He took the glass and tossed back the drink without so much as a wince or grimace. He held on to the glass. “Just bring the bottle, Sarah-Jane.”
She’d never seen anyone look as grim. “Wyatt, you don’t drink. Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong, instead?”
“I never said I didn’t drink. I said I didn’t bother trying to keep up with my brothers.” When she didn’t go to get the bottle, he got up, set her out of his path, and went into the kitchen himself.
She trailed after him. “What’s happened? You came here.” Even after nearly a week of silence from him, he’d come. “Please,” she said huskily. “Tell me what I can do to help.”
He filled the glass halfway, and set the bottle down with a thump. He looked into the whiskey, then left it on the table and turned to face her. “You can do this.” His voice was deep. Rough. The hands he set on her shoulders to pull her to him were tense. And his mouth that covered hers was urgent. “Open your mouth, sweet Sarah-Jane.”
Her head reeled as if she’d been the one to throw back a few shots of whiskey. She mindlessly opened her mouth, meeting his marauding tongue with her own and he groaned, pulling her nearly onto her toes as he pulled her closer. Tighter. His fingers threaded through her hair, wrapping in it, gently tugging, urging her chin up even higher, her head back even farther. He dragged his mouth from hers, ran it down her jaw, her throat.
Her fingers curled, only to realize that she’d buried them in his thick, damp hair. “Wyatt.” If she’d ever possessed a coherent thought, the memory of it was becoming increasingly dim.
“I want you.” His voice sounded thick. “I’ve always wanted you.”
Then where have you been?
The question swirled in her mind, but it seemed to get lost somewhere in the heat of his mouth on hers.
“Where’s your roommate?”
Felicity, Sarah-Jane remembered dimly. “Trade show. She won’t be in until late.”
“Good.” He abruptly lifted her around the waist right off the ground, ignoring the protesting gasp she made and slid his hands beneath her khaki-covered thighs, urging them around his hips. “Bedroom.” His breath was harsh against her ear. “Where?”
She could hardly speak past her heart since it had shot straight up into her throat. “Upstairs. To the right.”
He strode toward the stairs, but even then he didn’t put her down. Just tucked her head against his shoulder to keep her from knocking into anything. Before she could adjust to any of it, they were inside her bedroom and he was following her down right there onto the center of her thick fisherman knit bedspread. She could feel the moisture from his shirt pressing through her white blouse, but beyond that, could feel the warmth of him burning through. She worked her fingers between them, fumbling with buttons, pushing, tugging, until she could reach beyond the damp linen to the man beneath.
She felt his muscles jump and was thrilled. But when her fingertips followed the trail of his chest hair downward, where it narrowed, turned silkier, bisecting the ridges on his abdomen, he let out a muffled curse and circled her wrists in one hand, pulling them away, pressing them gently against the mattress above her head. “Not so fast.” His voice was deep, rasping over her nerve endings as exquisitely as the fingertips he drew down the inside of her arm, over her shoulder and between her breasts until he reached the first button of her blouse.
Her fingers curled, but she felt herself melting into the bed beneath her, completely immobile as he deftly flicked each button free before spreading the white fabric wide, as if he were unwrapping a gift. Then his hands moved, sliding around her waist. His thumbs pressed together just above her navel, his fingers splayed on either side of the waist, then his palms swept inward, over her belly, up to cup her breasts. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze white-hot as he shaped his fingers around her. Explored. Teased. Touching everywhere except the centers that pulled together so tightly beneath the sheer mesh covering them that they were nearly painful.
“Don’t tease me,” she begged.
He pressed his mouth to her temple. Her cheek. Her ear. “How am I teasing you?”
She shifted against him restlessly. “You know exactly how,” she accused thickly. His fingertips were gliding back and forth along the underwire of her bra. “Touch me.”
His gaze caught hers. His mouth hovered above hers. His fingers slid yet again along the band of her bra. “Where?”
She groaned. “You know where.”
“Show me,” he murmured against her lips. The long fingers trapping her wrists above her head disappeared.
She swallowed. Need was cramping through her, making her desperate. She shakily lowered her hands to her breasts. “Here.”
He stroked the top curves of her breasts, well above the scalloped edges of the sheer cups. “Here?”
She wanted to gnash her teeth. She caught his teasing fingers in hers and dragged them over her nipples. It was like lighting a fuse straight to her center. She shuddered. Wyatt groaned. Teasing evidently forgotten, he found the center clasp of her bra and set it free. The sheer cups sprang apart, still molding her breasts within them, and he lowered his mouth to the valley between.
She pressed her head back into the mattress, only to jerk forward when his lips moved again and the heat of his tongue slicked over one crest, then the other. She caught his head in her hands, not sure whether she was trying to hold him to her, or push him away. And all she did was twist her fingers through the cool, damp strands of hair, and groan his name, then jerk a little when she felt the distinct edge of his teeth gently rasping against her nipple.
She was so aroused she could hardly bear it. But then he levered off her, giving those tightening quakes inside her a respite even while his gaze pinned her in place as he unzipped her khaki pants and slowly tugged them down her hips, her thighs. Pushed them right past her curling toes.
She sucked in her bottom lip, fighting the urge to grab a handful of bedspread and yank it over her. But he breathed her name, and just that easily, the urge to hide herself passed. And when she realized that the fingers he was slowly sliding beneath the narrow mesh bands holding the triangles of her panties together weren’t steady, either, the shakiness inside her eased, too, leaving only that desperate, liquid ache in its wake.
She could hear her own harsh breath in the silent room as he pulled her panties away. And then his hand returned, gliding over her thigh, sliding inward, inching upward.
She gasped when his fingers grazed over her. Felt flushed to the roots of her hair at the slickness he found.
He just closed his eyes as if on a prayer, and murmured her name again. Then he suddenly moved, yanking off his shirt and shucking his jeans and boxers in one fell swoop. She knew she was staring but couldn’t look away as he tore open the packet he grabbed from his pocket and sheathed himself. And then she gasped again when he came down on her once more.
“I can’t wait.” His breath burned against her ear just as surely as the hands he slid under her hips, tilting her to him. “I just can’t, Sarah-Jane. Please don’t let me hurt you.”
“You’ll only hurt me if you stop.” Her mouth opened wide against his chest, her tongue tasting the saltiness of him, and then he shifted, taking her in one swift stroke.
She cried out at the startling, sheer fullness of it, and he stiffened, started to pull back, but she twined her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his. “Don’t,” she begged hoarsely. “Don’t leave me.”
His arm curled around the top of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. His mouth found hers in a searing kiss.
And then slowly, so slowly that he would have stolen her heart all over again if he didn’t already have it, he moved again.
Gently rocking. Coaxing. Filling. Almost retreating. Then returning again. Over and over until her nerve endings were screaming and she could feel him inside every pore, every cell. And when she wasn’t sure she could survive the pleasure a moment longer, he caught her legs, lifting
them higher around him, angled deeper, and proved to her that she could more than survive it. Then she heard him groan, heard her own name on his lips as he surged even deeper, and she gloried in it, crying out insensibly as she exploded around the home he’d found in the very heart of her, shattering into a million points of exquisite...perfect...light.
Chapter Eleven
It was a long time before either one of them had the strength to move. But eventually Wyatt levered off her enough that she wasn’t suffocated beneath him, before finally rolling away. He tugged the bedspread over Sarah-Jane and brushed his lips over hers. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured.
She wanted to smile. Where would she go? She didn’t have a solid bone left in her body.
She realized something was poking her in the back and shifted around until she’d found the culprit. Her utterly pretty bra. She tossed it onto the floor.
She’d be forever grateful to Felicity for the night she’d dragged her to Charlene’s. If not for her, she’d have been wearing plain cotton panties and a decidedly ugly bra.
Wyatt returned, seeming a whole lot more comfortable with his brazen nudity than she knew she could ever be. Not that that kept her gaze from latching on to him as soon as he appeared and closed the bedroom door behind him.
The corner of his lips crooked upward in a wry curl. “Look at me like that in another half hour,” he suggested.
“Half hour? That’s all it takes?”
She loved the dusky color that rose up his throat.
She loved the soft laugh that he gave even more.
And she loved him most of all. She still wasn’t sure how she’d managed to hold back the words when he’d been inside her. They’d been blasting inside her head.
“Maybe an hour,” he allowed. He caught the knitted bedspread in his hands and tugged until she let it go, and pulled it away from her. “Your work, I suppose?”
He meant the thick, off-white bedspread of course, though he wasn’t looking at it, but at her. “Yes.”
“Nice.” He smiled slowly. And even satiated nearly to the point of numbness, she felt warmth bloom inside her.
He climbed onto the bed, stretching out nearly from one corner to the opposite, and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her back against him. He crooked his thigh against the back of hers, neatly scooting her rear end exactly where he seemed to want it. His splayed hand against her belly stretched from the undercurves of her breasts to well below her navel.
Warmth was most assuredly blooming.
She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his arm beneath her. She wanted his fingers to go both higher, and lower, and the depth of her wantonness shocked her. “Do you want to tell me what this was all about now?”
His fingers slid almost lazily upward. “Why can’t you believe it’s about this?” His thumb rubbed over her, around and around, breathing renewed life into her sensitized nipple.
She shivered, wondering how it was that he could touch her there, and yet she could feel it deep down inside her. “I wish I could.”
He exhaled. She felt the brush of his hair as he angled his head to kiss the top of her shoulder. “My father didn’t sell off JMF,” he finally murmured.
She turned her head to look up at him. “Why do I have the feeling that’s not a good thing, after all?” It should have been, but Wyatt was not wearing the expression she’d have expected.
He shifted. Bent his elbow and propped his head on his hand. She rolled onto her back, watching him, and the way he looked at her breasts made her flesh go as tight as if he were still touching her. “Wyatt?”
His gaze slid up to meet hers. “He gave away half the company shares.”
“Gave!”
“To some woman none of us have ever heard of.”
She absorbed that. “How’d you find out?”
His lips twisted. “Read the press release. Probably about the same time the media outlets were.”
“Oh, Wyatt.” Dismay filled her. No wonder he’d been in such a state. “I’m so sorry.”
“He’s gotta be having an affair with her. Or she’s got one helluva hold over him about something else.”
“What do you mean? Like blackmail? That’s a horrifying thought.”
“Stranger things have been known to happen to a Fortune.”
“What does your mother say about it?”
He grimaced. “She didn’t know about his plan to sell until we told her. I doubt he kept her in the loop on this. I sure in hell don’t want to be the one breaking the news that her husband is a cheat, as well.”
“If he’s being blackmailed, maybe he’s not cheating,” she suggested weakly.
“Is it some flaw in your DNA that causes you to go hunting for excuses for people?”
“Not an excuse,” she countered. “Just...a reasonable explanation. And I hardly consider it a flaw.” At the look he gave her, she turned on to her side and pushed up on her elbow, mirroring his position. “Seriously. The whole point of blackmail is to push someone unwilling into a desired action by threatening to expose some sort of secret if they refuse. If that’s the case, your dad might not be willingly giving away anything. You’ve said he’s steadfastly refused to explain himself. Right now, the only thing you do know is the end result. The reasons that led to that result are completely unknown.”
“You’re sounding like Shane again. He keeps looking for a reasonable explanation, too.” His expression plainly showed what he thought of that.
“While you prefer to believe the worst of your father, instead.”
“Right now, the only thing I care about is that my brothers and my sister and I have to live with the end result. Bad enough to sell right out from under us. But to give it away? The man’s spent his life acquiring. Building. Not handing it over to complete strangers. He’s betrayed all of us in the worst of ways. Why can’t you admit that it’s a total BS way to treat us?”
“Why can’t you admit that there may be mitigating circumstances that you’re unaware of?”
His expression tightened. “I don’t want to argue with you about this. I came here because—”
She went still. Waiting.
“—because I wanted to finish what we’d started.” His voice turned flat and she couldn’t shake the sense that it hadn’t been his reasoning at all. If he’d wanted to finish what they’d started, he could have come to her at any point during the past week. But he hadn’t.
She’d foolishly fallen in love with him, but that didn’t mean she could afford to be even more foolish.
He’d come to her because he was upset. Not because he’d suddenly realized he was in love with her, too. That he couldn’t live without her.
Wyatt said what he meant. And did what he said. If she’d realized nothing about him, she’d learned that.
But this time, he hadn’t.
Was she just a way for him to put off thinking about everything? His father? JMF?
She wanted him with her, but not only because he considered her an acceptable distraction.
That was the problem with love.
It seemed to always lead to someone wanting more.
How ironic it was, that he was one of the people to convince her that she actually deserved to have more.
“Wyatt—”
“Yo, Sarah-Jane. You awake?” Felicity’s cheerful voice sounded through the bedroom door as she knocked once before pushing it open.
Wyatt bit back an oath and managed to sweep the bedspread over them both in the nick of time.
“You’re never gonna guess—” Sarah-Jane’s roommate’s words broke off as she stepped into the doorway and saw them. Her eyes went wide as saucers. Safely covered or not, it was plainly obvious what they’d been doing. “Oh. Criminy.” She whirled around and fumbled for the door. “Sorry. Just, um, pretend I was never here.” She dashed out, yanking the door shut after her.
Sarah-Jane was covering her face with her hands. “Good grief.” She sounded morti
fied.
“I thought you said she was going to be out late.”
“It is late.”
He eyed the plain round clock on the nightstand beside her bed. “It’s ten.”
“To some people that’s late.” She was looking anywhere but at him as she scrambled off the bed and snatched a flannel robe off the hook on the back of the bedroom door. It was almost as if they’d been caught in the act by scolding parents, rather than a grown roommate. She wrapped herself in the robe and turned to face him. “What are you going to do about your father?”
The robe would have been hideous on his late grandmother. On Sarah-Jane it was pretty much criminal. “I’ve already done it. I’m in Red Rock to stay.”
“The end result,” she murmured. “And once again, skipping over all the parts in between.”
“You think I’m a coward. Is that it?”
“No, I don’t think you’re a coward,” she dismissed softly. “I think you’re hurt. You’re hurt because of what your dad’s done, because it feels like he’s slamming you down, and the way you’re dealing with it is to draw this imaginary line with him on the wrong side of it, and you staunchly in the right. Wyatt, I know what it feels like to be discounted by a parent. Maybe your father is every bit as wrong as you think he is, but what if he’s not? I have a hard time believing that someone who raised you to be as...as decent as you are...doesn’t have a great deal of decency himself.”
“That’s just it, Sarah-Jane. You see things in terms of decency. You have no experience in getting completely screwed over.”
She winced. “Well, I guess the guy who took me to prom, and then took my pathetically eager virginity afterward, all so he could collect on a hundred-dollar bet with his buddies the next morning might count as a little experience,” she said coolly. “I should have at least gotten half the money, don’t you think?”
He wanted to swear. “What was his name?”
“Bo—” Her lips clamped shut, obviously realizing what she was giving away. But it was too late.
Her New Year's Fortune Page 17