Sliding his arm free of the sling, he lifted the fabric over his head and tossed it on the night table, then reached for her, hooking his fingers around her belt, using it to pull her to him. She didn't hesitate or hang back but came willingly, right up to him. "I've waited all my life for a woman like you."
She started to respond, then thought better of it and simply smiled instead. What had she been about to say?he wondered. That she'd waited all her life forhim? Or maybe that she would wait therest of her life for him? What a waste that would be, because she would be waiting for nothing. Once he left here, he could never come back.
Unless he did as she asked. Turnedhimself in. Went to prison. Served his time. One day in the distant future—if he lived long enough—they would let him go and he could come back here.If she waited.If she still wanted him. Hell, he wouldn't even have to wait that long to see her. They had visiting days in prison; a lot of them even made arrangements for conjugal visits. Ashley could take her chances on the road with Bessie every month or two or three, getherself all prettied up and drop in at the prison for a few hours' stilted conversation and a desperate fumble and grope behind bars. Wouldn't that be a terrific offer to make to a woman like her?
He would rather never see her again than see her in a shameful place like that.
Shaking away the grim thoughts, he unfastened the big brass buckle, then drew the belt from its loops and laid it on the night table atop his sling. Next he pulled her shirt free of the denim skirt, the cotton gliding smoothly along her skin. The shirt waswhite, a nice contrast to the pale golden hue of her skin, and the style was masculine, copied from a man's dress shirt, emphasizing the very decidedly feminine curve of her breasts and the narrowness of her waist. The buttons opened easily; in only a moment the two sides of the shirt were separated, revealing a strip of soft bare skin all the way down to her waist.
He had the answer to his question. She was naked underneath the shirt.
Now he owed her an answer that he couldn't give last night. Sliding his fingers over that strip of skin, he brought his hands to her throat, then her face. "You're a beautiful woman, Ash, more beautiful than any woman I've ever known."
Her smile was bright, teasing and just the slightest bit unsteady. "More beautiful thanPris?"
"I told you—Prisis pretty. You—you make a man feel weak. You're the strongest woman I've ever known, but just looking at you makes me want to protect you. You're sweet and lovely and delicate and tough, and you take my breath away."
Leaning forward, she kissed him. There was nothing tentative or hesitant about it. Her mouth connected with his; her tongue stroked inside. He was feeling little shocks all through his body when, as quickly as she'd begun, she ended the kiss. "You could have told me that last night when I asked."
"Last night?" He buried his hands in her hair, feeling it settle cool and silky around his fingers. "When I was lying in bed praying that you would quit tempting and tormenting me while I still had some small measure of willpower left? When I was seriously considering using the handcuffs on myself becausemaybe, just maybe, they would keep me away from you?"
"Tempting and tormenting…"Vague bewilderment was replaced by shameless satisfaction. "You mean when I put your hand on my breast."
"I mean when you sat in front of the fire and brushed your hair. The way you looked. The way you moved. Even the way you breathed." He chuckled softly. "You were seducing me then, and you didn't even know it."
"I'm trying to seduce you now, but you don't seem to know it."
He sobered. "I know, Ash. God help me, I know." Sliding his hands down, he caught the shirt and guided it along her arms until it was free and fell to the floor, a puddle of bright white on the dark woven rug.Beautiful. He hated to overuse the word, but he couldn't think of any other to describe the way she looked standing there, her hair mussed, naked to the waist, the firelight gleaming on her skin. So beautiful.
He reached out, almost touched her but not quite, his hand hovering only a fraction of an inch from her breast. "You know, don't you," he began, his voice so hoarse that it scratched his throat, "that this is going to destroy me."
The certainty in his voice made Ashley's heart ache. She longed to protect him, to draw him close, to hold him tight and keep him safe for the rest of their lives. All she did, though, was touch him, brushing her fingers just barely across his jaw. "Maybe not," she whispered. "Maybe it will heal us both."
For a moment he stood there, his hand less than a breath away,then he touched her. Her nipple hardened instantly, with no more than his light caress, and the ache around her heart seeped out in every direction, making her tremble. She wanted to let her head fall, to close her eyes and lose herself in the sweet sensations he was creating, but even more she wanted to look at him while he touched her. They would have so little together—tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe even, if she was very lucky and fate was feeling kindly, tomorrow night. She wanted to remember every detail about every moment. She wanted to see every expression that crossed his face and softened his dark eyes. The desire. The need. The hunger. The pain. She wanted always, for as long as she lived, to remember his face.
With gentle touches, he guided her to the bed, laid her down on her grandmother's Double Wedding Ring quilt,then joined her there. Supporting himself on his left arm, with his right hand he stroked her, tender caresses that, because of the stiffness and pain in his shoulder, should have been awkward and clumsy but were nothing less than exquisite. They spread heat through her body, made her breasts swell and her nipples ache,stirred a desire deep in her belly that was unfamiliar in its intensity. The acts were nothing new—Seth had touched her, and so had the only other man in her life—but the results… They were different. Stunning. Breath-stealing.
"Your skin is so soft," he murmured.
Her smile trembled. "Aloe and evening primrose oil."
"You smell so sweet."
"Honeysuckle." Now her voice was trembling, too, and her breathing had grown unsteady.
He ducked his head, placing kisses between her breasts,then breathed deeply. "Chamomile," he disagreed. "Every time I take a bath, I reach for the honeysuckle because it smells like you, but I always put it back because smelling like you would surely drive me insane. Now you've switched to chamomile and that will also drive me crazy."
Raising her hand to stroke his hair, she shook her head dazedly from side to side. "No, it would relax you. The scent of chamomile brings tranquility."
"I've been many things since the minute I walked into your clearing, but, honey, tranquil isn't one of them."
His teeth closed around her nipple in a tender bite, bringing a gasp of sharp pleasure from her and, at the same time, a low groan from him. He suckled her breast, drawing hard on her nipple, and her muscles twitched and tightened. Lower, his leg was hooked over hers, his hardness pressing against her thigh. Heavy denim separated them—her skirt, his jeans—but she could feel the heat, the length, of him. She could feel that simple, strong evidence of his need, and it made her greedy. It made her throb.
His kisses moved from one breast to the other, then across her ribs, lower, slower, until the skirt blocked his way. She watched as he slid down on the bed, finding the hem of the skirt, then working his way up, unfastening each button, pushing the fabric aside, frequently diverting his attention to a light touch across her thigh or her hip or drawing his fingers, just the very tips, across the pale cotton of her panties in an achingly intimate caress.
At last he opened the final button. Rising to his knees, he pulled the denim out from underneath her, dropped it over the side of the bed, then removed her last bit of clothing, following his progress with a trail of damp kisses—on her stomach, her hip, her thigh, the inside of her knee and all the way down her calf. Sitting back, for a moment he simply looked ather, and in the heartbeat and ragged breaths that filled her ears, she thought she heard him murmur one soft, gratifying word. "Beautiful."
She reached for him, both arms s
tretching out. "Please, Dillon…"
Grasping the hem of his sweatshirt, he started to strip it off, but stopped halfway through the motion. His expression was a mix of pain, impatience and embarrassment as she sat up and pushed his hands away. "Let me." But she didn't go straight to the task. She glided her hands underneath the fabric, bunching it, then bent to kiss his chest, bruises, scrapes and all, pausing only briefly to flick her tongue across his nipple, wondering if her mouth felt as heart-weakeninglygood to him as his mouth had felt on her body.
Reaching his shoulders, she eased his left arm free of the shirt,then carefully worked it over his head and off his other arm. The dressing on his right shoulder was a reminder that his arm couldn't support even a fraction of hisweight, that his bruised ribs, though much improved, also required special consideration. But that was all right. Though there was something tremendously appealing about lying underneath him—her body sheltering his while his, in turn, sheltered hers, his weight pressing against her as they moved together, arms and legs entwined—the options were terribly erotic, too. It didn't matterhow they did it. All that mattered was that they did.
Advancing on her knees, she nudged him toward the edge of the bed. "Stand up," she whispered, her hands seeking and finding the button, then the zipper, of his faded jeans. Her fingers were suddenly clumsy, resulting in a great deal of fumbling that made him suck in his breath, then groan aloud.
"Ash…"There was a note of warning in his voice. "Don't play games or you're going to make me—" He groaned again as she opened his jeans and slid one hand inside. The muscles across his belly quivered as she explored lower, finding his arousal with a feathery light caress. Suddenly he grabbed her wrist, but he didn't pull her hand away. Instead, he pressed her palm hard against him. "Now, Ash."
Yes.Now. She freed her hand, and together they removed the last of his clothing, then he joined her on the bed again, and again he hesitated. "I don't know if I can…"
"Wecan," she whispered. Hands on his shoulders, she gently pushed him onto his back, then bent low for a kiss. His mouth was hot, his tongue bold. His hands, moving in heated caresses, were even bolder, rubbing her breasts, across her stomach, in hot, steady strokes between her thighs.
"Take me inside you, Ash." His effort to retain some bit of control tightened his jaw, making his voice thick and raw, and beaded sweat across his forehead. "I want to be inside you…"
She moved into place above him, seeking, guiding, sinking, taking him exactly where he wanted to be, where she needed him to be. He filled her, stretched her,made her feel more whole than she ever had before. He made her feel stronger, more alive, more womanly,more beautiful. For the first time in her life shefelt beautiful, because of this incredibly beautiful man.
This incredibly beautiful and deeply loved man.
She closed her eyes on that last part. She had plenty of time ahead of her to think about loving him and losing him and living alone. Countless hours, endless nights. Tonight she wanted to focus onthis, on the physical, on their bodies joined together, on the hunger and the arousal, the need, the sensation, the pleasure, the throbbing, the burning. She wanted to feel it all, wanted to make it all a part of her, a treasured memory that she could take out and relive when she had to make it through another lonely night.
His hands were on her thighs, moving restlessly, silently urging her to move, and she did, settling into an easy rhythm, taking him deeper, harder, feeding his arousal stroke by stroke, making him hotter, until, with harsh breathing and a harsher groan, he stiffened, went motionless for an instant, then filled her. She didn't stop, though, didn't give him a chance to catch his breath, didn't wait for the overload of sensation to become manageable, but continued thrusting against him, withdrawing, sheathing him again within her body. As he stroked her breasts, her thighs, any part of her that he could reach, he whispered soft words, erotic sounds, coaxing her, tempting her, encouraging her. Unable to resist the pure, sweet pleasure a moment longer, she gave in to it, too, and through it all, her gaze was locked on his face.
His sweet, beautiful and very much beloved face.
* * *
"Itwas Russell Bradley."
Dillon hadn't been sure before he spoke that Ashley was awake; she lay so still in his arms. But the instant she understood his words, the muscles all up and down her bodytightened, and he knew she was totally alert and waiting for more. With a weary sigh, he told her everything.
"I was surprised when Russ offered me a job. I hadn't seen him in years. We lost touch when he joined the navy after high school and just happened to run into each other when he was visitingAtlanta. We'd grown up together, but you couldn't tell it by looking at us. He was wearing an expensive suit and gold jewelry, driving a seventy-thousand-dollar import and having meetings at his convenience with corporate CEOs, and I was strictly blue jeans, blue-collar. I was working as a mechanic—not exactly a high-tech, fast-track, big-money career. It was probably my tenth job in ten years, and I was barely getting by, so when he called a couple of weeks later and offered me a job in Asheville, I took it. I moved there, settled in, learned the business—"
Ashley rolled onto her side, her head pillowed on his arm. "MetPris."
Without looking, he heard the lighthearted teasing in her voice. If nothing else, the past few hours had at least convinced her that he didn't find her lacking compared to his old girlfriend. "And metPris . For the first time in my life, things seemed to be coming together. I was making good money, I liked my job,I had a nice place to live and a good—"
He broke off for a moment, rubbing the soft underside of her breast as he considered his next word. Just yesterday he'd insisted that he didn't have relationships, only affairs, sometimes only anonymous one-night encounters, but that wasn't entirely true. It certainly wasn't true ofPris . He hadn't been in love with her and didn't think he ever would have loved her, but he had liked and respected her. What they'd had wasn't exactly a romance—Ashley was very possibly the only romance meant for his life—but it had been more than an affair.
"I had a good relationship withPris ," he said at last, and Ashley patted his stomach.
"That wasn't so hard to say, was it?" she gently teased. "Next time we'll work on a harder phrase, something like 'I trust you.'"
Or maybe one likeI love you, he thought grimly. Resolutely drawing back from even the idea, he picked up the threads of his tale again. "My life was stable, routine and perfectly normal … until theCatlin job came up."
"When did Bradley tell you that he intended to rob the bank?"
"That night last April after I'd already done it." He sighed again, hating this story, wishing he didn't have to tell it to her. But she deserved this much. After everything she'd given him, everything she'd done for him, she deserved to know the truth. "I know now that Russell had never intended for me to get so good at my job. I was supposed to just learn the basics. Iwasn't supposed to become so familiar with the systems that I could recognize a problem. The problem with the one we were installing in the First American Bank and Trust ofCatlin was that it wasn't sufficient to meet the bank's needs. Any fool who knew anything about alarm systems could bypass that particular system. There's not a bank in the country with such an inadequate security setup."
"You told your boss that, and he said—"
"'Prove it. Prove to me that it can be done. Show me how it can be done.' So I did. I made very detailed notes, just as he asked."
"The notes that were found in your room at the boarding house."
He nodded, his chin bumping the top of her head. "I can't believe I was such an idiot. I've been ascrewup all my life, but this was particularly stupid, even for me."
Ashley pulled out of his arms and sat up, turning on the bed to face him. He liked that she was all soft from their lovemaking, especially liked that she was still naked but made no effort to hide herself from him. She sat unselfconsciously, her back straight, her legs tucked beneath her. "Come on,Dillon, don't be so hard on yourself.
You were following your boss's orders. With ten jobs in ten years, maybe this comes as a surprise to you—" she smiled to take the sting from her words "—but that's what employees are supposed to do."
"Not when following orders leads to a crime."
Her smile faded and her expression grew serious and intent. "Your notes didn't convince him, right? So you asked, 'What do I have to do to prove this?' and he said, 'Break in and bring me proof. Bring me…'" She fell silent, no doubt replaying one of the previous days' conversations in her head, finding the little bit of information she wanted. "'Bring me five thousand dollars to prove that you were in the vault. If you can do that, we'll upgrade the system and fix the problem.'"
He nodded. That was exactly what he'd done. They had settled on that Wednesday evening for no particular reason except that the job had been finished that morning. The other techs had already returned toAsheville; only Dillon had remained behind. He had waited for the bank to close that evening, had gone to the café for dinner and had taken a leisurely walk around town, thinking all kinds of idiot thoughts, like what a nice little townCatlin was. Small-townAmerica, Ashley had called it.A perfect place to settle down, if you could find a job that paid a living wage, and raise a family. He'd been thinking aboutPris and how nice it would be to see her again, to make love to her again. About his job, how much he liked what he was doing, how good he had turned out to be at it and how grateful he was to Russell for giving him the chance.
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