Remember Summer

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Silently thanking Cord for the gift, she raised his hand to her mouth and brushed her lips over his fingers. The gesture was so natural that she didn’t realize what she was doing until she had done it.

  His thumb moved slowly over her lips, telling her how much he had enjoyed the spontaneous caress.

  “Now I know how Dev feels after I wash and groom and polish him and then ride him dancing to the starting gate,” she said dreamily. “Everything is ahead, anything is possible.”

  Cord’s thumb traced her cheekbone and the hollow beneath it before settling on the corner of her mouth. When he tilted her face, her lips parted and her arms moved to circle his waist, silently welcoming the coming embrace.

  Even though his breathing thickened with the sudden, urgent demands of his body, he didn’t stop thinking. Swiftly, gently, he captured her hands and kissed each palm. Then he put her arms around his neck. He didn’t want her to bump into the gun holstered in the small of his back.

  At the beginning of the evening, she had been deeply wary of him. He didn’t know why, but he knew fear was there. Sensing fear was his business. He had thought about it during the drive to the planetarium. By the time he pulled into the parking lot, he had decided that her fear had as much to do with her past as with his present job.

  But he didn’t want to remind her of either just now. He wanted Raine the way she was at this instant, warm and supple, hungry and very female in his arms. When her fingers rubbed over his neck and scalp, he made a low sound of pleasure and arched beneath her touch like a great black-haired cat.

  His uninhibited response swept through her like fire, taking her breath. She stood on tiptoe, but still she couldn’t reach his mouth to kiss him. Her fingers clenched in the rough silk of his hair. Her nails raked not quite gently over his scalp. She wanted him to lower his head and kiss her, and she wanted it now.

  He laughed and caught her bottom lip between his teeth. His hard tongue teased her while he slowly devoured her soft flesh. A small sound of pleasure and desire rippled out of her. It made him forget that he was going to stop with a single, teasing kiss. His hands went from her face to her shoulders and down her spine to her hips. Then his arms tightened and he molded her to the hungry length of his body.

  When he felt her shudder of response, he groaned softly and cupped the resilient warmth of her hips in his hands. She made a startled sound and tried to step back, only to find herself held by the teeth gently gripping her bottom lip. The instant she discovered that she was the prisoner of his sensual vise, he released her.

  Off-balance, she clung to the hard support of his upper arms, staring into his ice-blue eyes. Only they weren’t icy now, but smoldering with passion, a silver blue hot enough to burn.

  And the proof of his hunger was hard against her belly. When she would have withdrawn, he held her for an instant. Then he released her. Slowly.

  “You tempt me,” he said in a low voice. “Unbearably.”

  “I don’t mean—”

  “I know,” he cut in. “God, I know.”

  Slowly, almost helplessly, he bent his head and licked her lips with tiny catlike strokes.

  The primitive caress made liquid fire run and gather deep inside her. Lost in a swirl of sensation, she said his name, a name he stole from her tongue as he claimed the warm territory of her mouth for his own.

  In a heartbeat the kiss went from tender to ravenous. They fought to get closer to each other. His hands kneaded down her spine to her hips, touching each feminine curve, holding her against the blunt heat and hard ridge of his erection. His fingers caressed the deep crease between her buttocks, then slid lower, seeking the smooth curve of her inner thighs, rocking her against his rigid flesh.

  This time she didn’t withdraw at the intimacy of feeling his erection pressed against her, stroking her, making her dizzy with unfamiliar needs. Her arms locked around his neck and she arched into him, rubbing against him in turn, wanting only to be closer and then closer still.

  Hungry for more, he sank his fingers into her before he forced himself to slowly release the taut flesh of her hips. Restlessly his hands swept back up to her shoulders and then down her arms to her waist, devouring the feminine curves of her body. Fingers spread wide, heartbeat speeding, he traced the line of her ribs beneath the thin silk.

  Though she expected it, the brush of his thumbs over her nipples made her gasp at the stark hunger that leaped inside her. He murmured against her lips, words without meaning except as another kind of caress, the dark velvet of his voice both soothing and inciting her.

  Delicately, his teeth closed over her ear. He traced its shape with the hardened tip of his tongue, then thrust into her with slow, deep, thorough strokes that told her exactly what to expect if she opened herself to him, welcoming him into the sultry velvet center of her body.

  He knew just how good it would be.

  Eyes closed, letting the world fall away, his fingers probed beneath the chestnut coils of her hair until he felt the heat of her scalp. Then he held her close and hard while his tongue claimed her mouth, telling her all over again how thoroughly he would love her. He smoothed one hand over her throat, finding and savoring the wild race of her pulse. It made him want to shout with triumph. Never had a woman responded like this to him, as swift and hot as his own hunger.

  And never had his hunger been this great. With hands as hot as his own breath, his own blood, he slid into the deep neckline of her dress, searching beneath silk until her naked breasts pushed against his palms.

  Part of Raine knew it was too much, too fast; she should protest, but the only sound she made was a ragged moan of pleasure as Cord’s thumbs circled her nipples. Taut, full, aching with a hunger she had never known before, she surrendered herself to the endless sensuality of his touch.

  He brushed aside the fold of silk covering one breast and bent down. Even before the coolness of the night air registered against her flushed skin, a searing pleasure shot through her. His teeth and tongue shaped her hungrily, licking and nipping until she was as hard as he was, as hot, as wild. Then he took her into his mouth and suckled her with a fierce restraint that made her cry out, defenseless against the reckless sexuality he could summon from her depths.

  She had never suspected herself capable of such headlong passion. She had no way to fight it. She didn’t even want to. Eyes closed, trembling, she clung to him for balance and let her own unexpected hunger take over.

  He shuddered when her hips moved against him with open invitation. He told himself he had to stop now, while he still could. He was at flash point with a woman he should never have touched, but here he was teetering on the brink of burying himself in her.

  He had no right to seduce her into giving him a place at the center of her fire. He knew it, even if she didn’t. She was the queen and he was the soldier destined to guard the castle rather than warm himself at the fire.

  That was what his common sense said, but it was a small voice crying in a storm of passion and hunger and something more, emotions more gentle and complex and vastly more consuming than lust. He wanted to protect and ravish her at the same time, to keep her from harm and burn her to her soul the way he was being burned, to die and be reborn in her arms and she in his.

  Yet he had no right.

  It wasn’t her wealth or her family that defeated him. It was her vulnerability. As a child she had been a casualty in the undeclared war that was her father’s life.

  It would be no different with Cord.

  He would wound her, and in wounding her, destroy himself. Loving her would tear him apart. Two irreconcilable needs, duty and love locked in a death spiral until love was dead and duty was ashes. He had seen it happen to too many of his friends, their wives burned out, haunted, cynical. He couldn’t do that to Raine, who trusted him more than she knew. She was too precious to risk breaking.

  She was fire in a world of ice.

  It took all of Cord’s fierce discipline to gently disengage himself fro
m Raine’s clinging warmth. He held her against his chest as he had in the car, rocking slowly, soothing both of them in the only way he would allow. When he would have ended even that undemanding embrace, she made a sound of protest and edged closer to him again.

  “It’s late,” he said.

  But his arms tightened around her even as he spoke. He closed his eyes, savoring her warmth and fragrance. She stirred against him, her palms moving slowly over the silk of his shirt, caressing him.

  “You have a curfew,” he said, when all he wanted to do was take her down to the ground and discover how much he had been missing before he found her.

  “Captain Jon told me not to worry. He thinks I work too hard anyway.”

  “Do you?”

  Her shoulders lifted beneath his hands in a shrug. “I love my work. But . . .”

  “But?” His fingers kneaded lightly, smoothing away the tension he felt returning to her neck and back.

  “But right now,” she said, turning her face up to him, “I don’t want to go back to that world. Not yet. I’ve never felt quite like this.”

  He looked down into her wide hazel eyes and asked the question he had no right to ask, the very question he couldn’t keep himself from asking. “How do you feel?”

  “New. No past but tonight. No future farther away than the next instant when you’ll touch me, teaching me something about myself I never knew.”

  Her honesty was more devastating and more arousing than an experienced lover’s knowing caress. She was an invitation he couldn’t refuse and couldn’t accept and couldn’t ignore.

  “Raine,” he whispered, his voice thick with restraint and need, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “Does it matter?” Her hands lifted to his face, then tugged his head down to her lips. “You know enough for both of us.”

  “That’s the problem,” he said roughly.

  He saw the instant of realization hit her, the stillness of shock. Embarrassment stained her cheeks. One moment she was pliant in his arms. The next she twisted free with the speed of the highly trained athlete she was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a strained voice. “That was incredibly stupid of me.”

  She stepped back on legs that felt weak. Silently, she called herself names. Stupid was the least of them. Just because Cord Elliot was the first man in her life who made her ache with hunger, that didn’t automatically mean he felt the same way. She had turned down men in the past. It was only logical that one would turn her down.

  Especially a man like Cord. An experienced man would want an equally skilled lover. When it came to sex, she just wasn’t any good. Her last lover had made that painfully clear.

  “Raine, there’s—” Cord began

  “You’re right, of course,” she said, cutting across whatever sophisticated, kind, experienced explanation he was going to offer. She didn’t want to hear it. She had heard the only words that mattered.

  He didn’t want her.

  “I do have a curfew hanging over me,” she said. “But thanks for the guided tour. I’ll take a cab back to Santa Anita.”

  “Cabs are scarce in L.A.”

  “Then I’ll call up a limousine. The place is crawling with them. Good-bye, Cord.”

  Even before the words were out of her mouth, she turned her back on him. Blindly she began hurrying along the path, knowing only that she had to get away from the man who didn’t want her nearly as much as she wanted him. She no longer saw the dazzle of city lights or the shadow dance of black trees and warm wind. She saw nothing but her own humiliation.

  Not that he had intended to humiliate her, she admitted bitterly. He had been a gentleman until she had refused to take a hint. If he had been blunt, it was only because there had been no other way to get through to her.

  She increased her pace, ignoring the wobble of her high heels. The sandals weren’t made for speed or distance, but right now she desperately wanted both. She could hear Cord coming closer, closing the space between them with long, determined strides.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said quietly from behind her.

  Like bloody hell you will, Raine thought savagely.

  With two quick swipes she tore off her sandals. An instant later she was running flat out down the path, confident that she would quickly leave him behind. Part of her Olympic training involved running distances up to five kilometers. She had never particularly cared for the required exercise, but she appreciated the results.

  Especially tonight.

  Tonight she welcomed the physical release of running, the freedom of racing away from the man who didn’t really want her. Anger and humiliation became adrenaline coursing through her, feeding her desire to run. Part of her realized that she was heading away from the planetarium, into the black recesses of the huge park. She didn’t care. It felt too good to run.

  When Cord realized that Raine was going to keep on running, he gave chase without even thinking about it. A hunter’s adrenaline coursed through him. Frustration goaded him.

  He had never wanted her more than he did right now.

  She ran lightly, silently, a green flame racing among the shadows and pools of light along the path, wildfire running free in the night. The coils of hair he had loosened with his fingers had come wholly undone. Hair streamed behind her like a flag. With each flashing stride, jade-green silk flowed in dark caress up her thighs.

  She was faster than he had expected. Stronger, too. But her body hadn’t been honed in the same life-or-death kind of training that his had.

  One instant Raine was running free. In the next, something hard clamped onto her arm, spinning her around until she slammed into a hard wall.

  Even as she realized that the wall was Cord, he surrounded her. One of his hands tangled deeply in her hair, chaining her. His arms closed hard around her, crushing any thought of escape. He invaded her mouth, forcing her to accept the intimacy of his tongue thrusting into her softness while he held her immobile, consolidating his victory.

  The transition between freedom and capture was so swift, so stunning, that for a time she couldn’t have fought even if he had permitted her to. When she finally tried, he easily countered her untrained struggles. Her helplessness would have frightened her if she hadn’t sensed that it was hunger rather than a desire to punish her that was driving him.

  Whatever she had thought back on the overlook, he wanted her now with an honesty and an intensity that was more shattering than any words, any touch could have been.

  Her body changed beneath his hands, softening and flowing over his hard male surfaces, surrendering what he had already taken. Her response mocked the very idea of victory or defeat, flight or capture, invasion or surrender.

  She felt the shudder of desire rip through him, felt as much as heard the groan that began deep in his chest, felt and was inflamed by the sinuous movement of his hips as he lifted her. Then he let her slide down his body, silently telling her exactly how much he desired her.

  “I thought you didn’t want me,” she whispered, when he finally freed her mouth.

  He laughed once, harshly. “Kiss me.” His eyes looked hungrily at her mouth as he lowered his head again. “I want to feel your tongue rubbing over mine. Kiss me.”

  She opened her lips, inviting the sweetness and heat of his mouth even as she sought his tongue, demanded it. She kissed him the way he had kissed her, nothing held back. Hunger raged through her with each stab of flesh sliding hotly against flesh. She pushed inside his jacket, seeking the hard, coiling male strength of him. Her fingers searched beneath his tie, then slid boldly into the opening between buttons on his shirt. Even as her fingertips found his skin, his hands cupped her breasts beneath the folds of green silk.

  Cord drank the broken sound Raine made when he stroked her nipples until they were hard peaks begging to be kissed. His body was rigid, shaking, straining against the leash of clothes. Desperately needing what he shouldn’t have and couldn’t take, he raked his open m
outh down her neck. He had just enough restraint left not to leave loving marks on her, staking out her smooth flesh as his own.

  But he wanted to. He wanted to discover and claim every bit of her softness and feminine hunger, to feed and then to possess the heat inside her, to spend the night listening to the cries pouring out of her as she burned alive in her own fire.

  With a groan, he kneaded her hips, loving the satin flex and slide of muscle when she moved against him. Beneath his jacket, a rider’s strong hands stroked around his body, encircling him, demanding that he come even closer. He lifted her against his heavy arousal, dragging her closer until all that held them apart was a few layers of cloth.

  She gave a low, reckless cry and abandoned herself to the fire. Her head fell back as she answered with a swift movement of her hips, then another. He felt the tension and hot need in her, a sultry mirror of his own desire. Her nails raked down his spine until they found the gun nestled in the small of his back.

  She went utterly still. Her withdrawal from him couldn’t have been more complete if she had turned and run again.

  “I wouldn’t have expected Blue’s daughter to be afraid of a holstered gun,” Cord said in a husky voice, “but if it bothers you that much, I’ll take it off.”

  “It’s not that.” She felt numb and foolish and totally off-balance. But she wouldn’t reach for him this time. She would find her balance on her own, because she remembered now. “I’d forgotten what you were.”

  “What I am is a man.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was distant and sad at the same time.

  One of her hands slid beneath his jacket once again. This time she continued down to his waistline until she felt the hard case of the electronic pager fastened to his belt.

  “You’re a man who has clothes specially tailored to conceal the bulges of beeper and gun,” Raine said. “Or is that your spare ammunition clip?”

  “No,” he said, his voice even. “That’s on my right side.”

  She didn’t bother to verify it. There was no need. The knowledge chilled her. She rubbed her hands over her arms, trying to warm herself.