“Ready to go?” he asked, smiling.
“I’ll just lock the door,” she replied breathlessly, her gray eyes shimmering with happiness.
He watched her go up the steps. Odd, she’d come down them running, but now it seemed like an effort to go back up them. She took longer than necessary to lock the door, too. He wondered why.
She could feel the question on his face before she read it. Her heart was cutting cartwheels, and she couldn’t let him see. She forced a smile. “See what you do to me?” she asked pertly. “You take my breath away.”
The suspicious look was replaced by an arrogant one. He actually grinned.
SHE WALKED into the feed store beside him, smiling and happy. Old Jack Hadley, who’d owned this feed store, one of two in Jacobsville, since Grace’s grandfather was a young man, smiled benevolently at Grace.
“Nice to see you out and about, Miss Grace,” he said. “And in good company, too.” He smiled at Garon and winked.
Garon shifted, as if the teasing look made him uncomfortable. “I’ve got a list,” he said, handing it to the manager.
He pursed his lips. “Well, this seed is a special order. Will next week be soon enough?”
“Yes,” Garon replied.
“But the rest is in stock. Jake!” he yelled, and his teenaged assistant came running from the back of the store. “Get this feed for Mr. Grier and carry it out to his truck, will you?”
“Sure thing!” the boy agreed. He smiled at Grace. “You look nice today,” he said, blushing as he made the bold remark.
“Thanks, Jake,” she said, but her smile was impersonal and faint.
Garon moved to her side, glowering at the boy, who took off like a human rocket.
Grace was confounded at the look on Garon’s face. And when he noticed, his dark eyes began to burn in an odd, intimate way as he held her gaze until she flushed and dropped her eyes.
His big hand slid over her small one and held it tightly, as if to emphasize what his eyes were telling her. She could barely breathe for the stab of joy right through her body. She returned the pressure, and felt his fingers ease slowly, sensuously, between hers.
She bit her lower lip, hard, to keep from moaning.
“Don’t forget the fertilizer, Jake,” Mr. Hadley called after the boy.
His voice broke the spell, and Grace stepped back, laughing nervously at the tension that still held them both in its grip.
Garon didn’t say a word. But what he felt was hard to conceal. She was getting right under his skin. Now he was jealous of high school kids. He wondered what in hell was happening to him!
THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed with Garon making casual visits to Grace’s house, first for an occasional meal, and then in the evening to watch movies he’d rented. Miss Turner’s father had rallied, and she’d called to say she’d be back within a week.
Garon and Grace were watching a new murder mystery he’d rented, but his mind wasn’t on the film. He kept noticing Grace’s body in the demure rounded neckline of her blue blouse. She was wearing a skirt for a change, a long denim one. Her hair was around her shoulders and she smelled just faintly of roses.
“You’ll lose the connection,” she warned, looking up at him with a breathless smile.
He turned toward her on the sofa and tugged at her arm until she got the message and slid close to him. He was wearing a long-sleeved chambray shirt with jeans. His boots were lying on the floor with her shoes. He drew her across his lap and let her head slide down into the crook of his arm.
“Relationships don’t stagnate, Grace,” he said quietly, searching her wide, gray eyes. “We either go forward, or we stop seeing each other. I’m too old to settle for a platonic relationship.”
Her heart jumped. She’d been right. He was interested in a long-term relationship. He wanted her for keeps!
Her fingers went up to his hard mouth and traced it slowly. “I don’t want to stop seeing you,” she whispered, just to make it clear. She was nervous about what he might be asking of her, but she loved him. She was curious about the feelings he evoked from her, when he kissed her and held her close. She wanted to know all of it. She wanted to erase the nightmarish memories from her mind, to overlay them with loving caresses from a man to whom she could entrust her innocence. She smiled.
He drew in a long breath. “At last,” he whispered, bending. “I thought I was going to go mad before we got to this point!”
She wanted to ask what he meant, but he was kissing her. This wasn’t like the other times, when he’d been hesitant and slow. He was hungry. He was ravenous. At first his ardor was frightening and she stiffened.
He drew back at once to search her eyes. “I will never hurt you,” he said in a gruff whisper. “Not in any way.”
She began to relax again. “I know. It’s just…”
He remembered. She’d had a bad experience as a child. He smiled slowly and traced her mouth with the tip of his finger. “Everything’s going to be all right. Trust me. I can give you pleasure—as much as you can handle.”
As he spoke, he bent again. This time the kiss was longer, sensual, deliberately arousing. His hands slid up and down her sides until he was teasing just at the edges of her breasts. Something was happening to her, something unexpected. She felt her body swell and burn, as if he’d kindled a fever in it. She seemed to have no control over it anymore. It wanted his touch, his tenderness. She wanted him.
He took her face between his hands and searched her wide, gray eyes for a long time. He felt the look all the way to his toes. She made him ache all over. He wondered if she knew it, and reasoned that she probably didn’t. With her history, sexual attraction to a man was going to be something of an ordeal. His eyes narrowed as he considered how some men would take advantage of her interest, rush her, hurt her because they didn’t understand what she’d been through in her childhood. He hated the thought of some careless man using her for his own pleasure, and leaving her even more damaged.
“What are you thinking?” she asked curiously.
“How lovely you are,” he replied.
She laughed self-consciously. “Me?”
“Yes,” he said, and he didn’t smile. “You.”
He bent and kissed the smile, very slowly, in a way that he hadn’t during their short relationship. He drew her gently against him as his mouth worked its way against her lips until she opened her own mouth, to let him inside. He felt a flash of pure animal desire at the shy action. It tested his control. But he managed to keep things tender, even so, determined not to frighten her.
As the kiss grew in length and intensity, he felt her stiffen just at first, and then slowly relax into the hard contours of his body. His hand dropped slowly to her back and slid down, moving her gently against him until his ardor became tangible against her belly.
He lifted his head to look into her wide, fascinated eyes. “Not afraid?” he asked quietly.
She couldn’t manage words, but she shook her head. She felt boneless. She ached all over. Something began to throb deep in her body.
He felt those reactions. She wasn’t protesting. If anything, she moved closer to him, gasping faintly at the heat and power of his aroused body.
It was like falling into fire, he thought as he bent again to her mouth and slowly invaded it, first with his lips, then with his tongue. The first silken thrust of it inside hers caused her to grip his arms so tightly that her short nails dug into the flesh even through his shirt. Then as he moved his tongue sensually against hers, she moaned audibly.
If he had any thought of pulling away, it was gone in a flash. It had been too long since he’d had a woman. He was dying for her. He couldn’t stop.
He got to his feet and then bent, lifting her clear of the sofa in his arms while his mouth still covered her own. He carried her down the hall, glancing into a lit room with a double bed. He went into it, kicking the door shut behind him, and laid her out on the bed. His eyes were almost black with desire as he looke
d down at her, hesitating.
But she was as far gone as he was. She loved what he could make her feel. She was almost twenty-five years old and she’d never had a lover. She wanted him. She wanted to be a woman, a whole woman, with this man whom she loved with all her heart. And it wasn’t as if he just needed a woman, she told herself. He wanted a relationship. That had to mean marriage! Her arms opened.
He felt her submission without a word being spoken. His blood was on fire. He sat down beside her, but she put a hand against his chest. She looked uneasy.
“The light,” she whispered, biting her lower lip.
He frowned. Then he remembered the accident she’d had as a child. “I don’t mind scars, Grace,” he said softly. “I have a few of my own.”
She bit her lip harder. She didn’t know how to explain it to him. “Please?” she asked.
He sighed, but not angrily. He’d wanted to look at her. But her innocence was going to be his biggest problem. He only smiled. His hand reached for the lamp. He turned it off, and bent down to gather her against him.
It was, she thought feverishly, a banquet of the senses. She hadn’t known her own body had so many sensitive areas that a man’s mouth and hands could lift into realms of ecstasy. She moaned helplessly as he kissed her taut breasts. She moved her legs to admit the weight of him between them. She marveled at how easily they seemed to go together with all the clothes out of the way. His body was warm and hard and sensual against hers on the crisp sheets, and she shivered again and again with the growing, gnawing pleasure of his touch.
When he touched her with sudden intimacy she hesitated, her mind going back to horror and pain, he hesitated. “Did I hurt you?” he asked softly.
She forced her mind to shut out the unpleasant images. That was yesterday. This was today. “No,” she whispered, drawn back to the present. “Of course you aren’t hurting me. Don’t stop!”
He laughed softly and moved down against her once more. “I won’t,” he whispered against her throat. “Move with me, Grace,” he added huskily. “Move with me. That’s it. Harder…!”
She felt his hand exploring, and then it was something…else, something hard and warm…!
She gasped and arched right off the bed as the intimate contact produced a wave of pleasure so overwhelming that she thought she might faint. She cried out, pulling him down to her, shivering.
“You like that, do you?” he murmured drowsily against her mouth. “Let’s try this…”
She shuddered, again and again, as the pleasure began to spiral up. She made a strange, husky noise deep in her throat and moved her legs as far apart as she could get them, her nails digging into his hips. “Please,” she choked, gasping.
He nibbled at her mouth as his hips began to move down in a quick, hard rhythm. “Like that?”
“Yes!”
One hand went under her hair to hold her head firmly while his mouth crushed down on her parted lips. The other went under her hips, lifting her fiercely up to the hard downward thrust of his body.
“I’ll…die!” she choked against his devouring mouth.
“Of pleasure…maybe,” he managed in a harsh whisper. “God! Grace! Grace! Lift up! Lift up, hard!” He shuddered, gasping, as the rhythm became furious, insanely pleasurable. “Now, baby,” he choked. “Now, now, now…!”
She moved with him, held him tight, shivered helplessly as the pleasure built to such a degree that she thought she might lose consciousness. And then, when it was so hot and sweet that it had to be the end, the spiral went even higher and hotter. She couldn’t see, hear, think, even breathe as the rhythm quickened. He whispered something, but she was beyond understanding. Her body was on a journey of its own, carrying her along to a volcanic climax that sent her arching up into him with a quick, sharp little cry of absolute delight.
He gathered her hips up and riveted them to his as he felt, too, the sudden release of tension. “Grace,” he moaned, his voice deep and husky, as his hips moved helplessly against her in one last, hard thrust that sent him right over the edge.
They lay together, bathed in sweat, clinging to each other in the darkness. They shivered, speechless, in mutual satiation.
Endless seconds later, he eased away from her and slid his hand from her neck over her full breasts, down to her flat stomach. His fingers traced the small scars that rose above the smooth flesh.
“I have a lot of scars,” she whispered unsteadily.
“So do I. They don’t matter.” He brushed his mouth softly over her lips. “I’ve never had it this good,” he whispered. He wrapped her up in his arms. “Grace, you were a virgin, weren’t you?” he asked after a minute.
She stopped breathing. She hesitated. “Well, yes,” she managed to say. Technically it was the truth.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost control like this.”
“I lost control, too,” she said.
“It isn’t the same thing. It was like shooting ducks in a barrel.” He moved away from her with a long, harsh sigh. “Damn!”
“You…you didn’t like it?” she asked with dawning worry.
He turned and looked down at her in the darkness. “That isn’t what I meant, Grace,” he said. “I took advantage of you.”
“No!”
He put his hand gently on her belly. “Are you sure you can’t get pregnant?” he asked, and sounded concerned.
“I’m sure.” The doctors had all agreed about that.
He didn’t answer. So he didn’t have to worry about the complication of a baby. But he felt guilty just the same.
“I’m glad it was with you,” she said when the silence became frightening.
That didn’t make him feel any better. At least he hadn’t hurt her, he consoled himself. On the other hand, he’d taken something she might have wanted to save for marriage. She was very traditional.
“It wasn’t because you were thinking about her?” she asked with sudden horror.
For an instant, he thought she was referring to the past. Then he realized she knew nothing about his past. “About Jaqui?” he exclaimed. “Heavens, no!”
She relaxed. “Okay.”
He drew in a long breath. “I have to go.”
“Now?” she asked, sounding alarmed.
He bent over and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “As you keep reminding me, this is a small town. I don’t want people seeing my car in your driveway all night and gossiping about it.”
She smiled. “That’s nice of you.”
He didn’t answer her. He dressed in the dark, feeling like a heel. She’d been generous, and warm, and loving. Her headlong delight made him feel even guiltier. He had nothing to offer her.
“Grace, you do understand that I’m not in the market for a wife?” he asked quietly.
She felt sick all over. She was shocked and trying not to let it show. “Yes,” she said after a minute, and her voice didn’t give anything away. Her world was crashing around her, but she couldn’t let it show. “I understand.”
He grimaced. He could hear the hurt in her voice. He was just making things worse. “I’ll come over tomorrow after I get off from work,” he said. “We’ll talk it out.”
“All right.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
She sounded resigned to his leaving. He wanted to stay, to talk, to explain. He couldn’t manage it, though. He was afraid of relationships. He never should have started this!
He left without another word. But all day, the memory of the pleasure they shared haunted him. He’d started something he couldn’t finish. He thought of Grace while he was working. She came between him and paperwork, shimmering like foxfire in his memory. He ached every time he thought of her.
GRACE TURNED HER FACE into the pillow when he left and cried as if her heart was broken. She’d been such a fool. He didn’t want to marry her. He just needed a woman, and here she was, waiting eagerly for him. She groaned aloud. She’d given him all she had.
It wasn’t enough.
She felt like an idiot. He was used to women who gave out and got out, not retiring little spinsters like Grace who never dated. He was an experienced lover, and he’d lived in big cities for years, where sex was casual. Grace, on the other hand, lived a sheltered life because of her past. She knew very little about adult intimacy. Of course he didn’t want to marry her! Why marry a woman, when she was willing to give you anything you wanted without benefit of a ring? She cursed her own weakness for him. If she hadn’t given in so easily, if she’d made him wait a little while, he might have fallen in love, too. But now she’d ruined everything. He’d think she was just like all his other women, the ones he took in his stride and cast aside. She was just like that Jaqui woman, who’d made fun of Grace and said Garon would never see her as a real woman.
She pulled herself out of bed and went to bathe away the scent of him. If there was anything positive about this experience, it had shown her that she could be a whole woman, that she hadn’t been totally destroyed by her past. Perhaps if she looked at it that way, in a mature fashion, she could forget that the man she loved with all her heart was only looking for momentary relief. Perhaps.
GARON DROVE UP in her yard just after seven o’clock that evening. Despite her resolve not to speak to him again, she went running to open the door. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. He knew how she felt. He hadn’t slept, either. He’d gone through the day in a daze.
She opened the door wider, like a sleepwalker. He came in and locked it. Without missing a beat, he lifted her in his arms, and kissed her as if he hadn’t seen her in a year. Moaning, helpless, she yielded at once. He turned and carried her down the hall to the bedroom.
It was better this time. It was more intense than the first time. He kissed her from her eyelids all the way to her calves, in broad daylight, whispering to her the whole time, exciting and sensual things that made her blush.
When he had her at fever pitch, he pushed her right over the edge into ecstasy and fell with her through waves and waves of throbbing, blinding heat. She cried out endlessly as the waves tore through her body, leaving her shaking in the warm aftermath. He held her close against him while he fought to breathe normally again.
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