Instinctive Male by Cait London

Author:Cait London
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2003-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

Later, at the Stepanov home, the family shared zavarka in front of the fire while Leigh contentedly nursed Katerina. Mikhail couldn’t help watching Ellie, the blush that would course up her cheeks as their eyes met, and their bodies remembered and hummed.

On impulse, he rose from his chair and plucked Ellie from hers, carrying her back to sit on his lap. “Mikhail, don’t…” she whispered frantically, trying to push free of him.

He felt like a boy, excited and a little in love with his first sweetheart, and he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck until she wriggled and laughed. When she was breathless and limp and leaning back in his arms, the softness flew around them again, the other thing that they both feared.

Ellie reached to smooth his hair and then his cheek, and the haunting loneliness in him gentled. Mikhail took her hand to bring it to his lips, and the magic deepened and caressed.

They’d made love desperately, gently, and yet—yet more awaited, then he thought, as he looked up to see his family watching them, smiling.

With a delighted squeal, Tanya climbed up to sit on his other knee. “Do that to me, Mikhail. Mom never laughs like that. She sounds like a girl.”

“She is a girl, a very pretty one, just like you.” Mikhail nuzzled the little girl’s neck until she laughed and twisted away, running to leap on Ryan, who took her to the floor, tickling her.

“It’s good,” Fadey said quietly as he studied his son. Fadey’s look said he knew that Mikhail had found the woman he wanted and had claimed her.

“Very good,” Mikhail agreed as he held Ellie closer.

She studied him slowly, and he could have fallen into those dove-gray eyes. “I’m not used to this…this openness. You say what you feel,” she whispered.

Not always, Mikhail thought, remembering the shadows he preferred not to share with his family, the bitter fights with his ex-wife, the grief over his unborn child. But they knew and understood.

“Sometimes the quiet is good, too,” he said, drawing her head down on his shoulder and letting peace roll over him as smoothly as a gentle, sunlit tide.

He nuzzled Ellie’s silky hair and welcomed the warmth and the scent, the softness, the rightness of her in his arms.

But he knew that even now, after making love, she was fighting any future with him, throwing up barricades. She’d learned in a lifetime how to protect herself from the pain that came from caring for men whose capacity for love wasn’t equal to her own.

Mikhail understood her reasoning, but he wouldn’t hurt her—ever. He intended to give her all the love that was within him.

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