by Diana Palmer
The rain was falling harder. It banged on the hood, and on top of the cab, with tempestuous fury. Inside, Janie could hear the tormented sound of her own breathing, feel her heartbeat shaking her madly, while Leo’s practiced caresses grew slower and lazier on her taut body.
“Will you…please…!” she sputtered, gripping his arms.
“Will I please, what?” he whispered into her mouth.
“T…t…touch me!” she cried.
He nipped her upper lip ardently. “Touch you where?” he tormented.
Tears of frustration stung her eyes as they opened, meeting his. “You…know…where!”
He lifted his head. His face was taut, his eyes dark and glittery. He watched her eyes as his hand slowly moved down to where she ached to have it. She ground her teeth together to keep from crying out when she felt that big, warm, strong hand curl around her breast.
She actually shuddered, hiding her face in his throat as the tiny culmination racked her slender body and made it helpless.
“You are,” he breathed, “the most surprising little treasure…”
His mouth searched for hers and suddenly ravished it while his hand moved on her soft flesh, molding it, tracing it, exploring it, in a hot, explosive silence. He kissed her until her mouth felt bruised and then she felt his hand move again, lifting free of her blouse, around to her back, unhooking the bra.
She didn’t mind. She lifted up to help him free the catch. She looked up at him with wild, unsatisfied longing, shivering with reaction to the force of the desire he was teaching her.
“It will change everything,” he whispered as he began to move the fabric away from her body. “You know that.”
“Yes.” She shivered.
Both hands slid against her rib cage, carrying the fabric up with them until he uncovered her firm, tip-tilted little breasts. He looked at them with pure pleasure and delight. His thumbs edged out and traced the wide, soft nipples until they drew into hard, dusky peaks. His mouth ached to taste them.
She shifted urgently in his arms, feeling him turn toward her, feeling his leg insinuate itself even more intimately against her. He looked into her dazed eyes as his hand pressed hard against the lowest part of her spine and moved her right in against the fierce arousal she’d only sensed before.
She gasped, but he didn’t relent. If anything, he brought her even closer, so that he was pressed intimately to her and the sensations exploded like sensual fire in her limbs.
“Leo!” she cried out, shivering.
“You turn me on so hard that I can’t even think,” he ground out as he bent to her open mouth. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Janie,” he groaned into her mouth as he turned her under him on the seat and pressed his hips down roughly against hers. “Feel me,” he whispered. “Feel me wanting you!”
She was lost, helpless, utterly without hope. She clung to him with no thought for her virtue or the future. She was drowning in the most delicious erotic pleasure she’d ever dreamed of experiencing. She could feel him, feel the rough, thrusting rhythm of his big body as he buffeted her against the seat. Something hit her arm. She was twisted in his embrace, and one leg was almost bent backward as he crushed her under him. Any minute, limbs were going to start breaking, she thought, and even that didn’t matter. She wanted him…! She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until she heard his voice, deep and strained.
“I want you, too,” he whispered back.
She felt his hand between them, working at her jeans. His hand was unfastening them. She felt it, warm and strong, against her belly. It was sliding down. She moved to make it easier for him, her mouth savage under the devouring pressure of his lips…
Leo heard the loud roar of an approaching engine in his last lucid second before he went in over his head. He froze against Janie’s warm, welcoming body. His head lifted. He could barely breathe.
He looked down into her wide, misty eyes. It only then occurred to him that they were cramped together on the seat, his body completely covering hers, her bra and blouse crumpled at her collarbone, her jeans halfway down over her hips.
“What the hell are we doing?!” he burst out, shocked.
“You mean you don’t know?” she gasped with unconscious humor.
He looked at the windows, so fogged up that nothing was visible outside them. He looked down at Janie, lying drowsy and submissive under the heavy crush of him.
He drew his hand away from her jeans and whipped onto his back so that he could help her sit up. He slid back into his own seat, watching her fumble her clothes back on while he listened, shell-shocked, to the loud tone of a horn from the other vehicle.
Janie was a mess. Her lips were swollen. Her cheeks were flushed. Her clothes were wrinkled beyond belief. Her hair stood out all around from the pressure of his hands in it.
He was rumpled, too, his hair as much as hers. His hat was on the floorboard somewhere, streaked with water from her raincoat and dirt from the floor mats. His shirt had obvious finger marks and lipstick stains on it.
He just stared at her for a long moment while the other vehicle came to a stop beside his truck. He couldn’t see anything. All the windows were thickly fogged. Absently, he dug in the side pocket of the door for the red rag he always carried. He wiped the fog from the driver’s window and scowled as he saw his brother Cag sitting in another ranch truck, with Tess beside him. They were trying not to stare and failing miserably!
Chapter Eight
Belatedly, Leo rolled the window down and glared at his brother and sister-in-law. “Well?” he asked belligerently.
“We just wondered if you were all right,” Cag said, clearing his throat and trying very hard not to look at Janie. “The truck was sitting out here in the middle of nowhere, but we didn’t see anybody inside.”
“That’s right,” Tess said at once. “We didn’t see anybody. At all. Or anything.”
“Not anything.” Cag nodded vigorously.
“I was showing Janie a photo of the Clark man,” Leo said curtly. He pulled it out of his pocket. It was crumpled and slightly torn. He glared at it, trying to straighten it. “See?”
Cag cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “You, uh, should have taken it out of your pocket before you showed it to her…I’m going!”
Cag powered his window up with a knowing grin and gunned the engine, taking off in a spray of mud. Leo let his own window back up with flattened lips.
Janie was turned away from him, her shoulders shaking. Odd little noises that she was trying to smother kept slipping out. She was about to burst trying not to laugh.
He leaned back against the seat and threw the clipping at her.
“It’s not my fault,” she protested. “I was sitting here minding my own business when you got amorous.”
He pursed his swollen lips and gave her a look that would have melted butter. “Amorous. That’s a good word for it.”
She was coming down from the heights and feeling self-conscious. She picked up the clipping and handed it back to him, belatedly noticing his white Stetson at her feet. She picked it up, too, and grimaced. “Your poor hat.”
He took it from her and tossed it into the small back seat of the double cab. “It will clean,” he said impatiently.
She folded her hands in her lap, toying with the streaked raincoat that she’d propped over her legs.
“Marilee caused a lot of trouble between us,” he said after a minute, surprising her into meeting his somber gaze. “I’m sorry about that.”
“You mean I don’t really make you sick?” she asked in a thin voice.
He winced. “I was furious about what I thought you’d done,” he confessed. “It was a lie, Janie, like all the other terrible things I said. I’m sorry for every one of them, if it does any good.”
She toyed with a button on her raincoat and stared out the window at the rain. It did help, but she couldn’t stop wondering if he hadn’t meant it. Maybe guilt brought the apology out of him, ra
ther than any real remorse. She knew he didn’t like hurting people.
A long sigh came from the other side of the pickup. “I’ll drive you back home,” he said after a minute, and put the truck in gear. “Fasten your seat belt, honey.”
The endearment made her feel warm all over, but she didn’t let it show. She didn’t really trust Leo Hart.
He turned back onto the main road. “Fred and I are going to mob you with company at Shea’s,” he said conversationally. “Between us, we know most of the ranchers around Jacobsville. You can ask Harley to keep dropping in from time to time, and Fred and I will talk to the others.”
She gave him a quick glance. “Harley’s jaw was really bruised.”
His eyes darkened. “He had no business interfering. You don’t belong to damned Harley!”
She didn’t know what to say. That sounded very much like jealousy. It couldn’t be, of course.
His dark eyes glanced off hers. “Do you sit around in parked trucks with him and let him take your blouse off?” he asked suddenly, furiously.
“I do not!” she exploded.
He calmed down at once. He shifted in the seat, still uncomfortable from the keen hunger she’d kindled in his powerful body. “Okay.”
Her long fingers clenched on the fabric of the coat. “You have no right to be jealous of me!” she accused angrily.
“After what we just did?” he asked pleasantly. “In your dreams, Janie.”
“I don’t belong to you, either,” she persisted.
“You almost did,” he replied, chuckling softly. “You have no idea what a close call that was. Cag and Tess saved you.”
“Excuse me?”
He gave her a rueful glance. “Janie, I had your jeans half off, or have you forgotten already?”
“Leo!”
“I’m not sure I could have stopped,” he continued, slowing to make a turn. “And you were no damned help at all,” he added with affectionate irony, “twisting your hips against me and begging me not to stop.”
She gasped. Her face went scarlet. “Of all the blatant…!”
“That’s how it was, all right,” he agreed. “Blatant. For the record, when a man gets that hard, it’s time to call a halt any way you can, before you get in over your head. I can tell you haven’t had much practice at it, but now is a good time to listen to advice.”
“I don’t need advice!”
“Like hell you don’t. Once I got my mouth on your soft belly, you’d never have been able to make me stop.”
She stared at him with slowly dawning realization. She remembered the hot, exquisite pleasure of his mouth on her breasts. She could only imagine how it would feel to let him kiss her there, on her hips, on her long legs….
“You know far too much about women,” she gritted.
“You know absolutely nothing about men,” he countered. He smiled helplessly. “I love it. You were in over your head the minute I touched you with intent. You’d have let me do anything I wanted.” He whistled softly. “You can’t imagine how I felt, knowing that. You were the sweetest candy I’ve ever had.”
He was confounding her. She didn’t know what to make of the remarks. He’d been standoffish, insulting, offensive and furious with her. Now he’d done a complete about-face. He was acting more like a lover than a big brother.
His dark eyes cut around sideways and sized up her expression. “Do you think things can just go back to the way they were before?” he asked softly. “I remember telling you that it was going to change everything.”
She swallowed. “I remember.”
“It already has. I look at you and get aroused, all over again,” he said bluntly. “It will only get worse.”
Her face flamed. “I will not have an affair with you.”
“Great. I’m glad to know you have that much self-control. You can teach it to me.”
“I won’t get in a truck with you again,” she muttered.
“I’ll bring the car next time,” he said agreeably. “Of course, we’ll have to open both doors. I’ll never be able to stretch out in the front seat the way I did in the cab of this truck.”
Her fingers clenched on the raincoat. “That won’t happen again.”
“It will if I touch you.”
She glared at him. “You listen here…!”
He pulled the truck onto a dirt road that led through one of Fred’s pastures, threw it out of gear, switched off the engine and reached for Janie with an economy of motion that left her gasping.
He had her over his lap, and his mouth hit hers with the force of a gust of wind. He burrowed into her parted lips while one lean hand went to her spine, grinding her into the fierce arousal that just the touch of her had provoked.
“Feel that?” he muttered against her lips. “Now try to stop me.”
She went under in a daze of pleasure. She couldn’t even pretend to protest, not even when his big hand found her breast and caressed it hungrily right through the cloth of her blouse.
Her arms went around his neck. She lifted closer, shivering, as she felt the aching hunger of his body echo in her own. She moaned helplessly.
“Of all the stupid things I’ve done lately…” He groaned, too, his big arms wrapping her up tight as the kiss went on and on and on.
He moved out from under the steering wheel and shifted her until she was straddling his hips, her belly lying against his aroused body so blatantly that she should have been shocked. She wasn’t. He felt familiar to her, beloved to her. She wanted him. Her body yielded submissively to the insistent pressure of both his hands on her hips, dragging them against his in a fever of desire.
The approaching roar of a truck engine for the second time in less than an hour brought his head up. He looked down into Janie’s heated face, at the position they were in. His dazed eyes went out the windshield in time to see Fred’s old pickup coming down the long pasture road about a quarter mile ahead of them.
He let out a word Janie had only heard Tiny use during heated arguments with patrons, and abruptly put her back in her own seat, pausing to forcefully strap her into her seat belt.
She felt shaky all over. Her eyes met his and then went involuntarily to what she’d felt so starkly against her hungry body. She flushed.
“Next time you’ll get a better look,” he said harshly. “I wish I could explain to you how it feels.”
She wrapped her arms around her body. “I know…how it feels,” she whispered unsteadily. “I ache all over.”
The bad temper left him at once. He scowled as he watched her, half-oblivious to Fred’s rapid approach. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was delicious.
She managed to meet his wide, shocked eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” he asked huskily. “You went in headfirst, just like I did.”
She searched his eyes hungrily. Her body was on fire for him. “If you used something…” she said absently.
He actually flushed. He got back under the steering wheel and avoided looking at her. He couldn’t believe what she was saying.
Fred roared up beside them and pulled onto the hard ground to let his window down.
“Rain’s stopped,” he told Leo. “I thought I’d run over to Eb Scott’s place and have a talk with him about getting his cowboys to frequent Shea’s at night.”
“Good idea,” Leo said, still flushed and disheveled.
Fred wisely didn’t look too closely at either of them, but he had a pretty good idea of what he’d interrupted. “I won’t be long, sweetheart,” he told Janie.
“Okay, Dad. Be careful,” she said in a husky voice.
He nodded, grinned, and took off.
Leo started the engine. He was still trying to get his breath. He stared at the dirt path ahead instead of at Janie. “I could use something,” he said after a minute. “But lovemaking is addictive, Janie. One time would be a beginning, not a cure, do you understand?”
She shook her head, embarrassed now that her blood w
as cooling.
He reached out and caught one of her cold hands in his, intertwining their fingers. “You can’t imagine how flattered I am,” he said quietly. “You’re a virgin, and you’d give yourself to me…”
She swallowed hard. “Please. Don’t.”
His hand contracted. “I’ll drive you home. If you weren’t working next Saturday, we could take in a movie and have dinner somewhere.”
Her heart jumped up into her throat. “M…me?”
He looked down at her with the beginnings of possession. “You could wear that lacy white thing you wore to the ball,” he added softly. “I like your shoulders bare. You have beautiful skin.” His eyes fell to her bodice and darkened. “Beautiful breasts, too, with nice nipples…”
“Leo Hart!” she exclaimed, horrified.
He leaned over and kissed her hungrily. “I’ll let you look at me next time,” he whispered passionately. “Then you won’t be so embarrassed when we compare notes.”
She thought of seeing him without clothes and her whole face colored.
“I know what I said, but…” she protested.
He stopped the truck, bent, and kissed her again with breathless tenderness. “You’ve known me half your life, Janie,” he said, and he was serious. He searched her worried eyes. “Am I the kind of man who takes advantage of a green girl?”
She was worried, too. “No,” she had to admit.
His breathing was uneven as he studied her flushed face. “I never would,” he agreed. “You were special to me even before I kissed you the first time, in your own kitchen.” His head bent again. His mouth trailed across hers in soft, biting little kisses that made her moan. “But now, after the taste of you I’ve just had, I’m going to be your shadow. You don’t even realize what’s happened, do you?”
“You want me,” she said huskily.
His teeth nibbled her upper lip. “It’s a little more complicated than sex.” He kissed her again, hard, and lifted his head with flattering reluctance. “Look up addiction in the dictionary,” he mused. “It’s an eye-opener.”