She remained where he had told her to stay. “Is that what you tell all your other conquests?”
“No.” And then, taking out a match and squatting down, he sobered as he lingered on what she’d just said. “Is that what you think you are—a conquest?” Carefully, he felt around for kindling.
She could hear his movements. They floated to her as the thunder took a respite. Desire warred with resolve. “Wasn’t I?”
He tucked the kindling between the logs, resenting the picture she was painting.
“I don’t ‘conquer’ women. To conquer means to invade, to possess, to dominate. I don’t do any of that.” He struck the match against a brick; it hissed as a flame leaped into existence. He tossed it into the kindling and waited for it to take. “Women usually come to me, so I don’t invade. I certainly don’t own them, so there’s no possessing involved. And as far as dominating…” His voice trailed off into a laugh. If anything, the women tried to dominate, attempting to impose their will on him. The flame took and spread, greedily consuming the kindling. “I enjoy women.”
“And did you ‘enjoy’ me?” The question came in a hushed whisper.
“Very, very much.” He stared into the fire for a moment, watching it grow. Just like his longing. “There, I think I’ve got that going now.”
Like a lover, the fire’s warm glow caressed his face. Savannah watched in silence as Cruz rose to his feet again, wiping his hands off on his jeans. A few drops of rain still clung to his hair.
They would be gone soon, she thought.
Silly the things a person thinks about when confronted with their own needs. And she was beginning to think hers would never be resolved.
She watched as Cruz turned toward her. Watched and felt her heart twisting in her chest. Boy or girl, her baby would be beautiful if it looked like him.
“So,” he began as if everything within him wasn’t begging him to take Savannah, to make love with her here on the floor of his cabin, while the wind and the forces of nature howled just outside his door, “what did you come to tell me?”
She drew her eyes away from him. “That you’re wrong.”
“About anything in particular, or just in general?” The soft smile on his lips faded. “Or just wrong for you?”
Savannah swung around to face him, the comment restoring all the courage she’d temporarily lost.
“You’re wrong about what you’re thinking. Maggie told me that she believed you thought I turned down your proposal because I felt I could—” she threw up her hands in total frustration “— Oh, God, this is so stupid, I can’t even say the words.” Anger crystallized her convictions. “I judge people on who they are, Cruz, not how much change they have in their pockets, or where the post office drops off their mail. And certainly not on whose photographs are in their family album.”
She was almost breathing fire. All he could think was that she was magnificent. And that he wanted her more than he wanted to wake up tomorrow morning.
“We don’t have a family album,” he told her evenly. “My mother keeps all her pictures in the box that held the first pair of boots she bought my father.”
Semantics. She was pouring out her heart, and he was toying with words. “Whatever.” She licked her bottom lip, confused, nervous. “Stop trying to mix me up.”
The smile was slow and all the more sensuous for the journey. “Do I?” His eyes took hers prisoner. “Do I mix you up?”
There was no point in denying it. “Like a blender.”
Because he couldn’t keep his distance any longer, couldn’t stand having almost the length of a room between them, Cruz crossed to her. He was a man moving toward his destiny. And his doom. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except having her.
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, it’s a bad thing.” But there was no conviction in her voice. “I’m used to being able to think straight.” And right now, she couldn’t even think, much less think straight.
Savannah wanted to back away. She wanted to tell him what she’d come to say, and then leave, before something happened. Before he happened. But she couldn’t seem to get started. Instead, she remained where she was, watching him as he drew closer to her. Making the inches between them evaporate.
“Sometimes, thinking gets in the way. Sometimes, you have to put all that aside, and just feel.”
His words were causing tidal waves in her stomach, breaking down defenses that were, at best, made of papier-mâché.
Run, damn it. Run for your life, girl. Don’t just stand here, praying that he takes you in his arms again.
But she was standing. And she was praying. Because nothing else seemed to matter right now, except that she wanted him to hold her. To kiss her again, just the way he had before he’d lit the fire. And to make love with her, because her whole body was aching for his touch, for the fiery, mindless magic that she’d only felt once before. In his arms.
“I did put everything aside and just feel.” Color rose to her cheeks. “Remember?”
“Yes.” He smiled, feathering his fingers through her hair, framing her face. “I remember.” He began lowering his mouth to hers.
The loud roll of thunder startled Savannah and she jerked, turning her head toward the sound. Cruz found himself kissing her hair. He laughed, then saw her flush in embarrassment. Something tender and protective stirred within him.
“It’s only noise,” he soothed, saying the same words he’d said to Quicksilver earlier.
It seemed ridiculous to react that way at her age. He probably thought she was an idiot. “I know, you’re right. But it always makes me jumpy. I was afraid of thunderstorms when I was a little girl, and I guess I never completely got over it.”
He’d been afraid of thunder, too, until his father had made it all go away with one of his fanciful explanations. It wasn’t until years later that Cruz realized that all kids weren’t fortunate enough to have a father like his.
“What did your parents tell you?”
Savannah didn’t understand. “Tell me? About what?”
He smiled to himself as another crash of thunder drove Savannah further into his arms. “About thunderstorms.”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I didn’t tell them I was afraid.”
He wondered why. As a child, he’d shared everything with his parents. “Maybe you should have. I remember this one storm we had. It felt like the wind was howling for hours. I was about five at the time, and terrified. My father found me hiding under his bed. He pulled me out and asked me what was the matter. When I told him, he just laughed, then sat me down on his lap and said, ‘It’s just the angels, Cruz, reminding us that they’re there.’
“I asked him why they were so very noisy, and he looked at me, his face as straight as if he were reading chapter and verse out of his old family bible.” Cruz’s voice deepened again, imitating his father almost to a tee. “‘What do you think, that they’re all these tall, skinny things you see painted in books? These are angels like you and me and your uncle Pablo.”’
“Uncle Pablo?” Savannah didn’t remember anyone on the ranch by that name.
“He was my father’s uncle. At the time, Uncle Pablo weighed in at around two hundred and sixty pounds. I was very impressed with the comparison.” His eyes glinted as he continued. “My father said, ‘Those kind of angels, they make noise when they move around.”’ Cruz grinned as he looked down at her, and she felt her heart melting. “I was never afraid of thunderstorms again.”
“Angels,” she repeated.
“Uh-huh.”
“Weighing about two hundred and sixty pounds.”
“About.”
“I don’t know about you, but that would certainly scare me.”
The grin faded into something softer and even more lethal. “There are things to be afraid of in this world, Savannah, but large angels aren’t one of them.”
“Oh?” She felt her voice catching in her breath. “What are you afraid of?
Or aren’t you afraid of anything?”
Very slowly, he began to undo the tiny buttons at her throat. “Oh, I’m afraid of things all right.”
A moment ago, she’d been close to shivering. Now it seemed unbearably hot in the small cabin. Her eyes held his, afraid to look anywhere else.
“Like?”
“Like this moment.” Two more buttons were released from captivity. Very slowly, Cruz dipped just the tips of his fingers inside the space they created, barely gliding over the softest hint of skin. “You.”
“You’re afraid of me?” His fingertips burned as they skimmed along her skin. She could hardly force the words from her lips.
“Terrified.” The word whispered along her skin, tantalizing her.
“Why?”
Very gently, he drew the rest of the blouse apart. Savannah wasn’t wearing a bra. His smile was slow, sensual and completely bone-melting as it washed over her.
“You figure it out.”
Ten
His eyes touched her face. “I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty. I relieved you of blame and responsibility.”
It wasn’t that simple. Guilt he could deal with. You either made amends, or, if that wasn’t possible, you put it out of your mind. You put it behind you. But he couldn’t seem to do that with her, no matter how hard he tried. Just when he thought he had succeeded, she would suddenly, and with no reason, turn up again in his mind. To linger there, tormenting him.
“Guilt has nothing to do with it. I keep remembering the way you looked that night.” Even mentioning it brought the scene vividly back to him. Cruz felt his gut tightening in anticipation. His eyes on hers, he skimmed his fingertips up along her sides until his hands cupped her. “The way you felt.”
His rough hands rubbed along her tender flesh, and Savannah bit back a moan of half pain, half pleasure. And all desire.
“The way you tasted.” He pressed a languid kiss to her throat, his lips sliding ever so slowly down the long white column. Cruz felt her pulse there beating erratically beneath his mouth. He didn’t know why that excited him so much. It just did.
And it made him want more.
His emotions exposed, his feelings unguarded, he allowed a confession to slip through. “I’ve wanted to make love with you again. Badly.”
That was all it was, she told herself. Lovemaking. Physical. Nothing else. No matter how much she wanted it to be more, it wasn’t. She had to remember that and be satisfied with what she had. What she might share with him tonight.
Her mouth curved in amusement and pleasure. “I doubt very much if you have ever made love badly in your life, Cruz.”
The light in her eyes told him she was teasing. He had no idea why that felt so intimate to him.
He laughed, kissing her mouth quickly, nipping her lower lip. The laughter faded, drowned out by desire so large, so unwieldy that it threatened to swallow him up whole without leaving a trace to even mark where he’d existed.
“Then I’ll try not to start now,” he promised softly a second before his mouth covered hers.
His arms around her, holding her as closely as was humanly possible without having them merge into one, Cruz felt Savannah sigh against him. And surrender.
Urges rushed out—urges that had only temporarily retreated below the surface. Needs rattled the bars of restraint he’d been trying to construct. Bars that were as useless as a sieve was to hold back rainwater.
His mouth hot on hers, Cruz kissed her over and over again, growing that much more entrenched, that much more lost in her.
It didn’t please him that Savannah had preyed on his mind like this. That she continued to prey on it even while he held her, even while he made love with her.
He ached for her even as he tried to ease the ache.
No other woman had ever done this to him, had ever done more than evoke a passing smile from him after he’d had her. Yet Savannah stirred his hunger, his passions and an overwhelming, driving need to have her again. And again after that.
It gave her an advantage over him.
Cruz didn’t want to think about that now. He didn’t want common sense or logic to rear its head and interfere with this exquisite moment that the storm and fate had conspired to hand him. She was here now, and he wanted her.
Maybe this time, after he’d had her, she would fade from his mind like all the others.
Like a flame rushing along a fuse of dynamite, heat rushed over her. Heat so all consuming that she vaguely thought one of the sparks from the fireplace had leaped out of the hearth and landed on her.
But it wasn’t a spark. It was Cruz. Cruz’s touch, Cruz’s kiss. Cruz’s body pressed so urgently against hers, hardening so provocatively.
She hadn’t thought it possible to want him more than she already did. But it was, because the hunger she felt was ravenous. There was no containing it. She didn’t even try.
No longer shy, no longer withdrawn, Savannah cleaved to him, her own body thrilling at the reunion. All thoughts of being strong and resisting died instantly. All she wanted was to feel alive again, just one more time.
The clothes that were still left on their bodies quickly flew away in a flurry of eager hands urgently pushing away barriers. Eager to claim what was there. To reexplore, to reunite. To seize the moment before it was gone, and sanity returned.
Right now it, and everything else, was a million miles away. Only the two of them were here.
There was a part of Cruz that wanted to savor these feelings for all they were worth because they were so unique. But Cruz was at war with himself. His blood surging hot, he had to restrain himself from taking her quickly, the way everything within him begged him to. He wanted to make love to Savannah with complete abandon before something happened to rob him of this sensation. To steal it away from him. To steal her away from him.
The thought that he wanted her this urgently, this all-consumingly scared the hell out of him. Until this moment, he had always prided himself on retaining control.
He couldn’t claim that anymore.
But Cruz stopped a moment before he was going to take her. Savannah looked up at him in the firelight. “What’s the matter?”
Cruz wanted to tell her everything he was feeling. But he’d never shared this remote corner of his soul. Never allowed anyone to come so close to him that he feared being without them. Even with his own family, there were small fences, small recessed paths where he hadn’t let them follow. Telling her what he was feeling right at this moment—needy, confused, aching—would allow Savannah into a place he had never allowed anyone else to enter. It risked too much, exposed too much. He needed to be self-contained. Loving this way had too many consequences.
Locking the inner door that had opened just a crack, Cruz framed her face and brought his mouth down to hers. “Nothing.”
She tasted the word before she heard it. And if she was going to protest that she knew he was lying, that there was something bothering him, she never got the opportunity. The tender assault he’d mounted blotted out her mind.
Gently pushing her onto the handwoven rug before the fireplace, Cruz reacquainted himself with every inch of her. Instead of the darkness of the stable, he had the light of the fire to show him the way.
He made love with her with every fiber of his being, wanting to lose himself in her, to outrace any thoughts that could hold him back, threatened to destroy this temporary paradise.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his hands creating wondrous feelings that leaped into existence within her.
How many times had he said that to other women as he made love with them? she wondered. It didn’t matter. Tonight, she’d pretend that she was the first. And the last. She’d pretend to believe him.
Each movement in response to him, each noise of pleasure, of desire that escaped from Savannah only fueled his craving for her. He knew he wasn’t her first lover—that there had been someone before h
im. But she made him feel as if he were her first. And made him wish with all his heart that he was.
He’d never wanted that before, either. To be the first to take a woman, the first to make her feel like a woman. But he’d want to share that precious moment with Savannah.
If he couldn’t be her first, then he would be her most memorable. He wanted at least that much.
He wanted everything.
He wanted.
Her belly began to quiver as his lips started to forge a long, languid, seductive trail along her body. As the fire’s warm glow bathed her, he kissed the instep of her foot, her ankle, the sensitive skin behind her knee. He worked his way up along her body, discovering places that brought a sweet, sensual rush through her veins, a quickening in her loins.
It was magic.
Twisting and turning beneath him as sensations flashed through her, bringing her up and over, then back to earth, only to start the journey all over again, Savannah burned for him. She wanted only to be his in the complete, final sense of the word.
Unable to keep the longing under restraint, she raised her hands to him. “I want you,” she whispered.
He’d heard the words before. Had said the words before. But had never felt them in his soul as he did now.
Fighting feelings that had no place in his plans, in the life he had laid out for himself, Cruz gathered Savannah to him roughly. He was angry that he couldn’t divorce himself from all this, the way he usually could.
It was physical, only physical, he told himself. She didn’t have a hold on him.
But she did.
His body over hers, Cruz seized her mouth and lowered himself until he filled her. Her legs encircled his hips, closing around him. Urging him on.
A face like an angel, a body like sin. The words echoed in his brain as he surrendered himself to the feeling battering at him.
To the feeling, and to her.
The ride was wild, erratic and timeless. Capturing his goal, or being captured up by it—he couldn’t be sure— Cruz could only let it all happen.
Ecstasy released a web of euphoria that blanketed him.
Expecting...in Texas Page 10