by Diana Palmer
“Don’t go to sleep,” he teased as he put the hair dryer down.
“I’m not.”
She felt his lips in her hair at the same moment she felt his hands go down over her shoulders and into the gap left by the robe.
If she’d been able to protest, that would have been the time to do it. But she hesitated, entranced by the feel of his hands so blatantly invading the robe, smoothing down over her high, taut breasts as if he had every right to touch her intimately whenever he felt like it.
Seconds later, the robe was gone, she was turned against him, his robe was on the floor and she was experiencing her first adult embrace without clothing.
She whimpered at the fierce pleasure of feeling his bare, hair-roughened chest against her naked breasts. Her nails bit into the huge muscles of his upper arms as she sucked in a harsh breath and tried to stay on her feet.
“You like that, do you?” he whispered at her lips. “I know something that’s even more exciting.”
He picked her up in his arms and started kissing her hungrily. She responded with no thought of denying him whatever he wanted.
He carried her to the bed, paused to whip the covers and the pillows out of the way, and placed her at the center of it. His hands went to the waistband of his boxer shorts, but he hesitated, grinding his teeth together as he looked at her nudity with aching need.
He managed to control his first impulse, which was to strip and bury himself in her. He eased onto the bed beside her, his chest pressing her down into the mattress while his mouth opened on her soft lips and pressed them wide apart.
“I’ve ached for this,” he ground out, moving his hands from her breasts down her hips to the softness inside of her thighs. “I’ve never wanted anything so much!”
She tried to speak, but one of his hands invaded her in the most intimate touch she’d ever experienced. Her eyes flew open and she gaped up at him.
“You’re old enough, Janie,” he whispered, moving his hand just enough to make her tense. “And I’ve waited as long as I can.”
As he spoke, he touched her delicately and when she protested, he eased down to cover her mouth with his. His fingers traced her, probed, explored her until she began to whimper and move with him. It was incredible. She was lying here, naked, in his bed, letting him explore her body as if it belonged to him. And she was...enjoying it. Glorying in it. Her back arched and she moaned as he found a pressure and a rhythm that lifted her off the bed on a wave of pleasure.
One of his long, powerful legs hooked over one of hers. She felt him at her hip, aroused and not hiding it. Through the thin silk, she was as aware of him as if he’d been naked.
“Touch me,” he groaned. “Don’t make me do it all. Help me.”
She didn’t understand what he wanted. Her hands went to his chest and began to draw through the thick hair there.
“No, baby,” he whispered into her mouth. He caught one of her hands and tugged it down to the shorts he was wearing. “Don’t be afraid. It’s all right.”
He coaxed her hand onto that part of him that was blatantly male. She gasped. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes, but he wouldn’t let her hand withdraw. He spread her fingers against him, grimacing as the waves of pleasure hit him and closed his eyes on a shudder.
His reaction fascinated her. She knew so little. “Does it...hurt?”
“What?” he asked huskily. “Your hand, or what it’s doing?”
“Both. Either.”
He pressed her hand closer, looking down. “Look,” he whispered, coaxing her eyes to follow his. It was intimate. But not intimate enough for him.
“Don’t panic, baby,” he whispered, levering onto his back. He ripped off the shorts and tossed them onto the carpet. He rolled onto his side and caught one of her hands, insistent now, drawing it to him.
She made a sound as she looked, for the first time, at an aroused male without a thing to conceal him except her hand.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he whispered roughly. “I wouldn’t want any other woman to see me like this.”
“You wouldn’t?”
He shook his head. It was difficult not to lose control. But he eased her fingers back to him and held them there. “I’m vulnerable.”
Her eyes brightened. “Oh.” She hadn’t considered that he was as helpless as she was to resist the pleasure of what they were doing.
His own hand went back to her body. He touched her, as she was touching him, and he smiled at her fascination.
She couldn’t believe it was happening at all. She stared up at him with all her untried longings in her eyes, on her rapt face. She belonged to him. He belonged to her. It was incredible.
“Are you going to?” she whispered.
He kissed her eyelids lazily. “Going to what?”
“Take me,” she whispered back.
He chuckled, deep in his throat. “What a primitive description. It’s a mutual thing, you know. Wouldn’t you take me, as well?”
Her eyes widened. “I suppose I would,” she conceded. She stiffened and shivered. “Oh!”
His eyes darkened. There was no more humor on his face as his touch became slowly invasive. “Will you let me satisfy you?” he asked.
“I don’t...understand.”
“I know. That’s what makes it so delicious.” He bent slowly, but not to her mouth. His lips hovered just above her wide nipple. “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever done with a woman,” he whispered. His lips parted. “I want nothing, except to please you.”
His mouth went down over the taut nipple in a slow, exquisite motion that eventually all but swallowed her breast. She felt his tongue moving against the nipple, felt the faint suction of his mouth. All the while, his hand was becoming more insistent, and far more intimate, on her body. He felt her acceptance, even as she opened her legs for him and began to moan rhythmically with every movement of his hands.
“Yes,” he whispered against her breast when he felt the pulsing of her body. “Let me, baby.” He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes as she moaned piteously.
She was pulsating. She felt her body clench. She was slowly drifting up into a glorious, rhythmic heat that filled her veins, her arteries, the very cells of her body with exquisite pleasure. She’d never dreamed there was such pleasure.
“Janie, touch me, here,” he whispered unsteadily.
She felt his hand curling around her fingers, teaching her, insistent, his breath jerky and violent as he twisted against her.
“Baby,” he choked, kissing her hungrily. “Baby, baby!”
He moved, his big body levering slowly between her long legs. He knelt over her, his eyes wild, his body shuddering, powerfully male, and she looked up at him with total submission, still shivering from the taste of pleasure he’d already given her. It would be explosive, ecstatic. She could barely breathe for the anticipation. She was lost. He was going to have her now. She loved him. She was going to give herself. There was nothing that could stop them, nothing in all the world!
“Mr. Hart! Oh, Mr. Hart! Are you in here?”
Leo stiffened, his body kneeling between her thighs, his powerful hands clenching on them. He looked blindly down into her wide, dazed eyes. He shuddered violently and his eyes closed on a harsh muffled curse.
He threw himself onto the bed beside her, on his belly. He couldn’t stop shaking. He gasped at a jerky breath and clutched the sheet beside his head as he fought for control.
“Mr. Hart!” the voice came again.
He suddenly remembered that he hadn’t locked the bedroom door, and the cowboy didn’t know that he wasn’t alone. Even as he thought it, he heard the doorknob turn. “Open that door...and you’re fired!” he shouted hoarsely. Beside him, Janie actually gasped as she belatedly realized what was
about to happen.
The doorknob was released at once. “Sorry, sir, but I need you to come out here and look at this bull. I think there’s something wrong with him, Mr. Hart! We got him loaded into one of the trailers and put him in the barn, but...”
“Call the vet!” he shouted. “I’ll be there directly!”
“Yes, sir!”
Footsteps went back down the carpeted hall. Leo lifted his head. Beside him, Janie looked as shattered as he felt. Tears were swimming in her eyes.
He groaned softly, and pulled her to him, gently. “It’s all right,” he whispered, kissing her eyelids shut. “Don’t cry, baby. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing!” she choked.
His hands smoothed down the long line of her back. “Almost nothing,” he murmured dryly.
She was horrified, not only at her own behavior, but at what had almost happened. “If he hadn’t called to you,” she began in a high-pitched whisper.
His hands tangled in her long hair and he brought her mouth under his, tenderly. He nibbled her upper lip. “Yes, I know,” he replied gently. “But he did.” He pulled away from her and got to his feet, stretching hugely, facing her. He watched her try not to look at him with amused indulgence. But eventually, she couldn’t resist it. Her eyes were huge, shocked...delighted.
“Now, when we compare notes, you’ll have ammunition,” he teased.
She flushed and averted her eyes, belatedly noticing that she wasn’t wearing clothes, either. She tugged the sheet up over her breasts, but it was difficult to feel regrets when she looked at him.
He was smiling. His eyes were soft, tender. He looked down at what he could see of her body above the sheet with pride, loving the faint love marks on her breasts that his mouth had made.
“Greenhorn,” he chided at her scarlet blush. “Well, you know a lot more about men now than you did this morning, don’t you?”
She swallowed hard. Her eyes slid down him. She didn’t look away, but she was very flushed, and not only because of what she was seeing. Her body throbbed in the most delicious way.
“I think I’d better take you home. Now,” he added with a rueful chuckle. “From this point on, it only gets worse.”
He was still passionately aroused. He wondered if she realized what it meant. He chuckled at her lack of comprehension. “I could have you three times and I’d still be like this,” he said huskily. “I’m not easily satisfied.”
She shivered as she looked at him, her body yielded, submissive.
“You want to, don’t you?” he asked quietly, reading her expression. “So do I. More than you know. But we’re not going that far together tonight. You’ve had enough trauma for a Friday night.”
He caught her hand and pulled her up, free of the sheet and open to his eyes as he led her back into the bathroom. He turned on the shower and climbed in with her, bathing both of them quickly and efficiently, to her raging embarrassment.
He dried her and then himself before he put his shorts back on and left her to get her things. He’d washed them while she was in the shower the first time and put them in the dryer. They were clean and sweet-smelling, and the bloodstains were gone.
But when she went to take them from him, he shook his head. “One of the perks,” he said softly. “I get to dress you.”
And he did, completely. Then he led her to the dresser, and ran his own brush through her long, soft hair, easing it back from her face. The look in his eyes was new, fascinating, incomprehensible. She looked back at him with awe.
“Now you know something about what sex feels like, even though you’re still very much a virgin,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you won’t be afraid of the real thing anymore, when it happens, will you?”
She shook her head, dazed.
He put the brush down and framed her face in his big, lean hands. He wasn’t smiling. “You belong to me now,” he said huskily. “I belong to you. Don’t agonize over what you let me do to you tonight. It’s as natural as breathing. Don’t lie awake feeling shame or embarrassment. You saw me as helpless as I saw you. There won’t be any jokes about it, any gossiping about it. I’ll never tell another living soul what you let me do.”
She relaxed. She hadn’t really known what to expect. But he sounded more solemn than he’d ever been. He was looking at her with a strange expression.
“Are you sorry?” she asked in a hushed whisper.
“No,” he replied quietly. “It was unavoidable. I was afraid for you tonight. I couldn’t stop Clark. Neither could Harley. Until Grier walked in, I thought you’d had it. What happened in here was a symptom of the fear, that’s all. I wanted to hold you, make you part of me.” He drew in a shaky breath and actually shivered. “I wanted to go right inside you, Janie,” he whispered bluntly. “But we’ll save that pleasure for the right time and place. This isn’t it.”
She colored and averted her eyes.
He turned her face back to his. “Meanwhile,” he said slowly, searching her eyes, “we’ll have no more secrets, of any kind, between us.”
She stood quietly against him, watching his face. “Nobody’s seen me without my clothes since I was a little kid,” she whispered, as if it were a fearful secret.
“Not that many women have seen me without mine,” he replied unexpectedly. He smiled tenderly.
Her eyebrows arched.
“Shocked?” he mused, moving away to pull clothes out of his closet and socks out of his drawers. He sat down to pull on the socks, glancing at her wryly. “I’m not a playboy. I’m not without experience, but there was always a limit I wouldn’t cross with women I only knew slightly. It gives people power over you when they know intimate things about you.”
“Yes,” she said, moving to sit beside him on the bed, with her hands folded in her lap. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
She smiled. “For making it feel all right. That I...let you touch me that way, I mean.”
He finished pulling on his socks and tilted her face up to his. He kissed her softly. “I won’t ever touch another woman like that,” he whispered into her mouth. “It would be like committing adultery, after what we did on this bed.”
Her heart flew up into the clouds. Her wide, fascinated eyes searched his. “Really?”
He chuckled. “Are you anxious to rush out and experiment with another man?”
She shook her head.
“Why?”
She smiled shyly. “It would be like committing adultery,” she repeated what he’d said.
He stood up and looked down at her with possession. “It was a near thing,” he murmured. “I don’t know whether to punch that cowboy or give him a raise for interrupting us. I lost it, in those last few seconds. I couldn’t have stopped.”
“Neither could I.” She lifted her mouth for his soft kiss. She searched his eyes, remembering what he’d told her. “But the books say a man can only do it once,” she blurted out, “and then he has to rest.”
He laughed softly. “I know. But a handful of men can go all night. I’m one of them.”
“Oh!”
He pulled up his slacks and fastened them before he shouldered into a knit shirt. He turned back to her, smoothing his disheveled hair. “I was contemplating even much more explosive pleasures when someone started shouting my name.”
This was interesting. “More explosive pleasures?” she prompted.
He drew her up against him and held her close. “What we did and what we didn’t do, is the difference between licking an ice-cream cone and eating a banana split,” he teased. “What you had was only a small taste of what we can have together.”
“Wow,” she said softly.
“Wow,” he echoed, bending to kiss her hungrily. He sighed into her mouth. “I was almost willing to risk getting you pregnan
t, I was so far gone.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “How do you feel about kids, Janie?”
“I love children,” she said honestly. “How about you?”
“Me, too. I’m beginning to rethink my position on having them.” His lean hand touched her belly. “You’ve got nice wide hips,” he commented, testing them.
She felt odd. Her body seemed to contract. She searched his eyes because she didn’t understand what was happening to her.
“You can tell Shea’s you’re through,” he said abruptly. “I’m not risking you again. If we can’t keep Clark in jail for the foreseeable future, we have to make plans to keep you safe.”
Her lips parted. She’d all but forgotten her horrible experience. She touched her throat and felt again the prick of the knife. “You said he was vindictive.”
“He’ll have to get through me,” he said. “And with a gun, I’m every bit his equal,” he added.
She reached up and touched his hard mouth. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he seconded. His face twisted. “Baby, you are the very breath in my body,” he whispered, and reached for her.
She felt boneless as he kissed her with such passion and fire that she trembled.
“I wish I didn’t have to take you home,” he groaned at her lips. “I want to make love to you completely. I want to lie against you and over you, and inside you!”
She moaned at his mouth as it became deep and insistent, devouring her parted lips.
He was shivering. He had to drag his mouth away from hers. He looked shattered. He touched her long hair with a hand that had a faint tremor. “Amazing,” he whispered gruffly. “That I couldn’t see it, before it happened.”
“See what?” she asked drowsily.
His eyes fell to her swollen, parted lips. “Never mind,” he whispered. He bent and kissed her with breathless tenderness. “I’m taking you home. Then I’ll see about my bull. Tomorrow morning, I’ll come and get you and we’ll see about swearing out more warrants against Clark.”
“You don’t think Clark will get out on bond?” she asked worriedly.