Free A Mother's Love by Ruth Wind

them.
    â€œAnd eyebrows.” Kyra brushed her nose over the baby’s cheek lightly. “I don’t think her name is Amanda or Tommie,” she said. “Is that weird?”
    â€œNo, I think you’re right. She’s not meant to be named for anyone. She’s going to make her own individual way in the world.”
    â€œYes.” Kyra tucked her finger into the little fist, pleased when the baby grabbed on. “Something fiery and strong.”
    â€œBut nothing strange,” Dylan said.
    â€œNo, no.”
    â€œThere’s always Guinevere. Queenly name.”
    â€œBut she didn’t have a happy life, did she?”
    â€œTrue. We want her to have a happy life, don’t we? To make up for her parents dying so young.” He put the back of his hand gently against her tiny body. “A good name. How about Merry?”
    Kyra laughed at the rightness. “Oh, I love that!” She bent close. “What do you think of Merry, hmm? Is that the right name for a happy girl?”
    Dylan brushed Kyra’s face lightly, and she looked up, unable to hide the fact that her heart was in her throat. There was something so innately right about him.
    She had not met a man of such mingled passion and tenderness. A soft breeze blew over them, Dylan and Kyra and the baby between them, sleeping. Such a sweet domestic scene—and so false! She had forgotten for a moment that it wasn’t real.
    But what if it was? What if it could be? She stared at his square wrist scattered with light dustings of black hair and at the whirl of hair swept back away from his face, and a kind of greed overtook her.
    â€œIf you don’t stop looking at me like that, I can’t promise to keep my promise,” he said.
    She told herself all the reasons she shouldn’t let him kiss her. All the reasons it was a bad idea to let herself getattached—more attached—to a man she’d only just met and would likely never see again after next week.
    But maybe the very limited nature of it made it all right. She knew it had no future. She raised one eyebrow, an invitation.
    With an exhalation, he moved suddenly, carefully maneuvering around the sleeping infant, and slid down to nestle his body against Kyra’s. They lay side by side, looking close into each other’s faces, and a liquid layer of pleasure moved below her skin.
    â€œTell me why you don’t trust me,” he said, tucking his fingers beneath her chin.
    â€œI don’t really want to talk.” She edged forward, dizzy and hungry, and kissed him. She slid her hand around his neck, and he captured her thighs between his own, kissing her back. His eyes were closed, but hers were not, and up close he was intensely, dazzlingly beautiful, as if she’d made him up. She liked that he looked so lost in kissing her, and liked the restless up-and-down movement of his hand on her bare arm, stoking the flames to a higher pitch.
    â€œThis is crazy,” she said, “making out like teenagers.”
    â€œUh-huh,” he murmured, but he didn’t stop kissing her, only changed the location of his kissing, moving over her chin, down her throat, swirling his tongue in slow, electric glides. His fingers brushed her chest above the blouse. “I keep thinking about these freckles,” he said. “I want to kiss every one of them.”
    Kyra made a noise at that and tugged him closer so she could feel his chest against her breasts, his body against her own. He rolled her slightly so she was beneath him, and his blue eyes burned down into her as he put his hands on the buttons of her blouse. “May I?”
    â€œIt would have been easier if you hadn’t asked,” she said.
    â€œBut I don’t believe in sweeping things away, in pretending. This is fast. You choose.”
    Kyra looked up at him, then nodded.
    He sighed happily and opened one button at a time to reveal her very ordinary white bra.
    She had