by Sandra Brown
“This is a nice house. Does it belong to you?”
“No. To friends of my father. It’s their vacation home. They offered it to us anytime we wanted. I haven’t abused the privilege, but I knew it wouldn’t inconvenience them if I used it this summer.” Perching on the arm of the sofa, she gazed out the wide picture window. “In the wintertime, you can sit here by the fire and watch the snow fall.”
“Do you ski?”
“Yes, but I’m a better observer than participator.”
Curious, he walked around the room, stopping to inspect this and that, thumbing through the magazines left on the coffee table. She marveled that he could be so composed. He had virtually barged in on a woman who hadn’t even washed the sleep from her eyes or had her morning coffee. Yet he was making himself right at home. He’d offered no explanation for his untimely arrival.
But then she hadn’t asked for one, had she?
Even though she was sitting here with nothing on but her nightclothes, her feet and legs bare, her hair straggling like an unruly mop and her eyes still puffy from a sound sleep, she didn’t feel nearly as disconcerted as the situation warranted. Why not? she wondered.
Could it be because he seemed so at ease? Or could it be that her mind was so preoccupied with him, it didn’t have room to think about anything else?
He looked lean and hard and infinitely male as he prowled the room. The down vest he’d worn against the chilly air of late summer had been tossed negligently over the back of a chair. His western-cut shirt tapered to fit his torso. His boots were scuffed and looked perfectly at home with his jeans, which were far from new. Their snug fit made his sex unquestionable. Frequently her eyes strayed toward his thighs.
He was wearing his glasses, she supposed, since he had driven over. She remembered seeing an unfamiliar car parked at her curb. She also remembered how the sunlight had painted streaks of fire through his wind-blown hair.
“What’s this?” he asked, bending down over the card table where a jigsaw puzzle was spread out.
“I brought it with me,” she said, moving off the arm of the couch to join him. “I knew I’d have to fill many idle hours up here. So I brought a stack of books I’d been wanting to read. This is another of my projects.” She picked up a piece and after studying it a moment, locked it into place.
“Very good,” he said, smiling down on her. “Do you do these all the time?”
“I never have before. But I’ve gotten in hours of practice.”
The puzzle held a special symbolism for her. She hadn’t started it as most people would, from the outside. She had started in the center and worked outward.
To her the center represented the nucleus of herself, the things she believed in, her mores and values, her thoughts and convictions, the things she held near and dear, the parts of her personality that had been nursed through childhood and that made Kari Stewart Kari Stewart.
That was what she had started with when she arrived. And gradually, daily, she had added pieces to the puzzle. She relived the frightening childhood experience of losing her mother, the life she’d had with her father, her college days, the beginnings of her career, the development of her friendship with Pinkie, her meeting Thomas. She recalled as many specific days of their life together as she could. She relived the horror of his death. She chronicled each time she’d seen Hunter McKee. The picture on the puzzle had begun to emerge from the myriad pieces.
It was almost complete now. “When it’s finished, I’ll feel that I know myself better.” She hadn’t intended to speak the thought aloud. Quickly she glanced up at Hunter. He would think she was a fool. But apparently he understood this self-therapy. He nodded his head. She hoped he wouldn’t ask her to elaborate, and he didn’t.
“You have chocolate on your mouth,” he said softly.
She was enraptured by his eyes. The warm light from them seemed to shine over her whole being, inside and out. “Do I?”
“Uh-huh, right here.”
His finger lifted the speck of chocolate glaze from the corner of her mouth. He let it melt against the tip of his tongue. She watched his mouth, intrigued and aroused by its flagrant sensuality. Her eyes remained fastened on his lips as he settled his hands on her shoulders and drew her against him.
“Kari?” Her eyes slowly climbed his face until they met his.
“Hmm?”
“The first time I kissed you, you were unconscious. The second time I was so angry, I didn’t know whether to kiss you or throttle you. I was blinded by rage and hardly aware of what was happening.”
He moved his hands up to cup her cheeks between his palms. “Don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to kiss when both of us know exactly what we’re doing?”
Chapter Nine
SHE REMAINED PERFECTLY STILL. SHE DIDN’T EVEN BLINK. He took off his glasses and laid them on the card table. Her cheeks were again cradled between his palms. They were warm. His fingertips were gentle as they skimmed over her cheekbones. The pads of his thumbs alternately stroked her lips.
His eyes were still open when hers finally gave up the fight and fluttered closed. Then she felt his breath on her lips. It was moist and warm and coffee-flavored. His lips hovered over hers for what seemed like a small eternity before he actually touched them.
Lips closed, he rubbed her mouth with his, back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm. He made small nibbling motions, then lightly caught her lower lip between his teeth and laved it with his tongue.
Rockets exploded inside Kari’s head. Before, she had thought such reactions to a kiss belonged only in the movies. This was all new to her. Either she had been kissed by inordinately unimaginative men, or they had felt bound by some code of ethics that didn’t apply to Hunter.
Had she inspired men to give her protection rather than passion? Had she given the impression that there wasn’t a carnal side to Kari Stewart? Or had that part of her nature just been born? For the first time, she was being kissed like a woman, and by a man who knew how. Hunter made kissing a frankly sexual mating ritual.
He laid his lips against hers and pressed, withdrew, pressed again. Each time their mouths met, his lips were parted more, until she felt the damp heat of his mouth. She responded to it. Her lips opened to take it in.
All of him moved at once with perfect timing and coordination. His head tilted to one side. His mouth settled over hers and with the sweetest suction, fused them together. He gave her his tongue. His hands slid from her cheeks, down her arms, and around her back until she was being held in the warmest, closest embrace imaginable.
Her bare toes stubbed against his boots as she instinctively moved closer. No longer docile, her body was restless to know his. Her arms lifted and folded around his neck. She heard a growl of approval rumble in his chest.
God, she had needed this!
She loved being held like this, loved feeling defense-less and feminine against such maleness. He had carried the cool outdoors in with him. It clung to his clothes and hair and skin. What a delicious contrast to her sleepy warmth! His scent was distinctly masculine. It reminded her of lemon peels and wood smoke and crunching autumn leaves.
He was hard. She gloried in that evidence of his desire by cushioning it with her softness. At every point along their complementing bodies, she was electrically aware of the differences between them. The rasp of his beard against her chin and around her mouth was exciting.
Her mouth was being made love to by a wicked tongue. With each rowdy thrust her entire body reacted. Tiny pockets of desire burst inside her and leaked their liquid fire into her veins.
Then the tempo changed. The strokes of his tongue became disciplined and controlled. She wanted to feel its knowledgeable caress all over, on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. She wanted intercourse.
But when his hands untied the knot at her waist and the panels of the robe fell apart, she realized how far it was going and how soon she had lost control. She tensed. Her fingers dug into the back of his neck. Tea
ring her mouth free from his, she bowed her head against his chest.
“I only want to hold you against me, Kari.” His unsteady breath fanned the top of her head. “I want to feel you against me, but it will go no further than that. I swear it.”
Gradually her fingers relaxed. He tipped her head back with his finger beneath her chin. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was red and kiss-swollen and dewy. A pulse as rapid as his own vibrated in the hollow of her slender throat.
He felt a rush of sexual desire so intense it was painful. But it was coupled with a tenderness he’d never experienced before.
His mouth touched hers briefly, experimentally. She didn’t pull away, but her fingers stretched up into his hair and laced through it. He settled his lips more firmly over hers as he slipped his hands inside the robe on either side of her waist. As the kiss deepened and his tongue sank into the wonder of her mouth, he drew her against him.
His hands splayed wide over her back. The cotton knit T-shirt was soft beneath his hands. Her body heat came through it. He knew her skin would be silky to his touch, but he dared not lift the shirt and slide his hands under. God he wanted to.
Her breasts flattened against his chest and he moaned his pleasure. He could feel the hardness of her nipples even through their clothes. He wondered how the rough denim of his jeans felt against her bare thighs as he worked his knee between hers. He wished he could see their legs linked together. Just the thought of the way her hips were raised up against his sent his mind reeling.
He also wondered what she thought of that ridge behind the fly of his jeans. She had to feel it. It was nuzzling the beguiling triangle of her bikini panties. He couldn’t get that image out of his mind either—the way she had stretched in the sunlight, back arched, arms raised, legs braced apart, head thrown back. Sensual abandonment personified.
He wanted to touch her, all of her. He wanted to smooth his hands over her skin while his tongue was lazily exploring her mouth. How would she react if he slipped his hands beneath—
No. If he touched any part of her bare skin, even her back, he’d want to caress it all. His hands wouldn’t stop at the small of her back but would probably slide into her panties and squeeze that cute bottom. And if things should progress from there—Damn! Don’t even think about her front—she would hate herself afterward.
She would condemn herself for consenting too soon. He would be called an opportunist for catching her lonely after nearly three months of solitude. He had arrived early in the morning when she was at her most vulnerable, only partially dressed. She would blame him for taking advantage of her again.
He could all but hear the accusations she would fling at him. And the hell of it was, she would be right. He was moving too fast. Maybe her response to him was only a result of her being without a man, any man, too long.
That thought was a slap to his pride, but it carried enough weight to make his hands move from the inside of the robe and settle affectionately, but passionlessly, on her shoulders. He forced his mouth away from the miracle of hers.
Her eyelashes lifted heavily and she looked at him through hazy green eyes. Hunter cursed himself for a damned fool for stopping so soon. Maybe she was ready. Maybe … No, not yet. He smiled and asked, “What’s on the agenda for today?”
He was a bundle of contradictions. After the kiss they had just shared, while her senses were humming and her limbs were liquefying and her body was melting all over his, she would have expected a man of Hunter’s virility to ask, “Where’s the bedroom?” or “Do you mind if we forgo the bedroom?” and drag her to the floor.
His softly spoken inquiry was so different from what she had thought he would say that she blinked rapidly. When her vision cleared and she could feel the floor beneath her feet again, his words finally registered on her. “Agenda?” Her voice was reedy and weak. She tried again. “What did I plan to do today?”
He brushed back stray wisps of hair from her cheeks. “Yes. Whatever you were going to do, care for a companion?”
“I, uh, I need to buy groceries.” She smiled wanly. “That doesn’t sound very exciting, does it?”
His eyes took on a gleam that startled her. The wolfish grin sent a thrill of sensation feathering up her middle and back down again. “We can make anything exciting, Kari. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
He waited in the living room while she showered and dressed. When she came from the bedroom wearing jeans and a pullover, he whistled low and long.
Putting her hands on her hips, she asked flirtatiously, “Which turned you on? The jeans or the ponytail?”
“Both. Remember, lately I’ve never seen you any way but camera-ready.”
“How soon you forget. You saw me fresh out of bed only an hour ago.”
His eyes took on a smoky hue. “I’ll never forget that.”
She ducked into the kitchen to make a grocery list, but her fingers could barely control the pencil. During her shower, she had tried to tether her high-flying spirits, but they wouldn’t be anchored down. She felt as lighthearted as a child in the springtime. No, amend that. She felt as if she were learning for the first time all it meant to be a woman. And what fun it was!
Suddenly a new emotion washed over her. It had been there, lurking on the edges of her mind, trying to get a foothold. Now she had no choice but to acknowledge it.
Guilt.
For the first time since Thomas’s death, she was enjoying the company of a man, and having a helluva good time at it. She felt guilty about it. The pencil rolled from her listless fingers.
“It’s perfectly natural, you know.”
She jumped and spun around. Hunter was standing close but had moved so silently she hadn’t heard his approach. “What?” she asked breathlessly.
“The guilt.” He didn’t touch her, but she thought that he wanted to. “It’s natural to grieve when someone we love dies, Kari. But it’s just as natural to eventually go on living, to enjoy life, to laugh again. Possibly love again.”
She doubted that she would feel guilty if she weren’t so attracted to Hunter. If he were older, chubby and bald, she doubted her conscience would be pricked at all. But he wasn’t. He was young and handsome and virile. If he were someone she could establish a comfortable, affectionate friendship with, she probably wouldn’t feel guilty at all. But she was thinking of him as a lover. And since the only man she had been intimate with was Thomas, she saw her passionate response to Hunter as unfaithfulness.
“I don’t intend to replace anyone in your life, Kari. I intend to make a place there for myself.”
“You said once that mind reading wasn’t one of your strong points. You lied.”
“That’s the only time I’ve lied to you.”
Both the subject and his ability to read her were disturbing. She turned back to her list. “Oreos or Nutter-Butters?”
“Why not both?”
“Remember that television camera and its cursed fifteen pounds? Oh, what the hell? Both.” She scratched across the paper with the pencil. “If Pinkie sends me to a fat farm, the television station can foot the bill. What else?”
“Tomato sauce, oregano, onion, bell pepper—”
He was peering over her shoulder at the list as she wrote. She turned to face him in the small space he allowed her between the cabinet and his equally unyielding frame. “What’s that for?”
“The spaghetti dinner I’m going to cook you one night.”
“You can cook?”
“Spaghetti. Can you cook?”
“Spaghetti,” she answered, laughing.
He shrugged. “So, we’ll eat a lot of spaghetti or eat out. Or overdose on Oreos and Nutter-Butters.”
They laughed together and finished their list. He insisted on taking his car. “I’m perfectly capable of driving on a mountain road,” she said as he unlocked the door for her.
“And I’m a male chauvinist. Shut up and get in.”
“Bossy.”
He drove as capa
bly as he did everything else. She liked to watch his hands on the padded leather steering wheel. Naughty mental images of those hands on her naked body flickered through her mind. The motor of the sleek sports car throbbed beneath her. She was throbbing all over.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, catching her eyes on him.
“I was just thinking how much you and your car are alike.”
He cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “Care to expound on that?”
She studied him, the lean symmetry of his body, the threat of a dangerous temper just beneath the surface, the power in every taut inch. “No. I don’t think I do,” she said saucily.
“Aw, come on.”
“Nope.”
“Then, I won’t tell you how sensational you look. I won’t tell you that until this morning I had a fairly good idea that your thighs would be just as perfect as your calves and ankles. Now I know for sure that they are.
“I won’t comment that your tush is even better in jeans than it is in a skirt. Or that I love the way your breasts looked under that T-shirt and the feel of them against my chest. Or that I like the color of your hair in sunlight, which is almost as pretty as it is in candlelight. Forget my even mentioning that your face is exquisite and as easy to read as a first-grade primer.
“Nor will I tell you that your eyes are the most bewitching pair I’ve ever gazed into. As for your mouth, suffice it to say, it has played a major role in my fantasies for months. Is there anything else I shouldn’t say?”
He swung the car into a parking lot and brought it to a jarring halt. He switched off the ignition and faced her. “Well?”
She swallowed. “No. I think that about covers all that you shouldn’t say.”
“One more thing.” He took her hand and met her eyes with his. “I’m glad to be here with you like this.” He smiled that heart-stopping smile that had convinced judges and swayed juries and seduced God knew how many women.