He left her a few strokes from the top, knowing her need met his as he positioned himself just slightly inside her, then caught her eye and began to press himself deeper. She was unbelievably tight, her hot pussy grabbing onto him and fitting him like a second skin. He could barely stand the slow pace he'd set for them, but he didn't want to hurt her, and judging by just how tight she was, he was glad he hadn't just decided to take her with one hard thrust.
Instead, he drove the both of them crazy, settling himself into her by centimeters, letting his own weight set the pace as his spiked flesh seared its way deeply inside her. By the time she was fully impaled, Elodie had already begun to shift restlessly beneath him, trying to encourage him to begin the rhythm that would carry them both to ecstasy.
Clay could hold himself back no longer. He had to move! Elodie clutched at his back, arching herself to meet his every thrust, moaning as he scraped the delicate tissues within her with each snap of his hips, building her pleasure to the point where she thought she was going to pass out beneath him before hurling her off the mountaintop into the abyss of the purest paradise.
He followed a stroke or two later, crying out her barely discernable name in a voice he didn't recognize, it was so gravelly and animalistic. Clay flexed his butt several times afterwards, driving himself into her as much as he could, eking out every iota of pleasure before collapsing on top of her, burying his face into her hair where it lay on the pillow around her head, panting it into his mouth but not caring in the least as he tried to come to grips with what had happened.
Chapter 12
Elodie lay beneath him, still clutching at his shoulders although her quakes had been reduced to small, trembly tremors. Her eyes were wide open, as if she'd just seen a ghost, and she had.
April.
She felt April's presence there—in that room, despite the change of furniture—as surely as she'd ever felt anything else, and the stark reality of what she'd done made tears seep into her eyes. When she finally had to close them, the moisture dribbled down the sides of her face and into her hair.
What had she done? Was she crazy? How could she have been so adamant about not wanting to get involved with Clay, and then end up doing exactly that? Where was her brain? She was lying in her sister's bedroom, with her sister's husband lying on top of her. It didn't matter that April was gone—it didn't matter one bit!
She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn't help it. She felt dirty. She felt as if she'd crossed the point of no return. Elodie didn't recognize her own behavior. Obviously, she'd begun thinking with her overactive sexual need rather than her brain. She never meant to dishonor April's memory in such a way. That was the last thing she'd ever wanted to do, and yet it was exactly what she'd ended up doing. She felt sick, as if her stomach wanted to rebel against her behavior as well as her mind.
Elodie wanted to melt into the bed beneath her, to disappear, to be forgotten and forgiven. But that wasn't likely to happen here, lying under her dead sister's husband. The only thing she could think of right now was being alone, and doing some sort of penance. She didn't know what, but it wasn't going to be pretty, she knew that.
But Clay didn't seem to be going anywhere. In fact, she could swear she could hear him snoring in her ear, and that was the last thing she wanted. She had absolutely no intentions of sleeping with him tonight, so she began to shift herself subtly beneath him, hoping to either wake him enough to get him to roll off her, or be able to sidle out from under him so that she could get up, get dressed, and leave.
He didn't seem to wake up, but he did roll to one side, so that the only part of him that was really still over her was his arm, which she was able to gingerly, very gingerly, scoot under, holding his wrist up by her fingertips as if it was a particularly odious snake, then replacing it on the mattress where she had been. She gathered up her clothing as carefully and quietly as she could, all the while checking him nervously where he lay on the bed, glancing down at him, ready to sprint out the door at a moment's notice if he should wake.
But he didn't, thankfully.
Elodie paused at the door, though, looking over her shoulder at his broad back. She had a lot to think about, a lot to reconcile before she could see him again. She hoped he'd understand about that, although she didn't have a lot of hope. What Clay wanted, Clay got, one way or the other.
She shrugged and closed the door behind her without making a sound, wending her way through the house and out to her car mindlessly, deliberately not thinking about anything but getting herself home, not seeing anything in front of her except a vision of a very unhappy April glaring down at her.
She needed to be home.
*****
When the phone rang in the middle of the night, it was never a good thing, unless you knew someone who was pregnant, and Clay didn't recall anyone expecting a baby amongst anyone who had his private number. Unfortunately, the nature of his business meant that there were occasional dead of the night phone calls from a foreman if cattle or horses got loose or sick, so he was instantly, fully awake.
He picked up the phone and punched the talk button. "Carver."
"Clay Carver?"