“I’m all right,” he said, reaching for the wheelbarrow.
“Don’t be ridiculous. We can come back for the yucca after we get that cleaned up. You’re bleeding, too. The sooner I get the spines out, the sooner we can doctor the cut.”
His mouth went mulish. Winona thought he was going to play stubborn warrior for a moment, but evidently he decided against it and followed after her.
At the house, she paused in the kitchen where sunshine poured through the windows in a blaze. “Do you want something to drink?”
“I’ll get it,” he said gruffly. “The tweezers are in the bathroom, in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror.”
Winona found them and hurried back, her skin prickling with remembered cactus encounters. Once she’d landed with her palm open on one. It had taken weeks for all the tiny spines to work their way to the surface.
When she appeared, Daniel put down his glass and reached for the hem of his shirt. Carefully he pulled it over his head, swearing when the fabric brushed the spines. He cast it to one side. “Where do you want me to sit?”
Winona realized she was squeezing the tweezers tightly and holding her breath. “Umm...” The light was shifting, catching now on the tops of the trees beyond, which cast a shifting, uncertain light over the kitchen. “This isn’t going to work. I need better light.” She frowned, thinking of an old-fashioned floor lamp that sat by the couch downstairs. “Basement. And you can even watch a movie.”
“Terrific,” he said with a grimace.
Winona smiled.
The basement was cool and dark until Winona switched on the lamp. Daniel sat on the floor in front of the couch. Winona settled behind him and bent the gooseneck lamp to the proper position.
“Pretty good scrape here,” she said conversationally, blowing crumbles of dirt from the wound. Blood had welled in tiny scratch marks over a three-inch area, and she could see that the injury would be one of those annoying, thinly scabbed scrapes when it started to heal, but nothing serious.
The big problem was the cactus spines. The color of fishing line and firmly embedded, there were literally dozens of them. With a sigh, she started to pluck them out.
It was not a hard process, but it was tedious. Some spines were older and thicker, but the vast majority were only millimeters long, almost invisible. It took forever to find them all.
And hard as she tried to remain aloof, there was the problem of proximity. Daniel sat comfortably on the floor, her thighs on either side of his arms. The sleek expanse of his back was below her hands, the supple flesh giving off a sheen that held an unceasing temptation. Down his spine fell the rope of his tightly braided hair.
When she thought she’d removed all the spines from his shoulder, she took the chance to pick up that long, glossy braid. “There are a bunch of spines in your hair, too,” she said. She tried to pick some out, but frowned. “It might be easier just to brush them out.”
Ever so slightly, he leaned back, and propped his arms on her knees, tilting his head back to look at her. “So take them out,” he said, his voice low.
Winona froze, suddenly awash in the intimacy of their position and the allure of him, half-naked, his head nearly in her lap, his beautiful angled face utterly open to her touch. Her gaze snagged on his chin, sharply cut, and then his throat below, long and brown and smooth.
“Go ahead,” he said. Softly.
Struggling to maintain a facade of control, Winona shifted her gaze to his hair. “Lift your head,” she said matter-of-factly.
He did, but as she took the elastic band from the end of his long hair, he curled his hands around her knees. Her blood leaped, and heat spread from her belly to her thighs. With trembling fingers she unwound his hair, shaking it to loosen any spines that didn’t fall out right away.
His hair was beautiful. The night-dark strands held a silk cool weight that seemed almost alive, and Winona could no longer resist temptation. She wove her fingers through it, letting it spill and slide over her fingers and palms, and rubbed her inner wrist against a thick lock of it.
So beautiful, she thought, mesmerized. So exquisitely sensual.
And then, oh, then, without consciously making a decision to do it, she bent her head and put her face to the thick, glorious strands, breathing in the smell clinging to them, letting them move on her cheeks and chin. She spread his hair over her eyes and forehead and touched it to her neck. It was unlike anything, Daniel’s hair, and it smelled of him, like the desert, like hunger, like morning.
Slowly he let his head fall back into her lap, raising his eyes as she moved her hands over and over through his hair, spreading it over her thighs in a gesture she recognized distantly as brazenly wanton—but it felt glorious against her bare skin, sleek and satiny, and she couldn’t help imagining how it might feel on other parts of her. He simply let her explore the sensation, his head backward against her legs, his arms draped casually over her knees.
Caught in the strange, hushed moment, Winona looked at him, at his sleek skin and planed face and the vanity of that hair and his blazing dark eyes, full of hunger and yet infinitely patient.
She put her hands on his cheeks and moved them down to his neck, stroking his throat, then his chin, reveling in the smooth texture of male flesh, and still he did not move. She tried to speak and could not. The awakened being in her would not allow it, would not let her do anything except indulge this sensual worship of a man who was made to be touched this way.
After a long time of allowing her feathery explorations, he shifted, kneeling between her legs to face her. He put his hands on her legs, bare below the shorts, and gazed at her for a long moment, as if to give her a chance to move away. Instead Winona lifted her hands and put them on his shoulders.
He made a low, hungry noise, like a growl, and reached for her suddenly, fiercely, taking her bottom into his palms and moving her forward to the edge of the couch, so he could press between her legs. His eyes—oh, his eyes—were liquid with heat and longing, and they covered her, all of her, washing from the crown of her head to the meeting place between their bodies.
And with his hands, he traced the path, too, tenderly stroking her forehead, then skimming her cheeks with his fingertips. He traced her lips, her neck, lightly over her breasts. Without kissing her, without speaking, he reached for the hem of her shirt.
Winona did not protest. She raised her trembling arms and let him peel the tank top over her head, hearing the deep, soft noise that came from his throat when her body was revealed. She shivered, filled with an anticipation unlike anything she’d ever known.
Only then did he pause, his hands open on her legs. “Stop me now, Winona.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
He lowered his gaze then, and lifted his hands, and gaze and fingers met upon the dark-green lace of her bra. The first bold caress, grazing her nipple, made her gasp, and her legs tightened involuntarily around him.
She found herself watching as he touched with both hands the swell of flesh not entirely contained within the lace cups, and her breath came quicker, whether from the extraordinary attention he gave by looking at her so appreciatively or the way his fingers moved so reverently, she couldn’t say. Her shivering increased as he slowly, slowly folded the lace aside, lower and lower, until her nipples showed, pink and aroused, over the cups. She gasped at the wantonness in her, the aching desire she felt at such a sight. She watched as he moved his thumbs over her, then abruptly bent and took one into his mouth, suckling fiercely.
She cried out softly at the sensation that bolted straight to her very center. By his low, almost pained groan, she knew it gave him as much pleasure as it gave her. She held his head lightly, and he expertly laved his tongue over the place.
It was too much. With a cry, she pulled him up to her so she could kiss him, so she could participate. He pulled her down into his lap, nestling their yearning bodies tightly together, his tongue plunging hard, his teeth nipping her lips, his hot, sleek
chest moving against her aching breasts. His hair, like an exotic love toy, brushed over her arms, adding to the sensations.
And oh, his hands, his hands, moving, teasing, skimming. Such nimble, knowledgeable fingers. He pulled away once to unclasp her bra and free her breasts to press into him. The sensation seemed to send him over the edge, for then he rocked against her, and she felt the rigid heat of his arousal straining against her, with too many layers between them.
“Winona,” he said raggedly, kissing her. He licked her lips, her chin, her neck, and pushed her backward to circle her breasts and mark a line down her belly. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “I want to make you scream.”
And somehow, then, they were stretched out on the carpet. His mouth, so hot and moist and clever, moved all over her, down her sides, into her navel, along each rib, up the tender and deliciously sensitive flesh of her inner arm, to her breasts—and she cried out when he fell to his task there. He moved his hips against the tender apex of her thighs and her blood began to pound more furiously, rising and rising. She writhed, wanting him to stop, wanting him never to stop. He seemed to know exactly how long to pause to build anticipation, how firmly to suckle, when to drag his tongue to some other, unexpected place.
And now Winona trembled violently, her whole body an earthquake that shivered and rolled and pulsed. It was agonizing and thrilling and—The puppy yipped upstairs, a sound quickly followed by the opening of the screen door. Daniel and Winona froze against each other, then Winona was on her feet, running for the laundry room. She grabbed her bra as she scrambled, and Daniel was right behind her. Just as the girls called out the first hello, Daniel and Winona made it into the room and closed the door.
Winona, trembling wildly and naked to the waist, faced Daniel, who held out her shirt. For one awkward moment, they stared at each other, then Daniel moved forward and took her in his arms and started to laugh. “Close one,” he said, taking the bra and dropping it in the washer behind her. He shook out the shirt and pulled it over her head.
The girls called out a second hello.
“Down here!” Daniel replied. He kissed Winona, deeply, his hand clasping her breast over her shirt before he stepped away. “We’ll finish this later.”
Winona, her senses stunned, only nodded. The girls tumbled down the stairs, and she grabbed one of Daniel’s chambray shirts from the top of the dryer to put on over the tank top.
At the door he stopped, his hair tumbling paganly around his bare shoulders. “Later,” he said, a small smile spreading over his face.
Chapter Twelve
Winona emerged from the laundry room, involuntarily smoothing her hair, which felt wild and unkempt to her guilty hands. Catching herself, she crossed her arms over her chest, all too aware of her bralessness, which felt somehow hedonistic and shameful. She felt as if her body were visibly marked by the passionate moments with Daniel, and worried that Joleen would sense something amiss.
It was almost impossible to look at Daniel, his hair loose over his shirtless torso. Impossible to look at that glossy mane and not think of how it felt, how he felt, the things they’d done.
The wild being in her was loose and gaining control. The being who whispered there could only be pleasure and joy in such a joining, the one who laughed wantonly at the cautions of her conscience, the one who said a woman was made for loving, and this man was designed to deliver it.
The girls told excitedly of the snake they’d seen. “It was three feet long!” Joleen said.
“With a rattle as big as my hand,” Giselle added, holding up her palm in illustration.
Daniel, seemingly perfectly content, sat in the chair. “What was it doing?”
“Just sleeping!” Joleen said. “All curled up in a ball, right there in the middle of the path next to the water. I almost stepped on him.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t dead?”
“No, he wasn’t dead,” Giselle said. “He woke up and shook his tail.”
“Good grief,” Winona said, feeling ill at the thought of rattlesnake bites. “What did you do?”
Joleen laughed. “We screamed and ran back here!”
“Good,” Daniel said. He started to lean back, and winced as his wounded shoulder touched the chair.
They’d never finished taking care of that wound, Winona realized with a flush. “Come upstairs and let me wash that out properly now,” she said. “I’d hate for it to get infected.”
“All right.” He stood up. “We’ll talk later about what you should do if you are bitten, but right now, I need to get some first-aid cream.”
Now the girls noticed the wide scrape on his back. “Oooh, what happened?”
“I tangled with a cactus patch.”
Joleen bent close. “I think there are still spikes in there.”
“Grab those tweezers,” he said to Giselle. They went upstairs, the girls trailing behind, making noises of sympathy. Gently Winona washed the scrape, trying to ignore the broad, brown back. She started to smear first-aid cream over it, but hesitated at the last minute. “If there are any spines left, that will hurt like crazy.”
“I know!” Giselle piped up. “Hydrogen peroxide.”
“Good idea.”
“Can I pour it on?”
Daniel grinned at Winona over his shoulder. “She wants to see me suffer.”
“No, I don’t. I just like the bubbles.”
Winona stepped back, her hands trembling slightly with reaction and strain. A faint sense of panic made her back away—if she didn’t get out of here, she didn’t know what she’d do. Already she thought Joleen sensed a difference in her. “Go ahead, Giselle. I’ll run out and get the yucca we left by the orchard.”
She didn’t look at any of them as she darted out of the room, into the full heat and calming brightness of the day beyond. On the porch she paused, trying to catch her breath. This was all too embarrassing. Too ridiculous. She was making a fool of herself with Daniel Lynch.
The thought repeated itself in her mind, over and over as she stomped through the orchard and fetched the upended wheelbarrow. The plants weren’t harmed by the jarring fall. She picked them up and carted them around the outside of the orchard, taking her time, hoping she’d have some semblance of sanity cloaked over this madness by the time she returned.
But her memory betrayed her. One vision particularly haunted her, unreeling over and over until she wanted to die of mortification: unwinding his braid, then burying her face in his loose hair, like some kind of harlot.
How could she have done such a thing?
And how in the world could she keep Daniel at bay now, when she’d given him such a wanton invitation?
As she came around the edge of the orchard, she saw him sitting on the edge of the concrete porch, Giselle behind him, Joleen beside him. Like a pair of hummingbirds at the mouth of a four-o’clock, they whirred and moved around him, drinking in his easy chuckles and the teasing comments he tossed to them like drops of nectar, feeding their vulnerable egos, making them feel beautiful, loved, appreciated.
Winona stopped, suddenly remembering her father’s wry humor, his easy hugs and twinkling eyes. In his company, she’d always felt like the most beautiful girl in the world. He told her she had racehorse legs, and hair like moonbeams, and a smile pretty enough to light the morning.
How she had adored him!
Just as Joleen and Giselle adored Daniel. He was the sort of father figure single mothers yearned to find, for he simply tended the children in his realm as naturally as breathing, as if anyone would do it. In a world suffering the lack of fathers for entire nations of lost children, Daniel Lynch was a rare and precious man.
As she stood there in the bright sunlight, her hands tight around the handles of the wheelbarrow, he laughed at something one of them said and clapped Joleen on the arm. Giselle made some comment, bending forward, and all three of them laughed.
A jolt of pure, blinding emotion passed through Winona, making her han
ds shake. For the first time, she realized she had a far larger problem than simply whether to sleep with him or not and, if she did, what her moral obligations were.
Somehow, when she wasn’t looking, she’d fallen in love with Daniel Lynch. Deeply, painfully in love with his laughter, with his mischievous and changeable eyes, with his strong sense of order and sometimes prickly ways. She liked the fierceness in him, and the hints of brooding darkness. She wanted to ease the loneliness she sensed buried deeply behind all his smoke screens. She wanted to take care of him and make him eat right, and make love to him forever and ever.
For one moment, she let the emotion move through her, sharp and bittersweet. She’d never felt it, not even a glimmer of it. Not like this. She wanted to inhale him, meld with him, mingle everything she was with what he was, because only then would she feel truly whole.
He caught sight of her, standing there in the desert as if thunderstruck. His face changed, lightened, and he lifted his hand to his lips, kissed his fingers and motioned blowing the kiss to her. Heat ripped through her at the simple gesture, and on its heels came despair. She’d done it this time.
Giselle looked up, delighted. Even at a distance of thirty feet, Winona could hear the singsong happiness in her voice as she chanted, “Daniel and Winona up in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
Joleen looked up and back, and Winona found it impossible to read the expression on her face as she lifted a hand and waved.
Embarrassed, but determined not to show it, Winona waved back and made herself move forward, suddenly aware that she’d totally forgotten to put her bra back on. As Daniel’s bright, knowing gaze traveled over her body, she felt her nipples tighten, and knew that he noticed, and she wanted to flee once more.
She put the wheelbarrow down by the side of the house in a patch of shade. “I need something to drink,” she said.
“Me, too,” Daniel agreed, looking at her with laughter in his eyes. “I’m really hot.”
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