by Diana Palmer
“I turned him down before you called,” she shot back. “Sorry to shatter your black image of me.”
He sighed deeply and paused long enough to give the waiter an order for steak and a baked potato.
“What do you want?” he asked Kate politely.
“I’ll have a shrimp cocktail and coffee,” she murmured.
“You need more than that,” Jacob said.
“That’s all I want, thank you.” She gave the waiter the menu with a wan smile, and Jacob noticed how worn she looked, how tired. He knew suddenly that it was a sense of excitement gone sour.
“I’ve spoiled the night for you, haven’t I?” he asked with sharp perception.
Her lips curved into a rueful smile. “I broke speed records getting ready,” she said. “Went through every dress I had in my wardrobe to find something nice enough to wear for you. I suppose I was a little excited, being asked out by you after all these years, when I thought I was more of a pest and irritation than someone you…wanted to date.” Her eyes glanced off the expression of frank surprise in his. “I should have remembered how you feel about me. It’s my own fault. Nobody held a gun on me.”
His heart did odd things inside his chest at that confession. He hadn’t thought she might want to be with him. At times he’d wondered if she might feel a little of the physical attraction for him that he felt for her. But Kate was mysterious. She was close-lipped and very private, in spite of her modern outlook.
“Maybe we could bury the hatchet for once,” he murmured, feeling this way for the first time in his life. The self-confidence he’d always had with women was lacking tonight. He felt something new with Kate, and everything in him was fighting it. She confused him, disturbed him. She had to be sophisticated, but why did she sound so damned honest? She’d sworn once that she’d never lied to him, and he’d had to fight not to believe her. He couldn’t believe her, because if he did… He stared at her, feeling something tingle inside him as her face colored. He couldn’t prevent a warm, quiet smile.
His smile could open doors. She stared at him with wonder. He’d never smiled at her like that. She returned his smile with interest. “Perhaps we could,” she said, her voice husky.
He reached across the table and found her hand, lifting it in his to study it. No rings of any kind. A slender, graceful hand with neatly rounded fingernails, no trace of polish on them. He frowned a little. Touching her made his breath come quickly.
Kate’s breath caught as he rubbed his thumb slowly over her palm, whipping up sweet storms of emotion. He looked up into her eyes, holding them, searching them, in a silence that whirled away the other diners and the whole world.
His fingers gripped hers with sudden passion, his face hardened, his breathing stopped in his throat. “Kate,” he whispered roughly, and his fingers began to work their way between hers in an act as intimate as kissing. He had sensitive hands, very lean, darkly tanned and strong from hours of working cattle, fixing equipment, doing all the things that ranch work required even of the boss.
Her hand trembled as his eyes held hers in a contact that was as arousing as the slow, exquisite tracing of his fingers between hers. She felt her breath quickening, her body reacting to the newness of it all.
“Years,” Jacob whispered roughly, his dark eyes blazing into hers as his body caught fire with the electric contact. “I’ve waited years for tonight, Kate.”
Did he mean…could he mean…? She swallowed down a burst of excited confessions and bit her tongue. She had to take it slowly—she couldn’t blurt out undying love and ruin everything. She looked at their joined hands, hers so pale in his dark, strong one. She’d waited years, too, and tonight was the reality after the golden dream. But was his dream the same as hers? Had they been waiting for the same reason?
Chapter 4
The waiter brought food and broke the spell. Kate went through the motions of eating, but her mind was on the wondrous emotions she was feeling with Jacob. He was content now to discuss general subjects, nothing intimate. But underneath it all, she suspected that he was still as disturbed physically as she was. His eyes were much darker than usual, and he hardly took them off her.
He finished his steak and leaned back to look at her. “Want dessert?” he asked gently.
She was excited by that note in his voice. It was tender, and openly warm. “No,” she said. “I don’t really like sweets.”
He chuckled. “Neither do I, although I’m partial to an apple cake. Janet, our housekeeper, bakes one occasionally when my father asks nicely.”
“Your father is a nice man,” she said quietly.
“Nice. That about sums it up. No one, ever, could accuse me of being…nice,” he added with a cool look.
“We can’t all be fiery and hard,” she reminded him.
“If I hadn’t been, we’d have lost Warlance twelve years ago,” he said shortly. “There is such a thing as common sense. My father was spending capital faster than the ranch was making it. Ranching has seen hard times in past years. Every year, more ranchers go bust.”
“You never will,” she muttered.
“I’m not superhuman,” he replied surprisingly, “and I’ve made some bad mistakes. But a soft attitude gets you nowhere in business. My father should have been an inventor. He’d rather putter around in his workshop than talk cattle futures.”
She searched his face. “Your mother wasn’t a dreamer, was she?” she asked softly, daringly.
His dark eyes seemed to blaze up for an instant. He stared at Kate. “I hated her,” he said half under his breath. “From the day I was old enough to understand what she was doing to my father, I hated her. She was nothing but a tramp, with an eye out to opportunity. She sent for me once, after she married that Texan, and I went. It was almost amusing, watching her try to explain.”
“You didn’t even listen, did you?” she asked sadly.
His eyes grew cold. “You can’t imagine what my childhood was like.”
Yes, she could understand, she thought. With his black pride, it must have been pure hell. “You went away to school eventually, didn’t you?”
“Dad got tired of being called into the principal’s office twice a week,” he replied. “I was in scraps constantly.”
She searched his hard face. “My father said that my mother was like that.” She spoke hesitantly, her voice soft and unsteady. He looked up, curious. “I never knew her, you see. And my father was very sick and his mind came and went. But he seemed to always be afraid that I was going to be like her.”
He had to bite his tongue almost through to keep the sarcastic words from pouring out. Wasn’t she like that? He frowned at her bitter expression, amazed at his own lack of sensitivity. What was it about Kate that made him doubt every word she said? Why was it so impossible for him to trust her?
“I made sure that Margo knew right from wrong,” he commented. “I didn’t browbeat her, but I got my point across. So did my father.” He didn’t want to hear about Kate’s childhood, or know any more about her than he already did. He didn’t know why, either. What he felt for her was only desire, surely. And every time he looked at her, that got worse.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“Yes. Of course.”
She watched him pay the check, feeling numb. She’d bored him, and now he was going to take her home and go back to South Dakota. It might be months before she saw him again. Or she might never see him again. He didn’t seem to like her any better now than he had before. His attitude was even colder, in a way.
He took her arm and led her out into the silky night, into the sounds of traffic and the bright lights. “I’d never get used to living in the city,” he remarked as he helped her into the Mercedes and then moved to the driver’s side. “I like wide spaces too much,” he told her as he got in the car.
“I couldn’t sleep for a long time when I first moved here,” she said with a soft smile. “The sirens and horns kept me awake. It’s a far cry fro
m howling dogs and lowing cattle.”
“Yes.”
She watched his face as he started the car and pulled away from the restaurant. Well, why deny herself that pleasure, she asked bitterly, when he’d be gone in a few minutes and it would be the first and last time she’d be alone with him.
He stopped at a traffic light and turned his head just a fraction of an inch to look at her. His dark eyes searched hers.
“You’re staring,” he said bluntly.
“I know,” she replied, her voice soft and full of dreams.
He reached out and caught her hand, bringing it to his hard thigh. He held it there as he drove, letting her feel the ripple of muscle as he eased up and down on the accelerator, his fingers linked into hers, caressing.
By the time they reached her apartment house, his nerves were stripped and raw. He cut off the engine and turned to her, releasing her hand slowly. She was still watching his face, shadowed under the streetlight, and his heart was beating wildly with a kind of hunger that challenged every ounce of control he had.
Kate felt her pride falling away. She loved him so much. What comfort was pride when, after he left, she’d be alone for the rest of her life?
“Oh, Jacob, kiss me,” she whispered, pleaded, her shy hands touching his, faintly tremulous. “Just once—!”
The words drove him crazy. He reached for her, his body on fire. He turned her face up to his, feeling fiercely male, possessive. His breath came harshly as he looked down into her hungry eyes.
“Open your mouth and put it against mine, Kathryn,” he whispered huskily, drawing her face up to his.
The words thrilled as much as those hard, warm hands on her cheeks. It had been the secret longing of her life. To kiss him…
Her eyes closed on stinging tears as she obeyed him. For years she’d dreamed of this, ached for it, prayed for it. It was happening. She could feel the hard, smoky warmth of his lips as she fitted hers slowly to them, trembling a little with the sudden freedom of being allowed to love him, to express all she felt physically.
“Jacob,” she breathed brokenly, sliding her hands against his shirtfront, inside the jacket which he’d unbuttoned when they’d climbed into the car. She could feel hard muscle and something springy, like hair, under the soft fabric. She moved closer, pushing upward against his mouth in aching hunger.
He eased her head against his shoulder as he slowly increased the pressure of his mouth, opening her lips fully to the sudden moist penetration of his tongue. Even in that, he was delicate, teasing before he took possession, guiding her into an intimacy that was overwhelming in its sweet pleasure.
Her fingers were still stroking over his breastbone, and she felt his hand move over them, shifting them, while he flicked the buttons open.
He put her hand into the small opening he’d made, spreading the palm over thick hair and moving it sensuously back and forth to show her the motion he liked.
The hunger grew suddenly, like a flash flood on the desert. One minute he was delicately teasing, the next, he was crushing her back against the seat and his mouth was fiercely demanding. Kate gave without reservation, in heaven at the tempestuous ardor that outmatched even her dreams. She began to moan softly, unaware of the sudden, unbearable desire that was coiling in the body of the man above her.
He drew back, his breathing faintly unsteady, his heart like a drum under her hand.
“We can’t sit down here doing this all night,” he whispered. His dark eyes searched her shadowed ones. “Do we go to your apartment or my hotel room? Or do I go home alone?”
It should have been the latter. She should have told him that she was a virgin, that he was asking something of her that he had no right to ask, especially considering his treatment of her. But maybe he wouldn’t know. She’d been alone all her life. Wasn’t she entitled to one bright memory in all that darkness? To one sweet hour in a man’s arms, pretending that he loved her as much as she loved him? Surely, loving gave her that right.
“Don’t…go home,” she whispered.
He searched her eyes for a long moment, hiding the sweet triumph he felt at her capitulation while he tried not to wonder if she always gave in so easily to a man.
He released her and got out, opening her door for her. They went up to her apartment in a stoic silence. She felt uneasy, and the feeling got worse as she opened her apartment and let him inside.
She turned to tell him that she wasn’t sure, to explain about her past. But he turned her, very slowly, expertly, so that her back was against the door. And he bent, his mouth breathing on hers, into hers, as his lips formed the very shape of her mouth and teased it.
In the soft, semidark silence of her apartment, with the outside sounds of sirens and horns fading into nothing, she felt his hands at her hips. And then his body was easing down completely on hers, pressing her back against the steely cold of the door. She felt the hardness of his body and knew instinctively what was happening to him. Her own body reacted to it in a way she’d never expected, by arching gently to press up against his hips, to encourage his ardor.
He trailed his fingers from her hip to her thigh and back up again, coaxing her to repeat the involuntary movement. And all the while, his mouth was growing more intimate with hers, tasting her in a new, tender way.
He shifted her just a little and she felt his hand at the laces that held her bodice together.
She trembled at the newness of what he was doing, a little shocked at the feel of his hands touching her there. Her eyes opened, big and curious. That amused him, because he was certain that he wasn’t the first man to touch her. But she was hungry for him, and that was satisfying.
He had the last of the laces undone now, and he started to push the fabric away from her full, soft breasts, when her hand instinctively caught his wrist in a token protest.
“Don’t pretend, Kate,” he said softly. “I told you before, I don’t want anything to do with a virgin.”
That meant that he was going to walk out the door and never come back if she admitted that she was innocent. She bit her lip worriedly. Would he know when he had her in bed? Could men tell, especially experienced men? He’d be furious….
“What a look,” he murmured, bending to her soft mouth. “Stop biting that lip,” he whispered. “Bite mine instead.”
He nibbled at her, arousing new and unexpected twinges of pleasure. She caught at his shirt when he began again to push the fabric away and she felt his fingers tracing around the edges of her breast.
“Relax,” he breathed, feeling her tremble. “We’ve got all night. There’s no hurry.”
But there was, because she was frightened of having him find out the truth. She loved him. She wanted nothing more out of life than to give him a night that would haunt him all his life.
She wasn’t experienced, but she was a great reader. She knew a lot about men that came from wildly romantic books, and now she drew on it.
Her hands went into his shirt, her nails drawing through that thick dark hair to the warm skin underneath. Her hips arched in a slow rhythm against his, brushing his thighs sensuously.
He shuddered, and the mouth over hers grew rough. His hand stopped its teasing and swallowed her breast whole, his palm rubbing against the hard nipple, his fingers contracting.
She felt him tremble faintly, and knew a wild fever of exultation. He was so aroused that he was losing control. She could feel it, taste it, in the sudden roughness of passion she’d aroused in him. He shifted, lowering his body, one knee finding its way between her thighs. He removed his hand from her breast and, still holding her mouth under his, stripped her to the waist. Then he was against her, his hard chest against her soft breasts, his hips against hers with a sudden intimacy that dragged a shattering cry from her throat.
She was on fire for him. His hands were on her skin now, touching her in ways she’d never dreamed a man would ever touch her. He managed to undress them both while they stood there, her mind in such a fever of
tension and hunger that it was an actual relief to have his hard, warm body against hers with no barriers to the beauty of shared nudity.
His mouth was demanding, insistent, as he lifted her, finally, and carried her into the bedroom. He had barely taken time to whip off the coverlet when his body was over hers, his mouth burning on her skin as he explored every single inch of her.
By the time she felt him position her, she was trembling all over, her eyes blurred by a mist of shuddering need.
“Jacob,” she moaned, tears in her eyes as she looked up into a face dark with passion, eyes so black they were almost frightening.
“Don’t talk,” he whispered. He pinned her down, his hands locking with hers, his hips shifting over her prone body.
“Be…careful,” she managed through lips that felt parched.
“I won’t hurt you,” he breathed. “Just relax.”
By the time she realized what he was saying, he was already becoming part of her body. She watched his face, awed by what she saw and felt. Her hips tautened, but he brushed a gentle hand over her thighs, soothing her, his eyes burning into hers.
She shuddered. It wasn’t just discomfort, it was pain. He bent then and put his mouth on hers, biting into it with shuddering hunger as his body began to move jerkily.
She pushed at his chest, but it was too late. He thought her moans were pleasure; he thought her sudden, sharp, shifting movements meant she was reaching a pinnacle. Her reaction pushed him over the edge for the first time in his life. He drove for his own fulfillment, losing himself in a frenzy of passion that exploded in a fire storm of ecstasy. He cried out with the anguished force of it, his body racked by coiling muscles.
It was all he could do to protect her. He barely made it at all, gasping for just enough air to breathe, his nostrils full of the exquisite scent of her, his body resting on her silky softness, so exhausted with pleasure that he could have died and not minded.
A long time later, he became aware of broken sobs. He lifted his dark, damp head and looked down into her pale face, her eyes filled with tears.