This is Sash. My love. Grady shifted slightly, wrapped his arms around Sash’s waist and pulled her as close to his body as possible. His muscles remembered her. Especially those south of his belt. As he lost himself in kissing her, tasting her, feeling her plastered against his chest, belly, thighs, he went into sensory overload.
Forgot everything except Sash. The sweet honeysuckle scent on her skin. Her mouth that teased and tormented as it went from sweet and demure to saucy and sexy in a flash. As though he’d woken her up. Those breasts pressed against his chest were bigger than he remembered, ripe from her pregnancy. His hands itched to touch, cup them; his thumbs needed to rub her nipples until they peaked.
Her hands were holding his head so that he couldn’t lift his mouth from hers. Her fingers were threaded through his hair, pummelling his scalp with their tips.
He felt something against his lower gut. What the—? Comprehension rushed in, had him peeling his lips off hers. ‘Is that the baby? Did I just feel her kick?’
‘You felt Flipper?’ Astonishment crossed her face, dashed away the slumberous look that had been growing with the deepening of their kiss. ‘Truly?’
‘There was a small thud.’ He stared in wonder at the baby bulge resting against him. ‘Unbelievable.’ He’d once had the opportunity to feel a baby’s movements when he’d been doing his training, but this—this couldn’t be more different. This was Sasha and her baby.
That green-eyed monster stirred. Grady pushed it right back where it had come from. He didn’t own Sasha. She owed him nothing. He’d sent her packing, freed her from loving him, so he had no right to feel jealous of the man she’d obviously had more than a passing fling with. But where was the man?
Sasha pushed out of his arms, tugged her shirt up and then grabbed his hand to place it on her belly. ‘Here.’
His palm on her skin, his fingers pressing against her flesh. Unbelievable. Sensory overload. Then he felt it. A nudge from inside Sash’s belly. Wow. And again. ‘That’s… That’s amazing.’
Sash was grinning like crazy. ‘Isn’t it? Amazing. That’s going on in my tummy. My baby girl. She’s something else.’
His other hand seemed to have a life of its own, reaching for Sash’s face, cupping her cheek. His thumb traced over her jaw, along her chin and up to her sweet, sexy mouth. ‘I have never known anything so unbelievable. This is real. Your baby. Nothing like what I learned in med school.’
She chuckled. ‘I’d hope not. Though it is exactly the same really. But it is amazing. I never get tired of feeling Flipper go ballistic in there.’
‘Especially after last night.’
‘Exactly.’ Her face contorted briefly.
‘Another kick?’ He slid his hand across her stomach to where her hand flattened and pressed down. ‘Here?’
Her head dipped in acknowledgement. Her eyes glittered with love and excitement. ‘I can’t wait to meet her. To see what she looks like, what colour her hair and eyes are.’ Then the glitter faded, replaced with worry. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m tempting fate. I don’t know what I’d do if it happened again.’
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he tugged her close, enjoying that pushing stomach against his solar plexus. ‘You are so lucky.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’ In more ways than one. Hell, he’d been an idiot when he’d told her to get on with her life without him.
Those lush lips spread into a wide smile. ‘So do I.’
That smile hit him in the gut, sending desire spinning out of control, heating the corners of his body, his heart, where he’d been cold for eleven long years. When his mouth covered hers a groan rolled up his throat from that pool of need and spilled into her mouth. Under his lips her mouth opened further, allowing him deeper access. He tasted Sash. Her fire and sweetness, her softness and strength. And he was lost.
He had to have her. Taking her hand, he began pulling her along the beach as fast as it was safe to go in the near dark. ‘We might have wonderful memories of what we got up to out here but it’s winter, not summer. Let’s carry this on back at your place.’ As long as she didn’t change her mind about kissing him before they got there. Leaning down, he held her close for a quick kiss. Raced a few metres and stopped for another one. They ran and kissed all the way back to the warmth of her cottage.
Immediately they got through the front door he pulled her into him, as though they could melt into one. He knew only the woman in his arms. Then her breasts slid up his chest as she stretched up on her toes to push her fingers into his hair. Breasts that had swollen with pregnancy. Breasts that felt soft and yielding, yet their peaks were as hard as pebbles as they moved against his over-sensitised chest. And then they were filling his hands where he’d slipped under her bra.
Then Sash twisted in his arms, feverishly tugging her shirt over her head, reaching behind to unclip the annoying bra. At the same time her baby bump rubbed up against him and he dropped his hands to touch and feel and hold. When she stood naked from the waist up a lump blocked his breathing. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he finally managed to croak as his hands kept caressing her extended belly. ‘Utterly beautiful.’
And then he couldn’t think any more as those small hands gripped his shirt and pulled him near. Her fingers plucked at the buttons of his shirt, working their way deftly down from his neck to his waist, exposing his chest bit by bit, her lips touching him with each new exposure.
Swinging Sash up into his arms, he strode to her bedroom and lowered her onto the bed, all the while kissing that swollen mouth, unable to break the contact.
Sash pulled her mouth free. ‘Make love to me, Grady.’ Her hands trembled as they unzipped his trousers and took his manhood, caressing and teasing.
He needed no invitation, had been waiting for this since the night on Takaka Hill when she’d slipped back into his life. He shucked his trousers, helped Sash remove hers, and then he was touching her intimately. She was wet for him, instantly arching into his hand.
‘Sash, baby, take your hand off me.’
Her slumberous eyes blinked at him. ‘No way, sunshine. I like what I’m feeling.’
‘Sash,’ he ground through clenched teeth. ‘I won’t last if you keep doing that.’
‘You’re not meant to. Ahh,’ she gulped. ‘Don’t stop, whatever you do. Don’t. Stop. That.’ And then her body was convulsing against his hand. And still she rubbed him. And then he rose over her, pushed inside, felt her heat envelop him and knew no more except the waves of hot need exploding from him as he drove into Sash again and again.
CHAPTER TEN
SASH TUGGED THE quilt over their naked bodies and snuggled against the hard, muscular length filling her bed that was Grady. His arm encircled her below her baby bump, pulling her as close to him as possible.
&nbs
p; Her brain was sluggish, filled with warmth and the aftermath of their lovemaking. ‘I’ve missed that,’ she whispered to herself. The instant inferno that always came with Grady touching her. She’d even begun to believe it was all in her imagination, made brighter as each year passed. Now she knew she’d been right. And her body wanted it again.
His hand slid over her breast to cup it. When he stroked her nipple she luxuriated in the erotic sensations flicking out from that point to touch her toes, her thighs, both breasts, lips and fingers. Her tummy.
My pregnant tummy.
The reason she should not be lying naked in bed with Grady. Her baby girl would expect her not to make mistakes, did not deserve to have her mother bring a man into their lives who’d sooner or later leave them. Not even when she might be falling in love with that man again.
Oh, help. What have I done?
Sent Grady all the wrong messages for a start. Sent those same messages to her heart as well. Now she had to undo it all.
‘Sash?’ Grady murmured by her ear. ‘You okay?’
No. No, she was not okay. She’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. Rolling out of his arms, she pushed to the other, cold side of her bed and sat up, tugging the quilt under her chin and all around her.
‘Sash? What’s up?’ Grady sat up, too, reached to take her hand.
She moved right to the edge of the bed. ‘No, Grady. Don’t.’
Click. Yellow light flooded the room from her bedside light and Grady focused that steady gaze on her. ‘I’m not understanding what’s going on here.’
Neither did she. What had possessed her to have sex with him? Like she could’ve stopped. She’d been seized by such an overwhelming need for him her brain had fried and all reason had evaporated. Now she had to face reality, only it had just got complicated. ‘This has got to stop. We can’t do this again. It shouldn’t have happened at all. We are not getting back together, ever.’
‘Why not?’