Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

herself that it existed. Yet she kept circling around it like a wary moon orbiting a dark planet. Whatever Archer was or wasn’t, he had come halfway across the world when she had asked, had put himself at risk for her, and had given her staggering pleasure.
    In return, she had told him that he wasn’t fit to be her husband or father to her children in any way but the most basic biological one. Truth wielded like a sword, wielded against a man whose only sin against her had been to help her.
    Reluctantly Hannah admitted that they owed each other an apology. Not for the truth, but for the method of telling it.
    She unclenched her fists, took a deep breath, and punched number six on the lighted pad.
    His voice floated out of the intercom speaker. “Yes?”
    “Archer, I—”
    “I’ll be right there.”
    The intercom went dead.
    Glumly, slowly, she got out of bed. She was enough of a coward that she would rather have apologized via intercom, but she had too much pride to insist on it. She went to the hall door and opened it a crack.
    Archer’s hand pushed it the rest of the way. He was dressed in a pair of jeans he obviously had just pulled on. They were only half fastened. “Do you need protection?”
    “No, I—”
    She never finished the sentence. His mouth was over hers, breaking it open, taking it in a kiss as hot as it was deep. His hands kneaded her breasts and plucked at her nipples until her breathing fragmented into moans and her body went slack. His knee pushed apart her legs until she was riding his thigh. Holding her with one arm around her, he used his fingers to bring her to the shattering edge of orgasm. Writhing, breathing brokenly, she demanded that he take her.
    He sent her over the edge alone.
    While she was still shivering and crying, he put her on the bed, pushed her thighs apart, and opened his jeans the rest of the way. He was fully erect, already dressed for sex in a high-tech condom. Kneeling, he pulled her up his thighs and buried himself in her. Hips pumping, he drove her back to the edge. And held her there.
    For Hannah it was like being caught in a wild, hot wave. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. She could only tumble out of control, darkness storming around her, blind ecstasy transforming her. Then came the lull between the waves, a lull that never quite let her catch her breath before another wave rolled over her, spinning her out toward the edge of consciousness, building and building and building until she could hold her breath no longer. Then she breathed in ecstasy and drowned.
    Another wave came, rising, building, teaching her that she hadn’t died. Not yet. She was still alive, still breathing, still feeling the next wave sweep up to her, lifting her, blinding her, ravishing her. This time she rode the sensual wave with primal abandon, turning and balancing, twisting and grappling, taking and demanding until all colors exploded into black and she screamed, drowning again.
    And he was the seething, powerful wave she drowned in. He moved over her, inside her, around her. In the savage, glittering darkness that smelled and tasted of sex, her breath sobbed and shattered and re-formed again after each climax.
    Finally she was boneless, weightless, spinning and falling, echoes of ecstasy beating in her like a runaway heart. With the last of her strength, she said his name.
    “More?” Archer asked.
    A shake of her head was all she could manage. Sighing, she reached out to curl up against him.
    Her hands found only emptiness. He was already out of her bed, out of her reach, walking away. He didn’t take time to dress because he had never taken time to undress.
    With trembling hands, she pulled down the silk shirt that was wadded up beneath her armpits while understanding broke over her in a different, colder wave. He had played her like an instrument. No tenderness, no holding; just raw, hot sex, as much of it as she could take.
    A stud at her service.
    Eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, Hannah remembered the way it had been in Australia. Hot, yes. God yes. Yet there had been tenderness as well as fire, sweetness as well as rending ecstasy.
    Archer had understood it before she had. He had told her. Sex can wait until hell freezes over. Making love, now, that’s different. But then she hadn’t understood the difference between having sex and making love with Archer.
    She understood it now.
    With swift motions she ripped off the borrowed wedding rings