by Linda Howard
“Yes,” she breathed. “I need you so much.” She needed to be as close to him as she could get, to reaffirm her life and freedom in the mingling of their bodies. This night wouldn’t answer her questions, but it would help to banish the week of nightmares and desolation. She needed him to make her whole again.
Without another word he rolled atop her, parted her legs, and slid deeply into her. She cried out wordlessly, at both the shock of his entry and the fierce pleasure she felt at their joining, at the moment when they ceased to be two separate beings. He comforted her with a rough murmur, drawing her legs up to wrap them around his waist.
Their lovemaking wasn’t prompted so much by passion as it was by a need to come together, to give and receive comfort, yet before long Tessa was gasping as his slow movements wrung new heights of ecstasy from her body. His hands stroked and soothed and excited, and his kisses were so deep and hungry that she was unable to breathe, but breathing wasn’t important any longer. The only thing that mattered to her was the man she loved, and in that moment she didn’t care what happened.
“I love you,” he groaned against her throat. “Tessa!” He gasped her name urgently and seized her hips, lifting her up to meet him. She cried out, too, shuddering with the force of her pleasure and accepting his.
There was silence afterward, but she was content. He lay heavily in her arms, his body damp with sweat, and instead of moving away he pushed himself closer against her. He turned his face into the softness of her neck, murmured something unintelligible, and went to sleep. Tessa held him in her arms, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, wondering why she had asked for his lovemaking, wondering if it had solved anything at all, or only made her thoughts more complicated.
His heavy weight bore down on her, pinning her to the bed, but she wouldn’t have moved him for anything. She couldn’t regret inviting his lovemaking. It had soothed a deep, crippling pain in her heart. She had been left lost and bewildered by his sudden desertion, and his passion had reassured her that he had really wanted her. She could trust his physical need for her, if not his emotional one.
With his actions that day he had offered her a clear choice, though he probably hadn’t meant to give her any choice at all. Her lips moved in a small, resigned smile. Brett Rutland was an autocratic, arrogant, dominating male. Any woman who lived with him would have a constant struggle to keep their relationship balanced. She wanted to be that woman. She could be that woman, because Brett had given her the opportunity—if she made the choice to live with him.
She could either trust him or not trust him, and she still felt too confused, too emotionally battered, to rely on herself to make the correct decision. The only thing she didn’t doubt was her love for him. That was odd, because she had always thought that love had a limit, that there was a point in any relationship where love could die. That had certainly been her experience with both Will and Andrew, and at the time she had been certain she loved them. Yet had she? What she felt for Brett so far surpassed anything she’d felt before that it made her doubt her own emotions, or at least her ability to read them. Life hadn’t always been easy for her. As a young child she had had to accept her father’s desertion, and not so many years later the death of her mother. But somehow she had skated around the edges of those emotional disasters, preferring to look at the sun instead of the shadows. The ultimate party girl, that was her. She hadn’t been malicious, but still she had slipped away from any relationship that could have touched her deeply, that could have made her care.
Until she met Brett. His character was so intense and powerful that he had overwhelmed her frothy defenses, and at the same time she had been challenged on a very personal, feminine basis by his cool control. Given their particular personalities, it had been inevitable that she would fall in love with him, truly in love for the first time in her life.
He had hurt her more than she had ever thought she would be able to accept from any man, yet it hadn’t killed her love for him. She loved him despite everything, and she wouldn’t be getting over it.
Welcome to the big time, Tessa, she told herself in aching realization.
A long time later he stirred in her arms and lifted himself higher against her. Tessa felt awareness tighten his muscles, and gently she stroked her palms over his powerful back.
His voice was a low, sleep-roughened rasp of sound, quiet in the darkness that surrounded them. “Have you slept?”
“No,” she murmured, her voice still as rough as his. They were a pair, she thought absently. They both sounded like frogs.
Several minutes passed in silence, while his hand moved slowly, exploringly, over her hip and side. “Any regrets?” he finally asked.
“About this? No,” she answered slowly.
“What have you been thinking?”
“That I still love you. That I still hurt. That I still don’t know what to do.”
He sighed. “It isn’t easy, is it? Loving. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was.”
In the quiet, warm darkness, she felt better able to talk to him than she ever had before. There was only his voice, and the warmth of his body, with no outside distraction to break her concentration. She wanted to concentrate on him, to learn everything she could about this man; she knew him physically, but now she needed to know all the little things that would give her the key to his thoughts. “You love your parents, don’t you? Your home? There’s your horse, your dog, your first-grade teacher… .”
A low laugh rumbled through him. “No, I never loved my first-grade teacher. As for the ranch…I don’t know if it’s love. The ranch is a part of me. I can’t separate myself from it; no matter where I am or what I’m doing, it’s there in my head.” He paused for a moment, as if considering the matter. “Horses and dogs…I’ve had my favorites, but I can’t say that I’ve ever loved an animal. My father…yes, I love him. I owe my life to him, and it wasn’t easy for him to take care of me.”
“Your mother died?” Tessa asked gently.
“I don’t know. She gave me away when I was a week old. She may still be alive, but it doesn’t much matter. There’s no connection between us now, no curiosity, or sense of need. There never has been. Tom is my natural father, but he wasn’t married to my mother. He was working in southwest Texas when he met her. She was a rancher’s daughter, and he was just a hired hand, a drifter, but she was wild and looking for a way out, trying to kick the traces. They would meet in an old line shack.”
Tessa lay spellbound, caught up in the tale he was telling her in a low, slow voice. She felt as if he were finally giving her the key to himself, unlocking a portion of that private part of his mind.
“She got pregnant, of course. I imagine she could have gotten an abortion, if she had wanted to risk the back-alley operations they had then, but she chose to have me. I was probably the ultimate gesture of rebellion. It caused an almighty scandal, but she refused to tell her folks who the father was, refused to go away, refused to hide herself until after I was born. Tom tried to get her to marry him, but she refused that, too. Ranch life was exactly what she was trying to get away from, and that was all he could offer her. It was all he knew.”
He was silent then for so long that Tessa feared that he wasn’t going to tell her any more. She touched his hair, sliding her fingers through the tousled, tawny silk. “And when you were born?”
“When I was born, she named me, nursed me for a week, then got in touch with Tom and told him to meet her at the line shack. She took me with her to meet him, handed me to him, and walked away. That was the last time he saw or heard from her. She never went back home, just kept on going.”
“So your father raised you by himself.”
“Yeah. He left Texas that day, too, because he was afraid her parents would take me away from him if they knew she hadn’t taken me with her.” In the darkness, she could feel his grin against her skin. “Can you imagine a rough ranch hand lugging a week-old baby cross-country, not knowing the first thing abo
ut kids? I imagine the wonder is that I survived.”
She found herself chuckling. “I feel sorrier for your father than I do for you!”
“Well, we both survived the diaper stage, and he was always there for me. We didn’t have anything, but we were together. He worked his way around the country, taking what jobs he could get. I guess I’ve been fed in more ranch house kitchens that you could count, sort of like a puppy who wandered in. I’d play in the yard and barns, waiting for Tom to come back in at night, until I got old enough to go with him.”
“How old was that?”
“Four or five, I guess.”
“That’s not old enough!”
“It was old enough to stay in a saddle all day long. I can’t remember when I couldn’t ride. By the time I was six, I was working. I could rope and cut, and though I wasn’t strong enough to bulldog, I could still help with the branding and dipping.”
“What about school?”
“That’s what decided Tom to settle down. I had to go to school, or somebody would eventually notify the authorities and I might have been taken away from him. We were in Wyoming at the time, so he spent every cent he had on a piece of land, built a shack for us to live in, and started ranching for himself, with two cows and a bull and a lot of pure cussedness. We didn’t always have a lot to eat, but we didn’t starve. I went to school, and did the chores early in the morning and after school. When I was ten, he legally adopted me, so I could have his name. It was the name I’d always used, but it wasn’t my legal name. There wasn’t any fuss about it; no one knew where my mother was, and my grandparents were getting on in years. They weren’t able to take in and handle a ten-year-old hellion, which is what I was.”
Tessa continued stroking his hair long after he stopped talking. No wonder he was so aloof, his emotions so controlled! In all his life, there had been only one person he could rely on. He had spent his earliest years leading a transient way of life, with people and places merely stops along the way. His only constant was his father, yet he would have seen that other children had two parents, with a doting mother and a stable homelife, while his own mother had given him away. He had grown up wary, not allowing anyone to get close to him, because the only person he felt able to trust was his father.
Given his childhood, was it any surprise that he hadn’t automatically trusted her? Understanding began to ease her mind, bringing her a measure of peace, though even now she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to forgive him. Her fingers sifted through his hair. If only she didn’t love him so much!
He lifted himself on his elbow, allowing himself access to her breasts, and his hard fingers moved gently over her soft curves, coaxing her velvety nipples into taut little nubs. “When Tom meets you, he’s going to melt into a little puddle on the ground. He’s got an uncontrollable weakness when it comes to women, anyway, and he’s going to fall in love with my delicious little Southern belle.” There was a huskier note in his voice now, and he bent his head to suck leisurely at her excited flesh.
Tessa whimpered at the sudden pleasure that jolted her body. He rolled her nipple around with his tongue, then lifted his head to run his hand over her breast in patent satisfaction. “You’re well blessed, as delicate as you are. Your bones are so slim I sometimes feel as if I could snap you in two. But here…” He chuckled richly.
Tessa blushed hotly in the darkness; then he put his mouth on her breasts again and it no longer mattered.
She slept afterward, but soon he woke her to love her again. The rest of the night was like that, with him returning to her time and again, demonstrating to her with his body how much he wanted her. She knew that was his purpose, but she needed that intense attention to boost her self-esteem, to restore her faith in her own femininity, and he devoted himself passionately to that goal.
When she woke for the last time to a brightly sunny day, it was to find him propped on his elbow over her, watching her sleep. Dark stubble roughened his jaw, making him look like a roughneck, but his face bore the relaxation of complete physical contentment. He knew what the hours of his lovemaking had done for her, and his satisfaction was plain in his eyes. Their gazes met, and locked.
“Good morning,” he murmured, pushing a strand of hair from her eyes.
She yawned, stretching under his appreciative gaze. “Good morning. Aren’t you late for work?”
“I’m not going to work. This part is all up to Evan and Sammy. My part is staying here with you and keeping you satisfied.”
She regarded him somberly; she was more sensitive now to everything about him, and she knew he was being evasive. “I promise you I won’t bolt. Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“The thought occurred to me.”
“I’m still confused,” she said slowly. “I don’t know what to do, but last night…I did a lot of thinking. I still love you, and after hearing all the evidence that pointed to me, I can’t blame you for thinking that I took that money. What else could you think? I still can’t…I can’t quite forgive you, but I can’t walk away from you, either.”
His face tightened at her words. “I won’t let you walk away. Give us time; that’s all I’m asking.”
“All right. I can afford the time; I don’t have anything else to do,” she said with a residue of bitterness.
He swung off the bed and restlessly swiped his pants up from the floor, where he’d left them the night before. “Do you want to go back to work?” he asked sharply.
“At Carter Engineering? No, I don’t think so, not after this. But I’ll have to go to work somewhere, won’t I? I have the normal assortment of bills to pay.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t look for anything yet.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
He sighed, thrusting his hand through his hair. “Because we won’t be living here.”
She got out of bed, too, and put her robe on. “Aren’t you taking a lot for granted?” she asked quietly.
“Not as much as I want to,” he assured her in a grim tone. “Just don’t look for work yet. You don’t have to worry about money; I’ll take care of everything—and don’t get your back up at me, you little wildcat. You’ve been through a rough time and you need a sort of emotional vacation. And since I’ve moved in on you, it’s only fair that I pay my way.”
“You’re trying to make me dependent on you.”
“Is that so bad? Honey, we’re trying to work our way through a rough patch. A lack of trust is what caused the problem to begin with. Let’s trust each other for a change, emotionally as well as physically.”
“For how long? When do you have to go back to San Francisco?”
His face went abruptly blank, and she could read nothing in that expressionless mask. “There’s no rush.”
His very calmness alarmed her, and she twisted the ties to her robe. “Evan said you could be fired. Is that it?”
“No. I haven’t been fired. You don’t have to worry about my job, honey.”
There was something he wasn’t telling her, but his gaze was so deliberately bland that she knew she would be wasting her time trying to pry the information out of him. How was she supposed to trust him when he was still hiding things from her? Frustrated at the way she kept running into an emotional dead end, she turned away abruptly. “I’m going to take a shower.”
“That sounds…interesting,” he drawled. “I was going to take one myself.”
“Fine. You can have the bathroom when I’m finished.”
Still naked, totally relaxed, he watched her gather her underwear. “I take it that I’m not invited.” He made the words a statement rather than a question.
“No, you’re not. It won’t take me long. Why don’t you start breakfast? Then I’ll take over and you can shower. It should be ready by the time you’re finished.”
He gave in easily. “All right, if that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
She was uneasy, wondering if he might join her anyway, but he was as good as h
is word. When she left the shower she smelled the delightful aroma of fresh coffee, and the scent made her realize how hungry she was. She dressed hurriedly, then rushed to the kitchen to take over the breakfast preparations. She stopped in the doorway, momentarily stunned at having a tall, powerfully muscled man standing stark naked in her kitchen, whistling through his teeth as he assembled the ingredients for pancakes.
“Why didn’t you put on some clothes?” she asked weakly.
“Just letting you get a good look at what you turned down,” he explained with dead-level calm as he walked past her.
He’d done that, all right. Her palms were moist, her breathing a little fast, as she mixed the pancake batter and poured it in small circles on the grill. He knew exactly what he’d done to her, because he had taught her, trained her responses until his lightest touch could arouse her.
Right on time, he came back into the kitchen, decently attired in jeans and an open-necked shirt, but still the sight of him made her mouth go dry. He had certainly known what he was doing by moving in with her, she thought dimly. He probably planned on keeping her so drunk on sex that she’d do anything he wanted. She tensed as she realized what she was thinking.
She was automatically attributing ulterior motives to his actions, rather than making an effort to trust him. But you couldn’t just make an arbitrary decision to start trusting someone; trust had to be learned, and earned. He had taken very good care of her, and with his lovemaking he had gone a long way toward helping her recover her equilibrium, but a part of her remained wary of him. She didn’t want it to be that way. She wanted to simply walk into his arms and forget everything that had happened, but she just couldn’t do it. She was still afraid.
“Eat,” he said gently, making her realize that she was sitting at the table with her fork motionless in her hand.
“I can’t decide,” she explained in a low tone, and he knew exactly what she was talking about.
“You don’t have to decide now. We have time. Let it ride.”
“I do love you,” she said achingly.