Tami Hoag - Magic

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t get too comfortable?” Rachel asked with forced lightness. She pulled away from him a bit, raising her head, bracing herself.

For once Bryan didn’t grin or answer with a joke. He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m telling you I love you, Rachel. I’m telling you I’m feeling something I didn’t expect to feel again for a long, long time.” He rolled her beneath him again and stared down at her with undisguised hunger in his eyes. “I’m telling you I want to take you upstairs and make love to you until the sun comes up. What do you have to say about that?”

Say? She was supposed to say something? With her heart in her throat and her brain suddenly numb, she was supposed to think of something to say? She swallowed hard and raised her head as his mouth descended toward hers, and whispered just before their lips met. “I’m praying for an eclipse.”

Flowers. What a lovely dream. There were flowers everywhere. Rachel sighed and burrowed deeper into the soft mattress of the old bed, a smile curving her mouth. There were flowers of every kind and color, delicate wild blossoms with the softest, sweetest scents clinging to their petals. She could feel them against her, cool and dew-damp. They rained down on her and fluttered over every exposed inch of her skin like a hundred silken kisses. And Bryan was the magician responsible for this wonderful illusion.

She couldn’t see him in her dream, but Rachel knew he was the one responsible, just as she knew he was the one who had left a rose on her pillow every night since she’d come to Drake House.

Bryan. Her smile widened and she purred in almost feline appreciation as she stretched on the bed. As he’d promised, he had made love to her all night. While the rain had fallen outside the windows of her turret bedroom and the cold wind had howled, Bryan had warmed her with kisses and caresses. He had awakened in her a woman she had scarcely realized existed, a woman of uninhibited passion. He had taken her to heights she had only imagined and set her soul free from the past and the future.

The future. A cloud scudded across the surface of her dream. Now that she knew what real love was, it hurt worse to think of a future without it, but she pushed the thought aside. She had vowed to take no regrets with her when she left for San Francisco, so she concentrated instead on her dream and the flowers.

“Rachel.” His voice came to her through the soft fog of sleep. “Rachel.”

Stretching, she raised her eyelids to half mast and rolled onto her back. The light in the room was dim, but one thing was clear-it was snowing. She could see Bryan through the flakes falling down all around her. He was standing beside the bed, wearing his Jeans, his glasses, and a wickedly sexy smile. She wondered why he didn’t look cold, bare-chested in the snow.

Snow? Her drowsy brain struggled to function. They were in Drake House. It couldn’t possibly be snowing, not even in this strange place.

“Bryan?” she asked, coming more fully awake. She pushed herself up in bed, looking around, puzzlement creasing a little line between her eyebrows. “What in the…? Flowers!”

She laughed out loud in delight when she realized what he was doing. He was showering her with flowers! The petals covered the bed in multicolored drifts-pink and blue and violet and yellow and white. They clung to her skin and hair and to the ivory lace bodice of her nightgown. The cloud of fragrance rising from them was intoxicating.

Bryan dropped the last of the blooms and joined her on the bed, scooping her into his arms and rolling through the fragrant cloud, laughing as petals stuck to the lenses of his glasses. He leaned down and kissed her with enthusiasm and rising passion.

“Since you keep accusing me of bringing you flowers, I decided I might as well go all out,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. “Mmmm… they smell almost as good as you do.”

Rachel scooped up a handful and rubbed them down his bare back. “Where did you get them?”

He smiled as he rose up above her, but his gaze was hot as he lowered the thin straps of her peachy-pink negligee, baring her breasts. “Magic,” he said, his voice turning low and velvety as desire flared anew in his eyes.

As Rachel had done, he scooped up wildflowers in his hands and caressed her with them, crushing them as he cupped her breasts. He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking at that tender bud of flesh and the pansy petal that clung to it. His hands swept down her hips, tugging her nightgown up out of his way.

He turned onto his side and admired the view as he showered a handful of flower petals down on the bare skin of her belly and thighs. Sliding down on the bed, he blew gently across her abdomen, sending the buds skittering. With a purposeful look on his handsome face, he parted her legs and settled himself between them, planting kisses on the petals that clung to her inner thighs.

Rachel raised herself up on her elbows, her hair tumbling around her as she watched him, wrapped in sensual fascination stronger than any narcotic. With gentle fingers Bryan parted her most tender flesh and caressed her intimately with the bud of a wild rose. She gasped at the feel of velvet brushing her, cool and damp against her heat. He caressed her again, then lowered his head and tasted her, kissing her softly at first, hesitantly, increasing the pressure slowly, opening his mouth over her and stroking her with his tongue until she was sobbing at the intensity of her pleasure.

He kneeled then, and lifted her into his arms, pulling her against him and kissing her deeply. His lips trailed to her ear, where he traced the danity shell with the tip of his tongue and whispered, “And they taste almost as good as you do too.”

Rachel purred and arched against him. A languid smile lifted one corner of her mouth as she reached between them and undid Bryan’s zipper. She tugged the denim down his lean hips, scooped up two handfuls of flowers, and encased his manhood in cool soft petals, wringing a gasp from him. She stroked him with them as she planted kisses across his chest. Then it was her turn to gasp as he lifted her against him. She dropped the flowers, her hands going up automatically to his broad shoulders as he pulled her hips to his and joined their bodies once more.

The light in the room was considerably brighter when Rachel awoke for the second time. Bryan’s tousled head was on her breast, one of his long, hairy legs was thrown across both of her considerably smoother ones. He was humming the Notre Dame fight song in his sleep.

“Bryan,” she murmured softly. “Wake up.”

He grumbled and growled, finally lifting his head and pushing his glasses up on his nose. “What time is it?”

Rachel reached to the nightstand for his wrist-watch and peered at it, shaking her head. “Three-ten, Bryan Hennessy time. Do you ever intend to set this thing correctly?”

“Oh, sure,” Bryan said, hauling himself up to lean back against the ornately carved headboard. “I’m sure I wrote myself a note to do it.” He scratched his kneecap through the sheet, looking puzzled. “I wonder what became of that note.”

“It’s quarter to seven,” Rachel said, consulting her travel alarm.

Time to get up and face the day, she thought. Her gaze roamed over the tangle of sheets and flower petals, and she smiled. With a night like this last one to remember, the day wasn’t going to be quite so hard to face.

She yawned, stretched, and scratched her arm. Snuggling against Bryan’s hard shoulder, she said coyly, “Thank you for the flowers. I loved them.”

Bryan turned his head and kissed her temple. “And I love you.”

Rachel’s heart jumped. She couldn’t get used to hearing him say that. She was afraid to say it back for fear the spell would be broken somehow, afraid she would be putting too much pressure on him, expecting too much of him.