"I can't," she said again.
Jake reached for her hands, joined their fingers together and pulled her arms over her head. "Look at me, honey. Open your eyes and look at me."
She whipped her head back and forth on the sheets, her fingers clinging to his, her hips feeling his body as he moved in and out of her, desperate for release.
"Emma, honey, open your eyes and look at me. See me." His voice slid over her like a soothing balm, caressing her sensitive skin with strokes of velvet--with tenderness. "We left something out and you need it. I need it."
"I'm going crazy, Jake. I am. She's driving me insane." She wailed it, pushing her hips tight into him, grinding, trying to get release when her body refused to give it to her.
"Emma," Jake said softly. "Love me. I want you to love me." His voice was husky and tender. "You think you're separate from your cat because she did something you found abhorrent, but she saved our child. She saved me. She's you, Emma. And you love me. Every time you touch me, you love me. Look at me and let me see you loving me."
Hot tears burned her eyes, but she forced her lashes up and looked at Jake. There was love etched into every line of his face. It was there in his eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her trembling mouth, his fingers pressing her wrists into the sheets. "I love you, Emma. And thank God you love me."
He continued to thrust hard, pounding deep, yanking her legs to him and drawing up her hips to the angle he wanted, his gaze holding hers so she couldn't fail to see the love there.
Her eyes went wide, glazed over as her orgasm ripped through her, destroying everything she was, shattering her with exquisite pleasure, making her wholly his. She cried as every bone in her body seemed to melt into him, as they shared the same skin, the same body, the same soul.
Jake emptied himself into her, pleasure ripping through his body beyond anything he'd ever known. He collapsed, holding her tight as her body rippled and rocked around his. He buried his face, hot with his own tears, against her throat, which was marked with wounds gotten from defending their son. She stroked his thigh, her fingers running caresses over each scar.
"I love you, Emma. I can't live without you and I don't want to. We can't separate love from sex. You taught me that. No matter if we're feeling like the cats, rough and hard, or more like my Emma, tender and gentle--we're making love. We're showing each other love. It's the same. You saved our lives with your courage. And you gave me the courage to love you."
He lifted his head, framing her face with his hands, his voice filled with emotion. "Do you have any idea what you've given me? I love my son and my daughter because of you. I feel love for them. I have friends. Most of all, I have you. I love how you love me, Emma. You take everything I give you and make it into something special. That's what I want to do for you."
He wiped at her tears with his fingertips. "Emma, I'll never be easy. I won't. I'm not going to pretend your life will be a bed of roses, but I can tell you that no man will ever need you more, want you more, or love you more than I will."
She stared up at his beloved face through the tears swimming in her eyes. "We just seem so crazy sometimes, Jake. It isn't normal."
"Why do we have to be normal, honey? This is normal for us. The children are happy. I swear I'll make you happy. You certainly make me that way. Let this be our normal."
She squeezed her eyes closed tight. "She killed that man. I tasted his blood." She began to cry all over again, this time burying her face in his neck. "There's nothing normal about that."
He held her tightly, reaching down with one hand to press her hips tighter against his. "Honey, my cat--me--I killed him. Without you there to protect me, I would have been dead. If not me, Joshua or Conner. You did what you had to do by stopping him. We don't have to like harming others or ending life, but we had no choice if we wanted to survive."
"I didn't know that was a part of me, that I could be like that." She lifted her head and looked at him. "It is a part of me, isn't it?"
"Yes. And I'm grateful. I saw it in you the day Cathy came to try to take Kyle. I know you can protect the children if you have to. And I know you love me enough to do something that abhorrent to you. No one has ever loved me, Emma. No one. Believe me, more than any other person on the face of this earth, I know what a gift that is. Spend the rest of your life loving me, Emma and I swear you'll never be sorry."
"I said yes."
"Say it again and say we can arrange it immediately."
"You're so relentless when you want your way."
His white teeth gleamed at her and his golden eyes went molten as his hips began to move again in hers. "Always," he agreed, unrepentant.
Emma laughed and rose up to meet him. "Yes, a million times over."
Turn the page for a sneak peek at
HIDDEN CURRENTS
the next novel in the Drake Sisters series by Christine Feehan
Available in July 2009 from Jove Books!
"HAVING fun, Sheena?" Stavros Gratsos rubbed his palms up and down Elle Drake's bare arms to warm her as he stood behind her at the railing of his large yacht.
All around them the sound of laughter and snatches of conversation drifted past her out to the shimmering Mediterranean Sea.
Sheena MacKenzie, Elle's undercover name--and her alter ego. Sheena could sit at any dinner table and rule, her polish and sophistication and air of mystery guaranteeing she'd get attention. Devoid of makeup and with her hair in a ponytail, Elle Drake could slide into the shadows and disappear. They made a nearly unbeatable combination, and Sheena had done exactly what Elle needed her to do--she'd lured Stavros and kept him interested long enough for Elle to poke around in his glamorous life and see what she could turn up, which so far was . . . nothing.
Elle couldn't read Stavros's thoughts and emotions the way she did others when they touched her, and that amazed her. Elle's psychic ability to read thoughts was disturbing most of the time, but there were a very few who seemed to have natural barriers, and she had to purposely "invade" if she wanted to see what they were thinking. Elle rarely intruded, even when she was using her undercover persona, Sheena MacKenzie. But she would have made an exception in Stavros's case. She had been investigating him for months and had found nothing either to clear him or to point toward his guilt.
She glanced over her shoulder at Stavros. "It's been wonderful. Amazing. But I think everything you do is like this and you know it." Stavros always put on the best parties and his yacht was bigger than most people's homes. He served the best food, had the best music, surrounded himself with intelligent, fun people.
In all the months she'd been watching him, she had yet to discover even a hint of criminal activity. Stavros had been kind and generous, giving millions to charities, supporting art and working out deals with his employees in a hands-on discussion that avoided laying off an entire group of workers. She had come to respect the man in spite of earlier suspicions, and she was ready to go back to Dane Phelps, her boss, and write a very strongly worded report that the rumors concerning Stavros were wrong--except that his aura indicated danger and a strong penchant for violence. Of course, some of the men her sisters had chosen as their mates had that same vivid color swirling around them.
"I held this party in your honor, Sheena," Stavros admitted. "My elusive butterfly." He tugged on her arm to turn her around so that her back was against the rail and she was caged in by his body. "I want you to come to my island with me, to see my private home."
Her heart jumped. According to rumor, Stavros never took any woman to his island. He had homes all over the world, but the island was his private retreat. Any undercover operative would have relished the opportunity to enter Stavros's private sanctum, but her boss had been adamant that she not go if the opportunity presented itself. There was no way to communicate from that island.
Stavros took her hand and carried her knuckles to his mouth. "Come with me, Sheena."
She tried not to wince. Sheena. She was such a fraud. This wa
s the man she should fall in love with, not the worm--he who could never be named, who had broken her heart. Here was Stavros, handsome, intelligent, wealthy; a man who solved problems and seemed to care for many of the same causes she did. Why couldn't he be the man she fell madly in love with?
"I can't," she said gently. "Really, Stavros. I want to, but I can't."