A wave of panic hit Amanda. "What do you mean it broke?"She said worriedly as she stared at him in disbelief.
"Just what I said, Amanda. I mean it broke when we were..." Lee halted his statement abruptly, not sure how to finish that sentence. When they were what? Having sex, getting it on, screwing. Making love, he thought as he realized there was no other way he could think of it with her. He just worried that she didn't feel the same way. In his mind, they had definitely been making love. Maybe making a baby, too, he added his thoughts drifting to the mental image he'd created of her pregnant with his child. Now, he was worried that just like his fantasy of making love to her had become a reality, that his other fantasy image of her may become a reality as well. "...you know."
"You know? What are we, twelve?" she said incredulously as she self-consciously pulled the sheet up to her neck and feeling ridiculous doing so. After all, the man had just been inside her not ten minutes ago. And now maybe his baby is too," she thought. Amanda reflexively lowered her hand to her abdomen.
The gesture was not lost on Lee. "What do you want me to say, Amanda? This has never happened to me before. I am always beyond careful. That's why I wanted us to talk about it before we..." He stopped himself again, flung himself out of bed, yanked off the offending prophylactic, tossed it into the trashcan beside the nightstand and snapped. "Stupid foreign piece of crap. You know, this is why people tell you, you should always buy American." He picked up his robe from the floor and shoved his arms into the sleeves, belting it tightly around his waist. Amanda couldn't help laughing as she wriggled out of bed herself and reached for her own robe. "You think this is funny?" he said turning to look at her just as she was tying the belt on her robe. When she continued laughing uncontrollably, he couldn't help but laugh too. "Ok, I guess it is a little funny," he said crossing to the other side of the bed and wrapping his arms around her.
Amanda snuggled into his embrace and said, "What are we going to do? An annulment's out of the question now." Inwardly, she was praying that he'd agree with her and think as she did that they should stay married, whether there was a baby or not.
"Why would you say that?"Lee said with a dumfounded expression as he pulled back from her and held her at arm's length. Did she seriously still want to end their marriage after...he found he couldn't even finish the thought.
"Because we...you know," she said. Made love, she added mentally.
"Ok, now who's acting twelve?" he said with a chuckle, but noticed she was no longer laughing.
She pulled herself from his arms and gave him a withering glare deeply hurt by the fact that he hadn't really responded to her comment about an annulment, hadn't indicated whether he still wanted out of their marriage and instead had made a joke. "That's not funny," she said icily.
At seeing the stern look that he'd seen her give her boys from time to time when he'd been lurking in her back yard he said, "What?"
"Since we can't legally get an annulment now that we've...um...consummated our marriage, that means a divorce," she said sadly, as she tried to stop herself from tearing up at the distasteful thought of another divorce.
"No," he said firmly. "No divorce." While he was panicked at the thought that he might have gotten her pregnant, he wasn't about to shirk his responsibility to her if he had. The Colonel had taught him better than that.
"No?" she said, hope rising within her, desperately wishing that he meant what she longed for him to mean. She had to know. "What do you mean?" she asked warily.
"Not yet, at least," he said covering quickly trying not to betray his own feelings that had only intensified now that they'd made love. "Not at least until we know for sure if you're...I mean, if we...if our actions tonight had...consequences." Damn it! Why can't I just say the words?
Amanda's eyes flare in anger and disappointment. "OHO, I see. So, you're okay with staying married to me if you knocked me up, but otherwise you still want to end it!"
Lee was stunned by the harshness of her words. "What the hell do you want from me, Amanda? I told you when we first met that I was a loner, no buddies, no girlfriends, no attachments. That's how I've been for years and how I've always liked it!" He knew that wasn't true anymore, not since meeting Amanda. Getting to know her had made him realize how empty his life was. He could never tell her that though. He'd never hear the end of it. Besides, how was he supposed to tell her that after all the times he'd insisted that he was better off alone, that he'd now discovered that he couldn't live without her?
"No attachments? Funny, I seemed to notice you seemed pretty attached when you were calling out my name!" she fired back.
"You seemed to be getting pretty attached yourself, Sweetheart. I seem to remember you calling out my name too! Pretty damn loudly at that!" He gripped her arms and pressed himself against her. "It was good, wasn't it? The way I made you feel?" He ground his hips against hers and growled, "Better than with your ex, wasn't it? Did he ever make you feel that way? Your second time around was the best one, wasn't it? Of course, since I'm only the second guy you've ever slept with, you wouldn't have much to compare it to, would you?"
Amanda felt another wave of desire flowing through her at feeling him so close to her again, feeling what he was doing with his hips, but she wasn't going to give in, not with the way he was acting. She braced her hands against his chest and pushed him forcefully away from her. "Don't flatter yourself!" she spat at him. "It was good, I admit that. I couldn't deny it if I tried because you know me well enough to know I'd be lying, but it's not as if I've never been there before. I'm not some virgin bride here! Furthermore, just so we're clear, you're not the second! My ex-husband wasn't even the second!"
"What?" Lee said completely thrown by her last outburst.
"That's right," she said smugly. "Come on, you've seen all the background stuff the agency has on me. I was twenty-two when I married Joe. Did you honestly think at that age, that I was some sad little blushing virgin just anxiously waiting for my wedding night to let my husband deflower me?"
Lee gaped at her in surprise. That was exactly what he'd thought. She seemed so reserved, he'd thought for sure that she was the type of woman who'd never sleep with a man outside of marriage. Of course, now that he'd slept with her and seen her lower her inhibitions, he realized just how unreserved she could be. "Well, I guess that answers the question I had about how you were so good at putting a condom on," he said sarcastically. "Here, I thought your experience was limited to your ex."
Amanda glared at him and said, "Did it never occur to you that that's the reason I only have two children and not five or six when I was married to him for ten years? What, did you think that I only had sex with him twice in that whole time?"
"I guess I never thought about it ," he said. "While we're on the subject, if you're so damn active, why the hell aren't you on the pill like most normal women your age?"
"Because I haven't needed to be lately. Unlike you, I don't sleep around!"
"You talk like I just jump into bed with any woman who's willing and that is just not true! The last time was over two months ago."
"Oh? Two whole months?" she said with a sardonic laugh. "Look, the point I'm making is that even though I may have slept with more people than you thought I had, I can still count them all on one hand! Can you?"
"Ok, no, but that's not the point." He took a deep breath to calm himself and sighed running a hand through his hair. "Look, this fighting isn't getting us anywhere. We still have a serious situation to deal with here."
"Agreed," she said.
He approached her, placed his hands on her arms, more gently this time, looked into her eyes and said, "I want you to know that if you are...pregnant, I'll stand by you, no matter what decision you decide to make."
She wriggled out of his grasp again and said, "What do you mean, whatever decision I decide to make? We are in this together. If it happened, we did it together and any decisions to be made should be made together."
"Why are you getting so defensive when I'm trying to be supportive here? I mean, in spite of everything, we're still friends, aren't we?" When she was silent and only glared at him open-mouthed, he began to get worried and said again, "Aren't we?" When she was still silent, he began to really panic. "Amanda, please tell me we're still friends."
"Friends, Lee? Friends? Really? How dare you ask me something like that! We're a hell of a lot more than friends, Lee. We slept together. That makes us lovers."
"Lovers? Come on, Amanda, don't romanticize this. I don't want you getting too attached to me," he said. As much as he would love to feel that she shared his feelings for her, he knew that he would be no good for her.
"Attached, Lee?" she said incredulously as she marched over to the desk and picked up the document that lay on its surface and marched back toward him. "Do you see this?" she said as held up their marriage certificate for him to see. "That is your signature, right there next to mine. Like it or not, we are married. That's as attached as it gets, which by the way I seem to recall you promising me would never happen! You swore to me that this case would be wrapped up before it ever got to that point! If it had been then we could have been home by now and none of this would have ever happened!"
"So you're blaming me for this? God, if this is how you act after you get some, it's no wonder you're not still married!"
"Newsflash, Lee! I am married!" she said waving the paper in his face. "And so are you!"
"I don't know how the hell your ex was able to stand being married to you for ten years!"
"Of course you don't! We weren't married ten minutes before you wanted out of it!' she yelled. She knew she was being overly dramatic about their situation, but the idea of another divorce was making her sick to her stomach. "You're going to have to face the fact that we are married and we have to deal with it!"
"Ok, yes, we are married, but it's not like this was some grand romantic honeymoon that we spent months planning! We didn't plan to get married and yes, I told you it wouldn't come to that, but it's not as if I could have possibly anticipated this would happen!" he said with a wild gesture toward the bed where they'd just made love.
"It's not like I anticipated this either! I was perfectly happy with my life the way it was! Do you think I wanted to marry you?"
"Oh, who are you trying to kid, Amanda? Don't you think I know that you've had a little crush on me since the day we met!" He said pointedly desperate to get her to own up to the fact that she had feelings for him the way that he did for her. "You may not have planned to marry me, but I bet you're glad this happened. The way you were coming at me tonight, it sure as hell seemed like you planned to get me into bed with you!"
"That's outrageous! You were the one who kissed me first! And you were the one bending me over the arm of the couch!" she said with a gesture to the loveseat where the whole thing had started.
"But you were the one who dropped your robe in front of me! And that little "muscle spasm" of yours? I bet that was all an elaborate set up! You had time to get a good long look at the contents of that basket while I was in the shower. I bet you didn't even have a real muscle spasm, just used that as an excuse to get me where you wanted me! In fact, I'm betting you even were hoping to get pregnant so we'd have to stay married!"
"You talk like I set this whole thing up to force you to marry me so I could get you here to seduce you! I wasn't the least bit interested in even marrying you, let alone getting pregnant! I'm already raising two kids by myself! Do you think if I had the choice, I'd want someone like you being a father to my kids when you prefer traipsing all over the globe? If I wanted that, I'd still be married to my ex! I don't know where you get off thinking that you can honestly accuse me of setting this whole thing up! If you recall, I didn't even know all of the details of our cover assignment until we boarded the ship because you didn't tell me about it," she said pointing an accusing finger at him.
"There you go blaming me again! Maybe you should take a little of the blame yourself! After all, you were the one who put the condom on. Maybe you tore it with those wicked claws of yours! I know they sure as hell did a number on my back!" Thinking about that and how she'd clung to him so tightly in the throes of passion just made him want to throw her down on the bed and do it all over again.
"You didn't seem to be complaining when you were inside me," she countered."In fact, it seemed like that got you even hotter!"
Hearing her put it so bluntly filled Lee with a mixture of feelings. He'd never imagined she'd be such a firebrand. In that moment of hearing her say it, he kept thinking about was how much he wanted to be inside her again, but at the same time, under the circumstances he knew how dangerous that would be. He had to think of something to get his mind off how badly he wanted her. He took another calming breath and suggested, "Ok, well maybe since you opened the package with your teeth, you damaged it that way."
"Why are you so determined to blame me for this? Did you ever think that it could have been the massage oil? I mean, anyone with half a brain knows you're not supposed to mix oil-based products with condoms! Maybe you still had it on your hands and that's what caused the problem!"
"So, you're saying I don't have more than half a brain?"
"If the shoe fits, Scarecrow! If I remember my Wizard of Oz correctly the scarecrow was the one without a brain!" she said pointing her finger at him again.
"Oh, so now you're blaming me some more?"He shouted in her face.
"Well, you were blaming me!"She fired back in his face.
"Well, you started it by blaming me in the first place!"
"That is so immature! You're worse than my children!" she shouted.
"God, I hate you!"He said in anger even though that couldn't further from the truth.
"I hate you too!"She screamed back. She knew she didn't mean it, but was so angry at him and the accusations he'd hurled at her that she couldn't see straight.
"You can hate me all you want! That's just fine with me!"He shouted though inside he was dying at hearing her say just the opposite of what he wanted to hear from her.
"Fine with me too!"She fired back though she longed to hear him saying I love you rather than I hate you.
"Good!"He said with a firm nod.
"Good!"
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
Their eyes locked and they both stared silently at one another both breathing heavily, the tension in the room now thicker than it had been before they'd made love. Before either of them knew what was happening, they'd moved into each other's arms and were locked in a frenzied, passionate embrace, groping and grinding against one another as they kissed furiously, their tongues battling for dominance as they worked their way back to the bed moaning against each other. "God, I want you," Lee growled as he tore his mouth from hers and lowered it ravage the tender skin at her neck, biting down hard as his hands gripped her bare bottom underneath her robe and he ground his hips roughly against her.
"Oh, I want you too," she gasped out as her desire for him escalated at feeling his mouth on her skin and his erection pressed against her. She nipped at his earlobe as they toppled to the bed together, Lee on his back with her atop him. Amanda reached behind his head to pluck another condom from the basket, which Lee quickly took from her hands.
"Let me do it this time," he growled. "We're not taking any more chances." He made quick work of the foil packet and making sure the condom was properly in place before pulling her down to him his hands sliding inside her robe to cup her breasts while she reached inside his to guide him inside her. "God, Amanda," he cried out as she began to buck against him pushing him deeper into her. He raised up enough to capture one breast in his mouth biting down on it while he gripped the other tightly.
"Lee!" She moaned as she clung to his shoulders and began to ride him harder, impaling herself on him repeatedly, driving him as deep into her as she could. Her breathing was becoming labored as she reached her peak quicker this time than she had the first time, screaming his name at the intensity of it, her nails digging into him as she held on for dear life.
"Ohhhh, Amanda," Lee groaned as wave after wave of pleasure overtook him. Feeling her trembling body locked with his and hearing her screams of ecstasy sent him tumbling over the edge right behind her. He pulled her head to his, crushing her lips with his own as they rode out the wave together, both quaking and trembling in each other's arms.