"He will, Zach." Raising on tiptoe, she pressed a gentle kiss upon his mouth before settling back on her heels. "Meanwhile, try not to brood about it."
A distinct light entered his eyes, and transferring his hands to her hips, he pulled her in, bending his knees until their pelvises were snugged together. "Well, I don't know," he said. "Brooding's damn tough to avoid when you're worried. Seems to me if you don't want me caving under the pressure, you'd give me an activity to help pass the time. Take my mind off it." He swiveled his hips suggestively. "Ya know?"
That reminded Lily of her earlier discovery. Since she'd never gotten to her room to drop off her stuff, the pharmacy bag was still in her hand, and she handed it to him. "I've got something for you first. It kind of falls into that better late than never category."
"What's this?" He reached between them for the bag. Shaking it open one-handed, he peered inside. Then the hand still holding her hip dropped to his side, and he stepped back. "'Oh, shit."
The set of his mouth turned grim as he stared into the open sack. "Christ, Lily," he said hoarsely. "I can't believe we've been having unprotected sex, and it never even occurred to me." Paper crackled as his fist suddenly cinched the top of the bag closed, and his gaze snapped up to pin her in place. "Is it possible you're pregnant?" A breath of derisive laughter escaped him. "Stupid-ass question; of course it's possible. We haven't used a damn thing to prevent it, and we've been fucking like—"
She winced at his wording, but said levelly, "That at least shouldn't be a problem. I'm on the pill."
" Good ." He blew out a breath. "Oh, God. That's good." Then, before she could decide if she was hurt by his obvious relief or perhaps the tiniest bit hacked off, he ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek, stared into her eyes, and said with soft intensity, "I'm sorry, Lily. I know what you must be thinking, but I promise you I don't make a habit of this. Hell, I can't believe I did it this time. I've never forgotten to wear protection in my life."
And just like that, she felt much better. She leaned into his touch. "I know what you mean. I've never been careless before, either. I don't know what it is about you." Okay, she did, but since Zach seemed to be pretty gun-shy when it came to emotional intimacy, she decided not to scare him off. She gazed at him solemnly.
"We probably ought to talk about this, though. I'd like you to know that the number of my sexual partners is in the single digits. And since it's been quite a while since the last one. and I have regular yearly exams, not only am I safe when it comes to pregnancy, but in all the other considerations, as well."
"Yeah. Me, too. My partners probably number more in the mid-double digit range, but—"
"You've slept with fifty women?"
"Hell, I don't know; it's not like I've counted. But I'm thirty-six years old, Lily, and I've been sexually active for twenty years. Let's be conservative and say I've slept with two women a year—that would still be forty right there." He shrugged. "So, realistically it was probably closer to a hundred."
"My gawd." Feeling her jaw drop, she said, "If a woman admitted to that much experience, she'd be labeled a slut. What the heck do you call a guy who has sex with a hundred partners?"
"A marine." He gave her a cocky smile, then sobered. "The point is, I was given a clean bill of health by the medics before I left for South America, and I, uh, haven't been with another woman since. Maybe that's why—"
He broke off and shook his head, a leery expression in his eyes as he looked at her. Then his sexuality slammed back into place, and Lily had the craziest notion he was using it like a shield. But when he smiled lazily and his breath misted warm against her ear as he murmured, "What say we take this box upstairs and see if we can't put a dent in the contents?" she forgot her momentary suspicion.
"Urn, yeah. Okay. That would be good."
The next thing she knew, she was up in her room, divested of clothing and flat on her back in the middle of the bed, with an equally naked Zach propped over her kissing her from forehead to toes.
He was slow and thorough, and she was a writhing mass of inflamed nerve endings by the time he rolled onto his back, unfurled one of the new condoms down the length of his jutting erection, then lifted her to straddle him. Looking down as she found her balance, her heart slammed fast and furiously at the hot-eyed intensity darkening his pale irises. Then every corpuscle in her body stood at attention and shouted yes ! as his rough-skinned fingers gripped her hips and slowly lowered her onto the hot, solid length pushing its way inside her.
"All those women?" he said hoarsely as she quickly found a rhythm and rose and lowered herself upon him. "They've run together in my mind, Lily, and I can barely remember anything about them."
Absorbed in the slight adjustment she'd just made that drove him deeper to touch a sweet spot high inside, bringing her closer, closer , to satisfaction, she barely heeded his words. She was striving for a shining goal just out of reach, and oh, gawd, she was nearly… she was almost—
Suddenly he arched his pelvis off the bed, and Lily cried out as mind-expanding pleasure exploded within her. Zach held her hips with a hard grip as he thrust up into her, and her climax roared through her body like sheet lightning, all but arcing and snapping as it went on and on and on .
But somewhere in the midst of it, she heard him say,
"I have a feeling, though, it's gonna be a long, long time before I ever forget you."
Jerking her chin down to study his expression, she found that he, too, had begun to come. His eyes were blind and his mouth mute as he held her tightly to him, so she wasn't certain if he'd actually said the words or she'd merely imagined them. Then she didn't care, for the look on Zach's face and the feel of that rigid source of pleasure throbbing powerfully inside her swept every other consideration from her mind and sparked a further round of contractions that were even sweeter than the ones preceding them.
She couldn't have said if minutes or hours passed before she became aware that the muscular body beneath her was losing its slackness. As some of her own postcoital lethargy dissipated, something important began to niggle at her memory. "Oh, shoot." She peeled herself off Zach's damp chest where she'd been lying limply. "I meant to tell you earlier: I discovered this morning that I might have another problem." Looking down, she was surprised to find his eyes wide open and, just for a second, vulnerable.
Then he blinked, and that endearing hint of confusion disappeared, leaving her wondering if she'd actually seen it at all.
Zaeh, fearing he'd just given something away, raised a deliberately sardonic eyebrow. "You have had yourself a busy day, haven't you?"
"It's sure as sugar been a long one," she agreed. "And it's not even noon yet."
He congratulated himself on successfully diverting her attention from whatever she'd seen in his face. But when she related the encounter she'd had with a young man in town, and told him how the youth had also approached her at the gas station on the Washington-Oregon border, Zach became all business. "I'm not a big believer in coincidence," he said flatly, and rolled her off of him. He climbed to his feet and bent to sweep up his discarded jeans.
"No. Neither am I."
He didn't care to admit to himself that it was almost a relief to have something to concentrate on besides the way he seemed to lose all control around Lily. But how the hell could he have forgotten to use condoms with her? Worse, why had he just been so tempted to continue doing so?
It wasn't an issue he was anxious to delve into, so he hustled her into her clothes, seated her in the chair in front of the desk, and hunkered down in front of her, his hands resting on the arms of her chair. "Okay, let's have it. Give me all the details you can remember."