Damn. She wasn’t even touching him, and yet he felt so connected to her.
“Shanghai, I’m serious—it was like you were there…with me in Mexico,” she whispered.
He’d felt it, too. He’d been sure he was crazy. But just her saying it now tugged at his heart again.
His pulse thudded so violently, he knew he should run. Instead he remained in the doorway as unable to move as if she’d turned him to stone with a spell.
“Shanghai. Don’t leave me. I’m scared. I really am.”
Bullshit.
And yet deep down he felt concerned about her. Why was he such a fool for her?
His gaze slid hungrily over her slim form. Too slim. Had Morales mistreated her? Shanghai hadn’t wanted to think about that as he’d gazed at the rounded curve of throat and shoulders, her narrow waist and the swell of her hips. Hell. If he hadn’t just seen her naked when she washed herself, he might be in better shape. Did she know how crazy she was driving him?
Yeah. She probably knew. No doubt the striptease had been calculated. Not that he hadn’t wanted her even before he’d accidentally glimpsed her bathing through the broken windowpane. That’s why he’d felt such anger when he’d visited her in prison. Whether he had been manipulated or not, the memory of her breasts lit by lamplight while she’d caressed herself with his wet T-shirt would be engraved in his brain forever.
He’d willed himself to stop watching her and then had stood rooted, unable to move, until she’d dressed and had collapsed on the cot. After that he’d figured maybe he was safe for a while. Then she’d had that damn nightmare that had led to him holding her when he’d worn nothing more than this thin, scratchy blanket. After petting her and having her literally beg him for it, he was rock-hard and burning up.
He wanted her velvet skin beneath his palms; he wanted his tongue inside her so he could taste her. Being Mia, she was quick to sense his weakness.
With a wild cry, she raced across the darkness, stopping mere inches from where he stood. Then shyly she placed her hands on his chest. At first she was tentative, her light fingertips trembling as they moved upward and looped around his neck. Because of her tremors, his arms closed around her, and he pulled her close. When he whispered soothing words against the back of her neck, she clung to him, her fingers ruffling through his hair.
He was losing the battle, sinking fast. Men were weak. At least he was. Beneath her touch, his skin grew hot. When Mia buried her face in the hollow of his throat, and her hips rose to cradle him, he felt himself swell and grow harder. He squeezed her tighter, and still she couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Silently, he half carried, half led her back to bed.
“Last chance,” he murmured. “Go to sleep.”
“No. Lie with me here.”
Her soft seductive tone took his breath away as she took his hand and pulled him down beside her against the heat of her length.
“You’ve had an awful ordeal,” he muttered, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore the impulse to rip his blanket off and strip her so he could feel her skin against his. “But it’s over.”
She turned on her side. He felt her warm breath against his forearm before she kissed him there.
At the touch of her lips a jolt went through him. Numb with pleasure, he kissed her open mouth.
“Is it over? Will it ever be over? What if the authorities make me go back? What if Tavio comes after me? His people cross the border all the time. He knows about you.”
“Knows what?”
“That I care for you.” She kissed his arm again, and the second jolt was electrifying. “I—I told him you’re dead. But if he finds out I lied—”
“Hush. You’re safe with me now.”
“You don’t know him. What he’s capable of.”
“He can’t be worse than a smart, bad-assed bull rider, now can he?”
Just lying beside her had him on fire. Still shaking, Mia nuzzled closer and pressed her warm, seeking lips against his arm. Just his arm! If she did it again, he would explode.
“He’s a murderer. He and his men have even killed women. There was this girl…Delia—” Her voice broke on a sob.
“Don’t,” he warned on a savage breath as he rolled over to face her. “Stop talking about him for God’s sake!”
“I would if you’d kiss me.”
“Oh, God.” His hands began to caress her tangled hair. His lips brushed her forehead.
“Shanghai.” Even as she sighed from his caresses as if in bliss, she moaned in frustration. “On the lips!”
Suddenly he couldn’t take it anymore, either. Cupping her chin gently, he took her lips in a searing kiss. Mouths fused. Tongues mated. As wildly glorious as ever, she began sucking on his tongue.
He shuddered. He felt the kiss in the pit of his stomach, in his aching groin—everywhere. Where the hell had she learned to do that?
In between breaths he managed a question. “Why do you have to be so damn beautiful?
“Most men wouldn’t object to that,” she teased.
“I don’t usually.”
“So it’s just me.”
“Yeah.”
“You watched me bathe, didn’t you? You wanted to touch me, didn’t you?”
“You little minx.”
“Well.” She sounded pleased. “That’s something then.”
“This will end badly—like before,” he warned.
“Maybe you don’t know everything.” She shifted so that she faced him and ripped off his blanket. He felt her eyes before her hands ran over his body. When her fingers touched his penis and began to make slow circles at the tip, the pleasure was too much.
He grabbed her hand. “My turn,” he growled, “to strip you.”
She sat up, and he pulled her blouse up and over her head and tossed it onto the top of his blanket. In seconds her panties, bra and skirt had joined the heat. Then he devoured her pale beautiful body with his gaze.
She twisted a little and opened her legs. Running her hands through his thick black hair, she pushed herself into him so that he lodged between her legs. Then she kissed him.
“Why do you have to be so damned sexy?” he muttered a long time later.
“Only with you.”
“I wish. I think of you with other men sometimes like that thug, and it drives me crazy. How many…”
“Like hell.”
“Why is it so hard for you to think you’re so special to me?”
Grabbing a fistful of her red hair, he pulled her closer. When his penis probed the wetness between her legs, she sighed.
“I see no bull’s gotten the best of you yet.”
He grinned. “The keyword being yet. A friend of mine got his privates stomped into bloody pulp.”
“You’ve got to stop that ridiculous business, you know. You’re not a kid anymore.”
He hated the age difference between them as well as the thought that she might consider him old.
“I decide when I’m ready to retire.”
“I just hope it’s before some rank bull decides to kill you!”
He tensed.
“Okay. Okay,” she murmured. “You decide. Forget I said anything. Just hold me and caress me.” Her hands found him again and began to move.
He stuck two fingers inside her. “God, you’re wet.”
“Of course.”
“Damn!” He sat bolt upright. “If we do this…”
“If—” She stroked him playfully, arching her body toward his with a playful cry.
“I’ve got to protect you.”
Swiftly he got out of bed and stalked outside to where he’d thrown his backpack down. He ripped open a plastic packet and slid the thing on. When he returned, his hands came around her gently. Spreading her legs apart so that she straddled him, he lifted her up on top of him and pulled her down, down until their bodies snugged together and his shaft was lodged at her damp entrance. He told himself to go slowly, but suddenly, he was as frantic to have her as she was to have him.
Her long hair swished against his face as he reached up and fastened his mouth on hers, this time with a soul-devouring passion. When she opened her lips, his tongue plundered her lips.
He kissed her again and again, drinking in the taste of her.
“I want you inside me—now,” she begged, sliding herself against him. “Now.”
His breathing grew harsh. “You do it then.”
She slid a little, and he lunged upward at the exact same moment. With a deep sigh Mia sank down, down and then with him locked inside her, she began to rock back and forth on top of him. Leaning down, clouds of her hair falling against his face and shoulders, she kissed his mouth very tenderly, and her gentle kisses drove him wild.
It had been so long, and she felt so good that soon he lost control.
As his climax began to build, she sobbed, crying out in soft rapturous moans. Happiness flooded him, the kind he’d been seeking his entire life. He wanted to stop, to hold on to the exquisite moment, to make it last, but he couldn’t.
When he suddenly exploded, she screamed and clung tightly, her body shuddering.
His climax went on and on, and so did hers. Even when it was over and they were both limp, he held on to her tightly, wanting to stay inside her as he stroked her back.
In the aftermath he felt profound tenderness. At the same time his intense feelings scared him.
“You screamed Tavio’s name when you slept. Did you fantasize I was him just then when we had sex?”
With a wounded cry, she jumped off him. “How can you ask that—now?”
“Is that why you were so wild?” he muttered.
“Don’t ruin it,” she whispered brokenly.
“I know what I heard.”
“Fine. Think the worst of me—like always!” She pushed him away.
When he got up and grabbed his blanket, she let out such a howl he jumped.
“What was that about?”
“You! Why can’t you be an easy guy?”
“Easy like you?”
“Get out!”
“Gladly.” He strode outside.
“Where are you going?”
“I need some air.” He knew he was using anger in some unfair way, but his unreasonableness only made him more furious—at her.
“Fine.”
“Fine?” Feeling all mixed up, he whirled and then thought better of what he’d been about to say.
“I hate Tavio! What does it take for you to figure out I’m crazy about you?”
“Maybe—that’s only ’cause I’m the one in your bed tonight, and you’re horny. Did you crave him in bed, too?”
“That’s the way you probably are!” She threw a can at him, and it zinged past him. The second one bounced against the wood and rolled across the cabin floor.
Feeling explosive, he slammed the door. Then he yanked his stiff, wet jeans off the railing and stepped into them.
“Shanghai—”
Ignoring Mia, he struggled into the cold denim that clung to his flesh, sticking to certain parts most unpleasantly. Then he sank down on the steps and pulled on his wet socks. It took all his strength to tug on his boots since the leather was swollen from having gotten wet in the Rio Grande.
When he heard her featherlight footsteps on the other side of the door behind him, he stiffened.
“Not more cans, I hope.”
She eased the door open and crawled on her knees until she came up behind him. Cursing, he yanked even harder at his boots.
When she got so close to him that he felt her body heat, he held his breath. After a moment or two, when she deemed it was safe, she laid her head against the middle of his back.
“What are we doing?” she murmured.
Acting like a pair of lunatics.
Oh, God, she felt soft and warm, and her silken hair tickled his bare skin. It would be so easy to turn around, to melt into her sweetness and lose himself again to the pleasure only she could give him.
Too damn easy.
His need for her tenderness and love was so acute, he was an easy mark. With immense difficulty, he clung to his anger.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I—I shouldn’t have come on so strong.”
“Me, too,” he said, but so roughly and with such little sincerity, she recoiled.
“I’m not like this with other men,” she said in a frightened undertone.
He didn’t argue this time, but maybe he should have. A few seconds later when she ran her fingers through his hair a powerful jolt made him want to kiss her so badly he hurt. Instead he jerked his head away.
“I—I don’t know what to say to you,” she said. “Is some of this because you’re mad about me marrying Cole?”
“No! He told me all about that.”
“We didn’t have a real marriage.”
“I said he told me. For your information he’s not legally your husband anymore. He’s married to Lizzy.”
“What?”
“Your daddy and he had you declared dead. Leo Storm consulted teams of attorneys. The majority opinion is that Cole’s second marriage is legal—not yours.”
“Is this about you then? Are you mad because you’re in love with somebody else?”
Abigail. Guilt hit him like a blow. He gulped in a savage breath. He hadn’t even thought about her once since he’d jumped into that courtyard.
“Hell, no!”
But Mia wasn’t buying it. “Why, that’s it.” She sounded strange and sad.
The last thing he needed was to think about Abigail right now, and he damn sure wasn’t going to talk about her to Mia. No matter how all this came out in the wash, Abby was the last person he wanted to hurt.
“I need to be alone right now,” he muttered. “Okay?”
Mia made another one of those awful strangling sounds behind him that cut him up.
“Okay.”
Again he heard the hurt in her wounded tone.
Damn it, he didn’t want to stomp all over her feelings when she’d already been through so much. He was behaving like a jerk.
Hell.
“I’m going for a walk in the park,” he said. “You stay put.”
“In the park?”
“It was a joke, okay?”
“One I don’t get.”
Cursing silently, Shanghai sprang down the stairs. Without looking back at her for fear of succumbing to her again, he headed north into the wild desert, losing himself within seconds in the dense sagebrush and thick darkness.
He stabbed his hands through his hair. What was his hangup with Mia Kemble? He’d spent the better part of his life determined to avoid her. Now, no sooner had he bedded her than he felt like she owned him body and soul. Hell, here he was madder at her than ever but as hard as a pike again, too.
Had Abby ever turned him on like this or made him feel half so much? Had any woman? Somehow in just a few hours, Mia had gotten under his skin so deep, he felt she was clawing out his guts.
Was this love? Whatever it was, it damn sure had him feeling twisted inside.
From the moment Cole had told him about Vanilla and his reason for marrying Mia, Shanghai had known he was in too deep and sure to sink even deeper.
Sometimes it seemed he’d been running from Mia all his life. His first impression of her in the prison visiting room came back to him. Her golden eyes had been huge and glassy; her cheeks pale and hollow. Her thinness in that awful prison uniform that had clung to her in limp, dirty tatters had terrified him.
Even though he’d been nasty, he’d felt an instant surge of protectiveness toward her. Tonight he felt those same feelings all over again, only more deeply. She had him trapped some way, just like Bad Boy had had him when his gloved hand had gotten tangled in his rope.
She was the last woman he wanted to get involved with. The very last. It wouldn’t work. Sure, he had deep feelings, but he had damn good reasons for avoiding her. He needed to find a phone and call for help and rid himself of her fast before she really sank her hooks in him.
When he returned, the cabin was so quiet and dark, that scared the hell out of him. His pulse racing with the fear he’d find her gone, he sprinted through the door only to hear her breathing steadily.
She was asleep on the cot. As he gazed down at her, her thin face framed by clouds of hair, never had she looked so sweet and vulnerable. It was all he could do to resist the impulse to lie down beside her and cradle her in his arms.
He let out an exasperated sigh.
Was he dumb or what?
He was a bull rider.
Bull riding wasn’t a career bright men chose with great regularity.
Hardly knowing what he did, he leaned down and kissed her brow. Then he covered her with a blanket before he went back outside to sleep alone on the porch.
The tension in the library of the big house on the Golden Spurs felt as thick and heavy as a bowl of oatmeal that had sat out too long. Nobody felt more uptight than Terence Collins, especially when he stared at the poignantly happy family photos set out on several library tables, which were in stark contrast to the present mood in the library. He kept watching the phone, willing it to ring. Willing it to be them.
If Mia or Shanghai died, he’d feel a personal responsibility.
He needed a cigarette in the worst way. Naturally Joanne Kemble didn’t allow smoking inside her house.
As a result of an acute nicotine deficiency, coupled with his gnawing guilt, the cherry walls and the tall bookcases were closing in on him. If he’d been wearing a tie, he would have been yanking at the knot. Still, ever the journalist, he couldn’t help studying the white-knuckled crowd jammed too tightly onto the leather couches. He had to admit this was a helluva story.
Joanna Kemble had barely said a word to him since their brief conversation after he’d arrived and she’d coldly thanked him for arranging for protection in the prison so the helicopter could land. He’d apologized for not notifying her before the article came out. He’d said he was sorry about the hit man in the courtyard, who’d started shooting and had caused Wolf to abort the rescue.
She’d stared at him coldly. “Who knows,” she’d finally said, “what’s right or wrong? If Mia lives, I’ll be in your debt forever. If she doesn’t, I may track you down someday and kill you.”
For some reason Terence found himself watching Joanne. Although she was a widow, her grief didn’t show—if she’d ever even felt grief. Remembering Caesar’s affair with Electra, he wondered how much Joanne had known and if she’d loved the bastard at all.
Terence was surprised at how sexy he found the aloof Joanne compared to Electra, who’d been known for her wild sex life.
Electra had been too free and too selfish and too self-absorbed. Funny, that he of all people would object to that. He eyed his daughter, Abigail. Maybe he knew better than anybody how such independent, self-serving spirits could damage those they loved most.
What an arrogant bastard he was! Me! Me! Me! Even now when maybe his cocky journalistic tactics and his desire to write something that could shock might get Mia Kemble killed, here he was at the story’s center, waiting like a vulture.
You were only doing your job.
Right.
Life was always about choices and he’d made a lot of wrong ones.
Joanne was tall and regal—cool and contained. She wore her streaked, red hair in a loose chignon. He’d seen pictures of her, of course, but she was much more striking than her photographs. Her jeans were as tight as a girl’s and her shape was perfect. Her boots were custom-made. Her cream silk blouse was buttoned all the way to her throat. Damn, if she didn’t look like a total tight-ass.
Strangely the thought of her being prim and proper in bed turned him on. Not that a woman as rich as she would look at him. Especially when he’d been the one to write the article that had endangered her daughter—even if doing so proved to be the first step to free her.
Shanghai’s half-black trainer, Wolf, who exuded excessive machismo, paced back and forth along the back wall. He was clearly very concerned about the fate of Shanghai and Mia. His frown grew deeper with the passing of each hour.
Cole and Lizzy sat hunkered together, holding hands, talking mainly to each other on a low couch near a window that looked out onto a palm grove.
Palm trees? Why did anybody bother with them? They didn’t provide a lick of shade and they were hell to prune. And when they froze, the damn things died. Not that you could tell a dead palm from a living one.
He forgot the palms and watched Abigail, who’d persuaded him after much arguing to accompany her here to wait for Shanghai, her soon-to-be fiancé. Although Terence hadn’t met this rodeo character, he heartily disapproved of him. The man probably screwed every buckle bunny in the West.
He’d been playing with Abby’s feelings. The bastard had bought a ring and then had refused to give it to her.
Terence of all people should have understood men who couldn’t settle into a life of marital routine and dull domesticity. But hell. What father wouldn’t want a more reliable sort of husband for his daughter—a doctor or a lawyer maybe?
Terrence shuddered to think how the families back East would react when they learned of Shanghai’s profession. They’d blame Terence, of course, for moving to south Texas, a place they still considered a godforsaken wilderness. Just as they’d blamed him when the barbarians had kidnapped Becky.
He hated the way Abigail fitted in at the ranch so well. She talked to everybody as easily as if she’d grown up here, even Leo Storm, the CEO, before he’d flown back to San Antonio.
Being a reporter Terence eavesdropped to catch tidbits of conversation. Not that he hadn’t heard it all already. When there was no new news, people tended to repeat themselves, speculating uselessly. Still, there was always the chance for a new slant on the facts.
“—I told you, Knight jumped—”
“—the thug kept shooting—”
“—hit him maybe—”
“—they could be anywhere—”
“—why the hell don’t they call—”
“—it’s been hours—”
When everyone stopped talking after the last comment, Joanne got up and pressed her hands together. “I’m going out to my birds.” Her smile was thin and controlled, but her pretty brown eyes were moist with pain.
Had he caused it? A wave of compassion hit Terence. He remembered the frantic hours after Becky had vanished…and the dull days and then the weeks and years that had become forever. Then he and Dora had turned on each other.
Mia’s plane had gone down sixteen months ago. Joanne had been through a lot already—even before he’d pulled this stunt.
Joanne turned and smiled wanly to the group in general. The golden lamp lit her face and eyes, and he thought that even in this hour of sadness and uncertainty, she was as beautiful as a girl. It struck him that he hadn’t thought like this about a woman in years.
He jumped to his feet. “Mind if I tag along, Joanne?” Was he insane? “Mind if I call you Joanne?” And getting more insane?
Frowning, she hesitated a fraction of a second. It was clear that she didn’t want him.
He was a pushy guy. “It’s a yes/no question,” he said, backing off. “I’ll understand—if the answer is no.”
“Would you now?” Looking doubtful and yet mildly curious, Joanne’s brown gaze lingered on his face in a way that gave him hope.
As the flicker of initial excitement inside him burned hotter, he forgot he wanted a cigarette. After what seemed an eternity, she lifted her chin and smiled.
The birds cooed, but Joanne wasn’t thinking about her darling birds. She was trying not to be too obvious as she watched the rough-cut man who stood outside the aviary on the concrete apron—smoking.
She certainly hated cigarettes, but when he’d asked if he could smoke, she’d said okay, as long as he stayed outside.
She didn’t understand her interest in him. A short time ago, she’d loathed him for writing that article. Then he’d left the hospital against doctors’ orders and had gone to Mexico where he’d talked to some mysterious connection of his on Mia’s behalf, and her feelings had changed.
He was brilliant—a genius. But reckless. Thoughtless, too. So thoughtless and self-absorbed.
All this she knew. She loved order and tidiness, and he dressed sloppily, almost like a homeless person. Still, she sort of liked the way his shirt and slacks and silver hair were rumpled. His body was still lean and hard, and the world-weary cynicism in his faded blue eyes intrigued her.
He had suffered as she had, and it showed. She wanted to know why and how. There were lines of bitterness beneath his eyes and beside his mouth. She knew what it was to arrive at a certain age and to be thoroughly disillusioned and brokenhearted by life.
He flipped his burning cigarette onto the ground.
God, did he have to do that? She grimaced when he squashed the butt out with the heel of a worn shoe that badly needed polishing. Nasty habit, she thought, smoking. And yet sometimes there were so few consolations in life.
Who did he think would pick that butt up? He didn’t look rich enough to have servants. Obviously the thought of ever tidying anything never occurred to him.
He was not her type. He’d arrogantly put her child in danger without the slightest regard for that fact. He was a writer, a writer she’d admired. But he was conceited about his writing. He thought it was more important than people’s lives. As a writer he would be forced to spend his life indoors with books and papers, and she was an outdoors person.
So, why had he fascinated her from the moment he’d stepped inside the library? When she’d been so determined to dislike him?
He was brave. Morales had tortured him, had nearly killed him. Even injured with hits out against his life, he’d gone back to Mexico and struck that deal to save Mia.
All day she’d felt his burning blue eyes watching her as intensely as Jack’s used to. Nobody had looked at her in such a way in years. This untidy, indoor man—an intellectual, an arrogant man she could have gladly strangled a few days ago, made her feel excited, and rawly alive…and young.
It was as if during all the long, dull years of her impossible marriage, she’d been waiting for something like this to happen.
So what was she going to do about it?
Nothing. Except talk to him.
For once in her life she was going to be smart when it came to men. The wind stirred through the trees outside the aviary, and still he didn’t come inside. She wondered if he was as nervous as she was. Wing Nut was barking somewhere among the trees a long way off, no doubt chasing a squirrel or a rabbit.
Mia was still gone, maybe lost forever—again. She felt the loss keenly. She should be at the house, waiting for a call. But sometimes it seemed, all she’d ever done was wait.
How could she, at her age, be here with such a man?
Simon would laugh, gloat even, if he knew about this little “incident,” which he wouldn’t. Not ever. Simon was her hairdresser in Corpus Christi, who’d masterminded her new look. He’d talked her into reddening her hair. He’d given her a new haircut and dyed her lashes and recommended the surgeon, who’d given her her recent minilift.
When Terence opened the door, forty of her white darlings, mad with panic, fluttered to the rafters while her own heart beat madly.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “You’ve got a lot of birds.”
“Too many some would say.”
He smiled at her.
“I started with a pair.”
“Sex is the most powerful force in our world.”
The air between them sparked hotter.
Caught off balance, she pretended a calmness she was far from feeling. “Every time I order a new addition to the aviary, Kinky and Sy’rai joke about overpopulation.”
“I’ll bet they love your birds, too. Who wouldn’t?”
“Then you like them?” Why did she care?
Joanne’s pulse raced even faster as Terence stepped closer to her. When he didn’t say yes or no, when he simply kept looking at her as if she were all that mattered to him, she wrung her hands nervously.
She caught the scent of tobacco and found it oddly pleasant on him. Her father had smoked.
“What’s it like, being a reporter?” she finally managed before their silence grew really awkward.
“Like a drug addiction. I write about what I care about. I don’t make much money. Making money is the thing my family does best, so they think I’m a failure. I find myself fighting losing battles. It’s difficult, too…because you sway opinion by what you say or don’t say. Then sometimes it’s difficult because you write about things that can hurt people. Like my story about your daughter. I scared the hell out of you. You’re still scared, and I have to live with that. I’m sorry. If anything happens—”
She held up her hand. “If you hadn’t written it, she’d still be with Morales.”
His blue eyes flashed. “Hold that thought while you endure the hell of waiting.” He swallowed a long breath. “Mostly I’ve been a champion of lost causes. It cost me my wife, and one of my daughters.”
“So you lost a daughter?”
“Because of something you wrote?”
“Maybe. But maybe because my family is so rich.”
“And still you keep on being a reporter?”
“I’m not the type to learn from my mistakes.”
Neither was she, apparently, or she wouldn’t be here right now with him.
“Or maybe you believe in what you do.” She looked away, through the screen walls at the new barn. “I lost that in my own life a long time ago.”
“How?”
“The man I loved died. I married his brother. I settled, you see. And I paid for it. And so did Caesar. So did our children. We lived a lie.”
“Don’t most parents try to keep their secrets?”
“Then it all came out when Caesar made such a fool of himself over Cherry.”
“Ah, the stripper. That must have been hell for you.”
“It’s over now.”
“When we’re young we think we can have it all, but we always pay for our sins, don’t we?” he said.
“And then some.”
When he reached for her, she wasn’t surprised. His hands were smoother than Caesar’s and Jack’s, and oddly she liked that.
She should have moved away. Yet, somehow she couldn’t.
What surprised her was the explosive tumult his kiss caused inside her. The moment his lips touched hers, she was a stranger to herself. She forgot that her duties lay with the family and the ranch. She forgot Mia entirely, and her long-starved body made its own demands. Her mouth clung to his. She opened her lips, wanting to taste him despite the cigarettes.
He was the car wreck that alters ordinary life in a single blinding heartbeat, the telephone call in the middle of the night that destroys a world.
When he’d asked if he could join her, she should have screamed no and fled. He was flagrant temptation, and she was an utter fool.
But she didn’t care. One taste of him, and it was too late. She’d come alive in his arms. She could no more have resisted him than a moth can the flame. She had been bored, crushingly bored with the sameness of her existence for far too long. And too tense from worrying so long about Mia.
She was tired of waking in the dead of night and lying in her bed until dawn, her heart filled with despair, knowing that she was getting older and feeling lonelier. No, it was much better to make love in the sunshine with her birds cooing in her aviary.
The taste of cigarettes was not as repulsive as she would have imagined. The roughness of his unshaved chin was somehow erotic. The touch of his hands, which were surprisingly big and flexible and powerful as they gripped her or caressed her, aroused and compelled her. When he ripped pins from her hair so that it cascaded about her face and shoulders, her blood began to hum.
She knew she shouldn’t let him pull her skirt up and her panties down in the aviary, that the phone might ring, and that Cole or Lizzy might come. But for the life of her, she couldn’t stop him. Were those her fingers on his zipper?
When he cupped her butt in his hands and opened her legs so he could fit himself to her, she stood perfectly still.
On some level the thinking Joanne Kemble couldn’t be letting this rough, rude man she didn’t even know, a man who’d played God with her child’s life, screw her in her own aviary where anybody could walk up and see them. But she wanted this—him—too badly.
When he plunged inside her, she knew an insane, reckless joy. She was a kid on a circus ride, thrilled beyond belief.
“How very strange this is,” he muttered in a voice that was thick with passion as he drove into her.
When he finished a few moments later, he stayed inside her and kissed her feverish brow. For a full five minutes he held her before he pulled her panties up and her dress down. “I’m going now.”
“Slam bam,” she teased.
He didn’t laugh. “Anyone could come and find you. Then you’d really hate me.”
“I don’t know about that.”
He cast a warm glance at her upturned face. “This isn’t over, for me, either, you know.”
His blue eyes seemed to stare straight through her. Caesar had ignored her. With this stranger she felt connected and alive.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she confessed, savoring the way the balmy air caressed her face.
“I know. This is new for me, too.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Your choice.”
“Nobody can know about this,” she said.
“All right. You know I think I’d promise you anything.” He kissed her again. “I won’t tell anybody you’re so wicked and wild.” Then he opened the door and was gone.
She leaned back against the wall and began to struggle with her hair. Somehow she had to get back to the house without anybody seeing her.
For another long moment she stayed. She closed her eyes and listened to her birds coo.