"Snake?" She tried to pry his hand loose, only to have him spread his fingers until the thumb met her breast. "Who would call a horse Snake?"
"The name came with him. He was a gift."
"Some gift."
Behind her, Jacques used the motion of his hips to secure their balance—and Snake's gait. And the motion reminded Gaby how hard a man could be, and how soft a woman was… and how they could complement each other.
She flushed all the way to her toes.
Snake broke into a gallop along the side of the ridge. "This is ridiculous," Gaby shouted, the words jarring from her throat. "Who do you think you are? The Red Shadow?"
He laughed and she felt the vibration. "Black Jacques to some, baby." Finding the spot on her neck he seemed to favor, he sang, "My Desert is Waiting," in a gravelly baritone just offkey enough to be charming—too charming.
Everything about him was exciting… intoxicating. She dared not wriggle again. "I don't want to call you anything. These are hills, not sand dunes. Sane men don't sweep women onto their horses and carry them away."
"I promise I won't carry you far," Jacques said. "Just far enough to show you a place I'm fond of. I'm the only one who knows about it. We'll be safe there—and very private."
His implication hit home. Gaby clenched her stomach against the instant response he evoked. Damn it, she would not be swept off her feet… but she was… and enjoying it too much.
Spurring on Snake, Jacques maneuvered along a path to the top of the ridge.
Gaby felt every skillful jerk and switch in the rhythm of his body, and closed her eyes.
"Okay," she said, when they set off along the narrow spine of rocky land. "You've had your fun, Jacques. Time to pack up your toys and go home."
He laughed again. "I'm glad you agree."
She bit her lip, refusing to smile. "I walked into that one. I'm not a toy. And I don't play with anyone I don't want to play with."
"Then we don't have a problem. We both know you want to play with me."
Gaby tried to turn in the saddle. Immediately she knew her mistake. A large, long-fingered hand held her in place using the most obvious anchor—her right breast.
"Jacques, don't," she said through her teeth.
The smallest move and he found and slipped his thumb under the neck of her shirt and over the swell of flesh above her bra. "I'm open to negotiation,' ' he said. "Where would you rather be alone with me? At La Place in the brand new hot tub I've just had built? It's open to the sky, Gaby. And it's warm in there— and very, very wet. I like wet, don't you?" The tip of his thumb grazed the top of her nipple.
She closed her eyes and leaned against him.
"Oh, Gaby, Gaby." Jacques brought his cheek against hers. "We aren't going to be able to hold out, sweetheart. You know that?"
"You're not being fair."
Very gently he rubbed his rough jaw back and forth over the soft skin of her cheek. "Sometimes being fair doesn't pay off. This is one of those times. Today I'm going to do what's wise. That means what pleases both of us the most."
"Wise? Or self-indulgent?"
"Then there's that secret place I mentioned. A stand of madrone that shelters a bed of grass so soft it feels like velvet. Smooth, Gaby—satin on silky skin." His hand was all the way inside the bra, cupping her breast.
"Jacques…" She couldn't think.
"Yes, sweetheart? Is that hot tub, or velvet grass?"
"I want… I want…"
"Oh, so do I. I want everything with you." Deftly he hooked Vi's rein over the horn. "We're alone out here, Gaby. You, me, the sky—and the wind." With sure fingers, Jacques slipped her shirt buttons from their holes.
"I ought to go." But she wouldn't.
"The madrones are closest," Jacques said, and tugged her shirt from her jeans, down her shoulders and free of her wrists.
The wind he spoke of smote her hot cheeks—and her tingling body. "This is madness. I can't be out here half-naked."
"You aren't yet." She felt him work behind her to undo and remove his own shirt. "Relax. Play with me, Gaby. Let me be the leader."
They made an abrupt turn and started down the other side of the ridge. Snake's hoofs thudded evenly while Vi galloped valiantly behind.
Jacques folded his arms around Gaby, held her against warm, male skin and crisp hair, and tensed, flexible muscle. The horse gathered speed until Gaby's hair began to rip free of the long braid down her back. Layered on Jacques's chest, bare skin to bare skin, the wild mountain scents rushing in, she knew—for the first time since she'd first met and loved Michael—the sweetly shocking force of pure arousal.
"We're crazy," Gaby yelled. Her lungs expanded erratically. The thudding of the horses' hoofs thundered in her ears.
"Duck!" Jacques did the ducking for both of them, bending over Gaby, bowing to sweep beneath the tangled branches of madrones at the edge of a tree-filled gully.
Gaby laughed and batted at twigs that caught her hair. "Stop, you nut. Stop!"
He rode with the unerring certainty of a man who knew exactly where he was going. Incense cedar, its lacy leaves shivering, nudged ponderosa pines among the madrone.
As quickly as the little forest had enclosed them, a clearing appeared. Jacques hauled on Snake's reins and the horse reared.
Jacques quieted the animal and slid from his back. "Come on." His tanned skin gleamed and his teeth showed very white in a triumphant grin. "Come to me, Gaby." He tossed their shirts across the saddle and reached up to grasp her waist.
She looked down, unable to ignore her breasts, nude but for a wisp of a red bra more provocative than if she'd worn nothing. And she looked into Jacques's upturned face. Sensuality glinted in his midnight eyes, eyes that made a slow passage over her body before his grip tightened and he lifted her from the horse.
Holding her aloft, he brought her middle to his mouth and kissed her tensed skin, dipped his tongue beneath the waist of her jeans and into her navel. "No." A spasm shot to her knees.
"No?" Slowly, he lowered her, let her slide down his length, tasted each fresh spot that passed his lips until her toes met soft grass. "I don't think you mean no." Looping his hands around her neck, Jacques tipped up her chin with his thumbs.
For what felt a very long time, he studied her face. "Tell me you want me?"
Her stomach fell away. "This doesn't feel like me," she told him weakly. "I've been so quiet for so long."
He snorted. "That's not a description I'd have used for you."
"I don't mean… I mean…"
"Ssh." He rested his mouth on her brow. "I wasn't thinking. You've been busy being Mae's mom, haven't you? Is that what you mean?"
She bit her trembling lip. "Uh-huh. All I wanted was to make a new life. A different life from the one I had. L.A. was never right for me."
"Too fast?"
"Too everything." And what was this—this moment that made her feel like an electrically charged being she hardly knew?
Jacques ran his hands down her shoulders and held her arms. "Are you saying you haven't… You were divorced seven years ago, Gaby."
"There hasn't been anyone for me since then," she told him simply. With one tentative finger, she traced his breast bone, and his ribs, first one, then another and another. "And Michael was the first. Prosaic, aren't I?"
"You don't look prosaic at this moment."
She felt him look at her breasts. "This can't be right, Jacques."
"Kiss me."
"I don't know much about you."
"Dull. A successful man who inherited his success."
"I don't think I believe that. Not entirely. Didn't you turn your success into more success, maybe?"
"Maybe. Let's not talk about candy. It bores me these days. Look at me."
Instead, Gaby stared steadfastly at his broad chest. "You have the kind of body that could make a liar out of me."
He laughed shortly. "Explain that?"
Spreading her fingertips, she feathered acros
s his nipples, smiled at the ripple of tension that passed over him, and stroked his sides all the way to his waist and inside his jeans to knead his belly with her knuckles.
"God, Gaby," he gasped. "I asked for an explanation."
With a quick glance into his eyes, she pressed her breasts to his chest and moved slowly back and forth. The lace couldn't be stimulating him more than it did her. She shuddered and opened her mouth over one flat, male nipple. Carefully, she closed her teeth and flicked the tip of her tongue.
"Gaby!"
"I'm explaining," she breathed. "Your body is making me want a lot of things I haven't thought about in too long. You're beautiful, Jacques. All man. Sexy as hell. I'll never forget the first time I saw you."
"You'll never know what I thought when I first saw you." He was panting. His hands, crossed over her shoulderblades, opened and closed reflexively.
"Did you think you'd like to make love right there, on the floor, Jacques? Did you want to get inside me even then?"
"Don't." Grasping her unraveling pigtail, he pulled her face from him. Strain showed in every line of his face, every visible vein in his neck. "Yes. Yes, my quiet lady. I wanted you right then. But not the. way I want you now."
Exhilaration flooded Gaby. Laughing, she J wrenched away. "Tell me how you want me now."
"Come here." He grabbed for her but she eluded him. "You little tease."
Whirling, she managed to pull her hair from his fingers. "Tease? Me? I'm a hick, Jacques. A poor little country girl. See this country girl run."
"Don't do it, Gaby—don't."
She laughed back at him and ran, her feet flying over the shaded, springy turf, her heart beating so hard it caught in her throat.
"I warned you!"
Jacques made no sound, but Gaby knew he came after her. Panting, she glanced over her shoulder. "No!" She sprinted, wove between the trees, dodged.
"Got you!"
She came face to face with Jacques around the ridged trunk of an incense cedar—and screamed. "You don't have me!"
Swallowing great gulps of air, she faked and darted in the opposite direction.
This time she heard his breathing. Her yell squeaked to nothing.
"Oh, yes," Jacques ground out, leaping into her path. "Yes, dear lady."
And his fingers descended on her shoulder, slid as she twisted yet again, and hooked into the back of her bra.
The scrap of red material gave way in an instant. "Ah!" She clutched for the bra in vain. Jacques twirled her to face him and she staggered back, her breasts swinging free.
"Ah," Jacques echoed, running his gaze over her. "Ah, yes. You like it rough and tumble, huh?"
Gaby backed away, covering her breasts with her hands. "I'm sorry," she said, trembling now, unbearably excited now. "I shouldn't have run."
"I'm so glad you did." He made a grab and caught her wrist, pulled her hand away. "Don't hide from me, Gaby. I won't let you, anyway."
Another step backward, and another. "We don't know each other. Not really," she said.
He tilted up his face and laughed at the treetops. "Very soon you and I are going to know each other as well as any man and woman ever could."
"I don't mean—"
"In the biblical sense? I did. I do. You're breathing hard, Gaby. D'you know what that does?"
She shook her head.
"It makes your wonderful breasts do things that aren't making it any easier to be inside these pants." Outrageously she blushed.
Jacques laughed again. "I'm never going to get tired of you. Are you going to keep on backing away?"
"Yes."
"No you're not."
She walked into a tree.
"See." He spread his legs and trapped her hips, ground his hard, heavy arousal into her pelvis until she shut her eyes and arched her back. "It's been too long for you, Gaby. But, hell, am I glad, because you're going to be all the more for me."
"We shouldn't…" No, she would not say what she didn't feel or believe.
"Shouldn't we?" Bending, he slid his tongue across her lips, beneath them, past her teeth and deep into her mouth. Finesse was there but no restraint. He told her with every searching touch that he wanted her, and Gaby responded, yes, with a body wild, as it had never been before.
Jacques sipped and nipped and slanted his mouth over hers, rocking her head sharply, drawing her bottom lip between his teeth until she clung to him
"We should definitely do all of this," he told her when he raised her head, in the instant before he bent to her breasts. "And I should definitely do this."
He supported the soft, aching weight, lightly pinched each nipple and took first one, then the other deep into his mouth. He drew firmly, suckled until Gaby filled her hands with his hair and opened her mouth in a silent scream.
"I want you," he said, rasping the demand. "Now."
His dark features sent white fire into Gaby's secret, hot places. Reason hovered at the edges of her mind. "We can't."
"We can." He gritted his teeth, kept his eyes on hers. "Come to me."
She shook her head. "We can't, Jacques." Surely he understood.
His hands were vices. They spanned her waist, but only for the moment before he tore open her jeans and skinned them to her ankles. Going to his knees, Jacques moaned. He cupped her bottom and kissed the shadowy triangle visible through red panties.
"Trust me, Gaby," he whispered, pulling down the last barrier, heating her skin with his breath. "This is my game, remember?"
He moved smoothly then, stretching her out on the velvet grass he'd promised, dragging the jeans and panties from her feet, shedding his own pants and turning his back to her for the briefest moments.
"Jacques?"
"Oh, yes, quiet lady."
Then he dropped beside her, stroked her, kissed and caressed her. And all the time, while his shaft lay hot and heavy on her thigh, he murmured words that meant nothing except to him—and to her.
"God," he said at last, and very clearly. "I can't hold back, Gaby. Not any longer. Not this time."
She couldn't answer, but she ran her hands down until she could surround him. While her own heat mounted, Gaby closed the part of him that throbbed with need into her palms and pushed against the hair at its base until he cried out and rolled over her.
"Yes," she told him, parting her legs. "Yes."
"Open for me," he cried.
And she did.
Jacques cradled Gaby's hips and thrust into her with force that burned. Then there was the rhythm and the dance—and the endless joining that slammed them together as one.
"Now, Jacques."
"Soon." His thumb found the pulsing nub that sent Gaby beyond reason. He ignored her flailing hands until she called his name over and over.
"That sounds so good," he told her. "My name never sounded that good."
Her body convulsed around him and he shouted his triumph.
12
"Champagne?"
"At nine in the morning?" Gaby turned from admiring the view and smiled at Jacques.
"I mixed it with orange juice."
"Mmm." Her smile widened. "Very nice."
"Why doesn't that sound like an endorsement of my mimosas?"
"I haven't tasted your mimosas."
He approached from the door that opened from his bedroom onto a terrace balanced between crystal-blue sky and a view of razorbacked hill and green valley devoid of any signs of civilization for as far as the eye could see.
Jacques slid a wooden tray onto a low, glass-topped table. "So," he said. "If it isn't my skill as a bartender that brings you pleasure, I'll just have to find out what does."
Gaby leaned against the terrace railings. Slow, moody music played through the sound system wired to every part of the house. "It may not be easy to get that information out of me. You could have to do some serious persuading." She crossed one bare foot over the other and cinched in the sash on the oversized, white terry robe she wore.
"How lo
ng will it take?" Jacques braced an arm each side of her on the railing. "I'm in a hurry to find out."
Gaby swayed to the music. With the backs of her fingers, she rubbed his jaw. "There are a lot of things left for us to find out about each other." Moisture from the shower gleamed in his still-wet hair and he smelled of soap. His robe matched Gaby's—except his fit him.
His gaze centered on her mouth and stayed there, until he tipped his head and bent to brush his lips across hers. "I never expected this." He closed his eyes and kissed her deeply.
Gaby stroked fingertips and palms down his neck and beneath the robe. He nudged her face up and she met his tongue hungrily.
When they'd finally left Jacques's valley the evening before, darkness had already begun to fall. The ride to La Place had been merely an intermission between acts of passion. In the hours they'd spent together, Gaby had learned what it was like to experience lovemaking with a man who knew as much about giving as taking. No millimeter of her body had escaped his attention.
Jacques drew back his head with the reluctance of a starving man letting go of a meal. "No, I sure never expected this."
"What does that mean?" Gaby asked softly.
"Maybe I'm not sure." He frowned slightly. "But I would have laughed if someone had told me—even a few weeks ago—that I'd find a woman I could…" Looking away, he let the sentence trail off.
She would not press him to finish the thought.
"Gaby… Hell, I don't know. I think you've worn out my mind."
"Maybe you ought to get some sleep." She forced a laugh.
Jacques held up her hand and flattened the palm to his own. "I said my mind might be worn out. I didn't say anything about the rest of me."
Her hand looked like a child's against his, the fingers—long as they were—barely passing his second knuckle. "Those mimosas are getting warm," she said.
"Mmm." Lacing his fingers through Gaby's, Jacques pulled her into his arms. His body moved with the beat of a lone saxophone played with sensual languor—and his body moved Gaby's. With their locked hands trapped between them and Jacques holding her so close she almost heard the beat of his heart, Gaby felt the music, the rhythm, the beat through him.
Mad About The Man Page 11