Part 23 (2/2)

She didn't expect him to speak, knew it was hard for him when he was like this, yet he did, in a rasping, broken whisper.

”Last night,” he began, his eyes drifting closed. ”Seeing you with the baby-both of you naked like that . . . It was the s.e.xiest thing I've ever seen in my life. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen anybody do. And I'll never be able to say . . . to say how it made me feel to hold that little body up against you . . . to feel your soft skin and his soft skin touching my hands . . . to see his head lying there, between your b.r.e.a.s.t.s.” His hoa.r.s.e whisper faded until it was barely audible. ”I want to see you do that with our baby, Katie. I want to come inside you and see your belly get big . . . and know there's part of me growing in you.” And as his hands slid downward, over her abdomen, to settle over her womb, he finished. ”I want to see that baby slide out of you and hear it holler-loud, like it ought to sound. And I want to hold it and touch it . . . and know it's mine.”

”Sam . . . Oh, Sam . . .”

”Take it, Katie. Take it all-everything I want to give you. Let my love work a miracle on you the way yours has worked one on me.”

And with a cry of absolute surrender, she yielded herself, and every desire or hope she'd ever had, to him.

He came into her slowly, filling her body as he filled her soul to bursting with the flesh and the spirit of his being. Filling her so entirely that, for a moment, she felt as if she'd never be able to accept the full, shattering power of what he was giving her, for her body and soul together didn't seem enough to hold it.

She cried out once more, a little frightened. And then, it was as if some part of her did burst open, for suddenly there was no sense of being separate from him. No limits between them. No limits at all. There was no him or her. No needs or wants or thought or emotions. No fear.

There was only the heat. Throbbing white heat. They were dissolved in it, lifted by it, floating in a radiant, glowing beam of it. Like the beat of a pulse, it thrummed in a rhythm that was the measure of all time. And it was s.e.xual and spiritual and mortal and immortal. It was all things possible. It was the best of what can exist between a man and a woman when they open themselves to each other and to the power of love. It was the piece of heaven that can exist on earth when human hearts allow it a place to dwell.

She wanted to stay there forever, to remain in that place of total rightness. To exist there with him, with the essence of life flowing from him into her in a steady, endless stream. The knowledge that she was bound, body and soul, with a man from whom it seemed she was drawing her life's breath filled her with awe. So much so that she began to wonder how she ever would give it back to him. How could she, a mortal woman, ever hope to satisfy the needs and desires of a man who could give her this most unearthly gift?

That thought came with the awareness that the energy had s.h.i.+fted. Reality was breaking up into its different planes and separateness, returning. Slowly, her senses were being given back to her, gradually coming under her own control. And with the awareness of her flesh being distinct from his, of his hands still lying low on the curve of her belly, came the intuitive answer to the question: She knew how she would give back to him the gift he'd given her. She would return it in kind. A perfect gift for a perfect gift, both gifts born of love and joy.

But he would have to wait for his. And as her senses began to clear, sharpening to a level of clarity that was acute, she realized he hadn't yet given her all that was necessary to make her gift to him possible. He might be able to evoke the light of heaven, but he still lived and breathed in this world. And he would go on living and breathing in the world-with her-for a long, long time.

At that moment, she was very aware-and very glad- that the hands now gliding over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were simply a man's hands, that the muscled, hair-dusted, and scarred body coming down to cover hers was merely a man's body. That the steely hardness filling the depths of her pa.s.sage was the flesh that rose from a man's loins. And when she opened her eyes to the morning sunlight, the face she saw above hers was a man's face.

The face of the man she loved.

He gazed down at her with eyes warmed by pa.s.sion and the trace of a smile curving his lips. And he said, ”Now, Katie . . . let's see if we can make a miracle-together.”

end.

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