by Diana Palmer
If he'd been thinking rationally, he'd have taken her straight back to the hotel and left her with Nan while there was still time. But she was wearing some sort of tangy perfume that made his senses whirl, and the thought of her softly rounded body in his arms made him reckless.
He led her along the dunes and then helped her down to the level of the beach with him, holding her so that, for an instant, her eyes were even with the aroused glitter of his.
He let her slide gently against his muscular body until her feet touched the sand. Behind him was the roar of the surf with moonlight glistening like diamonds along the waves that ran into the beach. But louder even than that was the frantic beat of her heart as he drew her to him with a self-mocking smile and bent his head.
"Every man is entitled to make a fool of himself once," he whispered into her mouth as he took it.
Chapter Four
Shelly wasn't rnodel-lovely, but her wealth had guaranteed that she'd had suitors in the past. None of them, not one, had made her mouth ache for his kisses, her body plead to be touched and caressed. But Faulkner did. Her response to him was instant and alarming.
Once, she tried to draw back, but his big hands slid to her hips and pushed them hard into the changing contours of his body while his lips teased around her trembling mouth.
He felt her instinctive withdrawal and checked it expertly. His nose brushed against hers and there was no urgency, no brutality in the touch of his mouth on her face. He was remarkably tender for the level of arousal he'd already reached.
"Don't be afraid of me," he whispered, his voice gentle, indulgent. "You can stop me whenever you like. Force is for bullies."
The calm tone pacified her. For just an instant she'd counted her folly in coming out alone with him, when she hardly knew him. There was a very real danger in being secluded with a strange man. The papers were full of tragedies that a little common sense, caution and wise counsel could have prevented.
"I read too many newspapers, I guess," she said unsteadily.
"Some women should read more," he replied flatly. He pushed the hair back from her flushed cheeks and stared down at her in the faint light. "You're quite safe with me. I wouldn't advise you to come out here with your friend Pete, though."
She smiled at the dry tone. "I know that already, thanks." The smile faded as she studied his broad, rugged face. It had lines that an artist would have loved. She reached up hesitantly, and stroked his thick eyebrows. He had big, deep-set eyes that seemed to see right through people. His nose was a little large, not oversize, and very straight. She traced it down to the wide, sexy line of his mouth, to the chiseled lips that had teased her into reckless response.
"This isn't wise," he said quietly, a little regretful. "You taste of green apples, young Shelly."
She reached up and caught his full lower lip gently in her teeth, acting on pure instinct. His big frame shuddered a little. "Teach me," she whispered unsteadily.
His hand tightened on her waist. "Teach you what?" he asked roughly.
Her lips opened and brushed against his. "How to...make love."
"That would be dangerous," was all he could get out. His body was burning; his heartbeat shook him.
"Yes." Her hands went to the front of his shirt. Holding his eyes, she gently undid the top button. He didn't say a word. Encouraged, she opened the next, and the next, and the next, until she'd bared his hair-covered chest to her fascinated gaze.
"Oh, my!" she whispered. She pressed both hands into the thickness of the hair and felt the hard, warm muscle through it. He was strong. She could feel it. He indulged her, letting her explore him, until the needs she kindled became unmanageable.
"That's enough," he said softly, stilling her hands against him.
"Why?"
"Because I'll want equal time."
Her eyes met his; her gaze was curious, a little shy. "I haven't let anyone see me like that. Not yet."
His eyes fell to her pink blouse and he saw the hardness of her nipples through it.
"I didn't have time to put on anything under it," she whispered softly.
"Oh, my God!" He ground out the words.
That deep groan, she decided, was pure frustration. As she thought it, he looked around to make sure they were still isolated. Then, with a total disregard for sanity, he dropped her sweater to the beach and began to unfasten her blouse.
His lips parted, as if he was finding it hard to breathe while he worked the tiny pearl buttons. So was she. But she wanted his gaze on her so badly that she banished common sense. When he pulled the edges of the blouse apart and looked at her, it seemed that she wasn't the only one with that terrible need.
His eyes were narrow and hot with admiration as he savored the firm, beautiful curve of her pink breasts.
"You said you liked...small women," she whispered unsteadily.
"Did I? I must have been out of my mind! Shelly," he whispered. "Oh, Shelly...!"
She didn't know what she'd expected, but it wasn't the sudden descent of his dark head and the warm moistness of his open mouth on her breast. His tongue pressed against her while she cried out in a strangled voice and clutched his head closer. Her whole body throbbed, ached, shook with an avalanche of uncontrollable need. She whispered to him, pleaded with him for more, more, her eyes closed, her body in anguish.
Vaguely she felt the cool sand at her back and the weight of Faulkner's body as he lifted his head to find her mouth. He kissed her with open passion, his tongue pushing deep inside her mouth while his hair-roughened chest rubbed over her bare breasts and made the ache intolerable.
Her hands found his hips and pulled him to her, trembling as she pleaded for something she'd never experienced. As far gone as she, he indulged her for one brief ecstatic second, levering down between her soft thighs to press himself hard against the very core of her hunger. She cried out and shifted to accommodate him, and the stars seemed to crash down on her.
But he groaned and threw himself over onto his back, shuddering, openly vulnerable to her hungry, fascinated eyes.
She looked at him as if he belonged to her already, sketching him with eyes that adored the power and sensuality of his aroused body. He seemed to be in agony and she wished she were more sophisticated, that she knew what to do for him.
She sat up, hugging her knees to her bare breasts. Probably she should fasten her blouse, she thought dazedly, but everything seemed a bit unreal now.
He sat up beside her and glanced sideways, noticing the open blouse. "Put your knees down," he said quietly. "I want to look at you."
She obeyed him, watching his eyes stroke her with pure pleasure, feeling sensations that made her tingle.
"You make my head spin," he said, leaning close to put his lips softly over her breast. "Do you like this?" he whispered, teasing the nipple with his tongue. "Or is it better for you...like this?" His mouth opened and suckled her with tender ferocity.
"Faulkner." She lay back on the sand, her arms spread, her eyes welcoming, her body completely open to him. She wanted him so badly that nothing else mattered for the moment.
He studied her with banked-down hunger for a long time while he fought his better judgment and lost. "It would be the first time, wouldn't it, Shelly?"
"Yes."
"If you've said no to men before—and I must assume that you have—why are you saying yes to me?"
She didn't want to think about that. She felt uncertain, when she'd been out of her mind with need of him only seconds before. Embarrassed now, she sat up and tugged the edges of her blouse together, buttoning them up in an excruciating silence.
She had to say something. Words were difficult in the cold sanity of the aftermath. "Listen, I want you to know...I don't go around doing things like this..." She faltered. "I'm sorry. I feel...rather ashamed."
He turned her face toward his and searched her eyes with a somber, intense scrutiny. "You did nothing to make either of us ashamed or embarrassed. We both know I'm too old
for you. That doesn't make me regret what happened just now." He traced her lips slowly with his hand, and there was a faint unsteadiness in his fingers. "I'll dream of you as you were tonight for the rest of my life," he said through his teeth. "God, Shelly, why do you have to be so young...?" He caught her to him and his mouth burned into hers for endless moments while he fed an impossible hunger. He forced himself to lift his head. She lay against him, her lips swollen, her eyes wide and soft and willing. He groaned audibly. "You'd let me, wouldn't you?" he asked in a hoarse, agonized tone. "You'd lie here in the moonlight and let me undress you. You'd open your arms and lie under my body and envelop me in your softness..."
She blushed at the images he was creating in her mind, shivering as she pictured his muscular, hairroughened body pushing hers into the sand while he possessed her. She moaned.
"Shelly!" His cheek lay against her soft breasts and he shivered in her arms. "Shelly, I want you so badly, honey!"
"I would let you," she whispered brokenly. "I would, I would...!"
His arm contracted and he rocked her against him with rough compassion, his face lifting to nestle against her throat, in the scented softness of her hair, while the wind blew around them and the surf crashed.
"I'm years too old for you," he said quietly, looking past her at the ocean. "And while my son wants a mother, I do not want another wife."
"Then why are you marrying her?" she asked.
"I'm not. And she knows it. She likes to pretend that things will change, and so does her father, who owes me money and thinks that my marriage to his daughter would negate his debt."
"I see."
His cheek nuzzled her hair. "I'm in my middle thirties and you're a college freshman. We're a generation apart. I come from a social set that you couldn't begin to cope with," he added when she was tempted to speak and deny what he was saying. "I come from money. Plenty of it." He laughed bitterly. "You'd have to organize and plan luncheons, dinner, business gatherings. You'd have to know how to dress, how to defend yourself at social functions, because I have enemies and former lovers who would savage you." His chest rose and fell heavily. "Marriage is out of the question, and I can't offer you an affair because my conscience would beat me to death."
"I see."
"Will you stop saying that?" He lifted his head and searched her eyes, looking for secrets that they wouldn't yield. She looked odd. Faintly amused and bitter, all at once.
"You want to make love to me, but that's all it is." She summed up what he'd told her.
"Basically that's about it." He couldn't tell her what he was beginning to feel for her. The cost was too dear. She'd forget him and he'd forget her, because they had no future together. Let her think it was only physical with him. It might make it easier for her to get over him.
She smiled with controlled dignity. "In that case, we'd better break this up and go back to the motel, hadn't we?" She got up, brushing off her jeans. She retrieved her sweater, shook the sand out of it and slipped it on. She was suddenly chilled.
He got up, too. "I'll walk you back to your room," he said formally.
"Thank you."
They didn't touch. She felt betrayed. He thought she was several years younger than she really was, and that she was beneath him socially. She could have told him the truth, but if he couldn't accept her as he thought she was, then he obviously didn't care about anything except her body. In fact, he'd said so. Thank God he was too much a gentleman to take advantage. She'd been crazy for him. It was embarrassing to remember how wanton she'd been. The memory was going to hurt for a long time.
She couldn't love him, of course. It was impossible to think that when she'd only been around him briefly. It was physical infatuation, surely, and she'd get over it.
They were at her door all too soon. "Thanks for the music," she said, without quite meeting his eyes. She even smiled. "Tell Ben good-night for me. Nan and I have plans, so I don't imagine I'll see much of him until we leave for home."
He frowned. Until now, he hadn't remembered how close Ben was getting to her. "You don't have to jettison Ben because of what happened tonight," he said curtly.
"I'm not."
He tipped her face up to his, scowling at the way she avoided his eyes. "Look at me, damn you!" he said sharply.
The anger shocked her into meeting his eyes, and she wished she hadn't. They were blazing.
"I didn't want to hurt you," he said shortly. "I never meant to do more than kiss you. You deliberately baited me until I made love to you, so don't put all the blame on me!"
She went scarlet. She was too sick with embarrassment and too flustered to even answer him. Jerking away from him, she fumbled the door open and went through it, locking it nervously behind her.
Faulkner stood staring at the closed door with shocked self-contempt. He couldn't believe he'd made a remark like that to her, when she'd been so generous and uninhibited with him. He hadn't meant to make her ashamed of such a sweet giving, but the look on her face had hurt him. He cared deeply for her, even if he didn't want to. He had no right to wound her, to scar her young emotions by taunting her with her responsiveness.
"Shelly," he said quietly, one big hand against the door. "I'm sorry."
He didn't know if she'd heard him, but he hoped she had. He turned and walked away, aching with regrets.
Shelly went to bed, pleading a headache from the music. She figured that Nan wasn't fooled, but she couldn't face questions now. She'd moved away from the door so quickly that she hadn't heard Faulkner's apology. She climbed under the covers, and her pillow was wet when she finally slept.
She meant to avoid Ben, so that she could avoid his father, but the boy was waiting for her in the restaurant the next morning. He stood up, beaming, when she and Nan came in.
"I've already ordered coffee for both of you," he said with a flourish. "Do sit down."
Shelly and Nan chuckled involuntarily as they took their seats.
"What am I going to do with you?" Shelly asked softly.
"Adopt me," he said. "She saved my life," he told Nan. "Now she has to take care of me for as long as I live." He frowned. "She's sort of reluctant, but I'm working on her. I really do need a mother, you know. And don't say I'll have one when Dad marries Marie," he added gruffly when Shelly started to speak.
"Where's your dad?" Nan asked, because she knew Shelly wouldn't. Something had happened the night before, and it must have been something major for Shelly to be so tight-lipped about it.
"Dad's gone to a meeting," Ben said. "He sure was upset. He didn't even want breakfast. I guess he's missing her," he added miserably. "He said something about us going home earlier than expected."
Shelly felt her pulse leap. So he was that anxious to be rid of her. Did he think she'd make trouble? Embarrass him with confessions of undying love? He needn't have worried. She wasn't that sort.
"I'll miss you, Ben," she replied, smiling. "But life goes on."
"You look sick," Ben remarked. "Are you okay?"
"I'm just fine. No more hangovers," she promised.
But she wasn't fine. She went through the motions of having a good time, joining in a volleyball game on the beach and sunbathing and swimming. But her heart wasn't in it. Nan had paired off with a nice student from New York she'd met on the sailing trip, and Shelly wished she had someone, if only to keep Pete at bay.
"We could go back to my room and have a drink or two," he suggested. "Come on, Shelly, loosen up!"
She looked straight at him. Courtesy wasn't working. Perhaps stark honesty would. "I don't want to have sex with you."
He actually flushed. "Shelly!"
"That's what you're after," she said flatly. "Well, it isn't what I'm after. I came down here to have a good time. I'm managing it, barely, in spite of you!"
He got up, looking embarrassed, and shrugged. "Okay. You don't have to get upset. No hard feelings." He walked off, and very soon he was talking up another girl. Thank goodness, she thought. One comp
lication resolved.
She felt tired and drowsy, and she began to doze. A sudden sharp movement brought her awake.
"This is stupid," Faulkner said roughly. "You're baking yourself. Haven't you put on any sunscreen at all?"
"Of course I have."
"Not on your back."
"Well, I can't reach it, can I?" she asked angrily. She sat up. "And don't offer to do it for me, because I don't want you touching me. Go away."
He searched her eyes slowly. "I apologized, but you didn't hear me, did you?"
Her eyes dropped. She didn't like looking at him in swimming trunks. He was disturbing enough fully clothed.
"I have to go back to the room," she said stiffly. "Nan and I are going shopping with some other-Faulkner!"
He had her up in his big arms and he was carrying her lazily down the beach to the water.
"Listen, you...!"
He put his mouth softly over hers, closing the words inside it, while he waded far out into the ocean until they were up to their shoulders in it. Only then did he release her, just enough so that he could bring her body completely against his and deepen the long, slow kiss that locked them into intimacy.
"Oh, don't," she pleaded, but her arms were already holding him, her mouth searching for his.
He gave it to her. His big hands slid down to her hips and his fingers teased under the brief yellow bikini bottom as he pulled her to the hard outline of his body and moved her against him.
He nibbled her lower lip while he positioned her in an intimacy that made her gasp and shiver.
"I can't get you out of my mind," he whispered into her mouth, groaning. "You torment me."
"Faulkner...!"
"I want you so, Shelly!" He kissed her hungrily. His hands released her hips and slid up to untie her top. It fell to her waist and his hands caressed her while his mouth teased and tormented hers. She felt his fingers teasing her nipples into even harder arousal, and she moaned sharply.