Joyride

by Patricia Coughlin

  She froze.

  He groaned.

  He opened his eyes. A slow smile curved his lips. “Better roll over.”

  “What?” She blinked rapidly, confused.

  “Just do it,” he whispered, his hands helping her along so that she rolled over away from him. He eased to his side behind her, his chest to her back, and reached around to cup her breast.

  “You’re not any less tempting this way,” he murmured against the side of her neck, “but with my control hanging by a thread, it’s best not to leave things to chance...and this damn bed.”

  He lifted her arm to nibble the delicate skin along her side, making her quiver with delight.

  “Oh, I like that,” she said softly.

  “So do I.”

  With one hand he tugged at her breast while his other slid down over her tummy, lower, tangling in the soft curls there. He was pressed to her from shoulder to buttocks. One muscled thigh rode between hers as he pulled her even more firmly into the cradle of his body. A single finger was trailing up and down the inside of her thigh, a feather stroke that dazzled her senses and clouded her thoughts. Then his hand moved again and his finger slipped deep inside her.

  He gave a heavy sigh of satisfaction as Cat went rigid at the sudden possession, limited though it was.

  “Easy,” he murmured against her hair. “I won’t hurt you.”

  She believed him. She wasn’t afraid and she thought of telling him so, but the pleasure spiraling through her from where his finger was moving in slow, rhythmic strokes made it impossible to speak.

  He pulled her shoulder back, leaning over her so that his mouth could take her breast. He suckled her, the warm, tugging pull of his mouth in time to the penetrating thrust of his finger. It was too much for Cat to absorb, and wave after wave of feelings she’d never even dreamed of came crashing over her.

  She was trembling, her forehead and the hollow between her breasts damp with perspiration as she pressed against him, wanting to get closer, wanting to feel more, wanting to feel everything she had forbidden herself to feel before now.

  She opened her eyes and glanced down, awed by the sight of his dark head bent to her breast and the sinuous movement of the muscles beneath his bronzed forearm as he touched her intimately. That was the most arousing sight of all, to watch him bestow the pleasure that was steadily carrying her away.

  The candles flickered around her, with Bolt the brightest light of all. His sure, gentle touch was illuminating the way for her, leading her into a world she knew nothing of, a world that instinct alone told her he had mastered long ago. She arched against him as he pressed his hand to her tightly. Bolt murmured and pulled her closer, his hand kneading, moving, the pressure exquisite.

  She heard herself, heard the small helpless gasps that started somewhere deep within. His hands and mouth seemed to be everywhere at once. He surrounded her with himself, layering sensation upon sensation too quickly for her analyze and isolate what was making her feel so good from one heartbeat to the next.

  She sensed his growing urgency, as well, and it made her mindless with need. She wanted him inside her, as proof of something, that she was still alive, perhaps, or that life went on. Cat didn’t have a very good grasp on the intricacies of her feelings just then. She felt and wanted and yearned until primal instinct and his sure hands rolled her onto her back beneath him once again.

  This time when his hardness pressed against her, she reached for him, pulling him toward her with all the fierceness of the desire his touch had awakened in her.

  He made a low, masculine sound as he stretched, poised above her.

  “Look at me,” he whispered, his tone as urgent as the passion that seemed to crackle in the air around them.

  Cat met his gaze.

  “I love you,” he groaned as pushed inside her for the first time. “I love you. I love you.”

  As gentle as he was, the unprecedented invasion was a shock to her senses, driving out all sound and thought. His thrusts were patient and measured, intended to give her time to adjust and accommodate his body, but they were also relentless.

  Slowly, slowly, he moved against her, and slowly her body softened and relaxed. Surprise gave way to excitement. Pain became pleasure. When his lips nuzzled her throat, she arched her neck and whimpered. Her legs lifted and curled around his hips and she felt the gradual quickening of his pace.

  His breath came hard against her neck. He sucked the sensitive skin there. His weight drove her down into the mattress. Cat was lifting to meet him now, wanting more and more with each thrust, all without knowing fully what it was she wanted. Wanting just the same, with an intensity that left her straining against him.

  As his thrusts grew quicker still, they also became harder, their power pushing her forward toward that unknown destination. He was driving straight into her center, straight to the heart of her, and she was lifting, lifting, meeting him on each stroke until passion broke over her and she was there...crying and throbbing and clinging to Bolt as he collapsed against her with a fierce groan that was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard.

  She fell asleep in his arms, beyond speaking, the candles still glowing brightly. She woke hours later in darkness, a cramp in her neck where it rested on his broad bicep. She carefully freed herself from his embrace. Bolt murmured a sleepy protest, rolled to his other side and continued to breath in the heavy rhythm of deep sleep.

  Only then did the words he’d spoken earlier sink in. I love you, he’d said. I love you.

  Cat went cold, inside and out. That couldn’t be. He couldn’t possibly have said that. If he had, she assured herself, it was simply something he would say to any woman in the heat of passion. As she lay there, fully awake, she came up with a half dozen other explanations, none of which she could make herself believe.

  Oh, damn, she thought, so much for tonight not ending with regrets.

  She rolled to her side and stared at his broad back. What was she going to do now? Run? Pretend she’d never heard the words and hope he came to his senses by morning and didn’t repeat them? Laugh if he did and trust he’d get the message?

  She decided her approach would depend on Bolt. She would just have to wait and see what happened next. In the meantime, she leaned forward and, purely as an experiment in futility, pressed her lips to his back and whispered against his skin, “I love you, too.”

  * * *

  Bolt awoke feeling like Sir Lancelot, ready to don armor and slay dragons or whatever else his fair damsel might want done before breakfast. Even tossing off a quick sonnet or two didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility this morning. Did knights write sonnets? he wondered groggily. Didn’t matter. If his damsel wanted a sonnet, so be it.

  Speaking of damsels... Bolt opened one eye and saw her across the room. She was already dressed, he noted with only mild disappointment. What went on could come off.

  “Bring me my trusty dagger,” he muttered, enjoying an erotic vision of slicing off her cutoff denims and pale pink T-shirt.

  Cat turned, stunning him all over again with her beauty. She appeared more spectacular to him than the most perfect sunrise, and he wanted to see her just this way every morning for the rest of his life.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Forget it. What are you doing up so early?”

  “Cleaning up.”

  He sat leaning against the solid headboard and observed that she had indeed cleaned up all traces of the night before. The candles were lined up neatly on the largest dresser, like soldiers given an early discharge, he thought dryly. The ice bucket and table with their untouched dinner were nowhere in sight, likewise the nightgown, which he had a sudden hankering to see on her again.

  “Come here,” he said, lifting one arm in invitation.

  “No.”

  He cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowed, something inside him pulling tight, like a whipcord around his heart. “No?”

  She shook her head. “No.”


  “Have I missed something here? Like a twist in the plot between last night and this morning?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Bolt,” she said, snatching the robe from where it lay on the floor and heading for the bathroom with it. “Just because this place looks like something straight out of a fairy tale doesn’t make us characters in one. Plot twist.” She disappeared, shaking her head.

  Oh, yeah, he thought. He’d missed something all right. He folded his arms behind his head and waited for her to reappear. It would have been nice if Cat had woken this morning as aware as he was of the truth, that they belonged to each other. Call it what you like—chemistry, fate, destiny—she was meant to be his.

  It would have been nice if she had accepted that fact as readily as he had, but he really hadn’t expected it. She’d suffered quite a shock yesterday. Learning the truth about her parents’ deaths had shaken her most cherished beliefs to the core, and whether or not she would admit it, that had a whole lot to do with all that had followed. He wasn’t sorry he had made love to her. He understood that it had been inevitable. He just wished it could have happened under different circumstances.

  This way, whatever Cat felt for him was bound to get all mixed up with her renewed grief for her parents and with the natural aftershocks of finding out that a good part of what she had taken for gospel in her life was really just a pretty fabrication intended to shield her from the truth. It was going to take time for her to work through all her feelings, and he was going to give it to her. Just as long as she understood that he was there for her when she needed him.

  She emerged from the bathroom carrying the small flowered case that held her cosmetics and tossed it into her open suitcase.

  “Don’t you think you should get out of bed?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Actually what I was thinking was that you should get back in bed with me.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” he said, quiet amusement in his voice.

  “Well, you have to.” She faced him at last, the color high in her cheeks, her violet eyes flashing, with what Bolt wasn’t quite sure. Anger? At him? Herself? Both, most likely. “I mean it, Bolt,” she said. “It’s only going to make the rest of the trip harder for both of us if you go trying to make last night into something it wasn’t.”

  He unfolded his arms from behind his head and dropped them to his lap, clasping them together lightly on top of the sheet. “Why don’t you tell me what you think last night was and we’ll go from there?”

  “Sex,” she said without hesitation. “Great sex.”

  “You being qualified to discern great sex from say, bad sex, or mediocre sex?”

  “I know what I felt,” she snapped, shoving her hair behind her ear. A dead giveaway that she was nervous, Bolt noted with satisfaction.

  “Thank you for that, at least, acknowledging that you felt something.”

  Her eyes darkened. “You know I did.”

  “I wouldn’t know from the way you’ve been acting this morning.”

  “I just think we should get moving,” she said, turning away to rearrange the already neatly folded items in her suitcase.

  “Are you in a hurry all of a sudden?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at him. “To tell you the truth I am. I’ve decided I want to get back home as soon as possible. I need to talk to Uncle Hank about...about things,” she concluded grimly.

  “I see. Can’t wait to let him have it with both barrels, hmm?”

  “No.” She looked horrified. “I would never do that. He did what he did to protect me, just as he always has. I don’t always agree with his methods, but I can’t hate him for it...or for making mistakes.” She heaved a weary sigh. “Truthfully, if I was facing the task of having to explain a nightmare to a five-year-old, I’m not sure what kind of story I would have resorted to. No, I could never blame him for any of this, but there are things I’m ready to know about my parents that only he can tell me.”

  Bolt nodded, loving her even more at that moment than he had at the height of his passion the night before. He should have known she wouldn’t be interested in recriminations or assigning blame for the mistakes of the past, but rather in moving on. Perhaps a woman to whom it came so naturally to forgive and forget could even teach the likes of him to do the same.

  “I think that’s real smart of you,” he told her. “Staying angry is the best way I know to eat yourself up inside. And I can understand that you want to get back there to see the general, but stealing a few hours this morning isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference. I was even thinking we might stay here another night and—”

  “No.” She looked horrified and the shake of her head was even more emphatic than her tone. Which was saying something, Bolt thought. “Bolt, I don’t know how to say this except to just say it. Last night was...wonderful. I’ll never forget your...kindness.”

  “Kindness ?” he echoed, his eyes narrowing dubiously. “Is that what you thought I was being? Kind?”

  “I mean in going out of your way to make it special for me...and it was special, believe me. The champagne and candles. I can’t imagine a more perfect night.”

  “But.”

  She wet her lips, so totally unaware of the effect such a gesture had on him that he wanted to drag her onto the bed and crush her mouth under his to clue her in.

  “But,” she said, “I’m not going to sleep with you again.”

  Something unbearably sharp sliced him right down the middle. It was a bloody miracle he could speak, much less sound cavalier. “Just like that?”

  “Not exactly just like that, as if it’s a whim or something, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” she replied, sticking her hands first in her front pockets, then the back, then linking them awkwardly in front of her.

  “Is that something like asking if I’ll still respect you in the morning? Because if it is, the answer is yes.”

  “I didn’t mean that you might get the wrong idea about my morals or something, but about the future.”

  “Our future?”

  “Yes. You see, the point is...” She shoved her hands in her front pockets once more. “We don’t have one.”

  “We could,” he countered softly when what he actually felt like doing was shouting and beating his chest like some Neanderthal. The fact that he was suddenly seeing and forced to deal with an all new side of himself made this conversation even more difficult.

  “No. You see,” she said, running her fingers through her hair, leaving it in disarray so that it reminded him of how it had looked spread across his pillow last night, “this is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen. That you would build last night up in your mind to be more than just—”

  “Just what?” he challenged. “A roll in the hay? No? An experiment? I’ve got it, a lapse in judgment?”

  “Maybe a little of each of those things. And now you’re trying to make it something more.”

  “It was more,” he insisted.

  “Even if it was...you’re expecting more than I can give.”

  The plaintive note in her voice got to him. “Come on, Tiger,” he said, climbing from the bed with no thought of his nakedness. “I don’t want to fight with you...especially not about this.” He took her in his arms, easily overriding her resistance. “I know this is a real bad time for you. I know how it must seem you don’t have anything left to give right now—”

  “Or ever,” she interjected firmly. “I’m not just saying this for now, I’m saying it forever.”

  Bolt jerked back to look at her face. “I love you,” he growled.

  “No.” She wrenched free. “Don’t say that, please. And please, for Pete’s sake, put something on.”

  She averted her gaze while he found his jeans and yanked them on, not bothering with the button at the waist.

  “Why shou
ldn’t I say it?” he demanded, coming up behind where she stood looking out the window, her arms folded stiffly across her chest. “It’s the truth.”

  “Please...I’m not quite that naive.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “I don’t think you’re naive at all. You’re young, sure. I admit that at first I thought you were too young and too vulnerable to get messed up with someone as jaded and washed-up as me. But I don’t think that any longer. I think now that you’re the most beautiful, wisest, kindest, sexiest—”

  “Stop, please, just stop. Why do you want to put both of us through this?”

  “Because I love you,” he said again, bewildered that she couldn’t seem to understand the utter, unprecedented wonder of that. He was in love, and that changed everything he thought or wanted or needed. And in the end, it was going to change her mind about this, too. He had no doubt about that.

  “Love.” Her laugh was lancing. “What do you know about love?”

  “What you taught me.”

  She looked startled.

  “For instance, I know that you don’t get to dictate where and when and with whom it happens. I know that you can be with a hundred wrong women and not feel it, then feel it like that.” He snapped his fingers. “When the right woman comes along.”

  “There’s no such thing as the right woman,” she said wearily. “That was all nonsense, a dumb kid’s fantasy.”

  “Last night was no fantasy.”

  “I told you, last night was sex.”

  “Uh-uh. It was destiny.”

  She shook her head, her eyes filled with pity and something else. The same thing he’d seen there earlier. Fear, he realized, and suddenly he understood. “You’ll learn,” she said.

  Bolt bent and landed a quick kiss on her gorgeous mouth. “Or you will.”

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Bolt had finished showering and getting dressed, Cat was packed and ready to go. And more determined than ever that she was doing the right thing. For Bolt as well as herself.

  He might truly believe he was in love with her, or, much more likely in her opinion, he was trying in the only way he knew to console her after what had happened to her yesterday. Noble, but not his problem. Then again, perhaps for the time being he needed to believe it in order to justify having made love to her in the first place. She imagined that even a former soldier would have a few qualms about messing with old Lucifer’s niece.