Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(61)

He laughed; she’d just said half the things he’d rehearsed on the plane. Though he’d intended to yell them at her.

“Can I ask you something, Theo?”

He turned his hand under hers and linked their fingers. “Sure.”

“Do you know when this happened?”

In the hours since he’d known, that question had been among the many teeming in his head. But he’d spent the summer drunk on bourbon and Carmen, and he had no idea. Now, he shrugged.

“You don’t?”

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

“Nor I. Dealing with the condoms is not among the most vivid parts of my memories of our lovemaking.”

She surprised him by laughing fully, and he cocked his head, not sure what he’d said that was so funny. “‘Lovemaking.’ That’s such an old-fashioned way to say it.”

“Romantic, you mean.” He grinned; it felt comfortable and familiar, the way she teased at his words.

“Maybe. But also lame.”

“You’d prefer what? ‘Fucking’?”

“I think that better describes what we do together.”

That abraded him a little, and he let his grin fall away and cupped her chin in his hand. “Not this time, Carmen. What I want to do with you now is make love. Honest love. Bare. I don’t want to hide behind roughness and pretend it’s not passion. I want to make love to you. With you. Is that ‘lame’?”

“No.” The word was a mere breath.

He stretched out along her side and leaned over her. As he lowered his head, intending to kiss her, however, she put her hand on his chest and held him off. When he stopped, confused, he saw that her eyes were at his throat. She moved her hand, and he felt her pick up his pendant in her fingers.

“You took the ‘M’ off.”

“I did.”

“When? Why?”

“About three months ago, I guess.” When Maggie had released him—or was it the other way around?—and his writer’s block had broken. At the time, he hadn’t been sure why, but he’d known it was time to take it off. “Because Maggie is not part of the life I’m living now. She’s my past.”

Carmen stared up into his eyes, and they were simply quiet together. Theo felt no impulse to fill the silence with further explanation. Finally, she said, “But you left this one.”

He smiled and lifted her hand away from the jasper disc still tied to his neck by a weathered leather cord. “Jasper is a healing stone.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “It had more work to do.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and he knew she understood. “You believe in that—the healing properties of stones?”

“I believe in the symbol.”

Carmen smiled, and then her eyes widened slightly and her smile grew. She took his hand and pressed it firmly to the side of her belly. “Do you feel that?”

He felt nothing at first but anticipation—and then a light bump against his palm, little more than a flutter, but distinct nonetheless. That touch, of something, someone, to which he was so intimately connected and yet so physically removed, was itself a symbol. He grinned down at the mother of this new child. “I love you, beautiful girl. Make love with me.”

Nodding, she released his hand and looped her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, threading her fingers through. “Yes.”

When he kissed her, he was gentle, moving his lips slowly with hers. He was going to take his time.

For long, quiet minutes, they only kissed. He lay at her side, propped on his elbow, one leg nestled between hers, his hand holding her face. Her fingers moved through his hair, combing and clutching in turns. He could feel her core, hot and wet on his thigh, but he didn’t rush. Even when she began to moan into his mouth and writhe against him, he took his time. He wanted to love her slowly and completely and not give her the chance to hide.

Not until she untangled her hands from his hair and reached down to try to take hold of him did Theo break their kiss. Moving to nibble the line of her jaw to her ear, he caught her errant arm in his hand and moved it to his back. Turning his attention to his mouth on her skin, he suckled her bare earlobe and then laved her neck, then the long, graceful span of her shoulder. He nipped at her collarbone and then moved lower, pressing soft, light kisses down the center of her chest, between her glorious breasts. When he paused between them, feeling their soft swells on his cheeks, Carmen arched upward and gasped his name. Then her hands left him.

He looked up and saw that she’d grabbed the ironwork of the daybed’s side rail with both hands. With the arc of her back, and her arms over her head like that, she presented her breasts to him like an offering.

Her eyes were closed, and she’d bitten down on her beautiful bottom lip. Like a fantasy she was, and Theo had a moment of unreality. For a hairsbreadth of time, he worried that he was lost in a drunken dream, passed out on the sofa in the Hunter’s library. But then Carmen squirmed again, and he felt the wet sear of her need on his thigh. She was real, he was here, they were true.

He lowered his head and took a dark nipple into his mouth, bringing his hand over to hold her other breast. At the touch of his lips and fingers, she cried out, “Oh, f*ck!”

Theo stopped and lifted his head. “Carm?”