“Now you’re starting to give in to it,” he murmured. “Just relax. We’re going to take this slow and make it last.”
For the first time she didn’t question who was in command. He was solidly in charge, guiding her through a foreign and exciting land, one she’d never allowed herself to travel before, never trusted a man to navigate for her. Oh, she’d taken her pleasure, but always on her own terms, always with restraint.
Restraint slipped away. She arched against him, letting him know how she craved what he was giving her, shameless in her vulnerability.
“Yes, my darling. Yes,” he whispered. Easing her bottom down to the blanket again, he braced his hands on either side of her head without breaking his steady rhythm. But his angle changed. The light sprinkle of hair that curled over his chest tickled her breasts as he created a new kind of friction with each thrust.
She gazed into his eyes, soft as rain clouds, yet she sensed the storm he kept in check while he led her through a garden of delights, building the tension within her. When he quickened the rhythm, she was helpless in his arms, swirling rapidly in an exotic river filled with frothy rapids and bright flowers. The waterfall rushed to meet her, wringing a cry from her lips as she tumbled over it.
He slowed the tempo, absorbed her convulsions against his body, and kept moving. Speechless, sated with the force of her climax, she looked at him in wonder.
His smile made her heart tremble. “I think that’s what you wanted,” he said gently as he eased back and forth, maintaining the thread of tension.
She thought so, too, but couldn’t manage a single word.
“But there’s even more.” He wrapped his arms around her, snugged in tight and rolled to his back, bringing her with him.
Limp and languid though she was, she still found herself drawing her knees up on either side of his hips and bracing her hands beside his shoulders so that she could keep that delicious momentum going.
Gradually she found her capacity for speech return. Hair falling around her face, she met his gaze as she moved sensuously and deliberately toward another climax. “I feel wanton,” she murmured. She felt far more than that, but lacked the courage to say it
“That’s the idea.” He cupped her swaying breasts in both hands.
She loved the way he was touching her breasts, and the glow in his eyes as he looked at her naked body in the afternoon light. “But I’ve never...felt this way.” In love.
“Then it’s time you did. You... Mmm.” He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Wow. You nearly made me...oh, Cleo, take it easy.”
“You put me on top, cowboy. Take the consequences,”
He grasped her hips. “I can put you back on the bottom again, too. You’re dealing with a steer wrestler.”
“Don’t.” She leaned down and brushed her lips against his. “Let me take you with me this time.”
He kept her close with a hand behind her head. “Your lips are so sweet,” he said, urging her down to him. “Kiss me again. And make it count.”
She did, telling him with the language of her lips and tongue what she dared not say out loud. His grip tightened on her bottom and his upward thrusts became more powerful. She took his moan of completion into her mouth as an answering explosion rocked her body. It was perfect. All of it. She’d broken her cardinal rule, and nothing had ever felt so right before.
ALL THE JANGLE of nerves that had kept Cleo from sleeping for years had quieted, and she dozed beside Tom as they lay sprawled on the patterned blanket. At last, the cool breeze from the window woke her. The wonderful light that had seduced her into coming into this bedroom was nearly gone.
She slipped out of bed without waking Tom and walked over to gaze at the ranch in the glow of late afternoon. The sound of a dog barking drew her gaze to the woods, where a group of riders came out of the trees headed for the corral. She stepped away from the window, although she was certain no one could see her from this distance.
Instead, she turned back to the bed and saw how the last light of day spilled across it, caressing the magnificent body of the cowboy sprawled there on his stomach, one arm flung out as if reaching for her.
She crept to the bedside table and picked up her camera. Five frames left on the roll. She sighted through the lens, moved a fraction and sighted again. In the orange light his sculpted body looked like bronze. The patterned blanket provided the perfect backdrop, and for once she wished she had a color roll. She’d love to be able to capture the rosy flush of his skin and the rich brown of his hair tipped with sunlight
She took one shot, and another. Excitement rose within her. The composition, the light, the subject were all perfect. She moved to another vantage point and took a third shot. And a fourth. If what she saw through the viewfinder was what came out on film, these could be the best photos of her career.
On the fifth snap of the shutter, Tom’s eyes opened.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking your picture.”
The haze of sleep cleared from his eyes as he propped himself on one elbow. “Do you develop your own film?”
“No. I have a special lab that—”
“I guess that settles the question of whether I’ll be in your calendar.”
Uneasiness gripped her heart. “It does?”
“Sexy pictures are one thing. Nude pictures are a whole other subject”
“I wouldn’t use these for the calendar!” No, she’d pictured putting them in an art show in the middle of Manhattan, and blowing them up to poster size.
“I don’t care. My bare ass isn’t going through some photo lab. You’ll have to destroy the film.”
13
“NO! I won’t destroy this film.” Cleo held the camera to her chest, as if he might wrench it away from her.
Tom sighed and moved over to sit on the edge of the bed. This wasn’t the mood he’d hoped to set when they awoke from the best lovemaking he’d ever experienced, and he hoped the best she’d ever known, too. She looked so damn good standing there, the light outlining her body like those auras he’d read about. “What did you plan to do with the pictures?”
She flushed, which made her look even more appealing. “Nothing without your permission, of course.”
“And what did you plan to ask my permission for?”
“Nobody would recognize you. Your face was in shadow.”
He saw red. “You wanted to show them to someone?”
“Tom, if I got what I think I did, they’re wonderful. They’re not just pictures, they’re art. In a gallery, they could—”
“A gallery?” He came off the bed and started toward her.
“Don’t yell,” she said, backing away from him. “Somebody will hear you.”
“I can yell if I damn well want to in my own house! And I want to!” He advanced on her. “Because that may be the only way you understand that my naked butt is never, and I mean never, going to be hanging in some gallery in New York City, or any other place on this planet! Got that?”
“Don’t be so provincial.” She backed up until she reached the oak chair, which halted her escape.
“I will be, because I am. I’m from rural Montana, lady, not the big city, and out here we don’t go in for nude art, especially yours truly.”
“Your name wouldn’t be on it or anything. That’s only for the calendar pictures, so they know the men are real. This is more like a fantasy, with the way the light fell, and I blurred the focus just slightly. It could very well be the best thing I’ve ever done. It could win awards.”
He stared at her. “Let me get this straight. You objected to sleeping with me if you planned to put my picture in your calendar, but you don’t mind sleeping with me and then parading my slightly blurred body all over New York?”
“That’s right! Because the calendars are deliberately provocative, and the men are completely identified, so I have to make sure everyone knows I don’t sleep with my subjects. That would be extremely unprofessional, and unfa
ir to them, as well. In photography circles I would be called an artistic slut, with a great deal of justification.”
“But sleeping with someone, taking his picture afterward and making it into an art print wouldn’t be unprofessional?”
“No, it wouldn’t, because the shots I took of you aren’t provocative.”
“Oh, no?” He glowered at her. “I have no clothes on, and I’m sprawled on a bed. That’s pretty damn provocative, if you ask me.”
“They’re subtly sensuous, not overtly arousing, because I took them with tenderness and an eye for beauty.”
He nearly choked. “Beauty?”
“Yes, beauty. Seeing you there, lying in that special shaft of light, with your hair all tousled, and shadows made by the muscles of your back, and your gentle hands spread out on the blanket...” She shrugged, making her breasts quiver. “The artist in me had to take those pictures. They weren’t taken for gain, they were taken for love, and...” She glanced away. “What’s the use? You don’t understand me, anyway.”
His heart squeezed. “I think I just understood some of it,” he murmured, tilting her chin back around. “Come here a minute.” He took her by the shoulders and turned her so he could slide onto the chair and ease her onto his lap. The pictures had been taken with love, she’d said. He’d gained more ground than he’d even hoped for.
She nestled against his shoulder, but she kept a firm hand on her camera. “Please don’t ask me to destroy that film. You have every right to, of course. I said I wouldn’t do it, but that was just bravado. I’d have to if you insisted, because I couldn’t even develop the film without your consent.”
“I told you from the beginning that I’m a private man. What we just shared is private.” He breathed in the womanly scent of her and stroked her hair, working through the little tangles he’d helped create.
“I know. But you really won’t be recognized. Besides, the lab doesn’t pay attention to what it processes. It has a lot of clients who specialize in nude art, and I’m sure the people there have seen more naked bodies than a hospital staff. They’re immune by now.”
He was far from immune to one particular naked body. In fact, she was getting further with her argument by sitting on his lap than she had with all her logical reasoning. “Let me think about it,” he said, knowing he probably wouldn’t get much thinking done in this position, skin to skin with the sexiest woman he’d ever met. “Since you don’t sleep with your calendar subjects, are you going to forget about using me for the cover?”
“Well, I violated my rule.”
And how, he thought, trailing a finger down the slope of her breast and circling her nipple. It tightened in response. “Since it’s your rule, I guess you have to decide what to do about it.”
“Even if I want to use you in the calendar, you might decide against it when I send you the proofs.”
“The proofs with my bare-butt shots included, I suppose.” He teased the other nipple to erectness. A similar stiffening behavior was going on in his lap.
“Yes.”
“But if I said the word, you’d take the film out and give it to me now?”
She stirred in his arms and sat up a little straighter. Her thighs rubbed sweetly against his erection.
“I’ll give it to you now.”
He wished she wasn’t talking about film.
Apparently, she was. She opened the camera and took out the finished roll. “I’ll leave it on your bedside table until tomorrow, so you have complete control over what happens to it.” She stood, went to the bed and put the film on the table.
“Cleo, don’t go yet We—”
She set down the camera, opened the drawer and pulled out a condom. “Oh, I’m not leaving yet,” she said, walking back to him with a decided sway to her hips. “The way I look at it, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.” Her gaze drifted to his lap. “And from the looks of things, you’re ready to continue aiding my fall from grace.”
He eyed the condom as she took it out of the package. “Do you have more film?”
“I always have more film. Want some kinky shots to remember me by?”
“God, no. I want you to promise me you won’t reload that damn camera again.”
“I promise.” She dropped to her knees in front of him and rolled the condom over his hardened shaft. Standing again, she grasped the back of the chair and straddled both it and him. “I’ll just concentrate on reloading you.” With a smooth downward movement, she welcomed him back to paradise.
CLEO DECIDED she must be making up for lost time. Apparently Tom was, too. They couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Somewhere near midnight they pulled on enough clothes to cover the essentials and raided the refrigerator in Juanita’s spotless kitchen. Afterward they tried to clean up the evidence.
“She’ll still know we were here,” Tom said after they gave the counter one last swipe and headed back upstairs.
“It’s okay. I have kitchen privileges.”
He slung an arm around her shoulders. “Do you realize that no one else has ever wangled that kind of treatment from Juanita?”
“She likes my calendars.”
He pulled her over for a kiss as they walked down the hall toward his bedroom. “She likes you.”
She savored the taste of him, flavored now with the roast beef and cheese sandwiches they’d just finished. “I like her, too. I like her coffee almost as much as I do her, and that’s saying a lot. I’m going to miss both of them.” She could talk about missing Juanita. What she couldn’t talk about, couldn’t even think about, was missing Tom.
He guided her through the door and closed it tight before turning to her. “Cleo...”
She saw in his eyes what was coming next. She shook her head. “I can’t do that to you.”
“Do what?”
“Involve you with a New York woman again. Make you suffer going to the city because I couldn’t always come out here. And there’s something else. You’re going to have children someday. You’ll find the right woman and have those kids, because otherwise there won’t be a McBride to take over the ranch.” She waved a hand toward the photos on his dresser. “This place is full of continuity. You deserve to find someone who can help you create the next generation.”
His gaze searched hers.
She felt her womb tighten and told herself it was mere sexual desire, not some primitive mating instinct. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the maternal type.”
“Aren’t you?” Slipping the buttons free on her blouse, he cradled her breast and looked into her eyes as he stroked his thumb across her nipple.
In spite of herself, she pictured a tiny mouth there, seeking nourishment. A baby with Tom’s eyes and her hair. Her voice grew husky. “You’re the sort of man who would make any woman think of children, whether she wants to or not.”
“That’s not true.” He cupped her bottom and pulled her against his erection. “But you’re thinking of it.”
Yes, she was. His arousal carried a different message this time, created a different sort of ache deep within her. “That’s only because we’ve spent the past few hours in the activity that can result in babies, and now I brought up the subject It’s only natural that I’m...aware of...of...” She became lost in the depths of his gaze.
His tone was low and intense. “After what happened, I never thought I’d want to make a woman pregnant again.”
She swallowed. The ache within her threatened to overpower everything.
He stroked her belly as he looked deep into her eyes. “It seems I was wrong.”
Heat rushed through her, and she was suddenly desperate for his solid fullness deep inside her—all of him loving her, with no barriers. She reached for the snap on his jeans. “Make love to me.”
They managed to get as far as the edge of the bed. He leaned her back across the mattress, her feet still on the floor as he shoved her slacks down. Insanity claimed her as she released him from his jeans and open
ed her thighs.
“Wait. We need—”
“No.” She kicked the slacks free and wrapped her legs around his hips.
“Just for...a minute,” he gasped. “Just until...”
She moaned aloud as he plunged inside her. In a few quick strokes she exploded.
“Cleo, I can’t...stop.” He buried himself inside her trembling body with a guttural cry of surrender.
“I SHOULDN’T HAVE done that.” He’d refastened his jeans and now stood in front of the windows looking into the night.
“It takes two to be stupid.” Cleo pulled on her clothes. “You tried to stop me from behaving like a mare in season. I wouldn’t let you.” Her feelings were so jumbled, she couldn’t make sense of anything. She’d loved what had just happened, yet it could ruin both their lives. She should be horrified, when instead she was filled with joy.
“I helped bring you into season,” he said, “if you want to use that comparison. I saw that look in your eyes and I encouraged you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, coming over to put a hand on his arm. “One wild moment doesn’t usually result in...an accident.”
He turned and clasped his hands around her upper arms. “You’re whistling in the dark, Cleo.” His eyes were stormy. “You opened to me the way a flower opens for a bee, and you know it.”
She did know it. Until now, all they’d done was make love. But this...this was mating. Still, the law of averages was on their side. She’d known couples who’d had unprotected sex for years and had never conceived the child they wanted. “You’re a romantic,” she said, smiling at him. “And you’re also paranoid, which is understandable. We’ll be fine.”
His grip tightened. “And what if you’re carrying our child?”
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