It was Jane’s turn to be wary, although the wariness was almost instantly overridden by a heady dose of excitement as his hands fastened on her arms. In the nerve-racking, swampy sea of her relationship with Rider, she finally knew what came next, because they’d played this part before.
His hands slid up her arms, making her shiver, glided over her shoulders, slipped under her hair, and cupped her face, and she had to resist the urge to give in without any fight at all and melt into his arms.
“I know you, O’Reilly,” he murmured. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, to analyse. While you pretended I didn’t exist, I researched you. Before you buried yourself in Tayler’s Creek and started dressing like Huckleberry Finn you used to buy and sell stocks and consult on mergers. You’re gorgeous and you’ve got a brain. Well, figure out this merger.”
She swallowed, unnerved as his head lowered. She wanted him to kiss her so much that her mouth was actually watering, but her mind couldn’t shake loose of one compelling fact. She’d agonized over Michael Rider for seven years, and now she was finally free, and so was he. But, forbidden or not, Rider was still high-octane danger. She knew how to play the percentages, and whichever way she added this “relationship,” she was going to get burned.
His mouth grazed her forehead, the contact fleeting and unexpected, and totally unfair. Her eyes closed, and her palms flattened on his chest. She could feel the hard points of his nipples, the rapid slam of his heart, and the faint panicked urge to push him away dissolved as every bone in her body turned to jelly. He felt hot and muscular and wet, and God help her, she wanted him. “There’s nothing wrong with my clothes.”
She caught the flash of his grin. “Just that you’re wearing too many.”
His lips brushed hers again, unexpectedly soft and gentle, when everything else about him seemed hard as nails—tough and uncompromising. She drew in a shivering breath, tasted Rider, then his tongue filled her mouth, hot and unutterably male and every nerve ending in her body melted.
After the emptiness of the past years, the antiseptic smells of medication and hospitals—the curious stillness of waiting for death—he tasted like fire and heat and rain, as earthy and powerful as the rugged hill country that enfolded Tayler’s Creek.
His hand settled in the small of her back, urging her closer, until her breasts were pressed against his chest, the contact hot, electrifying. He was wet, his T-shirt soaked, his skin burning through the dampness.
He broke off the kiss as he peeled off his soaked shirt, then his hands clasped her waist and shifted upward, sliding her shirt and the cotton singlet up in one smooth, slick sweep. When he didn’t find a bra, his hands curved around and gripped her breasts, holding them firmly, his thumbs stroking over her erect nipples, making her shudder as he leaned forward and captured her mouth again.
Heat rolled through Jane as she wound her fingers in his wet hair and held on, drinking in his taste and scent, the heady feel of his skin against hers. Her breasts were swollen and tight, her lower belly throbbing, and rain and moisture filled the air, making even the simple act of breathing difficult.
He bent and took one breast in his mouth. One hand cupped and gripped her bottom, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, and abruptly liquid heat spasmed through her so that she shuddered and arched, her mind blanked out by the exquisite rill of pleasure.
Vaguely, she logged the short, sharp word he said, but her mind was still swimming, caught up in a curious stasis where light and sound faded. She had the dizzying sense of movement, felt the cool sharp shock of wet grass against her back. She registered the rough slide of her shorts and panties being drawn down her legs, the abrasion of denim as he slid down his jeans and between her thighs, and vulnerability assailed her even as she tilted her hips in automatic reflex, the slight movement opening her fully to him.
She felt the stroke of his fingers, the bolt of pleasure from even that simple touch, then he shifted upward, making a low sound of satisfaction as he completed the job of stripping her shirt and singlet from her torso. The blunt shape of his naked sex lodging between her tender folds tipped her over some invisible edge, and she arched, straining against the pressure, the hot, ridged muscles of his belly. Her fingers sank into the heavy muscles of his back. He jerked beneath her touch, then his mouth came down on hers and he shoved deep. For an endless moment she clung to him, her body quivering at the hot shock of penetration.
He said something low and indistinct, then withdrew and slid home again, forging deeper, the pressure relentless as delicate inner muscles stretched taut.
He groaned low in his throat, his gaze locked on hers. “How long?”
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. The second she’d realized that she was attracted to Rider, she’d been incapable of making love with her husband. Whenever Patrick had touched her, she had frozen. Patrick’s cancer had been both a hell and a saving grace in that respect. It had kept her tied to him when honour demanded she give him the honesty and respect of the truth—and a divorce—but it had also meant separate rooms. She briefly closed her eyes. “Seven years.”
He went still and suddenly the unreality of lying naked and entwined with Rider on the wet ground in the middle of a cyclone hit her. He was large enough that he took the brunt of the wind, and protected her from most of the rain, but they were both soaked. Rider’s shoulders glistened in the faint glow from the kitchen, water trailed from his hair and dripped from his nose, but wet or not, where his skin touched hers, she burned.
He framed her face, his palms warm and calloused against her skin. “I nearly went crazy thinking about the two of you in bed.”
The confession was startling, even though she’d known he’d left his wife for her. Abruptly, a feminine confidence she thought she’d never feel again warmed her, along with knowledge, as solid and real as Rider. Despite the passage of time, despite the doubts that had eaten at her, in all the ways that counted he was hers. “It didn’t happen,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t.”
Some of the tension left his body. His breath stirred against her cheek. “Thank God for that. I wouldn’t wish what happened to Patrick on my worst enemy, but…”
He had wanted Patrick out of the picture. The unspoken words hung between them, as raw and uncomplicated as Rider’s weight pressing her into the wet ground, the heat pouring off his skin, the hot, stirring pleasure as he moved inside her.
The pitch of the wind altered, adding a keening edge to the building savagery of storm. He dipped and his mouth closed over one nipple, and her body shimmered out of control again as hot, dissolving pleasure gripped her.
He lifted his head, his face slick with rain, his gaze fastened on hers as he shoved deep, and she felt the hot liquid pulse as he held himself deep inside her. The moment was primal and extreme, and she was fiercely glad he hadn’t worn a condom. She wanted his penis naked inside her. In an utterly female way, she quite simply wanted him, and had done so from the first time she’d laid eyes on him.
At a primitive animal level, the coupling was preordained and logical. She was a female who had been cordoned off and alone for years, and he was a strong, dominant male in his prime. The fact that he could impregnate her, and probably already had, didn’t terrify her. She wanted his semen. Planning didn’t come into it. She’d been locked in deep freeze for years, the chill mired deep in her bones. Getting involved with Rider was the equivalent of stepping into the heat of a blast furnace. He was wild and risky and unexpectedly vulnerable, and she was certain of only one thing: She wanted more.
Her arms wound around his neck and she stretched and arched beneath him, glorying in his weight pressing her into the ground, the continued penetration as he kept her beneath him, and the delicious throbbing wetness deep inside.
Experimentally, she gripped him more tightly and felt him twitch and thicken.
“More?”
She lifted her face to his, studied the taut line of his jaw, the sharp cut of his cheekbones. “Much mo
re,” and then the liquid glide started again, and she couldn’t think, could barely breathe. The thrusting seemed to go on for a long time, although time was hard to measure; it slipped away in the darkness and the roar of the wind, the rain slicking their skin, the heat that built in waves, stretching the tension tight until it was close to unbearable.
His teeth fastened on the tender flesh at the join of her neck and shoulder, and the small erotic nip sent her spinning over the edge, heat and darkness lapping at her as she clung to his shoulders.
She caught the edge of a short, harsh word, then his mouth locked on hers and he shoved deep and she felt him come inside her again, the pulsing shiveringly deep and prolonged.
They lay in an exhausted tangle, until finally, Rider moved, pulling her up with him. They made it to the kitchen with its lamp still glowing softly on the table. Rider slammed the door, framed her face, and lowered his mouth to hers, the kiss long and drugging.
Before she was able to feel the vulnerability of being naked while Rider still had his jeans on, he walked her back three steps, lifted her onto the table, parted her legs, and stepped between them. She looped her arms around his neck as his mouth moved over hers again, the kiss intense and oddly sweet as the rain pounded on the windows, violent and tropically heavy.
He lifted his head, and when he spoke his voice was dark, and faintly hoarse. “This time I want you to watch, I want you to know who’s making love to you.”
Her gaze snagged on his, and she wondered that she’d ever thought his eyes cold. “I know who you are.”
His hands tangled in her hair, his forehead dropped to hers. “Sometimes I wondered if you even knew I was alive.”
She cupped his face, and suppressed a smile, feeling as giddy as a teenager. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, Rider, but you’re hard to miss.”
Incredibly, his smile bordered on embarrassed, then her breath caught as he began to enter her by slow, deliberate increments. Outside in the dark, she’d been aware of shape and proportion, but it had been too dark to make out any detail. In the soft lantern light, every part of him was visible, and like the rest of him, his genitals were sleek and beautifully formed, his shaft long and muscular, his testicles heavy and pulled up tight against the shaft.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, the movement tilting her hips and deepening the penetration. His thumb eased up from the place they were joined, and slid over the tight bud of her clitoris, once, twice, and heat spasmed through her again and she began to climax. His arms came around her and she felt him thicken inside her, the long, hard pulsing of his release.
Eventually, he lifted his head from the curve of her shoulder, his expression soft and faintly wry. “You see why I spent so much time away? If I’d stayed in Tayler’s Creek, Tucker would have resurrected some old law about adultery, locked me up, and thrown away the key.”
His arms tightened around her, and he lifted her from the bench, collected the lantern from the table, and carried her upstairs.
She indicated which room was hers, and he set her down on the bed, pulled a fistful of foil packets from his jeans, and placed them on her bedside table alongside the lantern. “I can use these if you want, but it’s too late for them now.”
The breath stalled in her throat as he peeled out of his jeans. Way too late. And he’d come over with more than just a handful, he had a supply.
She caught the edge of a male grin. “I’ve been carrying them since I got home. You had to know I was going to try and get you into bed.”
He pushed the covers back, climbed into bed with her, and pulled her close. “But the hell I wanted to use them.”
Fully naked, he was beautiful; his shoulders wide, his chest broad, his belly flat and ridged, his legs long and muscled. She touched a scar that curved over his stomach, another that made a puckered shape just above one hip. When she questioned him about the injuries, he answered with typical male brevity, then switched to questioning her, seemingly more interested in the small day-to-day details of her life, and the complicated dynamics of her large, extended family—who were mostly resident in Auckland—than the fact that he had nearly died, twice. As the conversation ebbed and flowed, the tension that had gripped her when she saw the injuries dissipated, and she was happy to simply wallow in the totally unexpected contentment of just being with Rider.
A series of heavier than normal gusts of wind buffeted the house hard enough that the entire structure shook, and for long minutes they were silent, their attention riveted to the sounds of the storm and the creaking protests of the old house. When the wind dropped to a more normal velocity, Rider propped himself on one elbow and stroked hair back from her face. “What will you do if you get pregnant?”
“Probably jump for joy.”
Some of the wariness left his face. “You don’t mind?”
A baby…Her stomach tightened on a kick of excitement. If she was pregnant, there was no question in her mind; she wanted her baby. “What about you?”
“You might regret asking that question.” His gaze was direct, and without a shred of humour. “Ever since I first saw you I’ve fantasized about getting you pregnant.”
Emotion swelled in her chest. Marg Tayler’s terse statement that Rider was “taken” popped into her mind, and a tension she’d barely been aware of dissipated.
Rider wanted her—enough that he’d waited for her for years. At the first opportunity, he had bound her to him in the most primitive of ways by stripping and penetrating her on her front lawn. He hadn’t taken the time to remove his jeans, and he hadn’t sheathed himself when it would have taken him only seconds to do so. He’d wanted to be naked inside her, and he had wanted to make her pregnant.
What Rider had done had been ruthless and dominant, and she’d gloried in it. She hadn’t cared that they’d both gotten soaked, or that he could make her pregnant. After years of closing him out—of repressing the most feminine, vulnerable parts of herself—she’d needed him to be wild for her, she’d needed the raw, earthy shock of lovemaking.
Urgency rose up inside her, fierce and sharp. She didn’t regret all of the years they’d put this relationship on hold, because Patrick had been important to her; he had needed her. But it was their time now. She touched Rider’s jaw, and felt the tension there. “Then let’s do it.”
Possessive heat flared in his eyes, but this time, it was going to be her way. Placing her hands on his chest, she pushed him flat and took a moment to admire the body that had been driving all of the women of Tayler’s Creek—single or married—crazy for years.
His dark gaze flashed over her as she straddled him, and his hands cupped her waist. “When you get pregnant,” he said flatly, “we get married.”
As Jane wrapped her fingers around his shaft, she thought he muttered, “If not before,” and a peculiarly female satisfaction curled through her. Three days ago, she’d thought of herself as civilized to the nth degree, and driven by logic rather than emotion, but in the space of those few days her world, and her view of herself, had been turned upside down. In any other circumstances Rider’s hard-ass male demand that she marry him would be considered outrageous in the extreme and ignored. As proposals went, it was a disgrace, but in this case, what mattered to Jane was that Rider was vulnerable enough that he wanted to make certain of her.
Fitting the broad head of his penis to her opening, she slowly lowered herself, hovering at the brink of penetration until the exquisite pressure was almost beyond bearing. They’d already made love three times, but this time her awareness and sensitivity were heightened to an almost painful degree.
Taking a deep breath, she increased the downward pressure until the first tight constriction was breached and she took him inside her in a slow, hot glide, heat pouring through her at the massive sense of impalement.
She settled herself more firmly over him, shimmying slightly to ease the tight fit, her eyes briefly closing at the exquisite sensation of fullness. “You’re suppo
sed to have a ring, Rider.”
His hands slid to her hips, locking her tight against him. His gaze fastened on hers, dark and hot, and lit with humour. “Michael. The name’s Michael. And don’t worry, I’ve got the ring.”
WHEN SHE WOKE it was still dark, but greying, as if morning was close.
She wasn’t sure what had pulled her from sleep, and she was surprised she’d woken at all, because she felt heavy and exhausted. Vaguely, she noticed that the wind was no longer buffeting the house, although it was always possible that an extra strong gust, or even a flash of lightning, had woken her. Yawning, she allowed her lids to drift closed, then a rending creak jerked her back to full awareness.
Rider’s arm tightened around her, telling her that he was awake.
The creak came again, out of sync with the steady whine of the wind, as if someone were peeling corrugated iron from the roof.
A chill ran the length of her spine. She could feel the coiled tension in Rider’s body. Another short, sharp creak practically made her jump out of her skin, and suddenly she was sure.
“There’s someone on the roof.”
“He’s in the ceiling.”
A finger pressed on her lips, signaling quiet, then Rider slid from the bed and pulled on his jeans. Jane climbed out of bed and slid drawers open as quietly as she could, extracting underwear and a fresh shirt and shorts by feel. When she was dressed, Rider’s hand locked around hers.
He bent his head and spoke close to her ear. “Stay here, so I know where you are.” He pressed a cold, smooth object into her hand, which she realized was his cell phone, which he must have had in his jeans pocket. “Call emergency services, and don’t let up until they dispatch a police cruiser. Get Tucker if you can. Tell him we’ve got his boy—if he’s interested.”
Rider disappeared into the hallway, then just as quickly reappeared, flattening himself against the wall and motioning for her to get down. Jane ducked down beside the bed and began dialing, keeping an eye on the inky opening of the doorway as she strained to see in the darkness.
Lover Beware Page 24