Too Hot To Handle

by Elizabeth Lowell

  So she swung her right leg over alongside her left and jumped.

  The ground was harder than the water in a swim­ming pool, and her legs were wobbly from being stretched over Blackjack’s powerful back. Favoring her injured knee threw her off balance. She knew that she had a choice between catching herself with her right leg or falling flat on her face. No choice, really. Even as she fell she turned, hoping to take the impact on her shoulder.

  Hard hands grabbed her and yanked her back onto her feet.

  “How anyone as sleek looking as you can be so damned clumsy is beyond me,” he said, releasing her instantly. “Or is it just an act to get me to touch you? It won’t get you a thing, little girl. I don’t believe in on-the-job training.”

  The only possible answer to that was two words long, and one of those words was at the top of the list that Tory had already forbidden herself to use. Very carefully she walked around Reever and went to the stream. She found a flat, sun-warmed boulder at the edge of the creek, eased herself slowly onto her stomach and lowered her face to the water until she could sip from its silver surface.

  It was cold, sweet, perfect, like drinking a torrent of winter moonlight. With a husky sound of pleasure, she buried her raw hands in the crystal water and low­ered her face again, turning it slowly from side to side, bathing away dust and sweat.

  Watching her made Reever feel like Blackjack had kicked him in the stomach. Tory’s sensual pleasure in the water was as wild and pure as the creek itself. He could almost taste the water as she did, could almost feel its bright chill sliding down his throat and caressing his face, washing away dust and sweat, dissolving everything but the sensations of the instant.

  Without realizing that he had moved at all, he found himself kneeling on the bank just downstream from her, sinking his hands beneath the brilliant silver ripples, wanting simply to be touched by the water that had just flowed over her.

  With a savage motion he came to his feet, flinging water in all directions, and strode to where Blackjack waited patiently. Tory didn’t notice, for her face was still in the sweet water, her eyes closed as she gave her attention completely to the mountain stream that had both slaked her thirst and soothed her burning palms.

  “For God’s sake,” he said when he couldn’t take it any longer. “What are you trying to do, drown yourself?”

  She looked over her shoulder at him and laughed, a sound that was as rippling as the water itself. “Cowboy, the day I drown, those sidewinders you once mentioned will be ice-skating in hell.”

  A corner of Reever’s mouth kicked up unwill­ingly at the image. “You’re good in water, is that it?”

  “I get by,” she said, coming to her feet, wincing slightly as her right knee bumped against the stone.

  Unselfconsciously she wiped her face on the hem of her loose T-shirt. Even if she had known that the movement revealed a sleek, tanned strip of her skin from her waist to just below her breasts, she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. She was ac­customed to being wet and to drying herself on any­thing handy. She was also accustomed to being all but naked and utterly ignored by the males around her.

  Reever frowned, unable to understand Tory’s con­flicting actions. He touched her and she went off hot enough to burn both of them to the bone, yet she appeared unaware of what she was doing. Although she seemed innocent, she was as unselfconscious as a cat around him. She wasn’t immodest. It was just that she seemed unaware of the sensual possibilities of her own body and how easily, how violently, she could arouse men. She was... unawakened.

  The thought of being the man to awaken her was a sweet agony in his loins.

  Tory walked over to Blackjack, who snuffled gently at the damp tendrils curling around her face where her hair had fallen into the water. She laughed softly, delighted by the horse’s velvet muzzle and tickling, grass-scented breath.

  “What—?” she gasped as she felt herself snatched off her feet without warning.

  “Spread your legs,” Reever said impatiently.

  Speechless, she stared over her shoulder at him.

  “God save me from useless city girls.”

  His grip shifted. Even as he swung her up to­ward the saddle, his right hand slid down her back, over her buttocks and fastened on the inside of her right thigh, forcing her legs apart. An instant later she was dumped into Blackjack’s saddle with about as much ceremony as a hog-tied calf.

  “It’s called riding stride,” Reever bit out. “It’s an old custom among us rustics.”

  Her startled, wildly flushed face confirmed his worst fears. She definitely was not used to a man’s hands on her sleek body.

  Passionate as hell and innocent as heaven.

  A virgin who’s too hot to handle.

  Why me, Lord? he asked bitterly. Why me?

  “Try not to faint when I get up behind you,” he said curtly.

  She didn’t know what he meant until he stepped into the stirrup and swung into the saddle as if she wasn’t already sitting there. With a startled sound she scooted forward, giving him as much room as she could.

  The saddle was big—but so was Reever. The sad­dle was also higher at the front and back than in the middle, a design that helped to keep the rider in place. It also ensured that the only way she could rest her weight was smack up against him in an intimacy that made her cheeks burn.

  It made Reever burn, too. His only consolation was that she was probably too innocent to know that not all of the hard flesh pressing against her hips was muscle. It was a small consolation for a problem that would get bigger with each rocking motion that Blackjack made.

  “Do we have to—” she began, only to gasp as the horse stepped forward eagerly, sending her slid­ing down into the hot, hard cradle of Reever’s thighs.

  He heard her breath come in sharply. He saw the shiver of sensation that raced through her, goose bumps clear on her skin. He knew without seeing that her nipples would be rising and tightening, nuz­zling against the soft cloth of her T-shirt, searching for a man’s caress to ease their sensual ache.

  She scooted forward again, only to slide back. Grimly she shifted her weight, trying to find a po­sition that wouldn’t surround her with Reever’s male heat.

  “Goddammit,” he growled, putting his right arm around her hard, pinning her in place. “Stop wiggling.”

  “Put me in back again,” she said desperately.

  “You wouldn’t last three seconds.”

  “But I rode all the way here without—”

  Her protest ended in a yelp as Blackjack leaped into Wolf Creek with the abandon of a child, divid­ing the hock-deep water in glorious sheets that sprayed head high on either side of him. Tory clutched wildly at the saddle horn, but it was Reever’s steel grip that kept her in the saddle.

  He tried to be a gentleman and ignore the feel of her body as his fingers spread wide to hold her in place. But before Blackjack had finished plunging through the creek and up the bank on the far side, Reever knew that Tory’s loose T-shirt concealed surprisingly lush, firm breasts. He also had searing confirmation of his earlier guess—her nipples were as hard as he was and every bit as eager to be touched. The tip of her breast had tightened violently when his fingers ac­cidentally brushed over it as he shifted his grip at Blackjack’s first leap.

  Desperately Tory hoped that Reever hadn’t heard her gasp when his hand had held her so intimately for just an instant, but there was little hope that he wouldn’t notice the flush of embarrassment climbing her neck and flooding her face. She stiffened and leaned away from him, an instinctive reaction that was utterly wrong for the time and the place, because it pushed her rump hard against the cradle of his legs. She heard him swear violently and wrap his other arm around her to keep her upright in the saddle.

  With a combination of fascination and embarrass­ment, she saw his muscular forearm slide be­neath
her breasts, taking their soft weight, pushing her tight nipples against her water-splashed shirt. Each of Blackjack’s rhythmic movements made her breasts sway against Reever’s supporting arm.

  She twisted helplessly, trying to retreat from the intimate contact, but only ended up rubbing against his body even more.

  “For God’s sake, relax,” he said harshly. “You’ve got nothing up top that I haven’t felt more of and better.”

  For an instant she couldn’t believe what she had heard. Then she believed it. A bitter tide of humil­iation washed all the color from her face. She fin­ished the ride to the ranch in absolute silence, count­ing all the ways it was possible to drown an over-sized, under-mannered cowboy.

  3

  Reever and Tory rode into the ranch yard with identical, tight-lipped expressions on their faces. He had the edge, though. His black hat, black hair and the harshly masculine lines of his face gave him a distinctly satanic look that Tory’s wide-eyed, delicately triangular face couldn’t hope to equal.

  Her eyes, however, matched the devil’s in the emotion that made them burn like green flames.

  By the time the ranch house came into sight, she had counted sixty-three improbable ways for her to drown a rude cowboy, but she hadn’t yet decided how to manage even one of them without touching Reever.

  That she refused to do. After she got off Blackjack, she never intended to touch Ethan Reever again.

  Her stomach growled miserably, audibly, be­neath his muscular arm. He cursed under his breath as he realized that she probably hadn’t had time for breakfast and certainly hadn’t eaten lunch. Then there was always the possibility that, even if she had had the time, she hadn’t had the money to buy food. Close up, her clothes were even more frayed than he had first thought.

  And there were streaks of blood where barbs had bitten into her tender flesh.

  He didn’t know whether to yell at her for being so stupid or to gently lick her as clean as a mother cat would a kitten. One thing he did know—he didn’t feel the least bit parental toward Victoria Wells.

  It had driven him crazy to feel her firm little rump rocking between his thighs. He didn’t even feel much guilt about her cuts and scrapes anymore. He might not look it, but he was in a lot worse shape than she was. He was steel hard and hot as hell, and his guts were tied in knots from wanting a soft, use­less girl with bloody scratches on her back and palms like hamburger. He had suffered the tortures of the damned on the ride home and had no sympathy to spare for a sweet young thing who wreaked havoc on every male in sight.

  Reever cursed softly, steadily, fluently, letting Tory know with each word how very happy he would be to get her off his lap and out of his hair.

  She ignored him. She had heard a lot of dark muttering during the ride and had promised herself that she would say nothing until she reached the dubious safety of the ranch. Then she would tell Reever just what she thought of him. But as the ranch house drew near, she wished that she had spent more of the ride choosing killing words rather than ways of killing, period.

  Blackjack stopped in front of the main corral.

  Tory’s stomach growled vigorously.

  “God above,” Reever muttered as her stom­ach rumbled and rumbled and rumbled beneath his arm, “now I suppose you expect me to feed you before I send you to town.”

  Her mouth flattened even more. “Why shouldn’t you feed me?” she asked curtly. “You owe me.”

  “Yeah? How do you figure that?” he asked as he dismounted.

  The easy power of Reever’s movements only made her more angry. She knew that her legs weren’t going to support her. After she dismounted, she was going to go flat on her face in a sprawl that would only underline his opinion of her.

  Clumsy. Useless. City girl.

  She gritted her teeth. Why should I care what that muscle-bound, icy-eyed son of Satan thinks?

  I should go down on my knees in the dust and give thanks that I’m not his type.

  “I figure you owe me lunch because you’ve taken enough bites out of me during the ride for a nine-course meal,” she said, glaring down at him with narrowed green eyes.

  “Honey,” he said, giving her a slow, dan­gerous, onceover kind of look, “if I’d been nibbling on you, you wouldn’t be complaining now—and you sure as hell wouldn’t be hungry.”

  The sensual impact of his eyes and smile made her feel like she was being stroked. She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and muttered, “I thought cowboys were shy, modest, and had a vocabulary consisting of ‘giddy up’ and ‘aw, shucks.’ But not you, Ethan Reever. You’re as proud as Lucifer, and your vocabulary is fully suited to hell.”

  Reever’s mouth turned up in a smile that was very male and frankly threatening. “Keep pushing, green eyes,” he said, his voice low, deep. “You’ll find out just how hard a man I am.”

  Blackjack sighed loudly and shifted his weight, hinting that he would like to be in the corral and out from under the saddle.

  At the horse’s first motion Tory grabbed wildly at the saddle horn, only to wince as her raw palms met leather.

  Reever cursed softly at the sign of her pain. He jerked off his hat and swept his fingers through his shaggy hair to keep from reach­ing for her. As she sat up shakily, he yanked his dusty black Stetson back into place, grateful that he wouldn’t have to touch her again. The feel of her soft, supple body would tie so many knots in him that he’d be lucky to stand up straight for a week.

  “Get off poor Blackjack so he can get some food,” Reever said. “He’s as tired as I am.”

  “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” she shot back, delaying the inevitable moment when she would dismount and land in an ungainly heap at Reever’s big feet. “You don’t ache from your knees to your, uh—”

  “Honey, I ache in places you can’t even imag­ine.” He watched color climb up her cheeks as his words registered. He laughed softly. “Penny for your thoughts,” he offered with a slow smile.

  “Go. Away,” she said, spacing each word care­fully.

  “Can’t,” he said blandly, but beneath his mus­tache his lips quirked over a hidden smile. “You might need me.”

  “Like a sidewinder needs ice skates,” she said.

  “A sidewinder isn’t going to get all rubber-legged after an hour on horseback.”

  “A sidewinder doesn’t have—”

  “Legs,” he interrupted. “Real quick for a city girl, aren’t you? Come on, honey. Get it over with. Or can’t you even get down alone?”

  She looked at him and brought her running total to sixty-four ways to drown a grinning cowboy. That made her feel better, but it didn’t solve the problem of transferring her weight from Blackjack’s back to her own feet.

  Slowly she shifted, trying to dismount as Reever had by swinging her right leg over Blackjack’s broad rump. As her leg came half­way over, she fished around with her left foot, trying to find the stirrup. It was a long reach because the stirrup length was set for Reever’s six-feet-three-­inch height.

  Belatedly she realized that she should have put her left foot in the stirrup before she started to dismount. It was too late now, though. Her right leg was bumping over Blackjack’s rump, her left foot was treading air, and saddle leather was racing through her slippery hands. Suddenly her left foot found the stirrup, only to slide right on through the opening as her hands slipped completely off the sad­dle.

  The world spun crazily as her left foot went all the way through the open stirrup. She landed flat on her back with enough force to knock out her breath.

  Blackjack, who was used to a higher order of skill in his riders, was so surprised that he shied away. She was yanked with him because her foot was wedged through the stirrup.

  Even as the horse moved, Reever leaped for the bridle and hauled Blackjack up short.

  “Easy, boy, easy,” h
e murmured, calming the animal.

  He wondered if he would ever forget the picture of Tory lying half beneath those dancing steel-shod feet. The thought of what a blow from those hooves would do to her soft body made his blood chill. Despite that his voice was as gentle and firm as his hands while he held the trembling Blackjack still.

  Tory lay dazed on her back and wondered if that was really Reever’s voice, gentle and sweet, deep and soothing, a voice that verified her instinc­tive belief that there was much more to him than his harsh surface. She tried to sit up, to get closer to that reassuring voice.

  “Don’t move,” he snarled. “If you spook Blackjack any more with your clumsiness, he’ll for­get his manners and step all over you.”

  That voice belonged to Reever, too. Tory had no doubt about it. She had felt its icy lash before. She closed her eyes because suddenly the sunlight was so bright it felt like hot sand beneath her eyelids. She blinked fiercely, wondering why a stupid little fall made her want to cry. It had never been like that in the pool when she was learning a new dive and landed wrong, knocking out her breath and raising livid welts on her skin. She hadn’t cried then.

  Not once.

  Maybe it was just that she was so hungry. Maybe that was why she felt like everything familiar was falling away from her, a row of dominoes kicked over by the doctor’s calm description of what had happened to her knee, what might happen again, the future she had worked so hard for toppling in front of her.

  She didn’t bother to look up when she felt Reever’s hands easing her foot from the stirrup. She didn’t even open her eyes when he swung her up into his arms and began carrying her to the house.

  “Are you all right?” he asked roughly.