THE MAVERICK'S CHRISTMAS BABY Read online

  All on its own her hand went to his head, smoothing his hair.

  But at least not burying her face in it...

  Dallas froze.

  Then he flipped down the bicycle’s kickstand and set the bike upright before he took her hand from his head, stood and turned to face her, releasing her hand the moment he was.

  He inhaled noticeably and sighed, looking raptly at her. And, with only two fingers that never actually touched her skin, he raised her sweater’s neckline from where it had fallen off her left shoulder and gave it a more demure positioning.

  “What’re you doing, lady?” he asked, his voice raspy.

  Nina shrugged. She couldn’t give him any other answer because she wasn’t completely sure what she was doing. Being carried away, she guessed.

  All she knew with any certainty was that her body was screaming for him. It had been for the past twenty-four hours. And while this was certainly not an ideal time for her to enter into anything with Dallas or anyone else, she’d never been in the throes of a desire so persistent, so undeniable, so intense.

  A desire he’d said last night that he didn’t think he would regret satisfying.

  Sounding accepting—reluctantly—he said, “I get that you might not be so interested in...” He obviously wasn’t sure how to say having sex, but the involuntary glance down at breasts that were contained by a strapless bra tonight made it clear what was on his mind.

  And she could only smile at how wrong he was.

  “But, Nina,” he went on in a tone that rang with frustration. “I want you in the worst way, and if you come any closer or so much as lay another hand on me...I’m gonna bust wide-open.”

  “That sounds painful,” she said in a voice that was pure seductress. She raised a hand to mold to the side of that sculpted face and looked into his blue eyes. “What if I want you in the worst way, too?” she whispered, then glanced at her protruding belly and back at him. “This wouldn’t bother you?”

  “No,” he said with a wry laugh that left no doubt it wasn’t an issue for him at all. “But you...last night...”

  “Yeah... It made me feel a little...shy...” she confessed. “But that hasn’t seemed to...quench anything.”

  He laughed, then reiterated what he’d said the night before. “You are amazingly beautiful. That baby bump is nothing but—” he took a turn at shrugging “—nature at work. It doesn’t make me want you any less.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her, as if to prove that. A hopeful kiss that was tentative, too, as if he was afraid of getting where they’d been the night before and then having her pull the plug again.

  But there was some kind of something—something indescribable, something almost magical—in whatever it was that was between them. Because all it took was him moving only those inches nearer. All it took was getting one whiff of his cologne. All it took was that simple press of his lips to hers, and to Nina nothing mattered as much as he did. As wanting him did. As getting to have him did...

  Just this once, a little voice in the back of her mind rationalized.

  Just this once because there were too many reasons why it couldn’t be anything but this once.

  But just this once, as her Christmas gift to herself.

  Because she couldn’t resist anymore...

  She placed a hand on the side of his neck and let her lips part to invite more of that kiss, and Dallas followed suit.

  A sound rumbled in his throat, and even without words Nina knew what it meant. He did want her, and his resistance was down, too, so he had to trust that she really would go through with it tonight.

  But Nina had every intention of it. There was no way the needs coursing through her would allow anything less.

  All tentativeness evaporated from that kiss then, as it grew more fervent, and hunger was unleashed.

  Dallas’s arms circled her, pulling her to him as his mouth opened wide over hers and his tongue really came to play.

  At least for a little while, until it ended and he took her hand. “You’re sure?” he asked, giving her one last chance to opt out.

  “I’m sure if you are,” she told him. “And if you know how it’s done at this stage...” she added, a bit insecure about the fact that she didn’t have a clue.

  He grinned. “I do,” he said confidently before he took her upstairs to his room.

  It was a big master bedroom and so clean that Nina had the fleeting thought that he must have expected this tonight—or at least held out hope.

  He didn’t turn on any lights. Instead, he left the room in only the white glow of a full moon reflected off the snow outside and coming in through large windows exposed by open curtains.

  Then he spun her around to face him again at the foot of his king-size bed and recaptured her mouth with his in a kiss that held nothing back now. Instead it started very much where they’d left off the previous night, as if his own needs and desires had been simmering barely beneath the surface since then, too, waiting to be unleashed.

  Feverish—that was what that kiss was. Hot and intense and burning bright. And it was everything Nina had been dying for since she’d stopped him from kissing her like that in the store.

  He cradled her head in his left hand and braced her back with his right as mouths reclaimed each other and Nina realized she now had free rein...

  She slipped her hands under his sweater to his bare back, drinking in the feel of sleek skin over massive muscles. She was up to his shoulders when the thought struck that she didn’t have to leave him dressed, and so she tore away from the kiss long enough to pull his sweater off over his head.

  He smiled and went right back to kissing her, letting her have her way, exploring him.

  And now that she had the chance, Nina didn’t leave anything unexplored. She sent her palms on a quest that went from his narrow waist, expanding from there to broad, broad shoulders that she dug her fingers into just a little. She went to biceps that were cut and carved, squeezing those, too, reveling in the feel of power and strength there. And then there were his pectorals and the tiny male nibs that were almost as hard as she could feel her own nipples growing even as she discovered his.

  Apparently Dallas decided to continue what she’d begun because he reached down to the very bottom of her sweater and went under, too. But rather than what she’d expected—and hoped for—rather than returning to breasts that were yearning for his attention, he found the waistband of her leather pants and slid them down.

  Ah, the advantage of an easy-off waistband...because down they went without incident. Nina kicked them aside and was left in the lacy string bikini panties she’d chosen tonight just because they were comfortable and not because she’d had this in mind as an endgame.

  Or so she told herself.

  Her sweater had fallen so far down her right arm that the part of her breast that swelled above the strapless bra was exposed. It made her feel sexy and bold. So she let her hands glide from Dallas’s chest to his washboard abs. All the way down to the waistband of his slacks.

  He really did want her, and that made her smile beneath the onslaught of the kissing that was still going on, and growing hotter and hotter with every passing moment.

  And she wanted him to be free to want her....

  So she unfastened the hook that held his waistband closed and then unzipped his pants with the help of his own burgeoning needs.

  It was such a turn-on to have the evidence of how much he really did yearn for her that Nina felt her own desire take a leap to another level even as she closed her hand around the steely length of him.

  He groaned from deep in his throat, and that was when one of his hands slid under her sweater again. Up the back, he went straight for the hook of her bra, undoing it and then pulling it out to drop on the floor.

  Then he did t
wo things at once. He abandoned her mouth and nuzzled the top of her sweater to dip low enough to expose one breast to his seeking mouth as his hand found the other breast from inside the sweater.

  And suddenly there was so much that was so deliciously sweet all at once...

  He kneaded and massaged and toyed with her nipple while sucking the other breast deeply into the warm, wet velvet of his mouth, flicking the crest with the tip of his tongue, nipping with tender teeth and giving Nina her reason for moaning.

  It all felt so divine that her spine arched and let him know she just wanted more. More and more and more, and maybe nothing would be enough when she wanted him as much as she did.

  His other hand located the string of her panties and he disposed of those, too, bringing his hand back to the side of what used to be her waist. And just like that, mounting desire mingled just a bit with self-consciousness.

  But his hand was big and warm, and so, so adept, too, and the way he slid it to the underside of her belly—gently, lovingly, adoringly—dissolved some of the awkwardness.

  Just before he slipped lower still and his hand ended up between her legs...

  The gasp at that first touch took her by surprise, and when his fingers slipped into her she very nearly turned to mush. Her knees actually did weaken enough for her to rely more on leaning into Dallas’s big body, and her grip around him tightened, too, apparently giving him the signal that it was time to get her off her feet.

  But not without getting rid of her sweater first.

  He returned to kissing her after he did that, giving her a deep, poignant kiss laced with so much passion that it was the sexiest kiss she’d ever had, and it washed away every last reservation about being naked with him.

  Then he scooped her up into his arms much the way he had that day in the blizzard—only so much better this time—and he laid her on his bed, joining her there.

  That was when the urgency that had been growing in Nina since the night before burst to the surface. And apparently the same thing happened for Dallas because a new concentration, a new intensity, came to everything then. To his mouth at her breasts, to his hands all over her body, to her hands all over him...

  Until she knew she couldn’t last much longer, not without the full feel of him inside her. Not without the release that her body was beyond needing...

  Then he wasn’t lying facing her anymore, he was behind her, spooning her, kissing her shoulder, flicking his tongue there. One hand still worked its magic at her breasts and the other shifted her legs just so, freeing a way for him to find his home right where she craved him to be.

  Part surprise, part sigh, part moan was what sounded from her then as he taught her the delights of a position she’d never known before. He moved carefully into her and retreated, carefully in even more, all the while continuing to arouse with the wonders of his hands on her, giving her nipples his palms to kernel ever more tightly into, kneading and taking her on a ride that was so incredibly not set in its way that she didn’t know what to do but let him take her on it.

  And take her on it he did. Coming deeply and more deeply into her. Delving gently, carefully, but still faster and faster into the core of her, building white-hot flames to burn and fuel her. To drive her higher and higher, striving for that peak that he seemed to know exactly when to bring.

  Because just when she was desperate for it, one hand deserted her breasts and reached down below instead...

  He definitely knew what he was doing because he sent her right over the top into a climax so incredible she lost herself in it. In it, and in that man and what he was doing to her, even as she felt him plunge into her and shudder with a culmination of his own that made him catch his breath, too, and kept them both suspended in pure, exquisite ecstasy...

  Then Dallas melded his body around hers so seamlessly it was as if they were two pieces of clay formed to fit together.

  He kissed her shoulder once more. “You okay?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

  “Wow...” was all she could whisper in response as she slowly came back to her senses.

  “But are you okay...?” he asked again.

  “Oh, yeah. Better than that...”

  He laughed a relieved, replete laugh and placed a trail of kisses along the length of her shoulder and up the side of her neck before he laid his head on the mattress above hers, making a nest for her head under his chin.

  They stayed that way for a while before Nina recalled that it was Christmas Eve. That even though she’d accepted his mother’s invitation to Christmas dinner the next day because her own family continued to be quarantined, Dallas still needed to have Christmas morning with his boys, with his family.

  “You have to get me home,” she reminded him softly.

  “I don’t want you to go home,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she commiserated with a laugh. “But I have to. I don’t think me and my being here in the same clothes I wore tonight is quite what anyone is expecting Santa to bring.”

  He laughed. “It’s what I want Santa to bring,” he insisted.

  But then he sighed in resignation, kissed the top of her head and said, “I know, I know...” And he did the last thing Nina wanted him to do—he took his arms from where they were wrapped so warmly around her, he took the long, heavy leg he had locked over her hips away, and he got up to retrieve their clothes.

  He brought her hers first, unashamedly giving her a pretty terrific Christmas gift in the view of his magnificent body naked in the moonlight. Then he sat on the end of the bed and put his own clothes on with his back to her.

  Nina appreciated that and wasted no time dressing herself, not really eager to give him the same unfettered view of her.

  And once they were both decent again, Dallas came to her to kiss her once more—a long, leisurely, sexy kiss that only made it more difficult to go out into the cold night for the drive back to her apartment.

  A long, leisurely, sexy kiss that was probably the reason that, once they got there and he gave her another one, he didn’t end up leaving her at her door.

  Instead Nina did what she’d been sorry she hadn’t done the previous night.

  She took him to her bed.

  For just one more time...

  Chapter Ten

  After his night with Nina, and slipping into his parents’ house at three in the morning, and very few hours of rest after that, Dallas was still the first one up on Christmas morning. Mainly because he was just too elated to sleep much.

  He lit the Christmas tree lights and a fire in the fireplace. He sorted all the gifts into piles specific to each person. And he was humming Christmas carols as he made coffee in the kitchen, feeling better than he had in longer than he could remember. Maybe since soon after Robbie was born, when he’d given up thinking that anything was going to please Laurel.

  And it was all because of Nina.

  “Merry Christmas,” a sleepy-sounding Ryder said from behind him.

  Dallas glanced over his shoulder to see his oldest son standing in the doorway in his flannel pajamas, surprised that it was Ryder who was first to rise and not Robbie.

  “Merry Christmas!” Dallas answered. “Anybody else up?”

  “Just me,” Ryder informed him.

  “Did you check out the presents?”

  “Mmm, a little,” Ryder said, as if he wasn’t sure it was all right if he had. “I saw a baseball mitt...”

  One of the things he’d asked for.

  “...and that swamp creature Jake wanted and Robbie’s bike.”

  Those were the gifts left unwrapped, as if Santa had set them out.

  “I hope Robbie got the deluxe neon alien invasion spaceship, too,” Ryder added with a hint of warning, as if Dallas might have overlooked the toy the youngest of the Traub sons
had asked for repeatedly—and without omitting a single word of the lengthy description.

  “I don’t think he’ll be disappointed,” Dallas said, silently thanking Paige for that contribution early on, when he’d still been too muddled in his own misery to be paying as much attention as he should have been to what his kids were saying.

  Sutter had spent a lot of time in Rust Creek Falls in November and had done some babysitting for him. The boys had gone along several times to do things with Paige, such as make cookies and help sort food for the food drives.

  Paige had also helped Robbie write a letter to Santa asking for his mom to come back. Or, if he couldn’t have that, then a new mom. Or, if he couldn’t have that, then a deluxe neon alien invasion spaceship.

  Dallas had been more stuck on the mom issue, but Paige had kept the spaceship in mind and picked one of the season’s hot items up when she’d had the opportunity. By the time Dallas had even begun to think about gifts, it likely would have been too late to get one at all, which would have disappointed his youngest.

  The alien spaceship was in one of the wrapped packages from Santa—Paige hadn’t even wanted the credit—and Dallas made a mental note to thank her again for that kindness and consideration.

  He just had to hope that the spaceship was enough to compensate for Robbie’s other requests not being met because there was no mom—new or old—under that tree.

  Ryder came to stand beside him. “I like the way coffee smells, but it tastes like licking a dirty ashtray.”

  “When have you ever licked a dirty ashtray?” Dallas asked with a smile.

  “You know, I just think it’s what it would taste like. Yuck.”

  “Well you’re a little young for coffee yet, so it’s probably better that you don’t like the taste of it. How about some juice while we wait for everyone else to get up?”

  Ryder shrugged his concession to that.

  “Your grandmother has a big breakfast planned for after we open gifts but I don’t think anybody would notice if we hit that cookie tray,” Dallas suggested.