The Expectant Executive

He caught her hands in his to stop her. “I get the idea, sweetheart.”

His breathing was labored as he moved away from her to find the foil packet he’d tucked under the pillow earlier. When he’d arranged their protection, he rose over her to nudge her knees apart and settle himself between her thighs.

“Let’s do this together,” he said, smiling as he took her hand in his and helped her guide him.

His gaze held hers captive as together they became one and Fin knew she’d never experienced anything quite so sensual or erotic. But as he eased his hips forward and her body stretched to welcome him, she gave herself up to the delicious feeling of their joining and abandoned all other thought.

She watched his jaw tighten as he moved farther into her. “You feel so damn good, sweetheart.”

“So do you,” she said, wrapping her arms around his broad back and her legs around his slender hips.

When he was buried completely within her, his heated gaze held hers as he set a slow pace of rhythmic thrusts. The weight of his lower body pressed intimately to hers and the exquisite friction of their movements sent tingling sparks skipping over every nerve in her body and in no time she felt the coil in the pit of her stomach tighten to the breaking point.

Holding him to her, Fin fought to prolong the feeling of being one with this amazing man. But all too soon the tension inside of her shattered into a million shards of sensation and she moaned his name as the sweet waves of release coursed through her.

Her satisfaction must have taken him over the edge because a moment later Travis’s big body stiffened, then surged into her one final time as he released his essence with a shuddering groan.

As the light of dawn began to creep into the room, Travis lay holding Fin’s slight body to his side. After making love again sometime in the middle of night, she’d drifted off. But he’d lain awake, thinking about one of, if not the most, exciting encounters of his life.

When Lauren had been alive, their coming together had been that of two people comfortable with each other. And although their intimacy hadn’t been overly passionate, it had been satisfying.

But what he shared with Fin was nothing short of explosive. Her unbridled responses to his lovemaking fueled a fire within him that he’d never imagined possible. Hell, she made him feel more like a randy teenager than a man staring long and hard at fifty.

It was a real shame that with the coming of morning their time together would end. She’d resume her life as the glamorous editor-in-chief of a fashion magazine, while he went back to being a Colorado rancher, chasing a herd of cattle all over hell’s half acre.

When Fin moaned and stirred next to him, he glanced down to find her satiny cheeks had turned ashen and her emerald eyes were clouded by a mist of tears.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

He watched her close her eyes and swallow hard. “I think…I’m going to…be sick.”

She’d no sooner gotten the words past her pale lips than she was bolting from the bed and running for the adjoining bathroom.

Following her, he supported her shoulders as she sank to her knees and lost her battle with the nausea. When she finally raised her head to take a breath, he released her long enough to grab a plush terry washcloth from a rack by the shower and dampen it with cool water.

“Th-thank you,” she whispered brokenly as he bathed away the beads of perspiration from her forehead and helped her into the robe that had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

“Feeling better now?” When she nodded, he helped her to her feet and led her back to bed. “Do you have some seltzer?”

“I think there’s some club soda…in the refrigerator behind…the wet bar,” she said haltingly.

Quickly pulling on his jeans, Travis hurried into the other room. When he returned to the bedroom, he found her once again paying homage to the porcelain god.

“Do you think it was something you ate that didn’t set well?” he asked as he knelt beside her and helped her take a few sips of club soda.

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’ve been queasy a lot lately, but this is the first time I’ve been sick.”

Her words slammed into him like a physical blow and he had to force himself to breathe. “How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “Maybe a couple of weeks. I’ve been meaning to make an appointment with my doctor, but haven’t gotten around to it.”

His heart raced and a knot began to form in the pit of his stomach. “Have you had a period since you returned from your trip to the Silver Moon?”

As he watched her worry her lower lip between her teeth, he knew the answer even before she managed to get the single word out. “No.”