“Do you still have doubts, Mr. Hammond?” Slade asked simply.
Marcus chuckled. “Not a one, my boy, not a one. And since your wife is waiting for you upstairs, I think we should put off our talk till later. Don’t you agree?”
Slade relaxed, his yellow-green eyes lighting up. “I do indeed.”
Sharisse lay back on the bed, her eyes dark with passion. Her lips were sore from Slade’s fevered kisses, but it was a pleasant soreness, and she was eager for more. He stood looking down at her as he began to undress, and she felt the familiar constriction in her chest as those green eyes moved over her. This was not the roguish charmer, Lucas. Slade’s very seriousness filled her with a thrilling excitement that bordered on fear.
She began to remove her gown, but Slade stopped her, joining her on the bed, his voice deeply persuasive as he took hold of her hands.
“Let me, Shari. I have dreamed of this so often it seems like forever.”
She gave herself up to his ministrations, moving only as he directed her to, until she was naked. She could not keep her hands still, needing to touch him, to feel the virile strength that was him. It had been too long.
“You’ve had a baby.”
Stunned, she followed his gaze to her bare breasts. The telltale stretchmarks were revealed. She looked away from him and lay back with a sigh. The time had come, hadn’t it? There was nothing she could do but tell him.
“Yes,” she said evenly.
“Were you thinking about informing me—ever?” he asked icily. “Or did it perhaps escape your attention that I didn’t know?”
She looked him in the eye and said calmly, “Slade, you emphatically didn’t want a wife. How could I force you to stay in a marriage you didn’t want? If you’d known about the girls you’d have felt obligated to stay married, and I have some pride, you know.” Her voice rose as she felt all the tiredness, the secrecy of the last year overwhelm her. It took her a while to realize that he was staring at her with complete incredulity.
“Girls?” he repeated. “More than one?”
“Twins,” she said. “And thank you for warning me that twins were a possibility. It might have helped to’ve had a little warning.”
“Twins? Daughters?” he asked, stupefied, and she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.
“I will be more than happy to fill your ears with every little detail about your daughters, butnot now!”
“All right, beautiful.” He smiled down at her. “But remind me to tell you later how wonderful I think you are.”
He kissed her soundly before she could say anything, and very quickly there was nothing to think about except the tremors and the fire being rekindled. It was going to be all right, she told herself as the flames rose within her. No, it was going to be better than that. It was going to be wonderful, wonderful. And it would last forever. They would go on and on together, consumed by their love as she was being consumed by passion right then.
She wrapped her arms around him fiercely, holding her love with all her might, and he answered with a passion as great as hers, leading her from one peak to another until they blazed together into a glorious, never-ending white-hot flame.
THE PURSUIT
Available now from Avon Books
And now enjoy an excerpt!
KIMBERLYMacGregor waved the letter in her hand to gain her husband’s attention as he entered her sitting room. “Megan has written again,” she told him. “She has invitations piling up, too many as usual, but in this case that’s ideal. Lets her pick and choose which will be more pertinent to the task at hand. She’s sounding really excited. ’Course, she did own up to how bored she was when she made the suggestion, what with Devlin away on business and expected to be gone the whole summer. Want to read it?”
“Nay.”
That answer was too abrupt and a bit disgruntled-sounding for a man of Lachlan MacGregor’s easy temperament. “You aren’t having second thoughts about letting Melissa go to London, are you?”
“Aye.”
“Lachlan!”
His disgruntled tone now had a matching look to it when he said, “I dinna like asking the duke and duchess o’ Wrothston for favors.”
Kimberly relaxed. She should have known. Lachlan might get along famously these days with Devlin St. James when he and his wife, Megan, came to visit them at Kregora Castle, or vice versa, but it wasn’t always that way. They had in fact met under bizarre circumstances…well, not so much bizarre as well planned and executed.
Lachlan had been reaving in those days—the polite term for robbing—reaving the English along the border, to support kith and kin after his stepmother ran off with his inheritance. And Megan and Devlin happened to pick Scotland to elope to, which was how they crossed paths with him.
