Page 111 of Texas Honor

His lean hands smoothed her hips down against his. “It may take a while,” he told her. “Sometimes it takes months. Years.”

She smiled through the building passion. “I’ll like that. Won’t you?”

He shuddered as she moved again, his fingers biting into her. “Don’t. I’ll bruise you.”

“I don’t mind,” she whispered at his lips. “I’m not afraid of passion anymore. Not with you.”

He took a deep breath. “Tell me this isn’t some new way of showing me how grateful you are about Becky,” he said, his movements beneath her growing sharper, quicker.

“It isn’t,” she whispered. She lifted closer, watching his face grow taut at the sensuous brushing. “It’s simply a new way...of showing you...how very much I love you,” she murmured, and found his mouth, and moved suddenly, sharply.

His mind exploded. He wanted to ask her, to make her say it again. But she was showing him. Her body was telling him everything she felt.

He groaned hoarsely under the flame of her twisting body, and his back threatened to give way as the frenzy of trying to get as close as possible threw it into convulsive spasms. He cried out something he didn’t hear because the blood was beating in his ears. He was vaguely aware of her own voice, then the world seemed to go dark and warm and gently trembling around him, and he buried his face in her throat and shuddered.

“I love you,” she whispered against his shoulder. She kissed his face, his closed eyes, his warm mouth. “I love you, I love you....”

“Keep saying it,” he whispered, his voice weak with exhaustion. “Say it until I die. I want to hear it all the time, all my life.”

She smiled against his lips. “You love me, too,” she murmured smugly. “You said so. You said so, just before your body went wild. I heard you.”

“Said it? God, I screamed it!” He held her closer, wrapping her up, cherishing her. “I didn’t even know it, until today. I’d always wanted you, cared about you. But I didn’t realize it was love until that blond jackass started telling lies about you, and I wanted to kill him. Because you were my Maggie, and he was hurting you.”

She smiled, her heart bursting, on fire with new delights. “I knew it the night after you made love to me on the sofa,” she told him. “All at once I realized why I’d let you. I couldn’t have done it without loving you.”

“I didn’t even think about that. I tried not to think of you, it disturbed me so. Every time I went in the living room afterward, I’d see your body lying in exquisite positions on those cushions and I’d bend over with pain.”

She laughed, looking into his pale eyes lovingly. “Me too,” she confessed.

His hands smoothed over her, his eyes adoring every soft curve. “I thought my legs were going to give way when you threw those pills in the trash can,” he said dryly.

“Mine almost did,” she told him. “I could hardly walk by the time I started undressing you. And you just stood there and didn’t even protest.” She cocked her head. “I didn’t think you’d let me make love to you like that.”

“I wouldn’t have stopped you, no matter what you’d done to me,” he chuckled. “That was so damned exciting, my heart stopped beating a time or two. I never thought I’d hold off until you stopped torturing me long enough to take me.”

Her eyes widened with delight. “You really didn’t mind?”

“Honey, lovemaking is give and take,” he said gently. “It’s as exciting for a man to be aroused as it is for a woman. I don’t feel any less a man because I give you that kind of freedom with my body. In fact,” he added with a wicked laugh, “I feel a lot like a man with his own private harem, intent on his pleasure. I loved it.”

“I’m glad. We’ll have to take turns from now on.”

He eased her down onto the bed, his body still locked with hers, and moved over her, resting his weight on his elbows as he looked down into her soft eyes.

“Do you think it could get any better than it just was?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” she replied, her voice husky with excitement.

His hips moved experimentally as he bent his dark head. “Let’s see.”

She closed her eyes with a faint smile. Her arms reached up. Heaven was so close, she could feel it....

The next day, while Becky was playing with the ducks near the small pond, Maggie decided it was time Gabriel heard the truth about his stepfather. Janet had been quiet since the wedding and was already talking about going back to Europe. Gabe hadn’t protested; if anything, he’d been even more indifferent to his mother. It was breaking her heart, and Maggie wanted more than anything to help heal the breach between them.

“I want to tell you something,” she said softly, lying in his arms under the big oak tree.

“You’re pregnant already?” He grinned down at her.

She hit him. “It would be a miracle if I wasn’t, after last night. But that’s not what I meant.” She touched his mouth with gentle fingers. “I want to tell you something. About your stepfather.”

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