by Mallory Rush
Her mouth opened. Whether Cammie meant to protest or welcome him—which was doubtful—he wasn't sure. Grant only knew he wasn't one to let opportunity pass him twice.
Seizing the access she had unwittingly offered, he quickly fit his mouth over hers. He heard her soft gasp of surprise mingle with his immediate groan of intimacy found. Her lips were warm and malleable and he relished them with a connoisseur's sensitivity—learning their shape and texture and taste, the way he could work them beneath his.
The shape of her bowed upper lip fit the tip of his tongue to such perfection, he was certain the small, sexy groove had been made for him and him alone.
He'd always wondered if her lips were as lush and ripe as he imagined. They weren't—they far exceeded his dreams. Sweet as peach nectar, they were meant to be savored, sipped, yet he could barely control his insatiable need to devour each succulent drop.
He could tell she was fighting herself, trying valiantly not to give in to the kiss. Her fists were still clenched and pushing against his chest while her mouth simply allowed his exploration. It maddened him, drove his urgency on to trample her damnable reserve.
"Kiss me back," he demanded. "Open your mouth and make love to mine."
"No," she groaned, "no..."
Wedging his tongue between her slightly parted lips, he tasted her shallowly, then more deeply, probing the hidden softness of the moist, tender interior flesh. He pushed against the straight slick teeth that stood guardian, refusing his tongue, which demanded total possession.
He was aware of the moment her fists relaxed and lay flat against his chest, then grasped his shirt. The moan of surrender came next, her teeth parting, giving up their guard.
Now that he knew she wanted it as badly as he did, Grant forced his mouth away, rejoicing in her murmur of protest. He skimmed his teeth over her chin and down the delicious length of her neck, feeling the vibration of her sigh of arousal roll wantonly from her throat.
"Please... Grant, please."
He lifted his head and stared down at her through slitted eyes, his emotional hunger, his arousal approaching pain. Her own eyes were glazed and her mouth was still wet and swollen from his kiss.
"If you want it," he whispered hoarsely, "take it."
For an uncertain moment that crackled with tension, they stared at each other.
With a cry of defeat, of triumph, she dug her fingers into his shoulders and urgently pulled him down. He vaguely realized through the pounding inside his head that if Cammie's mouth had been intoxicating before, when she gave wholly it was nirvana, paradise spiked with just enough wickedness to send him plummeting over the edge.
"More," he whispered urgently as her tongue darted into his mouth. "I need more."
She gave it. First hesitantly, then with a swift and eager abandon, she stroked deeply, thoroughly, learning his mouth with a grace that bordered on decadence. Then she withdrew, coaxing his tongue along the path of hers and into the haven of her mouth.
For him it seemed a welcome, a homecoming at long last. While she molded herself along his length and ran her hands over his back, he gave in to the impulse to ravage, to be tender, to demand and to give what was the essence of all they were now, had been, and were yet to be.
Touching her breasts, stroking up her thighs and over her buttocks to tilt her into his straining hardness... Yes, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. He led her hand down his chest, urging it lower, lower, until, groaning in unsated need, he pressed her palm over his fly and curled her fingers into his groin.
Nothing seemed to matter except for hurtling aside the obstacles life had thrown in their path. And with each rhythmic grasp of her hand, each desperate thrust of her hips, he could feel her reaching out to him, drawing closer to the loneliness and desperation she had created, where she had held him prisoner with no hope for escape.
Now he was pulling her in with him, determined to make her fall so fast and deep that nothing could compete with a lifetime together. Not family. Not moral conventions. Nothing.
They were breathing erratically, the sound mingling with the early fall breeze, which smelled of crisp leaves and memories of fireplace smoke. They were somewhere composed of the senses, the deserted road, and two running cars long forgotten. The anticipation was unbearable; he unsnapped his jeans.
"Undo them," he whispered roughly, then led her fingers to the zipper's metal. She stiffened. "Cammie, I need you to touch me. I'm going out of my mind with the need."
"Grant, I—I can't." She looked quickly away. Even in the darkness he thought he spied tears.
"Can't?" he repeated in frustration and confusion. Weren't those her exact words before? "What do you mean, can't? Is there something wrong?"
"No," she denied quickly. "I mean, it's too soon."
"A minute ago it wasn't. A minute ago we were both ready to fall into the backseat and finish what we'd started with the kind of touching that's a lot more intimate than your hand stroking me."
She tried to pull away but he refused, anchoring her hand firmly against his erection.
"We shouldn't be doing this here," she protested more urgently. "Someone could drive by any minute."
Grant could feel his frustration gather a measure of anger. More than that, he had an uneasy feeling, something niggling at him, telling him that whatever was wrong, there was more than met the eye. Cammie was sensitive; she would never play the tease. It took more than a little discipline to shut out his raging instincts and probe at the cause rather than focus on the symptoms—but he managed it.
"Does the thought of touching me repel you for some reason?"
"No! No, Grant, how could you ever think that?"
"Believe me, I don't want to think it. I'm just trying to understand what's going on. Talk to me, Cammie. Tell me what's wrong."
He tilted her face into the moonlight when she would have looked away. The sympathy he felt for her then overrode the dwindling urgency to take her no matter what.
"I don't want to talk about it, Grant. Let it go for tonight. Today was one of the most horrible days of my life, and I'm so drained it's all I can do to stand on my feet. Some other time, Grant, but not tonight."
He studied her awhile, touched, concerned by the silent plea he read in her eyes. "Okay, we'll drop it. Under one condition."
"That depends. Your conditions are usually stacked in your favor."
"Usually," he agreed. "But in this case, it's in both our interests." He leaned in closer and stroked the hair from her face, smiling as he touched his gift. He'd delighted giving her a lover's gift and doing it for everyone to see.
"The condition is, once we're at the cabin, we talk about anything, everything, and mostly about us."
She suddenly grasped his hands and fixed him with a stern, uncompromising stare.
"You're not going, Grant. I want you to tell Mom and Dad tomorrow that you've changed your mind."
"You've got to be kidding." He'd wondered how long it would take her to get around to it. "Give up two weeks alone with no outside interference? What do you take me for, Cammie? A fool?"
"You're nobody's fool, but neither am I. I need this time alone, Grant. I can't think straight as long as you're around."
"I don't want you to think straight. Look at what it got me, leaving you all alone to think this past week. Nothing but six sleepless nights while you decided I wanted you for a sleazy fling."
"That's not what I—"
Her heated defense was cut short by a set of headlights aimed in their direction. Grant squinted against the blinding brightness, glad for once that they'd been interrupted.
The car slowed, then pulled up beside them. Aunt Mabel rolled down her window.
"Grant, Cammie, what are you doing here?"
"I had car trouble," Cammie answered. "Grant was helping me out."
"Oh, dear. Should we go back and get—"
"No," Grant cut in smoothly. "Thanks for the offer, Aunt Mabel, but we've taken care of it. We w
ere just about to drive back into Austin. I'm following her to make sure she gets home safe. Right, Cammie?"
"Uh..." Her gaze darted from Aunt Mabel to him. "Right."
Aunt Mabel regarded them for a moment, seeming to come to the realization that Grant's hand was clamped onto the back of Cammie's neck and that she was fidgeting nervously. She gave them an odd, considering once-over, then nodded.
"Be careful then. We'll see you soon."
The minute the car took off, Cammie whirled to face him, anxiety and agitation stamped on her features.
"Did you see that? Did you see the way she looked at us?"
"Yes," he replied without inflection. "And we'll get a lot more looks like that, too, once you decide you've got the guts to come out of the closet."
"I don't believe you. How can you be so flippant, so—"
"How can you be so negligent with your safety?" he inserted, deliberately ignoring the direction she was headed. "When I drove up you were having car problems, weren't you? I swear, Cammie. Sometimes I could shake you for leaving your door unlocked or driving in something so undependable. Do you have any idea what it would do to me if anything ever happened to you?"
"Forget the car," she retorted. "We're not through talking about my lack of guts." She shoved a finger into his chest while her voice shook with fury. "Maybe that's true, but at least I don't beat up other people's feelings while I only think about myself."
Grant's jaw clenched and worked back and forth several times. Don't blow your cool, he ordered himself. Stay in control, and work this to your advantage.
"I'll follow you to make sure you get home okay," he said tightly. "Once we're there we can talk. Or we can not talk while you don't tell me why you can't bring yourself to touch me. That, and why I'm such a selfish SOB for thinking I should have the right to be in love with a woman who's so afraid of hurting other people's feelings she uses them to keep from facing her own."
Cammie stepped back as though he'd struck her. He felt bad about it, but then again he wanted her enough to be brutal, if that's what it took. The battle had started. He intended to win—for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and even in death, not to part.
"How can you say something that... that—"
"Honest?" He gave her a slight push toward her car, then headed back to his own. "Meet you at the house. We'll pick it up there."
* * *
Cammie was still seething by the time she opened her front door. Seething, fearful, and a total mess. She wanted to curse him for making her life so miserable. She also wanted to love him.
Grant never let a question go unanswered. She'd always admired his analytical nature, yet this time her admiration was laced with apprehension. She wanted to embrace the potential healing he offered while she shrank from the fear of failure.
Yes, she had failed the challenge tonight, unable to take the leap. But he hadn't belittled her. His anger emerged because he was in love with her and she couldn't rise to that challenge. His eyes told her that now as she dropped into an overstuffed chair—rather than beside him on the couch.
He sat forward, silent a moment, his fingers forming a contemplative steeple.
"You can't go with me, Grant," she said.
"Oh?" He raised a brow. "That's news to me. The way I see it, I can and I am, whether you like it or not."
"Then you go alone, without me."
"You're already committed."
"I'll uncommit then."
"Good luck." His lips formed a mocking smile. "Let me know what kind of excuse you come up with, because it's going to have to be something pretty amazing to convince the folks you've got a legitimate reason not to go along with me. Especially since I'm inclined to ask a lot of questions."
"You wouldn't."
"Try me." His eyes narrowed in challenge. "I'm holding the ace, Cammie. And you should know by now that I never bluff."
"I thought I knew you all these years, Grant. But I was wrong. You don't play fair. You make up the rules to suit your purposes."
"That's right, sweetheart. I've always played to win. You were just too blinded by what you wanted to see to find out what I really am."
"Which in this case is conniving, despicable, arrogant, and..." She searched for another insult to throw into his smug, satisfied face. "And insensitive," she finished.
"I'm also head over heels in love." His eyes met hers evenly, but with enough force to knock the world from beneath her feet. His determined expression blended with his words to tilt the scales in favor of his skewed point of view.
"As for those newer qualities you seem to have discovered in me," he went on, "I've probably been all those things at one time or another. But I'm also honest. You have my word on it, Cammie. I'll fight as dirty as I have to, to get what I want. Consider yourself warned, because I won't stop for anyone or anything. Not until I hear you say that you're in love with me too. Too crazy in love to give a tinker's damn about what anyone else thinks because you're committed to me, and only me. Sorry to break the news, but I happen to be insufferably selfish as well. Skimpy, guilty, stolen bits and pieces of you won't cut it. I want your loyalty, I want your body, I want your heart. I refuse to accept anything less."
For a moment she struggled with a mixture of panic and excitement. As a brother, Grant was someone she had relied on for comfort and understanding. She couldn't reconcile that with this dark stranger he had evolved into. This man who was formidable, challenging. Dangerous.
She felt like she was in over her head, scrambling to salvage the crumbling remains of her old world. Her dearest ally had become her second opponent. The biggest enemy was someone she didn't recognize inside herself. With too many mixed emotions roiling inside her, she felt she was in both hell and heaven, with no way to tell one from the other.
In a last-ditch effort to cling to the familiar, to the safety of what they'd had, she said honestly, "I do love you, Grant. I've always loved you."
"Not good enough. I want you to be in love with me." His gaze roved over her face, down to her breasts, then lingered at her lap, a heavy-lidded gaze that was laden with sexuality. "You're flushed. Your nipples are tight. You want me. That's not good enough, either."
She slid, like a drowning man going under, into the inky blackness that beckoned. Cammie swallowed hard, wet her lips.
Grant leaned forward. With the propriety of a husband, he stroked his fingertips over her breast, then casually withdrew.
She ached to call him back, to plead for more. But she didn't dare.
"Tell me, Cammie," he whispered, "are you in love with me?"
Was she? Oh, Lord, she didn't know. It was too much, too soon, and too possibly true.
"We can't forget the people we love," she said, frantic to remember what stood between them.
Clasping the locket tight, she scanned the room for portraits, for handmade reminders of why she couldn't do this, shouldn't even think it. He was steering her on a one-way course of no return, and she flailed blindly against the tide.
"That again," he snorted impatiently. "Damn, why do you always have to go back to that?"
"Because it's there, Grant. It exists and it won't go away. You've never lost a family. I have. It's torture. It's the most horrible, excruciating thing in my life. Your family is all that I've got and you're asking me to risk giving it up. If you love me the way you say you do, how can you expect me to go through that again?"
"How? I'll tell you how. While you've been coping with torture, I've been living in agony. What do you think it's done to me? Watching other men touch you in a way I never could, seeing an engagement ring on your finger while I had to cough up a hearty 'congratulations,' when it was all I could do not to puke it made me so sick. Can you imagine what that was like?"
"No." Unwillingly, her heart hurt for him while the bitterness in his voice flailed her. "No, I never knew. You never let it show."
"Well, now you know. You lost your family, and those are wounds that can never heal
. But my wounds go deep, too, Cammie. While you were getting on with your life, I had to watch from the sidelines without a snowball's chance in hell of competing. It was killing me by inches. The success, the women, the man who had it all... God, what a joke." He laughed harshly. "I couldn't have the only thing I really wanted. Without you, all I had meant nothing."
The enormity of his emotional need stunned her, and also stoked a yearning in her to appease the hunger she had created. His honesty had unshrouded the deepest place in her heart. The place she had buried along with her loved ones, that was so empty and aching she couldn't bear to take it out, examine it, and brave the chance of ever losing the emotional distance that kept her safe—and forever alone.
His eyes burned into hers without apology, with a stark rawness that could only be satisfied with a melding of their souls. With total possession of each other's hearts. With a physical mating of primal intensity.
His need was absolute. It frightened her. And she hated her cowardice.
Take the chance, came the whisper from the depths of unearthed need. If you take it, it's all or nothing and you've got no guarantees, countered the voice of reason. The echo of fear mocked her without pity: If it doesn't work, you could lose more than family, more than your heart. To give him what he wants means reopening the scab. It's a wound you're so afraid to coonfront, it keeps on running... just the same as you.
The past gaped open like a yawning abyss. She felt herself teetering, the sensation akin to vertigo. It was too much like hearing a scratch coming from the inside of a coffin. Creeping closer to it, compelled to know what lay within, and yet terrified to discover what might reach out from the other side of darkness. Life? Or something ominous, a nightmare waiting to justify her fear?
"What you want is more than I can give, Grant." Her heart sank at the sound of her own words.
"No." He stood and reached for her. She couldn't stop her trembling as he pulled her to her feet, and he made it worse by running his hands over her arms, twining his fingers through her hair, then locking her body against his. "It's not that you can't. Because you will. It's only a matter of time."