Being quite fond of hers, too, he covered one of her breasts with his free hand, surprised at how full it felt—until he remembered why. He handled her gently, letting his thumb brush softly across her distended nipple, which proved to be very sensitive. Megan’s soft sound of pleasure turned into a full-blown moan as she arched into his touch, her legs moving restlessly against his as her fingers curled into the muscles of his chest.
Her response encouraged Jack to continue reacquainting himself with her beautiful body, all while drinking his fill of her equally delightful mouth. She obviously had the same thought, as one of her hands left his chest in search of a more interesting target.
Jack chased after her, actually surprised she’d waited as long as she had. “Slow down,” he whispered into her mouth. “We’ve got all night, sweetheart.”
She skillfully dodged his attempt to capture her hand and had her fingers wrapped around him before he could even rear back. Jack sucked in his breath and released a shuddering sigh.
Marauding Megan was back.
Lord, he loved her for knowing exactly what she wanted and not being afraid to go after it. Obviously liking what she found inside his long johns, she made another interesting sound, which Jack answered with a shout when her fingers feathered over his scrotum.
“Take off your clothes,” she murmured, wiggling around to tug at his shirt with her other hand.
He immediately sat up and pulled his shirt off over his head, then reached down and slid his long johns off without Megan’s help, as she was still locked on her target, determined to drive him mad. Just as soon as he was free of his clothes, Jack grabbed both her hands and wrestled them over her head so he could kiss her again.
He should have remembered that this in no way disabled her. Now that they were both naked, her toes became her new weapons of choice. She ran one foot up the length of his leg and somehow managed to wiggle halfway beneath him so that he settled between her thighs.
Locking both of her hands in one of his without breaking their kiss, Jack slid his free hand down between them and had just found her sensitive little bud when he was poked—several times and rather sharply—in the belly.
“Holy hell!” he yelped, scrambling back so suddenly he fell off the bed of boughs. He stared at Megan’s naked, moving stomach. She looked like she’d swallowed a basketball, it was so perfectly round—except when the tiny creature inside was doing calisthenics.
Dammit to hell, he couldn’t make love to her with their baby in there!
Megan burst out laughing. “I wish you could see your face right now,” she chortled. She stopped caressing her wiggling belly and reached out to him. “Come on, Jack. You’re going to get frostbite.”
He couldn’t stop staring at her belly. “We can’t…I’m not going to…” He finally looked at her. “Our kid will know what we’re doing, Megan. He’ll feel me when…when I’m…” He trailed off to a whisper, shaking his head because he couldn’t even say it out loud in front of the baby.
She laughed at him again. “Of course he’ll feel us. He’s supposed to. Having his parents make love is reassuring to him. Come on,” she said, wiggling her fingers as she reached out to him. “Show our baby how much you love us both.”
Jack wiped a hand over his sweating face. He couldn’t do it now if God Himself held a gun to his head. He climbed out of the snow and back into bed, pulling her down beside him so they were spooned together with her back to him.
She gave a frustrated huff, then started snickering. He threw a leg over hers to make her quit squirming. “Go to sleep. You need your rest. We don’t know if we’ll have to walk out of here tomorrow or not.”
Her entire body expanded, then deflated with a heavy sigh. “You are such a nerd.”
Megan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of all the parochial, nonsensical notions—imagine not being able to make love because the baby might feel it? Did he honestly think pregnant women didn’t have sex? And now that she’d made up her mind to do it with him, she wasn’t about to not do it for another few months, that was for sure.
Megan stared into the fire, listening to Jack’s breathing slowly even out again. How was she going to get him past this foolish notion? He said he loved her, so by God, he needed to prove it! Besides, she liked making love; she was a healthy woman who appreciated an athletic romp in bed with a sexy man, especially when that man was unequivocally into her.
And for the first time in five months, Megan was beginning to believe Jack truly did love her. Didn’t he realize a sweet bout of lovemaking was just what she needed?
He was so clueless.
She smiled despite herself. Surely he was trainable. Her mistake tonight had been asking him to make love. He was a guy, wasn’t he? And didn’t guys have sex on the brain 24/7? She should have just quietly pulled down his long johns and climbed on top. He wouldn’t have felt the baby in that position, and by the time he’d realized what was happening he would have been way too involved.
She grinned. He was sleeping now, wasn’t he?
Megan decided she better give him another few minutes, just to make sure he was in deep dream sleep. She became almost giddy with anticipation. Was Jack about to have the best damn erotic dream of his life, or what?
Five minutes later she carefully removed his arm from around her, got up on her knees facing him, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that he hadn’t bothered to put his long johns back on. Talk about a blatant invitation!
She crawled to the woodpile and tossed a few sticks on the fire, watching to see if Jack woke up. The fact that he didn’t gave her hope. She crawled back over to him, peeled the edge of the sleeping bag off his hip, and softly sucked in her breath.
He was so beautiful, so perfectly, ruggedly male. He had a series of raised scars crossing the left side of his ribs, which he’d told her were from an encounter with a young bear when he was twelve. And the ugly mark on the right side of his stomach just above his hip bone he’d said was a souvenir from his military days. Megan suspected it was a bullet wound, since she knew there was an even more wicked scar on his back, implying the bullet had gone clean through. There were several other gouges and nicks on his beautiful body—some substantial, some not—that spoke of a hard and at times death-defying life.
She was finding it harder and harder to stay angry at him for breaking her heart. After all, what would she have done if their roles had been reversed in Canada? How brutal might she have gotten if she thought Jack’s life was in danger?
Honestly? She would have done anything, said anything, to protect him because she had loved him that much.
“You look like you can’t decide whether to castrate me or jump my bones.”
Megan’s gaze snapped to his, and she had to smile. “I don’t want to castrate you.”
“That’s good.” He lifted a brow in inquiry. “So does that mean you were going to take advantage of me in my sleep?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry for panicking earlier. Now that I’ve thought about it, I seem to recall my parents making love while my mother was carrying me. It got a bit bumpy on occasion, but I remember having this warm, fuzzy sense of being totally immersed in their love.”
Megan put her hands on her hips. “You can’t possibly remember something like that. You weren’t even born yet. Nobody can remember anything that happens before three or four years old.”
He propped his head up on his hand. “I think we remember quite a lot, only it becomes so ingrained in us that we simply don’t retain much of the details. I can still hear my mother singing to me. I remember how she smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, how she used to rock me for hours when I was sick, how she constantly flipped her hair behind her shoulder when it got in her way, since she wouldn’t braid it when Dad was around because he liked it loose. I remember every minute of my life from conception to nine years old like it was yesterday.”