Free Strangers in the Night by Linda Howard, Lisa Litwack, Kazutomo Kawai, Photonica Page A

belly, in the instinctive touch of a pregnant woman.
    He was real. Dear God, he was real. He had come back to her. She saw his shock mirrored in his eyes as he confronted the reality of impending fatherhood. He stared at her belly for a long, silent moment before dragging his gaze back up to hers. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked hoarsely.
    â€œ
I didn’t know, ” she said. “Until after you’d gone
.”
    He approached her, as cautiously as if confronting a wild animal, slowly reaching out his hand to rest it on her belly. She quivered at the heat and vitality of his touch, and nearly moaned aloud as the pain of months without him eased from her flesh. Couldn’t he sense how much he had hurt her? Couldn’t he tell that his absence had nearly killed her, that only the realization she was carrying his child had given her a reason to live?
    And then she felt the quiver that ran through him,too, as his hands closed on her body. Pure heat sizzled between them. She drew a deep, shaky breath of desire, her body softening and warming, growing moist for him in instinctive preparation.
    â€œLet me see you,” he groaned, already tugging her nightgown upward.
    Somehow she found herself lying on the dock, her naked body bathed in the pearly morning light. The discarded nightgown protected her soft skin from the rough wood beneath her. The water lapped softly around her, beneath her, yet not touching her. She felt as if she were floating, anchored only by those strong hands. She closed her eyes, giving him privacy to acquaint himself with all the changes in her body, the changes she knew so intimately. His rough hands slipped over her as lightly as silk, touching her darkened, swollen nipples, cupping the fuller weight of her breasts in his palms. Then they moved down to her belly, framing the small, taut mound of his child.
    She didn’t open her eyes, even when he parted her legs, raising her knees and spreading them wide so he could look at her. She caught her breath at the cool air washing over her most intimate flesh, and the longing for him intensified. Couldn’t he sense how much she needed him, couldn’t he feel the vibrancy of her body under hishands? Of course he could. She had never been able to disguise her desire for him, even when she had desperately tried. She heard the rhythm of his breathing become ragged, and glowed with the knowledge of his desire.
    â€œYou’re so lovely, it hurts to look at you,” he whispered. She felt one long, callused finger explore the delicacies between her legs, stroking and rubbing before sliding gently inward. Her senses spun with the shock of that small invasion; her back arched off the dock, and he soothed her with a deep murmur. And then she felt him moving closer, positioning himself between her legs, adjusting his clothing, and she lay there in an agony of anticipation waiting for the moment when they would be together again, one again, whole again. He filled her so smoothly that he might have been part of her, and they both gasped at the perfection of it. Then the time for rational thought was past, and they could only move together, cling together, his strength complemented by her delicacy, male and female, forever mated.
    Thea moaned in her sleep as her dream lover brought her to ecstasy, and then became still again as the dream altered, continued.
    The water closed over her head, a froth of white marking the surface where she had gone under. The shock of it, after the ecstasy she had just known with him, paralyzedher for long, precious moments. Then she thought of the baby she carried, and silently screamed her fury that it should be endangered. She began struggling wildly against the inexorable grip that was tugging her downward, away from air, away from life. She couldn’t let anything happen to this baby, no matter what its father had done. Despite everything, she loved him, loved his child.
    But she