Yesterday's Bride

‘Yeah.’ He all but purred the word, and, taking what she now recognized to be an ice cube, he drew it around her hairline to the pulse behind her ear.

‘Feel good?’ he asked, his gaze intense.

‘It feels great, but it’s not going to work,’ she told him. ‘You’re only making me hotter...’ Her words died to a sigh as the frozen cube was trailed down her throat and across her chest.

‘Hot, babe?’ he whispered, manoeuvring the cool wetness into the valley of her breasts, then mopping it up with his tongue. ‘How hot?’

Arousal flamed in her and Taylor gripped the sheets in an effort to stay centred.

‘Tell me how hot I make you,’ he urged. ‘Better yet—’ he paused only until her eyes lifted to his, then straddled her with slow, easy grace ‘—show me.’

As he said the words, the cube made contact with her nipple, sending her bucking from the mattress. Desire seared her bones as furiously as his hardness branded her belly. She made a futile grab for him but in one smooth motion he snared her wrists and stretched her arms above her head.

‘Easy, honey, I’m not through cooling you.’

The taste and temperature of his kiss had Taylor equating hell with the North Pole, and as passion engulfed her, she wondered if a person could drown in fire, or combust from love. Dimly she became aware of his reaching for another ice cube from the tray by the bed, but nothing in her wildest dreams had prepared her for what he did with it.

Placing it between his teeth, he began guiding it from the base of her throat along the length of her, the combination of her overheated skin and his breath creating melting rivulets that trickled along the ridges of her ribcage as slowly as he flowed down her body. With both her blood and flesh growing more heated by the moment, each time Craig replaced one spent ice cube with a cooler, fresher one, Taylor expected to hear it sizzle as it met her skin and evaporated on contact. By the time his trail of torture reached her navel, her breathing was as ragged and erratic as the reactionary tremors that surfaced across her belly, but erupted from a far deeper core.

Millimetre by erotically slow millimetre, he orally steered the ice lower and lower until her nerve endings were ablaze to the point where she thought she would explode into a zillion pieces without ever finding the completion she craved. Her experience with this man’s torrid sensuality meant there was no question as to why the ice didn’t feel cold against the most sensitive part of her femininity. Every pulse in her body was screaming at sound-barrier pitch for release and her hips lifted with wanton demand for its delivery.

She was almost frantic with need for him when his dexterous mouth and hands stilled. Tossing her head, she writhed beneath him. ‘Now!’ she cried. ‘Don’t stop...now!’

‘Look at me, Tay....’ His words were breathless and strained, but the touch of his hand on her forehead signified their importance.

Forcing her lashes open, she stared at up the sweat-drenched male perfection poised above her and her heart almost exploded at the depth of emotion shining from his eyes into hers.

‘I love you, Tay. I love you more than you’ll ever believe. And nothing will ever change that.’

‘Oh...Crai—’

His mouth claimed hers in a humid, hungry kiss that she never had a chance of controlling. Then he eased away and, with a smug, satisfied smile, moved his hips intimately against her. ‘Now?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes...now. Now...’

Taylor struggled to shrug free of the hand shaking her shoulder. It wasn’t Craig’s hand...it was too small. Too fragile...

‘Mummy! Mummy, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!’

Panting for breath and blinking against the glare of the bedside lamp, Taylor tried to sit up. To speak. To ignore the fact she was quaking with unsatisfied desire. To comprehend what the wide-eyed child hovering by her bed was doing in her and Craig’s tiny apartment in the middle of the night.

‘It’s okay, Mummy,’ the dark-haired child assured her. ‘You must have been dreaming about being on Grandpa’s farm.’ She giggled. ‘You kept yelling “Cow! Cow!”’

Reality struck with a crippling blow, catapulting Taylor from past pleasures to present pain. It hurt her to breathe, nearly killed her to think. Acid tears burned her eyes and throat. Tears for what she’d lost with the only man she’d ever loved and for what she’d gained with her daughter. His daughter.

‘Mummy, if you want, I could get in bed with you so you aren’t scared any more.’

Taylor pulled her daughter into a fierce hug, silent tears scalding paths down her face and her body trembling, as despair clawed her heart.

What had happened to them? What the hell had happened to the all-consuming love they’d shared? And when, dear lord, when would she stop feeling its loss?

It was well after midnight before Craig had the luxury of removing his tie and stretching out in his favourite reclining chair. He sighed wearily, lifting the glass of bourbon to his lips and savouring its soothing warmth.

His dinner meeting had gone on far longer than he’d anticipated or wanted. He allowed himself a smile as he ruefully admitted that part of the reason had been his inability to keep his mind on what was being discussed. If Taylor had consented to seeing him tonight, he’d have cancelled the engagement without a second thought. Considering the way the events of the day had distracted him from the business at hand, he would have been best served to have done so, regardless! His mind had been constantly sidetracked from the topic under discussion by images of a beautiful, green-eyed, honey-haired woman.

Taylor was back. Sexier and more beautiful than ever. And with her she’d brought a small, almost porcelain fragile, child who by rights should never have survived beyond a few days of life. He shivered as an image of his daughter’s face imprinted itself in his mind. His daughter. The reason Taylor had walked out on him.

He took another sip of his drink, wondering if the confused emotions he felt towards the child were genuine or simply a side-effect of those he felt for her mother. And what exactly was he feeling?

Guilt? Yeah. Well, sure. He’d always felt he’d failed Taylor in some way from the moment she’d suggested they consider having a child, but suddenly the guilt felt different. Fresher, more biting.

His anger was nothing new; it had remained just below the surface of his day-to-day existence for the past five years. He’d never been sure if the bulk of it was directed at Taylor for walking out or himself for letting her. He also allowed himself to admit that until today a huge chunk of it had been focused on Melanie.

Melanie. Until scant hours ago, he’d rarely thought of the child and never by name. It had been the easiest way of managing the gut-wrenching jealousy that consumed him. Jealousy.

God! Yet another ugly emotion he’d fallen victim to, made worse by the fact it had been directed towards a tiny premature baby. The notion left a sick taste in his mouth and he quickly poured himself another drink, tossing it down in one gulp. Sighing, he contemplated the empty glass. For five years his life had been equally empty. Ever since the love Taylor always claimed was exclusively his had been redirected.

If she’d turned her affection to another man, Craig knew he’d have fought tooth and nail to win her back; he was cocky enough to believe no man was capable of taking her from him. But he hadn’t counted on losing her to a baby. How did a grown man compete with a helpless child? Of course, back then he’d never really tried to compete; shattered by the discovery he’d been relegated to a distant second on Taylor’s list of priorities, it had been easier to simply let her go.

And now? Well, now she was back. He didn’t delude himself it was because she loved him—oh, no. It was maternal love that had prompted her to introduce him to his daughter. And neither did he delude himself he could forgive her for deliberately falling pregnant, but he sure as hell intended to make amends for the way he’d held the child responsible for what had happened between them.

There was an unaffected honesty about Melanie that intrigued him and he had little doubt he’d grow to like the child. To be honest, he hoped she’d grow to like him, too, for reasons other than the fact he was her father. But he knew he had no love to give his daughter; her mother had that and she always would. It was his trust Taylor had forfeited.

He might never have wanted to be a father, but he sure as hell was going to be one now.

Strangely, having made that decision eased some of the tension from his body. Then again, he thought drily, perhaps it was simply the Jack Daniel’s kicking in. Pouring another glass, he forced his mind to that part of his life he normally only confronted in nightmares—The Past....

In the sterile surrounds of the hospital waiting room, Craig’s hand shook as he took the polystyrene cup from Taylor’s closest friend, Liz O’Shea. Emotional turmoil made him oblivious to the hot liquid that spilled onto his hand.

‘Why, Liz? Why did she have to go and put herself at risk like this? I never wanted or needed a baby. She knew that! But I can’t live without her. I can’t live without Taylor!’

‘Craig, her doctor is the best. She’s in good hands. There’s not a thing on God’s earth you can do now except wait.’

It had seemed like a lifetime later that Craig looked up and saw the obstetrician striding towards them.

‘Well?’ he demanded of the older man. ‘Where is she? What’s happened?’

‘She’s resting, Mr Adams. But things aren’t good.’

‘What do you mean, aren’t good? If anything—’

‘Mr Adams, your wife is in labour.’

‘But it’s too early!’

‘Taylor has a condition called placenta previa, caused by—’

‘I don’t give a stuff what it’s called or what causes it! I want to know if she’s going to be all right!’