by Cindy Dees
“What are you playing at?” he growled at her.
“What do you mean?”
Their gazes locked, clashing. Sparks flew between them, sparks of friction and anger and betrayal—and of something else. Something he didn’t want to acknowledge. Something he refused to name.
“What are you doing here, insinuating yourself into my family’s life?”
“Contrary to popular belief, Wes, not everything revolves around you. I bumped into your mother in an antique shop, and she and I got to discussing the cabin she’s looking to redo. One thing led to another, and she hired me for the job. There’s no deep, dark plot afoot. It’s just a job.”
“Is that really what this is?” he snarled. “Tell me the truth.”
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. He saw the moment her gaze dropped to his mouth. How her throat worked as she swallowed convulsively.
“Quit looking at me like that,” he muttered.
“Like what?” she asked breathlessly.
“Like you want to eat me up.”
“But I do.”
The words zinged through him with the jolting shock of electricity. She wanted to eat him up? An image of her red, juicy lips on his flesh, doing just that made blood race to his groin. All of a sudden, he was hard as a rock and his pulse pounded through his erection demandingly.
“Stop it,” he bit out from behind clenched teeth. Whether he meant it for her or for himself, he wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
“Stop what?” she breathed.
“Dammit,” he snapped. He closed the distance between them, all of twelve inches, and kissed her roughly. He didn’t want to be doing this. Didn’t want to remember how damned soft and welcoming she always was to him. How she tasted like cinnamon and cream, and how he wanted more of that taste. More of her...
Her body surged forward against his, her slender arms going around his neck. Her head tilted to fit their mouths together better, and her tongue sipped tentatively at his.
The wet slide of tongue on tongue was so sexy, so blatantly sexual, that he lost his mind a little. His arms swept around her, dragging her up against him. Oh, man. Those curves. The way they fit against his hard body was perfect. She was perfect. So hot. So eager.
He wanted her. Like he wanted to breathe.
Wrong. This was wrong.
But so damned good. His hands plunged into her silky, lush hair, drawing her closer so he could deepen the kiss, explore her mouth more fully, taste that seductive sweetness—
There was a reason he shouldn’t be doing this—
Didn’t care. He couldn’t get enough of her. His kiss gentled and slowed. It had been so long. So. Damned. Long. All those nights of dreaming about her. All those nights of wanting her. And here she was, real and warm and eager in his arms, every bit as lithe and sensual and irresistible as ever. More so.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured against his mouth between kisses.
He peppered her jaw with kisses, tracing the artistic line of her neck with his lips, tasting the pulse leaping in her throat. A need to take her right here, right now, came over him. He plunged his hand down the waistband of her peasant skirt, found the skimpy thong—she always did have naughty taste in lingerie—and eased his fingers between the soft, plump folds of her womanhood.
She groaned and shifted her stance to give him access to her core, and then she rode his fingers, shamelessly groaning into his mouth as he rubbed the bud of her desire, rolling it between his fingertips. He plunged a finger into her wet heat and she gasped, arching up against him sharply.
“Like that?” he mumbled.
She let out a half sigh, half groan, and rocked her hips forward, impaling herself more deeply upon his finger. He added a second finger and her hips moved more rapidly. Using his thumb to rub across the hard, wet little bud, he drove her out of her mind.
As her cries increased in volume, he captured them with his mouth, tasting her pleasure with dark satisfaction. It didn’t take her long to shatter around his hand—it never did. And then she was trembling in his arms, her forehead falling to rest on his shoulder, her chest heaving with pleasure, her internal muscles still spasming around his fingers hungrily.
An urge to unzip his jeans, free his erection and plunge into all that wet heat and make her his once more nearly overcame him. And then, all of a sudden, reason came crashing back in upon him, breaking over him in a cold rush of terror.
Lord, the hold this woman still had over him—
He stumbled back from her in horror. What had he just done? No way did he want to get back into a relationship with her. She was lethal. Deadly. She’d sucked him back in so easily. And he’d gone along with her, a lamb for the slaughter. What fall was she setting him up for this time?
“What the hell do you do to me?” he mumbled hoarsely. “How do you do that?”
She stared at him in what looked like shock. “What are you talking about? You did that to me.”
“I didn’t want to. How did you manipulate me again?”
“I didn’t manipulate anything, Wes. We just have chemistry between us. We always have—”
He cut her off, half in fury, half in panic. “It has to stop. I want nothing to do with you. Do you understand? Nothing.”
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. She reached forward boldly to cup the erection that still strained at his zipper. “You don’t feel like a man who wants nothing. Seems to me you’d like quite a bit more than we just did. And that’s fine by me.”
She reached for the zipper and he swatted her hand away, staggering back from her. “You’re poison. An addiction. I can’t. Won’t—”
He turned and bolted from the room before he could give in to temptation—to disaster—again.
Chapter 7
Jessica tossed and turned in the guest bedroom of the Morgan mansion for hours, unable to forget the screaming orgasm that had ripped through her earlier. She had known she still wanted Wes. She’d just had no idea how much she still wanted him until she’d gotten a little piece of him. A very little piece. The man had held his body completely apart from her, never sharing more than a few kisses. And then he’d reached for her. Played her body like a finely tuned musical instrument. He always had known how to draw pleasure out of her like no one else.
And now she was sleepless and so turned on she could hardly stand it. Sure, she could scratch the itch herself, but she wanted Wes to scratch it. Why had he turned her down when she’d directly offered him more? She knew he wanted it. The bulge behind his zipper had been rock hard and filled her entire hand. He seriously wanted her.
Was he so stubborn that he would deny both of them the pleasure they both craved just to prove his point? What was his point, anyway?
That he had more self-discipline than she did? That he was a better person than she was? Lord knew, that was true. She was wild and undisciplined and had gotten both of them into trouble, dragging him down against his will. But she’d changed since the kidnapping. Grown up. She had no more desire to be the bad girl or break all the rules. Although she would never get along with her father, she no longer needed to enrage him like she once had.
If only Wes would give her a chance to show him the new Jessica. He might never forgive her for wrecking his career, but maybe he could at least see that a little good had come of it.
And he had his own ranch now. That was good, right?
His life didn’t totally suck.
If she had truly been out to ruin his life, she would have done a better job of it than this. Surely he could see that. Right? Was that what he was hung up on? Didn’t he know she would never have hurt him just for the sake of hurting him? She really liked him. Heck, she still cared for him after everything that had happened between them. Or maybe he didn’t know that.
A need to tell him, to make sure he was aware
of how she felt about him, came over her. The clock on the nightstand said it was nearly two in the morning. He must be asleep by now.
Although, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. The more alert he was, the more hostile he tended to be. When she’d caught him off guard, surprised him in the office by kissing him, that was when he’d let his real feelings for her show.
She climbed out of bed, the sleep shirt she’d bought in Hillsdale skimming her thighs. She opened the hallway door, glad for the small lamp on a table at the end of the long passage. The girl named Willa had helpfully told her that Wes’s room was the last one on the right. Jessica crept down the hallway now, heading for the closed door. She was startled to see that the door was beautifully carved, much like the front door on his current house. Except this panel depicted mountains with a stream running through a broad meadow. A deer grazed by the stream, and an eagle flew overhead. She made a mental note to ask Miranda tomorrow who the artist was.
And then she was reaching for the doorknob, and all thought fled her brain except letting Wes know how she really felt about him and, moreover, getting him to admit to himself how he still felt about her.
It did register that this was potentially insane and that he might very well tell her to go to hell and toss her out on her keister. But, hey, she’d always been a risk taker. Why stop now?
Memory of that throbbing erection behind Wes’s zipper spurred her forward. He did want her. She had to believe in that.
She tried his doorknob and it turned silently under her hand. She slipped inside the room, and faint moonlight crept around the curtains. A sleeping form stretched under the covers on the bed. She eased forward until she could see the planes of his face, the bushy beard that seemed to be such a source of contention with his parents. If he’d wanted to find a rebellion that would drive his folks nuts, he’d succeeded with that beard. They’d pestered him over it at length at supper, exhorting him to shave and cut his hair like a civilized human being.
Amused, she studied his beard. With a little trimming, it wouldn’t look half-bad. But she still preferred him clean-shaven. In her mind he would always be that spit-polished Marine she’d first met in her father’s office.
Carefully she lifted the covers so as not to wake Wes and slipped into bed beside him. She rolled to face him and gently reached across his body with her arm. Yay. He still slept commando.
He shifted a little but didn’t wake. She slid her hand ever so lightly down the flat, hard plane of his stomach. Her fingertips slipped through the curls at his groin and stroked lightly down the length of him. Immediately she felt a swelling response. She stroked him again. In seconds, his body was raging in response to her. Ha. And he’d claimed to be unaffected by her earlier tonight. Liar.
Of course, she was not immune to him, either. Her own body went limpid and wet in response to his obvious, if unconscious, desire for her.
She leaned in close to kiss his shoulder, and he woke—or half woke to be more accurate—groaning and turning toward her to wrap his arms around her. He rolled her beneath him, his muscular thigh pushing her legs open for him. His beard tickled her neck as he nuzzled her ear, and she lifted her chin to give him better access to her neck. He took the invitation and nibbled her neck, working his way across her jaw to her mouth. Their tongues tangled sexily, his plunging into her mouth and hers swirling around his, teasing him and inviting him in. His hips pushed against hers, his erection pressing into her core with only her flimsy sleep shirt separating their bodies.
“Take me, Wes,” she whispered.
His eyes opened then, and he stared down at her as if he was disoriented, as if he couldn’t tell if she was a dream or not. She lifted her head to capture his mouth with hers, to kiss him before logic could get the better of him and make him overthink this. That was his problem. He needed to go with the flow more.
She undulated invitingly beneath him, rubbing herself against the length of his erection. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples pebbling through her sleep shirt. She drew a deep breath and the cotton fabric dragged across her skin, making her shudder with pleasure. She was so highly sensitized at the moment that his mere breath against her cheek was doing things to her—sending bolts of pleasure zinging through her body where they were gathering at her core into a tight ball of desire.
“I want you so much,” she murmured. “I dream about you. About doing things with you. Asking you to do things to me...”
“What things?” he mumbled.
“Anything you want. Take me any way you want. Ravish me.”
He groaned and one of his arms snaked out to the side. He opened a drawer in his nightstand and groped around while he kissed her again, deeply. Druggingly.
She arched against his thigh, unable to stop her body from seeking the release she so craved.
She heard foil tear and a snap of rubber. And then Wes was back, pressing her deeply into the mattress, his thighs pushing hers apart. The blunt, hot tip of him touched her throbbing flesh and she cried out. His mouth closed on hers instantly, absorbing the sound into him.
“You sure about this?” he muttered against her mouth.
“Take me. Please. Do whatever you want to me. I want it all.”
“Don’t say that,” he groaned. “I’ve been having some pretty dark fantasies about you.”
“Show me,” she panted as he remained tantalizingly poised at her entrance, so close but so very far away.
“How bad do you want it, Jessica?”
“Worse than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“Do you want it bad enough to cry?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking. If he needed to cause her pain to work out his anger at her betrayal, she was honestly okay with that if it meant he would forgive her. “Uh-huh.”
“Bad enough to beg?”
“I’m begging you now. Please.” She squirmed beneath him, so hungry to have him inside her she was struggling to find words.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want you inside me. Filling me. Pounding into me. Driving me out of my mind. Driving you out of your mind—”
He plunged into her swiftly, without warning, filling her all the way.
She cried out against his shoulder, muffling her outburst so the whole family wouldn’t hear what they were doing. But it was hard not to scream with pleasure.
He withdrew all the way and she whimpered.
He slammed home again and she shuddered around him, teetering on the brink of something spectacular.
“Again,” she panted.
“Beg for it.”
“Please, Wes. Please. I want it so bad. I want you. Give it all to me.”
“On one condition.”
“Anything. Name it.”
“You can’t make any noise.”
He rose up above her, taking her hips in his big hands and lifting her up. He slammed into her again, and that did it. She shattered into a million pieces. She dragged a pillow across her mouth and shouted into it, shivering and shaking as he set up a rhythm, pounding into her like a piston, using her body hard yet never hurting her. Wes always had known exactly where that line lay and didn’t cross it.
His callused thumbs rubbed across her nipples and she surged up into his hands, silently urging him to use her breasts for his pleasure, as well. His mouth closed on her right nipple and he sucked hard enough to make her shudder with ecstasy. All the while, he surged into her over and over, filling her to bursting, withdrawing until she wanted to sob and then ramming home again.
It wasn’t elegant sex. It wasn’t slow and sexy and seductive. But it was exactly what she needed—a mutual plundering that left no doubt whatsoever about how much he’d wanted and missed her or how much she’d wanted and missed him.
Again and again she orgasmed, shattering around him more sharply each time, until she was
nigh unconscious with pleasure.
A lifetime later, when she was little more than a quivering mass of jelly, more pleasure than person, he finally picked up the pace, driving her over the edge one last time. And this time, he joined her, plastering his face in the pillow beside her head and shouting with his own shuddering release.
His body was covered with perspiration and she held him tight, her own perspiration-slicked body shaking like a leaf. Their legs twined together intimately, and she relished the crushing weight of him pressing her deep, deep into the mattress. They panted in unison, and their hearts pounded in unison, which was gratifying. She would hate to be the only one whose world had just been rocked.
Eventually Wes gathered himself and rolled away from her onto his back. He stared up at the ceiling for a long time before finally growling, “What are you doing in my bed, Jess?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“I never stopped wanting you, Wes. And I know you’ve never stopped wanting me. You wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to tell you how I feel, so I thought I would show you instead.”
“Message received.”
He threw back the covers and paced across the room, opened a door and disappeared into what must be an attached bathroom. She heard the sink run. Then nothing. She lay in his bed for a long time waiting for him to return, but he never did. Eventually she got up, found her nightshirt wadded on the floor and pulled it over her head. She knocked on the bathroom door. No answer.
Tentatively she opened it. It was empty! She spotted a door to the hallway and realized he had slipped out and abandoned her. Again.
She sat down on the closed toilet seat, buried her head in her hands and cried.
* * *
Wes’s silver-blue truck was gone when she got up in the morning. Which was just as well. She was bleary-eyed from crying much of the rest of the night. She truly had lost him. Even the explosive attraction that always erupted between them hadn’t been enough to convince him of how much she cared for him—or more importantly, to lure him into staying.