Red Lily

not.”
    “I’ve been so scared.” On a laugh, she threw her arms around him. “I was so scared that I’d fall for you, then we’d end up being friends like that woman who came into the nursery the other day. I’m not going to be friends with you, Harper, if this doesn’t work out.” She reared back, then pressed her mouth hard to his. “I’m going to hate you forever.”
    “Good. I think.”

    She sighed, long and deep, as she laid her cheek to his. “What do we do now?”
    “Since it’s a first for me, I’d like to ride on it awhile. It’s some pretty heady stuff. More immediately, I’d say we’ll play with Lily. Tire her out good, so that after you put her to bed I can take you to mine.”
    “I like that plan.”
    B Y THE TIME she’d settled Lily down, Harper had music on. She knew he was rarely without it. Though it was just dusk, he had candles flickering in his bedroom. And flowers—a touch she’d rarely seen in another man, but had come to expect from him.
    “She okay?” he asked her.
    “Fine. She goes down pretty easy, doesn’t always stay that way through the night though.”
    “Then we should take advantage of the quiet.” He slid his hands down her arms, then back up the sides of her body. “I love making love with you. Touching you. Watching you when I touch you. The way your body moves with mine.”
    “Maybe we’re just in lust.”
    “I’ve been in lust.” His lips cruised over her jaw. “Is that what this feels like to you?”
    “No.” She turned her head so their lips could meet. “Not just.”
    “I think about you. How you look, how you sound, how you feel. And here we are.”
    She linked her arms around his neck as he lowered her to the bed. His hands glided down, up, then palmed over her breast.
    “You are perfect. Perfect, perfect.” He nibbled his way down, then nipped lightly at her nipple through her shirt until she quivered under him.

    Then he tugged her shirt down, and took flesh.
    More than arousal, she thought even as her body bowed up in response. There was joy fizzing through the excitement, like the bubbles in champagne. He loved her. Harper with the patient hands and ripping temper loved her.
    Whatever happened, she was loved. And the love that rose so full and strong inside her was welcomed. There was no gift she treasured more.
    To show him, and how she needed to show him, she poured herself into a kiss on a flood of that love.
    She surrounded him with it so he felt his heart ache from the brilliance. He loved. It had never come to him before, this stunning surge of emotion that filled heart and soul, gut and mind. This woman, the one who moved with him, merged with him, was the one who sparked it.
    He savored the scent and flavor of her skin as the sky deepened to night and a whippoorwill began to sing in the apple tree outside his window.
    Inside, the air went soft and thick, throbbing with the sounds of sighs. He felt her rise, tremble, and tremble on the peak, then float down on a moan that was his name. Her skin quivered where he touched and his own warmed as her hands glided over him.
    Her lips. He could sink into them until pleasure swirled and shimmered in his mind like mists.
    When she rolled over him, rose over him, he could see her face in the candlelight. The glow of it framed by her dark hair, the delicate blue of her eyes deepened with passion.
    Her lips reclaimed his, soft, soft even as the kiss deepened. Then the throaty hum as she took him into her. He closed his eyes, riding the sensation as she closed around him.
    “This is what you want,” she whispered. “What you all want.”

    The change was like a finger snap, the cold like a sheath of ice. He looked at her, and everything inside him stilled.
    “No.”
    “To penetrate. To bury yourself.”
    “Stop.” Even as she rocked, arousal mixing with horror, he gripped her hips to hold her still.
    “Tell her anything. Love. Promises. Lies. As long as you get between her legs.” Her thighs clamped him, long, lean vises. Hayley’s body, he knew, but not Hayley. Revulsion rose in his throat.
    “Stop.” He reached up, and what was inside her laughed.
    “Shall I make you come? Shall I ride you like a pony until you—”
    He shoved her back, and she continued to laugh, sprawled naked in the flickering light.
    “Leave her alone.” He hauled her back. “You’ve got no right to her.”
    “As much as you. More. We’re the same, she and I. The same.”
    “No. You’re