His Daughter's Laughter (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Hudson, Janis Reams

  But then, she knew where. It came straight from her own lonely fantasies, from her heart.

  She stepped away from his loose, one-armed embrace and kept her gaze carefully averted lest he read more than he should on her face.

  By the time they finished their tour of the first barn and made it to the second, Carly realized that this nightly “checking the stock” was, for Tyler, more of a ritual than an actual chore. All the work had been done before the other men left for town. Still, Tyler came, because he gen- uinely loved horses and cared about each animal he was responsible for. That caring came through in his eyes, his voice, the gentle way he stroked a glossy neck, patted a muscle-bound hip or shoulder, combed through a mane with his fingers.

  By the time Carly and Tyler left the last barn and headed back toward the house, the night was cold. Carly shivered in her lightweight jacket.

  Without a word, Tyler slipped his arm around her again and pulled her so close to his side that their hips bumped. She welcomed his thoughtfulness and his heat.

  The moon was a huge rosy disk in the eastern sky. From out in the pasture, a calf bawled, and the breeze carried the far-off howl of a coyote. The quiet night sounds soothed something inside Carly, even as they tugged at her heart- strings. Before long she’d be back in San Francisco listen- ing to traffic and sirens and the voices of her neighbors through the walls of her apartment.

  Tyler pulled open the back door and dropped his arm from her shoulders so she could enter the mudroom. There they both took off their jackets and hung them on pegs.

  “You’re quiet tonight,” he said as he followed her into the kitchen, then on into the living room.

  She turned on the table lamp beside the sofa. “I could say the same for you. You had a lot more to say to your horses than you did to me.”

  “Did I?” He shook his head, more at himself than at her. “Sorry. I guess I had things on my mind.”

  The way his gaze roamed over her made her knees trem- ble. There it was again, that look she thought she’d only imagined earlier. The look that stirred her blood. “Any- thing in particular?”

  His gaze lingered on her lips. “As a matter of fact,” he said softly, “I was thinking how much I’d like to kiss you.”

  Something hot and sweet shot through her and stole her breath.

  He stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, suddenly not looking at all like a man who was getting ready to kiss her. Not looking like a man who was even thinking about it, as he now stared at the toes of his boots, his jaw flexing.

  “So why don’t you?” she asked, her voice sounding faint and trembly in the quiet house.

  Tyler’s head shot up. His gaze pierced hers, then he closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “Because we’re alone.” He opened his eyes again and looked at her. “Which will make it all too easy for me to push you for more than I think you’re ready to give.”

  Sweat broke out on her palms. “More?”

  “More than a kiss, Carly. I don’t want to stop with just a kiss. Not tonight”

  Intense heat flared in his eyes, along with the promise of making her feel that heat for herself. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” He turned his back and stared out the front window into the darkness. “Oh.”

  Carly licked her parched lips and felt a trembling deep inside. “Tyler?”

  Tyler stiffened. He should have kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to face her now. Just thinking about what he wanted from her made him hard. But something in her voice compelled him to turn around.

  The look in her eyes shook him. He read a dozen things in those brown depths. Longing and heat, mixed with the certain knowledge of what he wanted. Desolation and lone- liness so deep it hurt him just to see it.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  A hot shiver slid down his spine. In. what felt like slow motion, he pulled his hands from his pockets. Despite the knowledge in her eyes, he felt driven to ask, “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  Her throat worked on a swallow. “We both know I won’t be here much longer. Amanda’s getting better. This… tonight might be…our only chance.”

  They stood there, with six feet of pine floor and Navajo rug between them, each acknowledging the truth of her words, while Tyler’s mind screamed in protest. This couldn’t be their only chance, their only night together. God help him, it couldn’t.

  “I don’t think,” he said as he closed the distance be- tween them, “that one night is going to be enough.”

  At her soft sigh, he cupped her face in unsteady hands and let his hunger loose. He hauled her against him and took her mouth with all the intensity of a starving man suddenly presented with a feast. And she was a feast. A banquet of sweetness and warmth to fill the yawning emp- tiness inside him.

  When her tongue met his eagerly, it touched off a chain reaction of sparks that ignited into shattering explosions down his arms, his legs, his back. His loins.

  God, how could just a kiss…ah, but then with Carly, it was never just a kiss. It was a mating of mouths and a melding of bodies and souls that stirred a yearning deep down inside him to possess her fully, to make her his, to stake his claim. To brand her.

  Her response, as it always did, drove him wild. He slid one hand down to her hips and pulled her closer, tighter, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted her so damned bad, not being able to get close enough was killing him.

  Then he felt her hands at the front of his shirt, trembling fingers tugging at the snaps. His knees went weak. He nudged his hips against hers.

  Her tiny whimper of want accompanied the answering thrust of her hips and made him groan into her hot, sweet mouth.

  The first snap of his shirt gave, then the second. She didn’t bother with more, but slipped her cool fingers inside to touch him. The exquisite feel of her skin sliding against his made him want more. More skin, hers and his, naked, touching, heating, soothing.

  The third snap gave of its own accord.

  Tyler tore his mouth free and gasped for breath. Never had a woman pushed him so far so fast. “Come here.” He swung her up in his arms and carried her upstairs.

  He wanted her in his bed, but some dark corner of his mind warned him that if she didn’t stay, if she left him, he would never be able to escape the memory of her there. The room, the very bed, would become, for him, a torture chamber. Self-preservation led him down the dark hall and into her room. He told himself she would be more com- fortable there.

  Bright moonlight poured through the open curtains, spreading patches of light and shadow across the room. Tyler nudged the door closed behind him and carried Carry to the bedside.

  His lips ached for the feel of hers. After all, he hadn’t kissed her in at least twenty seconds. That was more than enough time for a calf to bolt, a horse to stumble, a man to die of need. “You make me crazy,” he whispered as he took her lips with his.

  He let her legs slip from his grasp, and as she stood before him and pressed her body to his, he moaned. Sizzling heat shot through his veins like wildfire. By the time he came up for air his chest was heaving.

  She pulled away from him. He stifled a cry of protest. An instant later she turned on the bedside lamp. “If this is our only night together, I don’t want to miss any part of it,” she told him, voicing his own thoughts.

  She looked and sounded calm. Too damned composed for his peace of mind. He wanted her hands to shake as violently as his. He wanted her skin to tingle with the need for his touch, her lungs to ache for air, the blood in her veins to turn molten.

  He wanted her to feel as desperate as he did.

  With deliberate slowness, he pulled her back into his arms.

  Ah, the lady wasn’t quite so calm as she appeared. Her pulse fluttered rapidly in the hollow of her throat as if it were a trapped butterfly trying to escape. Her heart thun- dered against his chest. She met his kiss eagerly, her hands curving around his neck. Her fingers threaded into his hair and sent heat racing down hi
s arms.

  He needed to touch her, feel her skin, taste it.

  Carly shuddered as his mouth left hers to blaze a trail of kisses along her jaw and down her neck. His hands found their way under the back of her sweater. Where he touched, she burned. Hard calluses gently scraped her flesh, leaving a path of fire in their wake. Her breasts swelled in response, aching to feel that rough skin against them.

  No man had ever made her feel so shivery, so needy. So greedy. She wanted her hands on his flesh so badly she fumbled with the remaining snaps on his shirt before finally baring his chest.

  His skin was smooth and taut and warm, the muscles beneath, hard and quivering under her touch. She shoved the shirt over his shoulders and out of her way.

  Under her eager fingers, Tyler felt his restraint slipping. Impatiently he yanked his shirt down his arms and flung it aside.

  She stood back and ate him with her eyes, her hot gaze every bit as arousing as her touch. He closed his eyes and fought for control. Then her fingers brushed across his nip- ples. He jerked and sucked in a sharp breath as the circles of flesh beneath her touch drew exquisitely tight. The flesh behind the zipper of his jeans grew hotter, heavier, harder. Achingly hard.

  With a low growl, he reached beneath her sweater again and unhooked her bra. “Turnabout,” he whispered against her lips, “is fair play.” In one motion, he drew the sweater and bra over her head and tossed them aside. They landed somewhere near his shirt. She tried to lean into his chest, but he held her back. “Let me look at you. God, Carly, you’re beautiful.”

  She hung her head and hunched her shoulders forward. “I wish…” She motioned toward her breasts. “I wish I was bigger.”

  “I don’t.” He trailed his fingers down the outer curves of her small, perfect breasts and was gratified by the quick- ening of her breath. With the backs of his fingers, he brushed both nipples and watched them peak. “You’re per- fect”. He pulled her to him slowly, until their bare chests mated. “So damned perfect.”

  She tilted her head to meet his gaze. “I want to be,” she whispered with a stroke of one slender finger along his jaw, “for you.” With both hands, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him.

  He was lost. He wanted to whisper her name, to describe all the emotions that were flooding him, but he wouldn’t— couldn’t—take his mouth from the sudden sweet posses- siveness of hers.

  Carly’s head spun as he swept her into his arms and lowered them both to the bed. She felt him shove off his boots, heard them hit the braided rug beside the bed with a dull thud.

  The empty, aching void inside her grew and grew, beg- ging to be filled by him, with him. Only him.

  He covered her with his hands, his body, his mouth. One hand worked its way between them and inched down her stomach to the snap on her jeans. Carly sucked in her breath.

  Tyler raised his head. The light from the lamp turned one side of his face golden. His usually blue-green eyes were so dark a blue they looked almost black.

  One finger delved beneath her waistband and slid slowly back and forth. With a slight tug on the snap, he whispered, “All right?”

  The roughness in his voice turned her body moist be- tween her thighs. His finger moved again, and her stomach fluttered. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Yes.”

  Tyler watched the undulation of her stomach muscles beneath his hand and felt an answering movement in his own body. God, she was so responsive. He popped open the snap, pulled down the zipper and slipped his hand in- side, feeling his way beneath elastic and lace, over springy curls, to cup the dark dampness that seared him with its heat.

  Carly arched against his hand with a cry that echoed along his nerve endings.

  The waiting was killing him, but he wouldn’t rush, not now, not yet. He pressed an openmouthed kiss to her shoul- der, then worked his way down to her breast. When he settled over the distended tip she cried out again. The nipple pearled against his tongue, driving him crazy, making him harder.

  He couldn’t wait, not any longer. He shoved and tugged until the rest of their clothes were gone and she was there, gloriously, totally naked in his arms. Her lips moved. He thought maybe she whispered his name, but all he could hear was his own labored breathing and the rush of blood in his ears.

  She moved beneath him, shifting until he lay right where he belonged, cradled between her firm, smooth thighs.

  Her hands roamed over him frantically, driving him nearer and nearer the edge of sanity.

  “Touch me.” God, he was begging, and he didn’t care. Not when she complied so sweetly, her fingers gliding around his hip to brush against the part of him that pleaded to be buried inside her.

  This time it was he who arched and cried out, squeezing his eyes shut to hold in the mind-numbing pleasure of those soft delicate fingers wrapped around him. “Yes, oh yes,” he breathed.

  Carly shivered at the sheer power that filled her with his reaction, and at his own power, the essence of which she held in her hand. He was smooth and sleek, as soft as velvet and as hard as steel. And she wanted him, ached for him to fill the emptiness that threatened to destroy her.

  Then he was there, surging into her, filling her, driving her far beyond anything she’d ever known. Emotions she’d never experienced swelled until she thought surely she would burst with them. Ecstasy, desperation, passion. Love.

  He set a slow, steady rhythm. All on their own, her hips matched his as he tortured her exquisitely with long, lin- gering strokes. Her name fell like a prayer, or maybe a blessing, from his lips as he pressed them to hers.

  Then the fire and heat took over, and thought fled. Again and again he filled her, harder, faster, taking her higher than she’d ever flown, until the sensations deep inside her ex- ploded in a rainbow of colors.

  An instant later, he followed her over the edge with a sharp cry and one final, shattering thrust.

  Long after his breath and senses returned, Tyler was still buried deep inside her. He never wanted to leave. But he was so big and she was so small, he worried about crushing her. He rose onto his elbows. “Am I too heavy?”

  Her arms, which had slid from around him only moments ago in what he expected was sheer exhaustion, curled around his back and clutched him tightly. “No. Don’t leave.”

  It was the word leave that did it. The very reminder that she would leave him one day soon had him lowering him- self again to take her lips with a fierceness for which he should not have had the energy, much less the inclination.

  He could ask her to stay. The thought had crossed his mind more than once. She must care for him, must have some pretty damn deep feelings for him, or she would never have given herself the way she had tonight, so wholeheart- edly, so gloriously.

  But the words lodged in his throat and wouldn’t budge.

  Coward, his mind accused.

  Yes, that’s what he was, all right. A rank coward. She was young and beautiful and vibrant. She was used to life on Nob Hill. With the money he was paying her, plus the promised bonus when Amanda recovered her speech, Carly would have more choices for her future than she would know what to do with. Who was he to assume she would want to confine herself to an isolated ranch halfway be- tween sagebrush and nowhere, with no one around but a bunch of uncouth cowboys and their horses?

  In that regard he was comparing her to Deborah and knew he wasn’t being fair. Yet he couldn’t stop himself. Even if Carly thought she might be able to adjust, how long would it be before the isolation, the short summers and long, harsh winters, wore her down?

  Don’t leave, she’d said. Yet it was she who would leave him. The very idea made him desperate to hold on to her as tight as he could for as long as she’d stay.

  Before he realized what was happening, he was hard again and thrusting into her over and over with a desper- ation that scared him with its intensity. And she was meet- ing him thrust for thrust, heartbeat for heartbeat, ragged breath for ragged, lung-crushing breath. The little sounds she made in her thro
at, the way she rocked her hips against his, had him fighting for control. He didn’t want to go off without her. Please, God, not without her.

  Then it was happening. She was clutching him with her thighs, her arms, her tight inner muscles, and crying out his name. He let go of his control and gave her everything he had, everything he was, knowing even as he emptied him- self into her that it, he, wouldn’t be enough to hold her.

  The next thing he became aware of, before he’d even caught his breath, was the slamming of a pickup door out- side Carly’s bedroom window. He swore; she stiffened.

  “Your father.”

  Tyler rose above her and watched in the lamplight as her expression closed off and she emotionally withdrew from him. Even her skin, still slick with sweat and pressed so intimately against his, seemed to cool too fast. He swal- lowed. “Do you want me to leave?”

  Outside, footsteps crunched on gravel.

  She turned her face away from the light, away from him. “I think it would be best.”

  No, he cried softly. Not best Nothing could be “best” if it meant leaving her arms.

  But because she asked, he would do it.

  He gave her one last kiss, keeping it as gentle as he could when what he wanted to do was kiss her harder than ever and stay right where he was, still buried deep inside her. Slowly, one reluctant, aching inch at a time, he withdrew from her, gritting his teeth against the need to thrust for- ward again, rather than pull out.

  Downstairs, the back door creaked open.

  “Could you…hurry?” she asked, her voice strained, her face still averted.

  “Yeah, right,” he said, stung by her withdrawal. He rose from the bed and grabbed his clothes and boots from the floor. At the door, he gave her one last look. “I love you, too,” he bit out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Tyler spent a long night kicking himself for the way he’d left Carly. She’d had every right to get uptight over his dad coming home; he’d had no right to get sarcastic about it. No right to hurt her that way.

  “Your insecurities are showing, bud.”