"Please," she cried, catching at his hand, searching out his gaze and holding it steady with hers, forcing her voice to a strong, purposeful level. "I want you. Inside me. Before you touch me one more time."
Heat blazed in his eyes as he pulled her body under his, as he leaned down and pressed a slow, intoxicating kiss to her open mouth. He eased away a fraction and smiled. "I thought you'd never ask."
And while she was still absorbing the irresistible impact of that smile, she felt him between her legs, apology tightening his face and his voice as he eased into her body.
"Bear with me…" He stilled, whistled out a breath between his teeth. "You're so snug." He pressed forward again, restraint taut on his lips, his brow, in the tendons standing out on his neck. "So damned … tight."
Chantal couldn't bear the suspense, the restraint, the slowness any longer. "And perhaps you're just too damned big."
"Oh, man." He shook his head, once, one side to the other. Then he laughed, a strained guttural sound that cut short in the middle as he gazed down into her eyes. "You're really something."
"I am?"
Eyes fixed on hers he eased partway out and she felt a mild moment of panic. Digging her fingers into his back, she held him there, poised at the brink of her body.
"Do you happen to know what that something is?" she asked.
Slowly he pressed into her, a little deeper this time. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he stopped, waiting for her body to adjust. "I'm working on it."
"Not nearly quickly enough."
"I'm trying—" he spoke through gritted teeth "—to be considerate."
"And I totally appreciate the effort."
Smiling sweetly, she lifted her hips in silent invitation but still he held himself there, unmoving, unrelenting. A tremor quivered through his body, through the long sweat-dampened muscles of his back, through the bulging arms that held him clear of her body, through the passion-hazed turmoil in his eyes. And in that moment Chantal felt an overwhelming sense of rightness along with an incomprehensible rush of tenderness.
She lifted a trembling hand to cup his face, touched the pad of her thumb to his lips and whispered, "Go ahead. Make my day."
He swore. Succinctly. Fiercely. And then he let himself go, plunging into her body with an intensity that rocked her to her toes, once, twice, three times, penetrating so deeply, so completely, that she knew she would never be the same again.
Knew she never wanted to be the same again.
"This isn't the way I wanted it to be."
The guttural depth of his voice, the burning intensity in his eyes, the heavy pulse of his body inside hers, all combined to fill Chantal with a primitive power, an elemental strength. Then he bent down and dragged her earlobe between his teeth and she felt as weak and helpless as a newborn kitten.
"I wanted slow and steady," he growled near her ear, retreating then filling her again with one smooth languid stroke. "Control."
He repeated the exercise as he repeated the words. Smooth. Steady. Control. It was exquisite. It was mind numbing. It was sheer, unadulterated torture. Chantal whimpered low in her throat as the pressure built to an unbearable intensity.
Then he reached between them, seeking, stroking, one expert thumb and one flashpoint of wildly spinning sensation that traveled so quickly and grabbed so ferociously she could barely breath. Wave after wave of delight shuddered through her body and she cried out long and loud as his strokes gathered momentum, no longer languid and smooth and controlled, just an ever escalating force that hammered at her senses until he buried himself with a shout that sounded something like triumph and something like desperation, a shout of release that echoed through the room and reverberated through her soul.
* * *
Chapter 10
«^»
She was watching him. Quade knew it the instant he came awake, yet the notion didn't feel as intrusive as it should have done. Or perhaps he was simply too spent, too sated, to register any feelings.
"How long have you been awake?" he asked, eyes still closed against the morning sun's white brilliance.
"A while." The sheets rustled softly as she shifted position. "Do you always sleep so soundly?"
"No." Never. At least not in the last several months. Yet he had slept like the dead, on the flat of his back, limbs heedlessly sprawled, with a strange woman in his bed and beneath several of those sprawled limbs. Strange? Only because her presence felt too familiar – that constituted strange.
He lay there a moment longer, waiting for the what-am-I-doing-here? misgivings to rouse him from his perfectly relaxed state. When they didn't he rolled onto his side, opening his eyes a mere slit to find her less than a foot away, solemn eyes looking right into his.
The effect jolted him to full consciousness in one heartbeat. Like the first shot of morning caffeine, he thought, still mesmerized by those deep espresso eyes … or by the expression in them. Grave, yes, but intensely focused, as if he were the only thing worth her regard. Chest tight – not with the expected dread, but good tight – he lifted a hand and touched her cheek, touched skin so pale and fine it seemed almost translucent in the bright light.
"Good morning." Her voice rasped with more than an edge of huskiness. From overuse during those long night hours before sleep claimed them?
The thought made him smile. "Yeah, it is. Especially since you're still here."
"I did think about leaving, but—" She shrugged. "It seemed like too much trouble."
Because she could barely move? Damn. Remorse washed through him. He had tried for restraint, for consideration, but she tackled lovemaking like everything else. Full on, take no prisoners, last man standing.
Heat chased hard on the heels of remorse, but he tamped it with thoughts of her inexperience. All but a virgin. "You must be feeling a bit…"
"Exhausted? Awed? Wonderful?"
"I was going to say sore."
"That too, but in the nicest possible way. Muscles I haven't used and all that." Self-reproach must have shown on his face because she suddenly smiled and touched a gentle hand to his frown. "Hey, no need to feel bad. I'm tough."
"You're a marshmallow." He kissed the soft sweetness of her lips before she could voice an objection. And because he felt like it. "Which, before you take issue, isn't necessarily a bad thing."
"You think?"
He kissed her again.
"And now you're trying to distract me," she murmured, clearly distracted.
Quade laced his fingers into her wildly tumbled hair and reminded himself how this conversation started. With self-reproach for the reason her hair arrived at that state – through excessive wild tumbling. He shouldn't be kissing her. Shouldn't be thinking about starting all over again the way he should have started. Soft and gentle and tender. Long quiet lovemaking that whiled away the hours and left a body blissful and boneless.
With a mental grimace, he removed his hand from her hair and scrubbed it over his face. Boneless was not an apt word choice, not given his current ever hardening state. He needed distracting.
"You up for breakfast?"
"What do you have in mind?" she asked lazily, propping herself up on one elbow in a way that enticed the sheet to mould her curves more closely.
"The usual. Coffee. Toast." You. On toast.
"French toast? With lashings of maple syrup?"
"Not unless you know somewhere that does home delivery."
Laughing, she shook her head and a tiny pink flower drifted to rest on his pillow. Eyes narrowed, he leaned closer and plucked another from her curls.
"Kree sprinkled those through our hair for the wedding. Apparently when I took them out in the bathroom last night, I missed a couple."
"Is that what took you so long?"
When she paused a second, hesitant, Quade instinctively held his breath. He wasn't sure he was up for any more surprises. "Actually I suffered a mild panic attack."
No surprise there. As soon as he'd pulled her into h
is bedroom he'd seen the anxiety and uncertainty in her eyes, but he'd let her go, left her to take her time, even though… "Back here I was having my own panic attack, not so mild."
"Really?"
"I thought you might do a runner. Out the window and across the paddocks."
"Would you have followed me? Would you have chased me across the paddocks?"
Awareness arced between them – he saw it in the teasing smile, in the slight flare of her nostrils – and like wildfire the scene filled his senses. Pumping legs and panting breath, the pale flash of her dress flitting in and out of view, the excitement as the distance between them closed, as his hands found her in the darkness. The clash of bodies, the sensation of falling, rolling over and over in the lush green grass. The knowledge of having her under the moon and the stars. Under him.
"Careful," he murmured, cautioning himself and cautioning her from responding to the images that burned in his eyes, to the heat he saw reflected in hers. "Let's just back this up a few degrees."
"Okay." She exhaled a hot breath that whispered over his bare arm. "Back to where you panicked about me leaving—"
"You first. What frightened you?"
"Insecurities." Her gaze dropped from his and she laughed softly, in that self-derisive way she had. "Or insecurity. I'm never sure if that should be plural or singular, although last night, in your bathroom, it felt like a whole seething mass of the suckers for a minute or two."
The need to reach out, to comfort her, was powerful. Irresistible. He touched a finger to her shoulder, stroked it the long beautiful length of her bare arm. "You care to tell me what a stunning, sexy, sharp woman has to be insecure about?"
"Not if it makes me sound like a neurotic nutcase."
He smiled but his gaze remained serious. "You don't see yourself the way I described, do you?"
"I'm sharp. I'm a woman. And you seem to have the knack of making me feel sexy."
"And beautiful?"
She sighed. "Look, I know the sight of me doesn't scare children, but when I was growing up I was always the shy, chubby one. The brainiac. The one with her nose stuck in a book … and I'm not talking about the Bobbsey Twins."
"Steinbeck? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky?"
"If they were on the syllabus," she said matter-of-factly. "Schoolwork happened to be the one thing I did well at, so I immersed myself in it. It became a habit."
"Study?"
"Success." Eyes lowered, she paused. Moistened her lips. "I started avoiding things where I thought I might fail. Sport, parties, boys."
"And after one…" What had she called it? Forgettable? Regrettable? "One experience, you started avoiding men?"
"Let's assume it was a spectacular unsuccess and leave it at that, okay?"
Yeah, he could do that. He could press a kiss to her wry smile and make some teasing comment and go start on breakfast. Or he could act on the compulsion barreling around inside him, the need to expunge the bad memories from her eyes, to replace them with spectacular present experiences. What the hell…
With lightning speed, he rolled her onto her back and pinned her to the bed. "So, how did last night rate on your success-o-meter?"
"Off the scale."
A simple response, three little words, but her lack of guile, the absence of premeditation, the clear honesty in her eyes, blew Quade away. He felt like puffing his chest out, thumping it Tarzan-style, swinging from the ceiling. And he couldn't help repeating her words. "Off the scale, huh?" Couldn't stop grinning like some big loon who would beat his chest and swing from light fittings.
"I heard you'd be a master class," she said, smiling right back at him.
"You heard? From whom?"
"My lips are sealed."
"I have ways of unsealing them." He nuzzled her neck until she squirmed against his hold, the laughter gurgling against her lips. "You know I can make you talk. And moan. And beg."
When he slid lower he took the sheet with him, playing it over the lush swell of her breasts until the nipples hardened and darkened, until he heard the hot rush of breath past her lips. Ducking his head he wet one, then the other, with one gentle slide of his tongue then he rocked back to inspect the results.
Glorious. The contrast of milk-pale flesh against midnight-dark satin. The gleam of their kiss-moistened tips, the flush of arousal pink in her skin, her lips plump and soft and begging to be taken. He obliged, losing himself in the deep dark complexity of the kiss, then, as he lifted his head, in the deep dark complexity of her eyes.
"Now you've gone and done it," she murmured.
"Not hardly." Not yet, but soon.
"You kiss me like that and, poof, my mind clears. I can't even remember what you're trying to coax out of me."
"Does it matter?"
"Probably not, but don't let that stop you." Her sultry come-hither smile was about the sexiest thing Quade had ever seen. The fact that it came dressed in nothing but pale skin and framed in dark satin didn't do it any harm either. "I'm rather enjoying the process."
"Settle in because this particular process takes a while."
A wicked anticipation danced in her eyes. "I don't have anywhere else to be."
"No golf lessons to run off to?" He touched the soft curve of her belly with the backs of his fingers.
"Yes." The answer whistled through her teeth as he dragged his fingers lower. "But you're making me forget again."
"Should I feel flattered?"
"Only if it doesn't augment your ego. That's had quite enough stroking this weekend."
Quade snorted. "No such thing as enough stroking. Not where a man's … ego … is concerned."
She rolled her eyes and warm laughter streamed through him. It struck him how much he was enjoying her, not just the feel of her under his hands, under his body, but the banter. The teasing. The laughter that no longer felt strange on his face.
"If you ask nicely I'll give you a few pointers later."
"Are we talking golf?" All wide-eyed innocence. "Because I do need a few pointers. It's my big debut on Friday."
"You don't sound very concerned." Not for a confessed success junkie who, last time he looked, had trouble even connecting with the ball.
"When Godfrey set the time last week I just about lost my lunch, but you're providing one heck of a displacement activity."
Well, hell. Quade's hand stilled. A displacement activity. Is that all this was to her? Frowning, he looked into her eyes and saw the teasing laughter dim. What was wrong with him? Five days before he'd been ready to run screaming for the hills – her words, pretty accurate – when she'd revealed her long-term crush on him. He'd feared she would place too much importance on this affair, that she was looking for more than short-term pleasure. And now he was getting bent out of shape about her calling it a displacement activity.
"Is something wrong?" she asked. "You've gone awfully quiet."
Shoving his qualms aside, he smiled slowly and found her again. "Just trying to remember what comes next."
"Or who…" she murmured on a serrated sigh of pleasure. Short-term pleasure, Quade reminded himself as he watched her eyes widen with delight. That's all this was about, for both of them.
* * *
Over the next four days they shared plenty of pleasure and Quade gave her many pointers. Some were even about golf. "And wasn't that a waste of time," he groused out loud, just for a change.
He'd been stewing in silence for – he glared at the clock on his shed wall – five hours now, and it was becoming old. So was pacing the walls of his shed, cursing at every tool that slipped from his fingers, and blaming the clock. Where the hell was she? Throwing aside his buffing cloth, he expelled a frustrated sigh and gave up all pretence of work.
One phone call, that's all he needed. Hi, I'm fine. I haven't wrapped my missile of a car around a tree. Talk to you later. How much trouble was that? Too much, obviously. At last count he'd left six messages, three on her cell phone, one on her home phone, one on her work phone, and, w
hen those cold spears of accident dread jabbed through him, one on her parents' phone.
What more could he do except stew and grouse? Julia and Zane were honeymooning and Godfrey didn't have a clue. He knew that firsthand. He'd willingly subjected himself to a whole afternoon in his uncle's company, nine holes of well-oiled maneuvers and manipulations, more aimed at getting him on board at M.A.B. than at winning a round of golf, and all for her benefit.
Because at breakfast that morning she'd knocked over the milk jug and burned the toast. Oh, she'd covered with jokes about clumsiness, but he'd known it was nerves, edginess, because of the afternoon's golf appointment. And as soon as she'd waltzed out the door, all breezy smiles and fake bravado, he'd picked up the phone and weaseled an invitation to join them. He'd wanted to be there for her, to provide moral and coaching support, because it meant so much to her.
And what had she done? She hadn't even turned up.
Godfrey had shrugged his concerns aside. "She couldn't make it this afternoon. Left a message with my secretary. Some fire to put out and she had to rush off somewhere. Work first with Chantal, always. That's why she's such a valuable member of our firm."
Hardly news to Quade, except this last week… No. Jaw clenched he shoved that dangerous thought aside. This week she'd been coasting – straight nine to five, few after-hours calls. Slow weeks happened along from time to time and, fortuitously, he'd gotten to share this one with her.
Didn't mean she rushed home to be with him. Didn't mean she chose his company above extra night hours. Didn't mean a thing in the big scheme of things.
When she hadn't returned his first message by seven, his irritation over an ill-spent afternoon had grown claws of worry, anxiety, unease. The golf had seemed so important. Impressing Godfrey the be-all and end-all. Hell, she'd even practiced in the rain to fit herself for this afternoon. She wouldn't have just blown it off … would she? I started avoiding things where I thought I might fail. No, not Chantal. She wasn't a quitter. Not any more.
QUADE: THE IRRESISTIBLE ONE Page 11