Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon

by Diana Palmer

  Her eyes widened when the last piece of fabric came away from his powerful body and her breath caught.

  He liked that expression. He turned away just for a minute, long enough to extricate a packet from his wallet. He sat down beside her, opened it, and taught her matter-of-factly what to do with it. She fumbled a little, her eyes incredibly wide and fascinated and a little frightened.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said gently, searching her eyes. “Women have been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years. You’re going to like it, Leslie. I promise you are.”

  She lay back, watching him with wide gray eyes full of curiosity as he slid alongside her.

  His dark head bent to her body and she lay under him like a creamy, blushing sacrifice, learning the different ways she responded to his touch. He laughed when she arched up and moaned. He liked the way she opened to him, the way her breath rasped when his mouth slid tenderly over her belly and the soft, inner skin of her thighs. He made a sensual meal of her there on the pretty, soft comforter, while the sound of rain came closer outside the window, the moonlit night clouding over as a storm moved above the cabin.

  She hadn’t known that physical pleasure could be so devastating. She watched him touch and taste her, with eyes equally fascinated and aroused by some of the things he did to her.

  Her shocked exclamation pulled an amused laugh from him. “Am I shocking you? Don’t you read books and watch movies?” he asked as he poised just above her.

  “It isn’t…the same,” she choked, arching as his body began to tease hers, her long legs shifting eagerly out of his way as he moved down against her.

  Her hands were clenched beside her head, and he watched her eyes dilate as his hips shifted tenderly and she felt him against her in a shattering new intimacy. She gasped, looking straight into his dark eyes. “I…never dreamed…!”

  “No words on earth could describe how this feels,” he murmured, his breath rasping as he hesitated and then moved down again, tenderly. “You’re beautiful, Leslie. Your body is exquisite, soft and warm and enticing. I love the way your skin feels under my mouth.” His breath caught as he moved closer and felt her body protest at the invasion. He paused to search over her flushed, drawn face. “I’m becoming your lover,” he whispered huskily, drawing his body against hers sensuously to deepen his possession. “I’m going inside you. Now.”

  His face became rigid with control, solemn as he met her eyes and pushed again, harder, and watched her flinch. “I know. It’s going to hurt a little, in spite of everything,” he said softly. “But not for long. Do you still want me?”

  “More than anything…in the world!” she choked, lifting her hips toward his in a sensual invitation. “It’s all right.” She swallowed. Impulsively she looked down and her mouth fell open. She couldn’t have imagined watching, even a day before. “Matt…!” she gasped.

  Her eyes came back up to his. His face looked as if every muscle in it was clenched. “It feels like my first time, too,” he said a little roughly. His hands slid under her head, cradling it as he shifted slightly and then pushed once more.

  Her pretty body lifted off the bed. It seemed to ripple as he moved intimately into closer contact. “I never thought…we could talk…while we did something so intimate,” she whispered back, gasping when he moved again and pleasure shot through her. “Yes…oh, yes, please do…that!” she pleaded huskily, clutching at his shoulders.

  “Here, like this?” he asked urgently, and moved again.

  Her tiny cry was affirmation enough. He eased down on her, his eyes looking straight into hers as he began a rhythm that combined tension with exquisite pleasure and fleeting, burning pain.

  His eyes dilated as he felt the barrier. He shivered. His body clenched. He’d never had an innocent woman. Leslie was totally out of his experience. He hadn’t thought about how it would feel until now. Primitive thoughts claimed his mind, ancestral memories perhaps that spoke of an ancient age when this would have been a rite of passage.

  She was feeling something very similar as her body yielded to the domination of his. The discomfort paled beside the feelings that were consuming her. Glimpses of unbelievable pleasure were mingling with the stinging pain. Past it, she knew, lay ecstasy.

  He kissed her hungrily as his lean, fit body moved on her in the silence of the cabin. Suddenly rain pounded hard outside the curtained window, slamming into the roof, the ground, the trees. The wind howled around the corner. There was a storm in him, too, as he lay stretched tight with desire, trying to hold back long enough to let Leslie share what he knew he would feel.

  “I’ve never been so hungry,” he bit off against her mouth. His hands contracted under her head, tangling in her hair. His body shuddered. “I’m going to have to hurt you. I can’t wait any longer. It’s getting away from me. I have to have you…now!”

  Her legs moved sensuously against his, loving the faint abrasion of the hair that covered his. “Yes!” she said huskily, her eyes full of wonder. “I want it. I want…it with you.”

  One lean hand went to her upper thigh. His lips flattened. He looked straight into her eyes as his hand suddenly pinned her hips and he thrust down fiercely.

  She cried out, grimacing, writhing as she felt him deep in her body, past a stinging pain that engulfed her.

  He stilled, holding her in place while he gave her body time to adjust, his eyes blazing with primitive triumph. His gaze reflected pride and pleasure and possession.

  “Yes,” he said roughly. “You’re part of me and I’m part of you. Now you belong to me, completely.”

  Her eyes mirrored her shocked fascination. She moved a little and felt him move with her. She swallowed, and then swallowed again, her breath coming in soft jerks as she adjusted to her first intimacy. She loved him. The feel of him was pure delight. She was a woman. She could be a woman. The past was dying already and she was whole and sensuous and fully capable. Her smile was brilliant with joyful self-discovery.

  She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him hungrily. The pain had receded and now she felt a new sensation as his hips moved. There were tiny little spasms of pleasure. Her breath came raggedly as she positioned herself to hold on to them. Her nails bit into the hard muscle of his upper arms.

  His dark eyes were full of indulgent amusement as he felt her movements. She hesitated once, shy. “Don’t stop,” he whispered. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

  Her lips parted. It wasn’t the answer she’d expected.

  He bent and kissed her eyelids again, his breath growing more ragged by the minute. “Find a position that gives you what you need,” he coaxed. “I won’t take my pleasure until you’ve had yours.”

  “Oh, Matt,” she moaned, unbearably touched by a generosity that she hadn’t expected.

  He laughed through his desire, kissing her face tenderly. “My own treasure,” he whispered. “I wish I could make it last for hours. I want you to blush when you’re sixty, remembering this first time. I want it to be perfect for you.”

  The pleasure was building. It was fierce now, and she was no longer in control of her own body. It lifted up to Matt’s and demanded pleasure. She was totally at the mercy of her awakened passion, blind with the need for fulfillment. She became aware of a new sort of tension that was lifting her fiercely to meet every quick, downward motion of his lean hips, that stretched her under his powerful body, that made her pulse leap with delicious throbs of wild delight.

  He watched her body move and ripple, watched the expression on her face, in her wide, blind eyes, and smiled. “Yes,” he murmured to himself. “Now you understand, don’t you? You can’t fight it, or deny it, or control it…” He stopped abruptly.

  “No! Please, don’t…stop!” Her choked cry was followed by frantic, clinging hands that pulled at him.

  He eased down again, watching as she shivered. “I’m not going to stop,” he whispered softly. “Trust me. I only want to make it as good as it can be for you.” />
  “It feels…wonderful,” she said hoarsely. “Every time you move, it’s like…like electric shocks of pleasure.”

  “And we’ve barely started, baby,” he whispered. He shifted his hips, intensifying her cries. She was completely yielded to him, open to him, wanton. He’d never dreamed that it would be like this. His head began to spin with the delight his body was taking from hers.

  She curled her long legs around his powerful ones and lifted herself, gasping when it brought a sharp stab of pleasure.

  His hand swept down her body. His face hardened as he began to increase the pressure and the rhythm. She clung to him, her mouth in his throat, on his chest, his chin, wherever she could reach, while he gave in to his fierce hunger and threw away his control.

  She’d never dreamed how it would be. She couldn’t get close enough, or hold on tight enough. She felt him in every cell of her body. She was ardent, inciting him, matching his quick, hard movements, her back lifting to promote an even closer contact.

  She whispered things to him, secret, erotic things that drove him to sensual urgency. She was moaning. She could hear her frantic voice pleading, hear the sound their movements made on the box springs, feel the power and heat of him as her body opened for him and clenched with tension that begged for release.

  She whispered his name and then groaned it, and then repeated it in a mad, hoarse little sound until the little throbs of pleasure became one long, aching, endless spasm of ecstasy that made her blind and deaf under the fierce, demanding thrust of his body. She cried out and shivered in the grip of it, her voice throbbing like her body. She felt herself go off the edge of the world into space, into a red heat that washed over every cell in her body.

  When she was able to think again, she felt his body shake violently, heard the harsh groan at her ear as he, too, found ecstasy.

  He shuddered one last time and then his warm strong body relaxed and she felt it push hers deeper into the mattress. His mouth was at her throat, pressing hungrily. His lips moved all over her face, touching and lifting in a fever of tenderness.

  Her dazed eyes opened and looked up into his. He was damp with sweat, as she was. His dark eyes smiled with incredible gentleness into hers.

  She arched helplessly and moaned as the pleasure washed over her again.

  “More?” he whispered, and his hips moved obligingly, so that the sweet stabs of delight came again and again and again.

  She sobbed helplessly afterward, clinging to him as she lay against his relaxed body.

  His hand smoothed over her damp hair. He seemed to understand her shattered response, as she didn’t.

  “I don’t know why I’m bawling my head off,” she choked, “when it was the closest to heaven I’ve ever been.”

  “There are half a dozen technical names for it,” he murmured drowsily. “It’s letdown blues. You go so high that it hurts to come down.”

  “I went high,” she murmured with a smile. “I walked on the moon.”

  He chuckled. “So did I.”

  “Was…was it all right?” she asked suddenly.

  He rolled her over on her back and looked down into her curious face. “You were the best lover I’ve ever had,” he said, and he wasn’t teasing. “And you will be, from now on, the only woman I ever have.”

  “Oh, that sounds serious,” she murmured.

  “Doesn’t it, though?” His dark eyes went over her like an artist’s brush committing beauty to canvas. He touched her soft breasts with a breathlessly tender caress. “I won’t be able to stop, you know,” he added conversationally.

  “Stop?”

  “This,” he replied. “It’s addictive. Now that I’ve had you, I’ll want you all the time. I’ll go green every time any other man so much as looks at you.”

  It sounded as if he was trying to tell her something, and she couldn’t decide what it was. She searched his dark eyes intently.

  He smiled with indulgent affection. “Do you want the words?”

  “Which words?” she whispered.

  He brushed his lips over hers with incredible, breathless tenderness. “Marry me, Leslie.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her gasp was audible. It was more than she’d dared hope for when she came in here with him. He chuckled at her expression.

  “Did you think I was going to ask you to come out to the ranch and live in sin with me?” he teased with twinkling eyes. His hand swept down over her body possessively. “This isn’t enough. Not nearly enough.”

  She hesitated. “Are you sure that you want something, well, permanent?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Leslie, if I’d been a little more reckless, you’d have something permanent. I wanted very badly to make you pregnant.”

  Her face brightened. “Did you, really? I thought about it, too, just at the end.”

  He smoothed back her hair and found himself fighting the temptation to start all over again with nothing between them.

  “We’ll have children,” he promised her. “But first we’ll build a life together, a secure life that they’ll fall into very naturally.”

  She was fascinated by the expression on his face. It was only just dawning on her that he felt more than a fleeting desire for her body. He was talking about a life together, children together. She knew very little about true relationships, but she was learning all the time.

  “Heavy thoughts?” he teased.

  “Yes.” She smoothed her fingers over his lean cheek.

  “Care to share them?” he murmured.

  “I was thinking how sweet it is to be loved,” she whispered softly.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Physically loved?”

  “Well, that, too,” she replied.

  He smiled quizzically. “Too?”

  “You’d never have taken me to bed unless you loved me,” she said simply, but with conviction. “You have these strange old-world hang-ups about innocence.”

  “Strange, my foot!”

  She smiled up at him complacently. “Not that I don’t like them,” she assured him. The smile faded as she searched his dark eyes. “It was perfect. Just perfect. And I’m glad I waited for you. I love you, Matt.”

  His chest rose and fell heavily. “Even after the way I’ve treated you?”

  “You didn’t know the truth,” she said. “And even if you were unfair at first, you made all sorts of restitution. I won’t have a limp anymore,” she added, wide-eyed. “And you gave me a good job and looked out for me…”

  He bent and kissed her hungrily. “Don’t try to make it sound better than it was. I’ve been an ogre with you. I’m only sorry that I can’t go back and start over again.”

  “None of us can do that,” she said. “But we have a second chance, both of us. That’s something to be thankful for.”

  “From now on,” he promised her solemnly, “everything is going to be just the way you want it. The past has been hard for me to overcome. I’ve distrusted women for so long, but with you I’ve been able to forget what my mother did. I’ll cherish you as long as I live.”

  “And I’ll cherish you,” she replied quietly. “I thought I would never know what it was to be loved.”

  He frowned a little, drawing her palm to his lips. “I never thought I would, either. I was never in love before.”

  She sighed tenderly. “Neither was I. And I never dreamed it would be so sweet.”

  “I imagine it’s going to get better year after year,” he ventured, toying with her fingers.

  Her free hand slid up into his dark hair. “Matt?”

  “What?”

  “Can we do that again?”

  He pursed his lips. “Are you sure that you can?” he asked pointedly.

  She shifted on the coverlet and grimaced with the movement. “Well, maybe not. Oh, dear.”

  He actually laughed, bending to wrap her up against him and kiss her with rough affection. “Come here, walking wounded. We’ll have a nice nap and then we’ll go home and make wedding
plans.” He smoothed down her wild hair. “We’ll have a nice cozy wedding and a honeymoon anywhere you want to go.”

  “I don’t mind if we don’t go anywhere, as long as I’m with you,” she said honestly.

  He sighed. “My thoughts exactly.” He glanced down at her. “You could have had a conventional wedding night, you know.”

  She smoothed her hand over his hair-roughened chest. “I didn’t know that you’d want to marry me. But just the same, I had to know if I could function intimately with you. I wasn’t sure, you see.”

  “I am,” he said with a wicked grin.

  She laughed heartily. “Yes, so am I, now, but it was important that I knew the truth before things went any further between us. I knew it was difficult for you to hold back, and I couldn’t bear the thought of letting you go. Not that I expected you to want to marry me,” she added ruefully.

  “I wanted to marry you the first time I kissed you,” he confessed. “Not to mention the first time I danced with you. It was magic.”

  “For me, too.”

  “But you had this strange aversion to me and I couldn’t understand why. I was a beast to you. Even Ed said it wasn’t like me to treat employees that badly. He read me the riot act and I let him.”

  “Ed’s nice.”

  “He is. But I’m glad you weren’t in love with him. At first, I couldn’t be sure of the competition.”

  “Ed was a brotherly sort. He still is.” She kissed his chest. “But I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She laid her cheek against the place she’d kissed and closed her eyes. “If the lawyers can help my mother, maybe she’ll be out for the first christening.”

  “At least for the second,” he agreed, and smiled as his arms closed warm and protective around her, drawing her closer. It was the safest she’d ever been in her life, in those warm, strong arms in the darkness. The nightmares seemed to fade into the shadows of reality that they’d become. She would walk in the light, now, unafraid. The past was over, truly over. She knew that it would never torment her again.