So that was it! Kate reburied her face in her arms, closed her eyes. She should insist on eating out, then have him take her straight home. A thought she recognized as ridiculous the moment it crossed her mind. The self-righteous mouthings of a woman running scared. A woman who clung from habit to archaic reasoning that was no longer comfortable or even sound. She was ready to move on in her life, and Michael was the gate she had to go through to get there. Perhaps . . . very likely . . . the only gate. The only opportunity she would ever have to be something more than she was at the moment. She’d gone seven years without taking a chance. After Michael there could be another seven years. Or never.
But what if she couldn’t? What if she failed?
She very well might. In spite of the sun’s great red glow low in the western sky, Kate’s day had faded to gray. Was it the thought of sex or the thought of failure that had her stomach rebelling, knotting into coils of pain?
Would Michael forgive her if she failed?
There was only one way to find out.
“So order the pizza.” Kate tossed the words at Michael like a bullet. Real romantic, Lady Knight. What a winner the poor man’s got.
Chapter 20
Kate tucked the heavy cardboard lid into the pizza box and headed for Michael’s refrigerator. In spite of his assertions about being hungry, he hadn’t eaten much. Neither had she. Kate gaped at the inside of the fridge. From the looks of it, Michael never ate at all. She stowed the pizza leftovers on a nearly empty shelf, sneaked a peek in his freezer compartment. It, she discovered, was crammed full of convenience food. Evidently, Michael’s culinary skills were solely centered around mastery of the microwave. And knowing how to find his way to his mother’s table. Old-fashioned, that’s what the man was. Or simply expedient. Why spend time and dirty a lot of dishes cooking for one? She understood that concept all too well.
Kate heard a footstep and slammed the freezer door, feeling unaccountably guilty. “I hope you’re not the type who eats cold pizza for breakfast,” she declared as Michael came through the kitchen door. Behind him, the exotic sound of an old Enigma CD filled the condo with a new beat. Gone was the soft sad wail of Enya which had accompanied supper. Strange, Kate thought, but liking the same kinds of music was perhaps all she and Michael had in common.
She recognized the message signaled by the music’s change of pace. Not that she hadn’t expected it, but somehow she’d managed to postpone the moment, chewing slowly, making desultory small talk. Fooling herself into thinking that if she could put it off long enough, she’d have an excuse to ask Michael to take her home. She had a costume to finish, she had to be at work early, she didn’t feel well . . .
“Come sit and talk to me,” Michael said, holding out his hand.
Kate’s chin firmed into a straight line, her feet rooted to the floor. “I have been talking to you. For hours.”
“Then come and kiss me,” Michael challenged, black eyes flashing, defying her fears. His message was clear: you want it, I want it. We’ve pussy-footed around this thing for weeks now. It’s time, Kate Knight. I dare you. He stood there, all six feet two inches of him, arrogant, proud, holding out his hand.
Damn your eyes, Michael Turco. Just when I’d begun to think you were gentle, kind, patient, understanding . . .
He wanted her to live again, she knew that. To be the woman she was supposed to be before she met Taggart Parrish, the southern gentleman with a short temper and big fists. She’d come a long way toward independence since then. But the only way she could handle men was on the lyst field. One-on-one in a man’s apartment, she metamorphosed into a timid little rabbit caught in the glare of the hunter’s spotlight. She could neither run nor reach out her hand. She wanted to change her life . . . yet she couldn’t raise her hand, take that step forward. Kate, you coward, you’ve ruined it! Inside herself, she shriveled, feeling herself contracting into nothingness, becoming invisible. Disappearing from Michael’s life, her gate into a beckoning new world vanishing before her eyes.
“Okay,” Michael asked, “are you going to knock my block off if I kiss you?”
Kate tried twice to get words past her lips. Nothing more than a raspy sigh came out. “I don’t know,” she finally managed, honest to the last.
“I guess I’m tough enough to chance it,” Michael ventured. Still, he didn’t move, eyeing her cautiously as if weighing his chances against an opponent on the lyst field.
Kate discovered she didn’t care for the analogy. Combat was what she’d had with Tag. It was the last thing she needed with Michael. It was, of course, all her fault. She was the belligerent one. She was the one overcome by ancient fears, giving a perfectly good man a hard time.
She was also Catriona MacDuff, a knight for the Kingdom of Florida, a warrior who could handle anything the world sent her way. Including Lieutenant Michael Turco of the Florida Highway Patrol.
Her whole body trembled as she willed her feet to move. Grabbing Michael behind the head, Kate pressed her lips to hers. She was doing it all wrong. It had been so long . . . she’d never actually kissed a man first. She was making a fool of herself . . .
Michael hesitated all of eight seconds. He almost counted aloud, experiencing the infinitely drawn-out time a bull rider must feel while riding a volcano’s back. Oh, hell! His arms snaked around her. He bent his head into her kiss, all the time telling himself he had to let go the moment she balked, drew back, so much as tried to wiggle away. This was where he had to find a damn-sight more wisdom and patience than he’d ever had before in his life.
Gradually, Kate’s lips softened from challenge to what Michael could only hope was pleasure. Her body sank into his, one hand still pressing against the back of his neck, the other creeping around his waist, up under his T-shirt . . . His warrior princess was delivering the best damn kiss he’d ever had. What had seemed like an impossible citadel to breech had dissolved into a conflagration that warmed his heart and inflamed his soul. Michael’s knees almost buckled. Was this surrender? Or was Kate playing with him? His sex was so hard, she couldn’t help but notice. Would she bolt and run?
Not his Kate. She played fair. She wouldn’t accept a challenge, then run away.
Or would she? Maybe this was all an experiment to see if she still knew how.
Michael groaned, spinning Kate around until her back was against the door frame. “You’re not going to back out on me, are you?” he demanded, his lips just far enough from hers so he could get the words out.
“I don’t . . . think so,” Kate murmured. She could see the lines around his eyes, the crinkles in his bronzed forehead. Badges of experience etched forever into features too strong and rough-cut to ever be handsome. But Michael was far more. His looks were striking, and she was beginning to suspect he had a beautiful soul. Any barriers between them were solely her own.
A wavering I don’t-think-so. Michael winced. Then again, it was better than a sudden run for the door. Finesse, Turco! No strong-arm tactics. Patience, dammit, patience! He leaned forward, pushed aside a few wisps of blond hair, brushed his lips over her ear. “Remember that oil I bought at the fair in Largo?” he whispered.
“Um-m-m?” The sheer pleasure of Michael’s warm breath in her ear almost convinced Kate she was going to make it.
“Let’s try it out.” His voice husky, seductive.
Kate struggled for rational thought. She’d made such a terrible mistake with Tag, she had to consider every angle. When Michael had bought the oil, she’d been certain he planned to use it on some other woman.
Maybe he had.
Okay, she’d been jealous, proprietary. Just because she cared didn’t mean Michael was everything he appeared to be.
“Come on,” he murmured on another surge of mind-numbing breath, “I bought it for you. That poor bottle’s getting positively lonely.”
Kate jerked her head away. Michael probably thought she was chickening out when all she was doing was hiding her crumpling face. Damn the man! He was
too good to be true. How could he possibly want a great big ox like herself?
She couldn’t say yes, her mouth wouldn’t move. She couldn’t even nod. Seven years of abstinence was a hard habit to break. And yet . . . if she didn’t accept Michael’s offer, didn’t give them both a chance, she deserved to be listed by Guinness as the greatest idiot of all time.
And yet she couldn’t give in gracefully. She was too much the warrior to admit the idea of Michael touching her, spreading sweet-scented oil over . . . over all of her weakened her knees, turning both mind and heart to liquid fire.
Warriors kept fighting, Kate reminded herself, even when grievously wounded. She might not be able to reply in any expected form, but there was something she could do. Her feet obeyed her command to move. Head up, shoulders back, she marched toward Michael’s bedroom.
As he watched, torn between astonishment and triumph, Michael could only wish she didn’t so closely resemble a French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine. Was he supposed to follow on her heels? Wait respectfully, like some Victorian bridegroom, while she did whatever females did before . . .
Hell, no! She might change her mind.
Michael paused in the doorway as Kate allowed a pair of satiny pink panties to slip down over her thighs. Deftly, she caught them on her foot, tossed them up into her hand. They joined the rest of her clothes, which were in a neat pile on top of his dresser. He surveyed the long length of her back and legs, the firm rounded buttocks with the starved intensity of a man who had never seen a naked female before. Kate pulled the elastic band from her ponytail, shook out her waves of silver blond hair. Michael swallowed hard, took a grip on the doorframe, squeezed until his knuckles turned white. This was not the moment to turn into a horny old goat. He had a game plan. He had to remember it, no matter how much he suffered.
With her back still toward him—and of course she knew he was there—Kate pulled back the bedcovers and climbed in. Sliding to the far side of the bed, she turned on her side, facing away from him, and pulled the covers up to her chin. Michael couldn’t decide if he wanted to make love to her or wring her neck. A difficult woman, Kate Knight. Then again, he supposed a lot of men had encountered worse, even on their wedding nights. Even from willing brides. Or at least that’s what he’d heard.
Michael crossed to the dresser, kicked off his sneakers, swiftly piled his clothes on top of hers. Turning, he surveyed the lump in the bed that was Kate. “I wasn’t planning on oiling the bedspread,” he announced in as neutral a tone as he could manage.
No reaction. Not one of those gorgeous muscles, obscured by bedcovers, moved.
He opened the drawer of the bedside table. From next to a box of condoms he took out the small glass bottle of oil, uncapped it, took a sniff. His head snapped back. Strong stuff. But it had a strong opponent. Michael feared much more than herbal magic was needed to turn his Lady Knight into an eager lover. For a moment, a brief one, he wondered if he was up to the task. An over-the-hill trooper, now mostly tied to a desk. A sometime lover who took his women where he found them, when it was convenient. A man who seldom looked back, stubbornly refusing to see anything in his future but his job. What the hell did he know about making love to a woman as traumatized as Kate Knight?
Michael’s lips tilted upward on a very private thought. At this point she sure as hell would be mad at him if he didn’t!
He eased himself onto the bed, leaned over and waved the bottle of oil under Kate’s nose. Automatically, she sniffed, then stifled a cough. “It’s all roses!” she sputtered. “I thought Diane said it had patchouli and . . . what else?”
“Yin and yang,” Michael supplied helpfully.
“Ylang-ylang,” Kate corrected. “And . . . musk, that’s it,” she added with satisfaction. “So why do I just smell roses, roses, and more roses?”
“The others make the roses smell stronger?” Michael suggested, not intending to be profound.
“Could be,” Kate conceded. “Ylang-ylang and musk are aphrodisiacs . . .” She broke off abruptly, suddenly recalling where she was, where this conversation was leading. An icy wave, cold as the Arctic, rolled over her. Her stomach heaved. For a moment she thought she might have to sprint for the bathroom. “Are you going to use it,” she demanded, “or are we going to talk about it all night?”
Michael stared at the small bottle of oil, shook his head. It just wasn’t going to work. He should have known better. But grabbing her up and kissing her silly wasn’t going to work either. Not with Kate. She seemed to be as adept at deflating his ego as she was with his sex. He must be some kind of a masochist to keep on trying.
“Uh, Kate? I’m going to have to pull back the covers.” Her only reply was to turn over on her stomach, one arm at her side, one tucked under her forehead. Cautiously, almost inch by inch, Michael hauled the bedspread and top sheet all the way down past her toes. She never moved. Stoic was the word that came to mind. But there was no faulting the lithe beauty of the five-feet-ten inches of woman laid out before him. And he planned to touch every last inch.
Michael poured a little of the oil onto his hand, rubbed his palms together. Warmth surged through his hands like a summer sun rising over a frozen landscape. If there was magic at work here, he could only hope it gifted him with skill and patience along with the infusion of warmth. His knowledge of massage was confined to the time his grandfather, the Golden Beach chief of police, had sent an eager twenty-year-old to check out a local massage parlor. He’d also been allowed to sit in a patrol car and watch when the place was raided a week later. Perhaps not the best training for love and romance . . .
Ah well, here goes nothing.
He parted her hair, carefully laying the long blond strands to either side of her head. He began his journey into the unknown in traditional places—Kate’s shoulders, the back of her neck. The scent of roses drifted around them, far beyond anything to be expected from a few drops of oil. She was stiff, of course, muscles knotted against his invasion, but Michael kept at it, smiling in triumph when he occasionally surprised an appreciative murmur from her tightly closed lips.
By the time he had worked his way down to her lower spine, Michael began to feel the transformation under his fingertips. Inch by hard-won inch, the fight was draining out of his warrior princess. Or at least he hoped so.
As his strong fingers caressed the sensitive area just above the end of her spine, Kate gave up her last twinge of guilt over indulging in something so pleasurable it must be some kind of sin. Burrowing her face farther into the pillow, she squeezed her eyes shut and gave herself up to whatever sorcery Michael was weaving. That he cared enough to do this for her, that he could tame his own desire long enough to give her this gift was a miracle in itself. It was what made him Michael Turco and not Taggart Parrish.
Kate gasped as his firm hands traveled down, kneading her buttocks as thoroughly as he had her back. Tension zinged back, butterflies doing somersaults in her stomach. Her hand struggled to find his wrist.
“Easy, easy,” Michael whispered, bending forward to kiss the back of her neck. “I’m planning to do all of you, so get used to it.”
All? “Michael, I don’t think—”
“That’s right, don’t think.”
“Michael!”
“Lie still and take it, Lady Knight. Figure this is your reward for a battle well fought.”
As Michael paused to rub more oil into his palms, Kate accepted that this was a battle she wanted to lose. With roses, patchouli, ylang-ylang and musk wafting around her, she allowed herself to melt into a softened stick of butter, unresistant to the hands that touched her thighs, the backs of her legs, her toes . . .
She smiled into the pillow, answering Michael’s chuckle as his fingers grated on grains of sand lingering between her toes. Having someone to laugh with . . . things didn’t get much better than this.
Suddenly, his lips were against her ear. “Now the other side,” he whispered.
Another kind of fea
r overwhelmed her. Her figure was so much like a boy’s. To display herself so openly . . . He was going to be so disappointed.
“Need help?” Michael inquired. Amused, a bit breathless.
What did he think he was going to see? Kate groaned. Some sex goddess? Stupid! He’s seen you in next to nothing. T-shirt, nightshirt, soaking wet. The man’s got eyes. Of course he doesn’t think you’re a latter-day Marilyn Monroe.
Gritting her teeth, Kate attempted to turn over, swiftly discovering she was so boneless Michael had to give her a hand. There, damn it, that’s all of me. All there is, all there ever will be. You can stop staring now!
Michael looked into the defiant green eyes below him and let a broad grin spread over his harsh features. The silly woman thought he wouldn’t like her. He almost wished it were true. His sex had re-awakened to the point where it was giving him fits. Demanding he make an end to all the damned preliminaries. But he’d vowed to do this right, and that was exactly what he was going to do. If she was ready for what his body so badly wanted, she wouldn’t be looking at him through pools of green wide enough to rival the ocean.
Pouring a drop of oil on his finger, Michael touched it to her throat, a teasing, anticipatory smile dancing over his face. Fear, dark and raw, overwhelmed the green eyes. Kate struggled to rise.
Michael drew back, palms flat in the air, silently cursing himself for a fool. Jesus! What had been done to her? Had she been choked?
He fisted his hands, held them close together eighteen inches from her face. “Look at these, Kate,” Michael commanded. “Take a good look. Remember what I told you last weekend. These fists will never hurt you.” He grabbed her hand, placed it on the part of him that throbbed to be inside her. “Nor will this,” he vowed. “Now look at my face and believe what I say.”
Wordlessly, Kate obeyed. Michael’s stern features had lost every glint of humor. The fires of passion were damped. He was a man who needed an answer. “Do you believe me? Come on, Kate, I need to know.”
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