Free Passion's Price by Gwynne Forster

hard and fast, shaking him up and causing him to question his thinking about getting involved with a woman he’d only briefly known. In the end, he’d had no choice. Every gesture she made drew him closerto her. And when he pulled out of her after the most electrifying and satisfying experience of his life, he’d have been a fool not to admit, at least to himself, that he belonged to her. He patted his shirt pocket for a package of cigarettes, remembered that he hadn’t smoked in years, got up from his desk and went downstairs to his kitchen and opened a can of beer. A virgin. He was thirty-four years old, and that was the first time he had made love to a virgin. He still couldn’t believe how she’d made him feel. As honest in bed with him as she was in ordinary conversation, her openness made pleasing her his passion and his mission. If only it wasn’t a fluke. He could hardly wait to duplicate the experience again.
     
    Friday finally arrived. He stepped into the waiting room at BWI Thurgood Marshall International Airport, and his gaze fell on her smile. He thought his heart had hit his sternum. He dropped his suitcase, lifted her into his arms and lowered his head. Her kiss, powerful and passionate, clouded his mind to his public surroundings. He lowered her to her feet and picked up his bag.
    “I told you not to meet me.”
    “I know. But I wouldn’t have missed this greeting for the world.” She grasped his free hand. “I drove, because it’s the easiest and fastest way to get home. We’ll go directly to the suburbs.”
    “Have you missed me?” That kiss said she missed him a lot, but he wanted her to vocally acknowledge it.
    “Uh-huh. You’ve even been invading my dreams.”
    He put the suitcase in the trunk of her car, opened the driver’s door for her and held it.
    “You mean you’re going to sit beside me while I drive?” she asked sarcastically, as if the question itself was an insult to his male ego.
    “Why not? I don’t know one thing about this area.” He got in beside her.
    He liked the fact that she drove with confidence. Suddenly, he laughed. Why didn’t that surprise him? It’s what brought them together. Most people would have investigated before going to an unfamiliar address in a strange city, knocking on the door, and accepting the hospitality of a strange, elderly man.
    “Are you afraid of anything?” he asked when she took the exit ramp at thirty miles an hour.
    “Sure. I’m scared of worms and snakes.”
    Laughter poured out of him, partly because he was amused and partly because he was relieved that they’d made it safely off the highway. “Just checking.”
    She parked in front of the big white Georgian house in which she’d been born and turned to him. “We’re here.”
    “You haven’t given me any rules,” he said, although he didn’t need to be told how to behave. But he wanted a better idea of what to expect.
    “Use your good judgment,” she said, opened the door and hopped out.
    She rang the doorbell and waited. “Maggie’s like my mother, Mike. So I have to give her a chance to meetyou at the door.” She looked at him with a quizzical expression. “What’s your exact title?”
    “Lieutenant Michael Raines, but don’t you—”
    The door opened, and a slim, matronly looking woman gazed at him. “Come on in.”
    Darlene slipped an arm around Mike’s waist in as possessive an act as he’d ever witnessed and looked up at him. “Maggie, this is Lieutenant Michael Raines, but please call him Mike. Mike, this is my surrogate mother, Mrs. Maggie Jenkins.”
    “I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Jenkins,” he managed to say facing the most thorough scrutiny he’d ever experienced.
    “Likewise,” she said. “Come here and let me look at you.” She grinned and shook her head as if perplexed. He didn’t know what to make of it.
    Then she put her arms around him and hugged him. “You’ll do. Looks like Darlene’s finally grown up.” He figured that