Bubba gave Caitlyn’s nose and mouth one last swipe with his tongue and went splashing off to see if he could find anything interesting in the creek. Her hand followed the dog in an involuntary groping motion, and a look of uncertainty flashed across her face. “C.J.?” There was fear in her voice. “That is you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said sourly, figuring it was okay to go ahead and let her think he was mad, now they both knew she was okay. “It’s me. Lucky for you.” He eased himself over the edge of the creek bank. “How in God’s green earth did you get down here?”
Her mouth tilted sideways. “I sort of…fell.”
“You…fell.”
She nodded and gave a gallant little gulp of chagrin. “Yep-spectacularly. I must have been a sight-too bad you missed it.”
Not thinking about what he was going to do, he hunkered down beside her in the rocks and ferns and dipped his fingers in the trickle of creek water. His hand felt unsteady as he brought it to her cheek. She flinched just a little when he touched her, and her eyes held a wary look. He slid the ball of his thumb across a scratch, spreading cool water over it like a salve. “You hurt yourself.” His voice felt and sounded like sand.
“Oh-” she touched a hand to her cheek, nudging his away “-yeah, actually, I did.” Her voice was quick, breathy. “I think I turned my ankle, too. Stepped in a hole-that’s why I fell. I don’t think it’s too bad, but I can’t put weight on it yet. I was going to try to crawl up the bank. I thought I could make it home, if I could just-”
“Cait,” he said as he let his hand drop away from her and drape across his knee, “what am I gonna do with you?” When what he really meant was, What am I going to do with these feelings inside me?
She made that funny, half-embarrassed gulping sound again. “Well, I was hoping you were going to take me home.”
He didn’t feel like laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna let me help you.”
Her smile disappeared and she turned her face away from him. “I don’t think I have much choice, do I?”
With a sigh of exasperation that was more like a growl, he shifted his weight, pivoting on the ball of his foot so he could reach the leg that was stretched out in front of her, making a bridge across the tiny stream. “This it?” he muttered, and she nodded. He’d barely touched it when she stiffened and jerked her other foot out from under her, then used both it and her hands to brace herself for what was coming.
She didn’t utter a sound as he lifted her leg into his lap and, as gently as he knew how, drew back the stiff wet fabric of her jeans. He eased off her shoe, then peeled away the sock. His heart hammered beneath his breastbone as he cradled her foot in his hands. Funny-he’d never noticed before how vulnerable and sweet a woman’s bare feet were. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember ever noticing a woman’s feet, period. To hold one-her foot-like this, the skin so cool and silky soft like a baby’s, the bones so fragile and yet so strong…it was vulnerable, yes, and even sweet, but incredibly intimate, too. It must be the intimacy, he thought, that made it so erotic.
“Yep, sprained,” he said in a strangled voice, as he eased the foot off of his lap and set it gingerly on a moss-covered rock. “Not too bad-that cold creek water’ll probably keep the swelling down some.”
He retrieved her sock and stuffed it inside her shoe. When he trusted himself to look at her again, he saw that her eyes, focused on the place where a moment ago his face had been, were shimmering like sunlight on gray water.
“Tell me something,” he began. She jerked toward him in surprise as, instead of preparing to haul her up out of the creek, he settled himself beside her in the nest of crushed ferns. With his back propped against the creek bank, he asked in a conversational tone, “Why do you hate it so much? Askin’ for help, I mean. Hell, not even asking-just accepting it when it’s offered.”
She was sitting forward, her body tensed and wary, her face turned away from him. He saw her shoulders lift. “I don’t know,” she said in a muffled voice. “I guess it’s just the way I am.”
Exasperation rumbled in his throat. He scrubbed a hand over his face and fought it down, and after a moment was able to quietly say, “That’s no kind of answer. What I was asking is for you to tell me the way you are.”
He stared at her silent back, a bulwark against him, and felt defeated. Then…as his gaze traveled upward to her neck, rising pale as a newly sprouted shoot from the neckline of her sweatshirt, the bumps of her spine downy and delicate as something newly born, and as vulnerable, revelation came to him, not in a blinding flash, but as a slow and gentle warming… She’s afraid of this, he thought. Even more so than I am.
He put his hand on her back, between the draped mounds of her shoulder blades, and began to move it with a relaxed rhythm…a kneading pressure. She said nothing, but after a moment her head sank forward. Closing his eyes in thanksgiving for that small acceptance, he let his hand work its way along the valley of her spine to the top of the sweatshirt…and then beyond. Her skin was satiny and cool where it stretched across her shoulders, warm and damp farther up on her nape beneath the slightly curling ends of her hair. He thought how small and slender her neck felt in his hand. He marveled at the vibrant strength in it even as desire mushroomed inside him, wallowing like a bathing hippo in his belly. Slightly seasick, he mumbled, “How’s that?”
Her reply was faint. “Heaven.”
A tiny thrill of triumph shivered through him. He lifted his other hand to her shoulder and raised himself so he was sitting upright, the way she was, moving slowly and carefully as he might if he were trying to tame a wild animal. Leaning toward her, he slid his hands lightly down the sides of her neck and curved his palms over the places where the rounded ridges of muscle were the thickest, kneading gently while his fingers brushed the velvety hollows above and below her collarbones and his thumbs probed the wells of muscle along her spine. He smelled sweet strawberries and closed his eyes and concentrated hard on not burying his face in her hair.
She said something he couldn’t quite hear, and he leaned closer to her ear to dazedly mumble, “What?”
“I said, that feels incredible,” she said in a thickened murmur. “I never realized-” She took a breath; her chin tilted sideways. “I don’t think anybody’s ever done that to me before.”
He felt a smile coming on and didn’t try to stop it. “Is that a fact?” He slowed the motion of his hands, making a new rhythm at once gentler and deeper…more like a caress. In a voice to match that motion he said, “Well, I’m glad I’m your first.”
She answered with a high, short laugh.
Then there was silence, while he allowed his mind to wander down impossible paths…
I wish, Caitlyn thought, as an ache came from out of nowhere, swelled through her throat and face and threatened to blossom into tears. I wish you could have been my first.
Her “first” had not been a wise choice-or for that matter, her choice at all. It had come about in the wee hours following her senior prom, in the back of her date’s parents’ station wagon. He’d had too much to drink, and she…well, maybe she hadn’t had nearly enough. She remembered being frightened and overwhelmed and all too aware that he was twice her size and that she had no hope of preventing him from doing what he was so determined to do. She remembered pleading with him, though that may have been only inside her head. In any case, he’d neither heard nor heeded. She remembered the pain, and what was worse, the helplessness. She remembered the humiliation, too.
She’d never told her parents-it would have hurt them too much. Though they’d wondered why she hadn’t wanted to go out with Tyler again. He’d kept asking her-pestered her, in fact, right up until the day she left for college. But she’d never been able to look at him again after that night without revulsion, and had taken care never to allow herself to be caught alone with him. She hadn’t liked him all that much to begin with, she realized too late, and had accepted his invitation to the prom for all the wrong re
asons: because he was handsome and popular and a star athlete, and she, a rather gawky, skinny late bloomer, had been flattered by his attention.
Later choices hadn’t been much wiser, perhaps, but at least she’d made sure they were her choices, and the partner, the circumstances and her emotions always under her strict control. She’d been content with that, and had never wasted time on regrets, or wished things might be otherwise…until now.
I wish… She put her hands over C.J.’s, stopping their seductive caressing motion. Her skin felt tight…stretched…on the verge of tearing. She didn’t lift her head; her neck felt too frail to hold it. “I think,” she said, and her voice was frightened and airless, “that’s the reason I hate needing help.”
“What is?” Warm puffs of breath stirred the hair above her ear. Goose bumps sprang up all over her body. She shivered, and her nipples tightened until they hurt.
“I don’t want to need anyone. I won’t-I can’t-I’m afraid-”
“What are you afraid of?” His hands, ignoring the restraint of hers, moved back and forth across her shoulders, gently stroking over the rounded part, moving the fabric of her shirt in a way that made it part of the caress.
Her breath caught in her throat. She cleared it and tried to speak calmly…rationally. “I suppose a therapist would say that I’m afraid of losing control. Of being weak.”
He was silent for a moment, considering…then softly touched the shell of her ear with his hoarse whisper. “Needing somebody doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human. In fact, I’d say just about everybody needs somebody-”
Desperate laughter rippled through her. She sang the words of an old song in a fruity, somewhat inebriated-and shaken-tone, “‘Everybody needs somebody sometime…’”
His hand swept upward, changing the contours of her throat and nudging her chin up and back, and the last note of the song died a burbling death as his mouth closed over hers. The breath she hadn’t had time to exhale swelled in her chest, her breasts tightened and her belly quivered.
His fingertips stroked up and down along the taut curve of her throat. His lips didn’t quite withdraw but brushed hers lightly, back and forth, and even though she could have taken that breath now, she didn’t. So enthralled was she with the smooth, silky firmness of him that she forgot she needed air, forgot she couldn’t see. Light enveloped her, lovely and golden.
“I suppose,” she whispered, searching for him in the light, “you did that to shut me up…”
He didn’t answer, not with words. His mouth came closer. She felt its warmth, and her own softened in a smile. Her breath bathed his lips. They parted. So did hers, just as they touched.
“But I’m not…”
“Hush up.” His mouth bore down on hers, increasing its pressure with exquisite slowness while his hand cradled the sensitive underside of her chin and tenderly and almost unnoticed, lifted and turned it toward him. His tongue coming inside her mouth seemed only a natural progression of that growing pressure…a completion, not an intrusion.
Her body grew hot…her skin stung with a thousand tiny points of heat. Melting inside, trembling, she felt her neck muscles dissolve and her head slowly sink into the nest that seemed specially made for it in the hollow of his shoulder. Weak as a newborn, she almost sobbed when she felt the warm strength of his body…his arms…fold around her, trapping her arms against her sides. Helpless.
She’d never felt so weak…so helpless. And she never wanted it to end.
Chapter 12
When he felt her begin to lose control, his instincts responded to the surrender with a surge of primitive masculine triumph. But then…she trembled. And it hit him. What he wanted from her wasn’t surrender. And he didn’t want her to lose anything, either.
Bleakly he realized he’d been feeding himself a lie all along, telling himself he only wanted to help her, to give her something, those things that had been taken away from her-her life, her eyesight, her sense of safety. And he did; sure he did. Only, with this terrifying revelation, he understood finally that what he really wanted to give her, in his deepest darkest secret soul, was himself.
And even that wasn’t ever going to be enough for him, because what he wanted just as much was for her to give him something back. Give him, in fact, the very things she didn’t want-and was bound and determined not-to give. And do it willingly, joyfully, unreservedly.
He wanted her to want him. In spite of what his mother had told him, he wanted her to, yes, need him-at least now and then. He wanted her to give him her burdens and let him help with the load. He didn’t just want to give her back her life, he wanted her to share it with him.
What he wanted was for her to love him.
For long, fierce moments he fought to deny it; the primitive male part of him, confident he had a victory on his hands, battling with the reasoning human being that knew damn well if he took advantage of the woman lying soft and trembling in his arms, it wouldn’t be any kind of victory at all. Acceptance of that fact came as a slow chilling in his blood, passion’s heat congealing into shame as he pulled away from her and looked down into her upturned face. As always the sheer loveliness of it took his breath away. This time it left a chunk of pain behind.
What were you thinking? he bitterly asked himself as he watched her eyelids flutter open and saw the silvery light in them fade like a dying ember. It wasn’t impossible enough you expect her to forgive you, now you want her to love you besides? After what you did to her? What were you thinking?
The sheer audacity of that leavened his spirits with irony, and on its yeasty bubble-temporary, he knew-it was possible for him to ease her upright and shift himself away from her. Not far, just enough to free him-temporarily-from the Siren spell of her sweet woman’s scent and warm, pulsating body. Enough to allow him to say, with some degree of masculine stoicism and authority, “You’re hurt. I’d best get you home.”
Caitlyn calmly nodded. She was in shock, she supposed. Shivering and cold inside, her mind a blank, barricaded against thoughts too devastating and emotions too confusing to cope with. She felt something thrust into her hands-her shoe, with the sock stuffed inside. She clutched it to her chest as C.J.’s hands came under her elbows.
“Easy now,” he murmured as he lifted her. “Just keep your weight off that foot… Now, put your hands on my shoulders. I’m gonna lift you up onto the bank.”
And her heart thundered and she felt her cheeks flame as he came around in front of her. Oh, God, what must I look like? Can he see it in my face, what he’s done to me? Her hands stung where they touched his shoulders. Her stomach flip-flopped when she felt his hands on her waist. His muscles surged beneath her fingers, and her lungs gave up an involuntary gasp as he lifted her. Then she was sitting on the top of the embankment with her feet dangling over the side. Her stomach righted itself, her lungs pulled in air and her mind cleared. And she knew that she was angry.
Angry. And battered, bruised and thoroughly humiliated. She felt, in fact, very much the way she had when Tyler Webb took her virginity in the back of his father’s station wagon. Not in body; what C.J. Starr had taken was something she didn’t have a name for and hadn’t even known she possessed. Emotional virginity. Is there such a thing? What was more infuriating-and confusing-was the fact that she didn’t know how he’d managed to do it. She only knew he had.
She held herself rigid, seething inside, as he lifted her once more to her feet. Clutching her shoe and hopping a little to balance herself, she said coldly, “I can walk, if you’ll just give me something-”
He muttered, “Don’t be stupid,” and swept her up and into his arms, not gently. She heard him exhale sharply through his nose as he began to carry her through the woods, striding heavily, feet crackling in the litter of leaves and twigs.
“It’d help,” he said after a while, in a voice that seemed to come from between clenched teeth, “if you’d quit bein’ so stiff. Relax a little-maybe even put your arms around my neck?”
He grunted and hefted her, settling her closer against him. And she could feel two hearts hammering against her ribs, one from outside, one from within. She couldn’t tell which was beating harder…faster. What’s my excuse? she thought. He’s the one doing all the work.
“It’s a long way home,” she said tartly. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”
“Wish you’d quit worryin’ about my health,” he snapped back, not breathing hard at all. “There’s easier ways to carry you, you know. Would you rather I throw you over my shoulder, like the firemen do?”
The image that called to mind compelled Caitlyn to mutter, “Not especially, no.”
But her anger had begun to erode, leaving exposed the hurt she’d tried to bury beneath it. Yes, she was hurt. Bewildered. Why would he do such a thing-kiss her like that-and then behave as though he’d done something shameful or, worse, as if he’d done nothing at all?
The why of it tormented her like an itchy place she couldn’t reach to scratch, until even the humiliation of asking didn’t seem as bad as wondering. Heart pounding, nerves vibrating, she pushed the words out of herself as she’d once forced herself to jump off the high diving board, with the exercise of sheer willpower. “Tell me-” and her voice was brittle, a little too loud and artificially light “-do you always make a habit of kissing women, just out of the blue? Whenever it suits you? On a whim?”
“Just the pretty ones,” C.J. said without missing a beat.
Shooting Starr Page 17