

  Laughing, he hauled her upright again. “Come on. I promise, you won’t be sorry. And you know how I feel about promises.”

  Hershey raised his head from his perch on the sofa when they passed by. Apparently he decided he wasn’t up for any nocturnal adventures and laid it back down with a lazy groan.

  “I’m with you, Hersh.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Blue laughed and waylaid her attempted detour back to the sofa, where she intended to curl up on the other end. Tucking her under his arm for security, he walked her toward the door.

  They stepped out onto the deck, greeted by a sweet night breeze and an unearthly iridescent glow.

  Suddenly awake and wary, she balked when he would have led her down the deck steps. “What is that?”

  “That,” he said, coaxing her gently with him, “is a major miracle of nature. That,” he continued with an expansive lift of his hand to the heavens as they cleared the cover of trees and stood under an umbrella of surreal and dazzling color, “is what I didn’t want you to miss. Aurora borealis at its brilliant best.”

  Enthralled, Maggie gazed toward the sky in wonder and awe. “Northern lights.”

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as they looked skyward. “Now are you glad I woke you up?”

  She was stunned, completely and totally mesmerized by the beauty of the mysterious phenomenon. Shimmering ethereal columns of reds and greens and blues of varying hues bled color to color in jagged vertical rainbow columns across the midnight Minnesota sky. “I’d only heard about them. I never realized how beautiful they were. And I thought they only occurred in winter.”

  “Definitely more often in the winter, but occasionally we get a light show up here this time of year. Come on. Let’s walk out on the dock and get a better look.”

  J.D. was drawn to the wonder in Maggie’s eyes as she stood there, her neck arched, her gaze cast skyward, her dark eyes reflecting the aurora, the moonlight and her pleasure.

  “What causes it?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked softly. “A true romantic doesn’t care what causes it. A true romantic simply enjoys it.”

  “And you’re a true romantic, aren’t you, Blue?”

  The sadness in her voice tore at him. Someone had taken her ability to believe in romance away from her. He was determined to give it back, to dispel the shadows of doubt and make her believe again.

  “A hopeless romantic,” he confessed. “Give me an old Cary Grant movie and I’m in heaven. Give me moonlight and I’m putty in your hands.”

  “And give you northern lights?”

  “Give me northern lights and I take it as a sign that I’ve got more than enough reason to believe in romance.”

  His gaze sought hers in the dazzling light show. Sought, and
probed and wondered if she would ever open up to him completely.

  Someday. Someday, he was determined she would. But not tonight. Tonight, he just wanted to please her.

  “You’re right,” she murmured, turning her gaze back to the sky. “Something this wonderful shouldn’t be questioned. It should be enjoyed. Thank you, Blue. Thank you for showing it to me. It’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful.” He wrapped her in his arms from behind and pulled her close. She was softness and substance and the renewed source of his strength. And in this moment, he wondered how he’d gotten by so long in his life without her. “And thank you for coming back to the lake so I could share it with you. I’m damn glad I found you again, Stretch.”

  A deep breath eased through her slight body as she leaned back against him, covering the arms he’d twined around her waist with hers. “Me, too,” she murmured, then tilted her head back and around so she could see his face. “Me, too.”

  He kissed her then. There on the dock, with the night breeze embracing them and the northern lights shining down. With the sense of being embraced by the forces of nature and a sense of completeness he’d never before known.

  “Come on,” he whispered gruffly. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  She turned in his arms, stopping him when he would have headed for the cabin. A warm, inviting light danced in her eyes.

  His desire was eclipsed only by his love for her sense of adventure when he realized what she had in mind. A slow, pleased smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. “Here?”

  “Here,” she confirmed, coming up on her tiptoes to whisper a slow, enticing kiss across his lips as she reached for the hem of his sweatshirt. “Now.”

  The first pale light of the morning sun gilded the bare back of the man sprawled on his stomach sound asleep in her bed. And as she watched him, sleepy yet sated from a night of sweet, thrilling loving, Maggie was afraid she could let herself fall in love.