“OH, ROSS,” she breathed. When he let her come up for air, which wasn’t often, she desperately tried to gain control of her emotions. But it was impossible. His kiss wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t tender. It wasn’t soft or romantic.
It was fire. Molten lava that he spilled over her body, numbing her, forcing her to submit to his wicked will. Which was okay by her.
His tongue teased her own, his teeth nipped at her lips causing them to swell, and his hot musky breath pushed into her mouth, increasing the heat and the intimacy. It was like no kiss she had ever known. Every sense was occupied, every nerve was on alert. She felt simultaneously alive and numb. A long way away from Joey Angelucci in the fifth grade.
He held her head in the grip of his two powerful hands, while his mouth ravaged her. Claudia clutched at his shoulders, but didn’t have the strength to hold on, so she let her arms flop about her sides while Ross held her securely. She trusted him not to let go.
But then he did.
Her head hit the window with a jolt, but no real pain. She was too shell-shocked for any pain to register.
“We’re still in the parking lot,” he said as he started the car’s engine. “We can’t do this here.” Roughly, he threw the gearshift into drive and peeled out of the parking lot.
Claudia remained mute, but the questions flew inside her head. He said they couldn’t do it there. Did that mean they were going somewhere else to do it? And do what precisely? They were too old to play like teenagers and make out under the stars in a parked car. But they were the perfect age to make love under the stars. Is that what she wanted?
Yes! her heart shouted freely. Her fire-ridden body willingly agreed.
But there was her mind. Her stubborn, highly rational mind. It always had to put its two cents in. What if they did make love? What would happen after that? It was still painfully clear that Claudia didn’t belong on the farm. It was also clear that Ross was searching for someone vastly different from herself. Someone like Susan. Like Hannah.
So what would happen after? The passion would subside. Awkwardness would set in. They would struggle for their clothes, embarrassed that they’d seen each other naked. He would mumble some apology about how it never should have happened. Claudia would agree, but inside her heart would break. The next several days would be excessively uncomfortable, then she would leave, never to see him again.
But she had to consider the flip side. A night of pure passion. A night like she had never experienced before in the arms of a man she unfortunately believed she was in love with. A memory that she could take with her for the rest of her life.
The car stopped shortly and Claudia was jerked out of her thoughts. She turned to Ross, realizing they hadn’t said a word the entire drive home. He must have been answering some of his own questions.
“Where are we?” she wondered. They seemed to be stopped in the middle of nowhere. Some trees looked familiar as did the telephone pole. “We’re stopped on your driveway.” About halfway down as far as she could tell.
“Betty is inside the house with Rosa May. We can’t very well go inside like this.”
She wanted to ask like what, but she imagined that her hair was all over the place, not a truly unusual style for her, but probably suspicious under these circumstances. As for Ross, he seemed unscathed by their little tumble, except for the taught lines of his body and the grim expression on his face.
“Okay. We’ll wait out here for a while.”
“We can’t do that, either.
“Why?” she wondered.
“Because if we don’t exit this car in about two seconds you’re going to find yourself in my lap, and it won’t be to tell me your Christmas wish.”
Oh, Santa! Claudia supposed he issued the threat to make her bolt out of the car. But the threat was going to have to be a lot more…threatening for her to do that. Instead she sat with her hands folded primly in her lap.
“You’re not leaving,” he said.
“You’re not leaving, either,” she returned.
“Do you want this to happen? Because it will happen. I’ve been thinking about it too long for it not to happen.” And after that kiss, he understood that she wasn’t getting off his farm until she had gotten into his bed. He’d never felt such heat before. He heard guys all his life talk about hot women and steamy sex. He’d always believed they were exaggerating for the sake of the story. But what he felt now was urgent. It was more than lust or desire or want. It was need.
He turned to Claudia to gauge her reaction. She had a dreamy smile plastered to her lips. “What?” he asked.
“You’ve been thinking about me,” she crooned happily.
Damn, he shouldn’t have admitted as much. They were still on opposite sides of the line drawn in the sand. And in war one didn’t reveal a weakness to the enemy. “Let’s get back to the topic at hand.…”
“Absolutely,” was her answer.
“Absolutely what?”
What a dope. Slowly this time, so he understood, “Ab…so…lut…ely.”
Lost, Ross wondered if he hadn’t destroyed some of his brain cells back there in the school parking lot.
She huffed, then tried again. Turning to her right, she very obviously locked the passenger door. Her message was clear. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Ross wasn’t thrilled with the location, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. In a swift move he lifted her off her seat, over the gearshift and settled her weight onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. She was tiny enough to fit, but it was tight. He was sure the steering wheel was pressed into her back, forcing her to press herself against his chest. Which was all right with him, but he didn’t know how comfortable it was for her.
Oh, my gracious, she thought. His chest. His wonderful gloriously thick chest. She held onto the headrest above his head, allowing her breasts full contact with his hard muscles. She actually moaned.
“Are you in pain?” Damn that steering wheel, he thought.
“Oh, yeah, agony.” She lifted herself against him, then slid down his body once more.
This time Ross groaned. “I want your mouth.”
“Me, too,” she uttered, not knowing if she made sense or not.
Tentatively, tauntingly, teasingly, she brushed her lips against his, then pulled away. She licked the tip of his nose then retreated. She gently bit his earlobe then escaped. His hands were cupping her bottom, so she doubted he would release that treat to force the kiss. She had all the power and she reveled in it.
She had all the power, he thought, because he’d be damned before he moved his hands. He’d waited weeks to squeeze this precious part of her anatomy, and he wasn’t letting go now. Besides, he could take any torment she could dish out.
A nip of his neck. A drag on his ear. A suckling of his bottom lip. Anything. He could take anything. Then she dragged her hands down his chest, and began to unbutton the buttons, starting with the bottom and moving up. Still, he was in control, but when all the buttons were undone, she pushed her hands inside the fabric. Her lengthy nails kneaded his flesh like dough. Then they began to scrape against his tight nipples. A jolt shot down his chest, through his stomach and to his groin. It was like no other sensation he’d ever felt before. He never knew how sensitive his nipples were. Never associated them with sex before. Not until Claudia. It was driving him delightfully nuts.
Maybe a year, she counted hazily. If she touched and kneaded his chest for a year straight she might be satisfied. Anything less than that would leave her wanting. She couldn’t say what it was that so enthralled her. But there was a male essence that hovered about Ross that humbled her. Something that Marco did not possess. Simultaneously that essence made her weak and strong. Weak with desire. Strong in the knowledge that she was desired.
Claudia lifted her head from his expansive chest and she noted the color of his eyes. Dark, hazy, they spoke of a powerful lust. In that instant the game changed. This wasn’t about teasing and touching anymore.
She clutched his face in her hands and bent her head to capture his lips. The kiss was intense. It spoke of fulfillment instead of arousal.
Ross recognized the change instantly. Releasing her bottom, he burrowed one hand under her shirt, and captured her breast. It was encased in a lace that both thrilled him and irritated him. He wanted to feel her soft flesh. He wanted to feel her nipple pucker into a tight bead of desire.
“Damn, I want you in my bed,” he cursed, longing for the room and the time he would need to fully experience her.
“Me, too,” she murmured as she made her way from his lips, to his cheek, to his neck. Her need was an agony. So much that she actually felt a roaring in her ears. A horn that blasted through her dazed senses. Odd, she thought, most women saw stars when they made powerful love.
“I want you naked and writhing, and begging for me to come into you.”
“Naked, writhing, begging,” she repeated in a chant.
“I want to feel your legs wrapped around my waist, holding me inside you.”
“Inside you. Yes, that’s what I want, too.”
“I want…”
“Dad!” a distant shout called to them. “Are you guys okay?”
A beam of light from the flashlight that Rosa May carried hit him square in the face. She was a few yards away and coming closer.
“Stop,” he ordered, halting Rosa May in her tracks. “We’re fine.”
Still in his lap, her face a portrait in guilt, Claudia whispered, “Oh. My. God.”
In one smooth motion Ross lifted Claudia up and off his lap. “Ow!”
“What?”
“I hit my head on the roof of the truck.”
“Are you sure you guys are okay?” Rosa May called out again.
“Worry about your head later, button up your shirt now!” he instructed Claudia. To his daughter he shouted, “What are you still doing up?”
“I heard the truck pull up, but it stopped. Then you started beeping the horn I thought you might be in trouble or something.”
“Oh, the horn,” Claudia concluded realizing that the sound wasn’t coming from inside her.
“Your butt was pressing up against it,” Ross accused softly as he finished with the buttons on his shirt.
“No,” Claudia corrected as she, too, finished redressing herself, “my butt was pressing against your hand, which was pressing against the horn. This is your fault!”
“My fault,” he roared. “If you hadn’t…” he stopped.
“What?”
If she hadn’t aroused him to a feverish pitch, was what he was going to say, but he managed to bite his tongue. Obviously, she couldn’t be held responsible. Still, knowing that all amorous activities had been suspended for the night left him in a bear of a mood. A mood he was willing to share with everyone who crossed his path.
“Rosa May, go back inside. We’ll be in shortly. We were just talking,” he called to his daughter.
“Six point two, Dad. Lacks both believability and originality,” Rosa May said laughing.
“Rosa May,” he threatened.
“I’m going. I’m going.” The light receded and they were left alone again.
Claudia unlocked her door and was about to get out when she noticed Ross wasn’t moving. “Well,” she wondered. “Are you coming inside with me to face the music?”
“I’m not going anywhere for a few minutes,” he snarled.
For a moment she was confused, but then her gaze shifted and she caught a quick peek at his lap. Oops. He wasn’t going anywhere for a few minutes. Claudia had the nerve to giggle.
“Don’t you dare laugh,” he warned. “There is nothing funny about this situation.”
Claudia begged to differ. Like a couple of teenagers they were caught red-handed making whoopee in his pickup truck by his eleven-year-old daughter. It was a little funny. However, she didn’t feel now was the time to share her mirth. Instead, she took a more practical approach.
“Look at it this way,” she began, “at least we spared ourselves the awkward phase.”
His features were knife sharp in the moonlight. When he turned and pinned his gaze on her, Claudia sucked in her breath. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Fearless, almost, she trod forward. “We both know that this would have been a huge mistake. After it was over we both would have been mortified. We spared ourselves that.”
“You think it would have been a mistake?” His tone was neutral, so it was hard to gauge the intent of his question. Was he angry or in agreement?
“Don’t you? We’re clearly wrong for each other.”
“Are we?” he asked.
“Aren’t we?” she asked back.
“You’ve been adjusting rather well to this place. You can actually walk around the farm without me or Rosa May being right there next to you. Shannon likes you.”
“Shannon likes having cool hair.”
“You can touch the cows now without having to put gloves on first.”
“Yeah, but I puked up my guts when I found out that the piglets’ names weren’t jokes.”
Ross twitched his lips. Ham and Bacon had endeared themselves to Claudia. She thought they were pets. When she found out they were food, she had tossed her cookies into the hay, marched out to where he’d been repairing some fence, and called him a list of vile names, beginning and ending with pig murderer.
Maybe she was right. She couldn’t handle farm life, which meant she couldn’t stay. If she couldn’t stay what made him think that making love to her would have been a good idea? His hormones, he answered. Hormones, however, should never outrank brains.
Claudia continued with her list of reasons in case one wasn’t enough. “You could never make it in New York, either. You don’t dress well enough. Rosie would be stuck in an apartment all day. No. No. It’s all wrong for us to be together.”
“What if we were together for the time you had left? Would that be so wrong?” he wondered.
No, she thought. Yes, she thought. Before she had been able to talk herself into a short, mutually pleasurable affair. One where she walked away with good memories and no regrets. Unfortunately, that had been her hormones talking. Vicious little devils. Somehow they had managed to short-circuit her brain and convince her heart that she would feel no pain. Now that she had them under control, she could honestly admit that she’d been lying to herself. Leaving Ross would hurt.
She wasn’t the brief affair type. And she would walk away with a pierced and bleeding heart, if she had Ross for a time, then was forced to give him up. Besides, he didn’t really want her. Oh, he wanted her, but not all the way. If they made love, would he even ask her to stay? The answer was too easy: he wouldn’t.
“Yes. It would be,” she said sadly, answering his question.
Ross sighed. She was right. He couldn’t very well conduct an affair under the nose of his daughter. An affair that would never end in marriage. What kind of example would that set for Rosa May?
So ask her to stay.
Ross dismissed the idea as soon as he had it. Of course she wouldn’t stay. She had a business, friends and a life back in New York. For her to give all that up to stay, she would have to love him.
Starting the engine, Ross pulled the pickup farther up the driveway. He and Claudia were silent as they walked toward the house. They found Betty asleep on the couch and Rosa May crouched halfway up the stairs, hoping to catch a good-night kiss.
“To bed, Rosa May. The show is over,” Ross called to her.
“Oh, Dad. I miss all the fun!” There were a few stomps then nothing.
Claudia waited a beat. “No good, kid. It’s at least five stomps to your door from the steps. I only heard three.”
“Oh, man!” This time the stomps were real.
Ross smiled, as did Claudia. It was a shared moment of recognition over a wonderful child. Suddenly, the air was thick around them. It was almost as if they were a family. Almost. But Ross and Rosa May would never be hers. She didn’t know why that should make her so sad, but it did.
Together they woke Betty and paid the groggy baby-sitter. Claudia handed her a mug of coffee to keep her awake during her drive home. After she left, the two stood in the living room wondering what should happen next.
“I guess I’ll go to bed,” Claudia announced first. It was the best course of action. Out of sight, out of mind. Out of mind was right! She was out of her mind if she thought she was going to be able to stop thinking about him for a full minute.
“That would be good,” Ross agreed. “Tomorrow, we’ll start over like none of this ever happened.”
Claudia nodded and started for the stairs. She had climbed the first two when she stopped. Sprinting, she returned to where Ross stood rooted in the living room. As quickly as she could, she leaned up and pecked his cheek.
“I just wanted to say thank you for tonight. You know, before we start over.” She sprinted back to the stairs and took them two at a time.
Ross stared at her back as she left him. “Stay,” he whispered to an empty room. But nobody heard him.
“IS IT OKAY if I go to Suzanne’s house today?” Rosa May asked. “Her dad just built an outside pool and he invited me over to go swimming.”
Claudia placed the waffles on the table and waited for Ross’s answer. If his reply was negative she fully intended to lend her support. The way she saw it, Rosie did far too much work around the place. A girl her age should be swimming in a pool with a friend. Not mucking stables and milking recalcitrant cows all summer.
“You’ve earned it. You’ve worked hard this week, Rosa May. Don’t think I haven’t appreciated your help. Do you need a ride?”
Claudia turned her back from the table with a goofy smile on her face. For as different as they were, they were often on the same wavelength. Don’t go there, she told herself. After a restless, sleepless, agonizing night, she’d come to the decision to bury any and all feelings she might have for the farmer.
“No, Mr. Davis is going to pick me up. I just have to call. But I need to use the phone.” Rosa May blushed a bit with embarrassment when Ross paused. He indicated for Rosa May to come closer and then whispered in her ear. After a few seconds, Rosa May hightailed it upstairs.
“Oh, come on,” Claudia shouted. “I will not give my location away! You think I want Rocco and his goons to come after me? Give me a little credit.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he explained.
Claudia poured herself a cup of coffee, winced at the bland flavor and lack of foam, and sat down across from him. “For the last time, it’s called an espresso machine,” she mumbled, then returned to the matter at hand. “I know. It’s just that you don’t trust the world. Spare me the lecture. My father gave me the same one when he said I couldn’t date Vito Camarari in the eleventh grade. He drove a motorcycle.”
“It’s for the best this way. Now, there will be no doubt if another leak occurs.”
“I understand that, but I miss my friend. I’m all she’s got besides that goon, Rocco. She’s never had to go this long without speaking to me. In a lot of ways I’m more like her mother than her best friend. How would you feel if you couldn’t get in touch with Rosie?”
An answer wasn’t necessary. Regardless, she still wasn’t getting the phone. “Listen, we have other priorities today.”
Uh-oh. Rosie was gone. Chores still had to be done. It was back to the barns for her, she just knew it. “Okay, here’s the deal,” she started before he could say anything. “First, I will feed the chickens and gather the eggs, except for Gretchen’s of course. Second, I will pitch hay, but I will not muck. My days of hand milking are over, that you know. But I can herd the girls into the barn. And I refuse to feed the piglets, thereby contributing to their extinction and your next breakfast. Agreed?”
He chuckled in response. “Agreed. But that wasn’t what I was referring to.”
“Oh.”
“You need to learn how to drive.”
“Huh?”
“Drive. As in a car. As in case there is an emergency and I’m out in the fields. You need to be able to get to me, or to the nearest neighbor for help. If I’d known you couldn’t drive before, I would have begun your instruction earlier. It’s ridiculous that a woman your age doesn’t know how to drive a car.”
“First,” she snapped, “a woman my age is still considered a very young woman. Second, I don’t need to drive in New York. Not when there are professional cabbies to do the job for me.”
Ross had ridden in a New York cab back during his days with the FBI. He breathed a sigh of relief that she was still alive. “You have no choice. Your life is in danger, and you need to take precautions. It’s either a car or a horse. Take your pick.”
Like she was going to pick the horse.
THE SUN WAS LOW over the farm, hailing the end of the day within the next few hours. Rosa May had been invited to spend the night at her friend’s and had accepted the invitation, leaving Ross and Claudia to themselves. Claudia would have been worried about being alone with him after last night if it wasn’t for one critical fact: at the moment she hated his guts.
“I said reverse. Reverse. As in backward!” he shouted.
“For the last time, stop yelling at me!” she shouted back. “I’m trying.”
The pickup pitched forward, stalled, the gears ground together in a symphony that would make Ross’s mechanic a very rich man, and after all that they hadn’t moved backward.
Inhaling as large a breath as he could to calm himself, Ross began again. “Let’s start over.”
“Nooo,” she whined. “Not again.”
Gritting his teeth against her whining and steeling himself against the power of her pout, he placed her hand over the gearshift, his own on top of hers. “This is first gear,” he said as he moved the stick in the correct direction. “This is second. This is third. This is fourth. This is reverse.”
“I don’t understand why you need four gears to go forward and only one gear to go back. Forward, back. That’s all any car has to do.”
Apparently his lecture on engines, power and speed had gone unheard. “Your gas is on the far right, your brake is next to that. Your clutch is next to your brake. You have to shift and clutch at the same time. Shift and clutch.”
Claudia looked down at her feet and the three pedals on the floor. She wasn’t stupid, but for whatever reason she was having difficulty grasping the basic concepts. Maybe it was the vocabulary. “Clutch,” she mentioned. “Clutch makes me think of pulling. That’s why I want to pull this thing over here when I shift.”
Patiently, Ross corrected her. “And that would be right. If that were the clutch and not the emergency brake.”
“Emergency brake. Regular brake. What’s the difference?” she asked testily.
“One you use in an emergency and after you have parked the car,” he answered slowly. “Maybe it would help with a little hands-on training. Switch seats with me.”
In a practiced move, Ross lifted Claudia on his lap and then pushed her off to the side. Then he moved behind the wheel, and pushed the seat back as far as it would go. “Okay, now come here.” He pulled her close and again lifted her into his lap settling her between his legs so that his feet were on either side of hers. It should have been a reminder of the position they were in last night only they were both so irritated with the other that they failed to notice. “Now watch. I clutch and shift at the same time.”
Claudia felt his arms push against her own. One hand held her own to the steering wheel. The other pinned her right hand against the gearshift forcing her to mimic his motions. His legs hugged hers, and his feet pressed hers into the pedals.
“Hey, watch it,” she cried. “You’re ruining my good leather sandals with your icky work boots.”
Ross glanced down at said “icky” work boots, ready to contradict her insult and keep her mind on the task at hand. The words froze in his throat when he spotted her milky white legs. Today her shorts were white. A snowy white that emphasized the little sun she’d received during her stay on the farm. They rode so high up on her thighs and clung so tightly to her body that he couldn’t imagine where she found the room for panties. The idea stirred his imagination and other parts of his anatomy as well. He shifted his weight a bit. She wore a white crop top to match her shorts and Ross discovered that from his position he could peer into the depths of her meager yet satisfying cleavage.
It must have been the puff of breath that hit her neck and stirred the sensitive hairs there that alerted her to his change in mood. It wasn’t an irritated sigh or an angry huff. It was sensual. Hot. Arousing. It reminded her that she was surrounded by him. Encompassed by his heat and his hardness.
The fighting stopped. The bickering ended. Conversation came to a halt altogether. Claudia didn’t dare move. Any shift, any sigh, any deep breath would have pressed her body more firmly into his. If a match had been lit the spark alone would have ignited the whole inside of the truck.
Time passed. So much time that it was apparent what was happening to both of them. If someone didn’t say or do something quickly, there would be nothing to stop what they both decided was so wrong last night.
“Maybe I should give the horse-riding thing a try,” Claudia announced.