“I’m surprised you got Mike to agree.”
“He didn’t agree. He just gave in.”
?
?Or?”
“Or I swore that I would never write another word as long as I lived.”
“Ahh. That would have cinched it.”
Now that he had answered her question, she eased herself on top of him and opened her thighs. With a grunt of satisfaction, he pressed himself inside her, began to stroke with the barest upward motion of his hips.
“Hmm. You are incredibly talented, Mr. Evans.”
“Yeah, and I can write a fairly decent book, too.”
Sitting up, she reached behind her, between his legs, and stroked the underside of his penis at its base. He strained a curse between his teeth. “You’ve got talents of your own, Ms. Matherly. Where’d you learn that trick?”
“I read it in one of your books.”
“Damn, I’m good.”
She continued to caress him until he pulled her down onto his chest and hugged her tightly around the waist while he pushed into her as high as possible. His raw, choppy breaths were muffled against her breasts.
Finally he relaxed, his head falling back onto the pillow. She smoothed his hair back from his damp forehead. “Felt good?”
“It still does.” Cradling her face between his hands, he kissed her, whispering into her mouth, “We’re being awfully messy here.”
“I don’t mind it. I’d like a baby.”
“I can live with that.”
“Or two.”
“Even better.”
“Parker?”
“Hmm?”
“Make me come.”
She was ready. It took only a few strokes of his fingertip.
Later, they lay facing each other, their heads sharing the pillow. He was tracing her fragile collarbone when she said, “I recognized you the first time you kissed me. The night we met.”
His finger fell still in the hollow just beneath her shoulder. He raised his eyes to hers. “What?”
“That’s why that kiss alarmed me. Because I knew you. And not just knew you, but knew you well. Intimately. I had spent so many nights with you, poring over every word. Your book was like a personal love letter. Like you wrote it to me. Just for me.
“When you kissed me, it was so familiar, it was as though you had kissed me like that a thousand times.” Adoringly, she touched every feature of his face. “I have loved you for so long, Parker. For years. From the day I first read The Vanquished.”
He swallowed hard. “When you talked about it with such passion… You got it, Maris,” he said with glad emphasis. “You got exactly what I had wanted to get across with those characters and that story. God, listening to you talk about it, my heart nearly burst. Can you imagine how hard it was for me not to tell you that I was the author? That it was me, not Noah, you’d fallen in love with?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. Not then. Not yet. Besides, I was afraid I wouldn’t live up to your expectations.”