The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

  “It’s not that far out, Doc. Your pager will work. Come on.” He stood and tossed some bills onto the table. He held out his hand. “Finished?”

  She glanced again, dismayed, at her plate. It seemed she was. She looked up at him, at his outstretched hand and the invitation she understood it implied. And thought, What the heck? I’ve just eaten half his dinner. How much more embarrassing could the evening get?

  They drove in separate pickups at her insistence. She wasn’t being coy—she would have sworn she didn’t know how to be—but sensible. She was on call, she’d told him again, nervous in spite of herself. And he was miles out, no need for him to go all the way back into town. Too, she needed her vet box. And she should get to know the roads, anyway, in case she needed to come this way again. And it was late.

  She’d had a couple other arguments ready, but he’d finally given in and gotten into his truck, shaking his head.

  He drove out to the ranch, past the folks’ house, saw their lights blazing and the flicker of the television set from behind the drapes. It would have been the polite thing to do to drop by and introduce the new vet, but he didn’t feel particularly polite tonight. Maybe confessions brought it out in him, but he felt restless, hungry. For what, he had a pretty good idea. He turned into his driveway. He left the engine running while he jumped out and strode back to her truck.

  “Come on,” he said, pulling her door open. She barely had time to turn the key before he took her hand and practically yanked her from her seat, but plenty of time to realize what a stupid move it had been to come out here, in the dark, with this bruiser of a man and his pushy manner.

  “You know what—?” she began, pulling back like a reluctant filly.

  “Yeah, I do. You want to go home.” He turned to her, looked into her moonlit eyes. They shone up at him, strong, determined, and a little afraid, and he had a fleeting, amazing sensation that he could see into them, into her. “Don’t be a wuss, McKenna. I want to show you my ranch and I can’t do that if you’re driving in a different vehicle. Just come with me.” He tugged and stepped backward when she would have fallen into him. He lifted his chin, daring her. “Come on, Grace.”

  She couldn’t resist him when he called her Grace, and wouldn’t have backed away from the challenge in his eyes in any case. She followed him to his idling pickup, holding his hand, which really did feel just perfect cupped protectively over hers. He opened her door, then jogged around and hopped in. He was practically giddy now, she thought. Comparatively, anyway. Now that she was his captive.

  Oh, Grace, settle down. You are a wuss, she told herself. The whole way out to his ranch she’d vacillated between a nauseating sort of excitement about being with him, alone, in the hush and coming darkness of an Idaho spring evening, and a head-banging regret. What was she thinking, become involved with any man at this point in her life? She had a practice to establish, priorities to set.

  But more than that, she had her heart to consider. It had been safely, steadily beating in her chest for twenty-seven years now, while she went about the business of making her dreams come true. Now wasn’t the time to test its vulnerability, to hare off into the night with a man to try to prove, for the first time, that she could do what other women seemed to do so easily. Attract a man, capture his heart.

  Frankly, the thought of doing that scared the hell out of her. The thought of not being able to do that scared her even more.

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and clamped down. Wuss? That was hardly the word. She’d made excuses for years about why she couldn’t—wouldn’t—be with a man. It had been easy to do—had even been, in the view of many people in her life, the responsible, if vaguely dissatisfying, path to take. After all, she was a vet now, a good one, with the kind of practice she’d always wanted. See how her focus had paid off?

  She wondered when she’d come to see it all for the lie it was.

  Daniel turned to her, smiling slightly as he described his wheat and hay rotation, and she knew the answer to that question. Just about the minute she’d met Daniel Cash.

  She hadn’t been responsible, she’d been afraid. If she never fell in love…if she never allowed herself to feel the heart-pounding, eye-popping, finger-tingling excitement she felt being with Daniel, then she could never get hurt. Then no one would ever say to her, “How can I love you? Just look at you.”

  It was what she feared most in the world. Just look at me, she thought. The circus freak, with a man like Daniel Cash. She may be a diversion for him, she thought morosely, but if she wasn’t careful, he could become vital for her. She’d felt it that first afternoon in her office. Vital.

  And then one day he’d look her up and down and realize that nothing in the world could make her into the small, delicate female a man could love forever. His diversion would be over, and her safe, steady heart would be broken.

  They drove all over the ranch, across fields that looked ready for a hot summer and a chance to produce. They stopped in big pastures, and Grace got a shadowy impression of fat heifers and lazy cows and spooky, jumpy little spring calves. Daniel told her about his grazing schedule on the federal lands that surrounded his ranch, surrounded the town of Nobel. She listened to him, listened more to the timber and tone of his deep voice, and reminded herself to be careful.

  When they came to a gate, she hopped out of the truck and opened it. He tried to beat her to it the first couple gates, but gave in when she glared at him.

  “I know the rules, Cash,” she said. “Shotgun always opens the gates.” She cocked her head, trying to lighten her somber mood. “Is that the real reason we took your pickup out here?”

  “You bet.” He wasn’t sorry they had, actually. After the initial, intense discomfort of sitting in the truck while she worked a gate wore off, he had to admit it was a sight worth seeing. Her butt in those long, slim trousers in his headlights. A man could die happy from a sight like that.

  The ranch was huge; it took them hours to get across it and back. By the time they returned to his house it was dark out, with a milk-white moon coming across the desert that stretched east to Twin Falls.

  They talked until they were hoarse. About clinical protozoology and grass tetany, about college and the professors they’d shared, about the diagnosis of equine influenza and how the moon shone off the reservoir that watered his fields. Daniel felt an ease with her he hadn’t felt with a woman since Julie, and chalked it up to their common body of knowledge. He’d not spoken of his love of veterinary medicine in three long years. It was a relief, palpable and chest-loosening, to do so with her.

  He remembered how he and Julie would stay up late, poring over their Merck manuals, testing each other. He’d loved doing that, had never experienced quite the same pleasure doing anything else, before or since. He’d fallen in love with her during those late-night sessions, amazed at her brain, connected to her through a mutual passion.

  He brought himself up short. There was a treacherous memory. Grace and Julie shared the same profession, but nothing more than that. He wouldn’t fall in love with Grace McKenna. Even if he didn’t take exception to the role she was playing in his life, in his hometown, he wouldn’t fall in love with her. He wouldn’t fall in love with anyone, not ever again. Love was a sort of madness he couldn’t afford anymore. It had left him open to all manner of failure.

  He set his jaw, annoyed with himself, and looked over at Grace.

  “You look tired.”

  “I am.” She smothered a yawn. “I’ve enjoyed the tour, though. It’s a beautiful place.” She smiled sleepily. “What I could see of it. You should be proud.”

  “I am. My grandfather and my parents put their lives into Cash Cattle. I’m glad Frank and I have been able to keep it going for them.”

  “It’s a tough business. Not many make it.”

  “We will.”

  That confidence again, and that flash of intensity, of almost-desperate resolve. She knew instinctively where it had come fro
m, and wondered if he’d ever get over what had happened to him up at W.A.S.U. She doubted it. She never would have. She sighed, fingered the handle on her door. All the more reason to stay away from this man.

  “I should get going.”

  He got out to open her door, but she was already standing beside the truck by the time he made it around the hood. “You’ll be out next week, then,” he said.

  “Yes.” She resisted twisting her hands together. How did women ever do this? This hadn’t even been a date—more like a business meeting—and still the ending was uncomfortably awkward.

  “We could go into Twin Falls after. Get something to eat.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t think so.”

  He ran his hand over his hair. “God, you drive me nuts.”

  “I know I do. You have essentially the same effect on me.”

  “You know, you can go superior and snotty faster than any woman I’ve ever known.”

  She raised her chin, straightened her spine. Years of being called far worse names than “snotty and superior” had given her a phalanx of defense mechanisms. “It’s a gift,” she said coolly.

  He regarded her in the dim moonlight. “And yet, when I kiss you, you go all soft and breathy. Wonder why that is?”

  “Hormonal aberration.”

  He had to laugh. “You kill me.”

  She didn’t much like being laughed at. It was a leftover from always being the object of laughter while she was growing up, and up. Her fists balled at her sides. “I’m leaving.”

  He cocked a single dark brow. It made him look like a pirate, Grace thought.

  “Who’s stopping you?”

  “Not you,” she said. “No one can stop me when I want to go.”

  “I’m sure they can’t. You’re a big girl. Go ahead.”

  Big girl? She glared at him. “You’re holding on to my arm,” she said stiffly.

  He was, and hadn’t even known it. His thumb was stroking against the sleeve of her coat even now. He wanted, badly, to know what the skin felt like beneath. He dropped his hand.

  “Good night, Doc.”

  Big girl. She couldn’t believe he’d called her a big girl. She could have smacked him for that. She grabbed the collar of his coat with one hand instead.

  “Good night,” she snapped, and yanked him forward. She’d show him “big girl.”

  He met her, mouth open, his arms clamping around her in an instant.

  Yes! Was all Daniel could think. He’d been wanting to get his hands on her since the first night he’d kissed her in that tiny, dark living room. The kiss on the sidewalk had only made him hungrier, more obsessed. It had taken all the discipline he’d been born with and every ounce he’d gained since then to keep from doing something unforgivably rash on that public sidewalk. But now he was loosed from those particular hobbles. He held her closer.

  Every promise the woman made with that amazing long body, she kept in one fiery kiss. He sealed his mouth to hers and plundered. His tongue swept through and he dragged out the moan she tried to bite back. He unclenched his arms, streaked under her coat, tugged her blouse from her waistband. Skin. He needed to touch skin. He’d kissed her twice now and had never touched her skin.

  He swore against her mouth, a dark and dangerous oath, and felt her shiver at the sound of it. Her skin was as smooth and cool as her walk. He rested his thumbs in her navel, torturing himself. She wasn’t what he wanted in his life, but he was certain he had to have her.

  “Grace, come inside and lie down with me.”

  That thick voice…that heavy, quick, desperate command cut through the haze of lust. Some of her lifelong good sense surfaced, dammit. “I can’t.”

  “You can.” His thumbs came up from their little nest in her belly button, brushed the undersides of her breasts, making his point for him.

  She couldn’t have stopped the gasp that escaped her if she’d had her mouth sewn shut. “I hardly know you.”

  “You know me.”

  “I don’t even like you.”

  He grinned wickedly. “Yeah, you do.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted slowly. “I do.” His smile softened. Her nipples were like eraser tips. He ran his thumbs across them again. “A little.”

  He was doing something shocking now, something she definitely shouldn’t allow. She’d kissed men before and had never let them— Oh, that was lovely. He really had better not stop doing that. She’d have to kill him if he stopped doing that.

  He kissed her again, more urgently. His tongue came in again, invited hers to meet his. Their mouths opened wide together and he slid one hand around to the soft skin at the small of her back. He urged her closer, loving how their long bodies met, center to center.

  “Let’s go inside,” he whispered when he could breathe again. He pulled away slightly and looked into her face. Her eyes were closed, and she was frowning.

  “No.” She was impatient with him, pulled his hair until he came back to kiss her.

  Fine, she wouldn’t go inside. He could work around that. He was a resourceful kind of guy. He simply fused her mouth to his and picked her up in his arms.

  She squealed against his mouth, jerked her head back.

  “What are you doing?” she huffed at him, mortified.

  “Getting more comfortable,” he said. He carried her around the pickup as if she weighed nothing and came down on his knees with her on to the spring-greening lawn in front of his house. She wiggled out of his arms, but before she could escape he landed on her, pinning her with his legs. If he happened to bump a very delicate, very aroused part of his anatomy against her hip on the way down, that was purely accidental. If he happened to leave it there, pressed against her, even grinding a little bit, well, he couldn’t be held accountable for that. He was so turned on he was surprised the top of his head didn’t blow off.

  “You picked me up,” she said, sounding amazed. He ignored her, focused instead on how he could get her to unzip her parka, unbutton her blouse. Hell, he’d just do it himself.

  She batted at his hands. “Daniel.”

  “Hmm?” He had the parka unzipped, one button undone. Maybe the rest would just pop off if he pulled hard enough. He gave an experimental yank.

  “I’ve never been picked up before.”

  He tried to pay attention, knew that was the correct and considerate thing to do, especially since he could dimly hear the wonder in her voice over the roaring in his ears, but he frankly didn’t want to. He wanted inside. Inside her shirt, inside her pants, inside her skin.

  “Shut up, Doc, and let me touch you.” He had to or he was going to die. He was reasonably sure of that.

  He shifted onto his back and pulled her on top of him. He could feel the damp grass beneath him, could see the white moon behind her head. Could feel the weight of her pressed into every cell of his body. She kept her hands on either side of his face, rasped at his beard stubble with her thumbs as they kissed. He stroked her back, petted her bottom, kneaded it, pressing her into him so there’d be no mistaking his response to her.

  She had no doubt. She could feel him, practically pulsing beneath her. She moved instinctively against him, back and forth, up and down.

  It drove him mad. He laid flat palms at the small of her back, pushed them into the waistband of her slacks. “Take your pants off, Grace.”

  “Out here?”

  He managed to laugh at her incredulous tone. “Or inside, if I can make it inside. No, wait, out here. Now. Quickly, Grace.”

  An hour before, a lifetime before, she would have placed the odds of her obeying such an order at about a million to one. She rolled over and wriggled out of her pants in three seconds flat.

  Oh, Daniel thought, light-headed. Those legs. The woman had legs up to her armpits. She came back down on top of him and while they kissed he ran his hands the length of her long thighs, again and again, from the backs of her knees up to the perfect curve of her bottom
. He could feel firm muscle and soft skin and thought he might explode in his jeans for the first time since Darla Lee Gilbert let him touch her breasts in the ninth grade.

  She was wriggling again. She knew it was probably unladylike and not what one was supposed to do in these situations. She’d ordered the salad at dinner but now she was ruining the whole image of relaxed, casual femininity by writhing on top of him like a maniac.

  But she was magnificently aroused and her body would not be still. His hands, oh, what were they doing back there? Oh, yes, a little higher now, Daniel, she thought frantically, opening her legs. A little—oh! He smoothed back down her thighs again. If he didn’t touch her soon, she was going to— Ah, there. There, Daniel, there.

  She was wet. He could feel it through the cotton of her prim white panties. He slipped his fingers beneath the elastic, brushed against damp curls, and lost his mind. So wet. His fingers were slippery with her and he used that moisture to open her, slide in, feel everything.

  He’d meant to take this a little slower. Kiss her for an hour or two, open her blouse, play with her, pull a nipple into his mouth and roll it gently between his teeth until she clutched at him. Oh, yeah, he would have loved to do that. But this was as good; better, astonishing. He’d do the other stuff later.

  She stopped writhing, lay perfectly still against him. They stopped kissing, stopped moving, stopped breathing. He used the fingers of both hands, stroked inside her, played with the little button she had hidden there until it was as hard and swollen as he was.

  “Grace,” he said, his eyes closed in concentration.

  She quivered against his hand. It hit her hard, knocked the breath out of her in a loud, long moan. Daniel wondered absently as he felt the contractions around his fingers if his parents could hear her over the sound of their television set.

  He couldn’t have cared less.

  Chapter 5

  They lay perfectly still for a minute as he played with her, bringing her to a smaller peak, a smaller one still, until her body calmed and her nerve endings were soothed.