But Savannah had married Durango and was happy and so were Jess and Chase. Rico was happy for them, and with them married off, he had turned his time and attention to other things. His investigation business mainly. And now, he thought, glancing over at Megan again, to her. She was the first woman in years who had garnered any real attention from him.
What he’d told her last night was true. What they’d started was just the beginning. She hadn’t responded to what he’d said one way or the other, but he hadn’t really expected her to. He had been tempted to ask if she’d wanted to talk about last night but she had dozed off before he could do so.
But before he had a conversation with her about anything, it would be wise to have one with himself. When it came to her, he was still in a quandary as to why he was as attracted to her as he was. What was there about her that he wanted to claim?
He would let her sleep, and when she woke up, they would talk.
* * *
The sound of rain and thunder woke Megan. She first glanced out the windshield and saw how hard it was raining, before looking over at Rico as he maneuvered the truck through the downpour. His concentration was on his driving, and she decided to allow her concentration to be on him.
Her gaze moved to the hands that gripped the steering wheel. They were big and strong. Masculine hands. Even down to his fingertips. They were hands that had touched her in places no other man would have dared. But he had. And what had happened as a result still had certain parts of her body tingling.
She started to shift in her seat but then decided to stay put. She wasn’t ready for him to know she was awake. She needed time to think. To ponder. To pull herself together. She was still a little rattled from last night when she had literally come unglued. Ramsey had said that everyone needed to let loose and let her hair down every once in a while, and she had definitely taken her brother’s suggestion.
She didn’t have any regrets, as much as she wished she did. The experience had been simply amazing. With Rico’s hands, mouth and tongue, she had felt things she had never felt before. He had deliberately pushed her over the edge, given her pleasure in a way she’d never received it before and wouldn’t again.
This is only the beginning.
He had said that. She remembered his words clearly. She hadn’t quite recovered from the barrage of pleasurable sensations that had overtaken her, not once but twice, when he had whispered that very statement to her. Even now she couldn’t believe she had let him do all those things to her, touch her all over, touch her in all those places.
He’d said he would let her stay in control, but she had forgotten all about control from the first moment he had kissed her. Instead, her thoughts had been on something else altogether. Like taking every single thing he was giving, with a greed and a hunger that astounded her.
“You’re awake.”
She blinked and moved her gaze from his hands to his face. He’d shaven, but she could clearly remember the feel of his unshaven jaw between her legs. She felt a tingling sensation in that very spot. Maybe, on second thought, she should forget it.
She pulled up in her seat and stared straight ahead. “Yes, I’m awake.”
Before she realized what he was doing, he had pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road, unleashed his seat belt and leaned over. His mouth took hers in a deep, languid and provocative kiss that whooshed the very air from her lungs. It was way too passionate and too roastingly raw to be a morning kiss, one taken on the side of the road amidst rush-hour traffic. But he was doing so, boldly, and with a deliberate ease that stirred everything within her. She was reminded of last night and how easily she had succumbed to the passion he’d stirred, the lust he had provoked.
He released her mouth, but not before one final swipe of his tongue from corner to corner. Her nipples hardened in response and pressed tightly against her blouse. Her mouth suddenly felt hot. Taken. Devoured.
“Hello, Megan,” he said, against her lips.
“Hello.” If this was how he would wake her up after a nap, then she would be tempted to doze off on him anytime.
“Did you get a good nap?”
“Yes, if you want to call it that.”
He chuckled and straightened in his seat and resnapped his seat belt. “I would. You’ve been sleeping for over an hour.”
She glanced back at him. “An hour?”
“Yes, I stopped for gas, and you slept through it.”
She stretched her shoulders. “I was tired.”
“I understand.”
Yes, he would, she thought, refusing to look over at him as he moved back into traffic. She licked her lips and could still taste him there. Her senses felt short-circuited. Overwhelmed. She had been forewarned, but she hadn’t taken heed.
“You feel like talking?”
Suddenly her senses were on full alert. She did look at him then. “What about?”
“Last night.”
She didn’t say anything. Was that the protocol with a man and a woman? To use the morning after to discuss the night before? She didn’t know. “Is that how things are done?”
He lifted a brow. “What things?”
“The morning-after party where you rehash things. Say what you regret, what you wished never happened, and make promises it won’t happen again.”
She saw the crinkling of a smile touch the corners of his lips. “Not on my watch. Besides, I told you it will happen again. Last night was just the beginning.”
“And do I have a say in the matter?”
“Yes.” He glanced over at her. “All you have to say is that you don’t want my hands on you, and I’ll keep them to myself. I’ve never forced myself on any woman, Megan.”
She could believe that. In fact, she could very well imagine women forcing themselves on him. She began nibbling at her bottom lip. She wished it could be that simple, just tell him to keep his hands to himself, but the truth of the matter was…she liked his hands on her. And she had thoroughly enjoyed his mouth and tongue on her, as well. Maybe a little too much.
Looking over at him, she said. “And if I don’t tell you to keep your hands to yourself?”
“Then the outcome is inevitable,” he said quietly, with a calmness that stirred her insides. She knew he meant it. From the beginning, he had given her fair warning. “Okay, let’s talk,” she said softly.
He pulled to the side of the road again, which had her wondering if they would ever reach their destination. He unfastened his seat belt and turned to her. “It’s like this, Megan. I want you. I’ve made no secret of that. The degree of my attraction to you is one that I can’t figure out. Not that I find the thought annoying, just confusing, because I’ve never been attracted to a woman to this magnitude before.”
Welcome to the club, she thought. She hadn’t ever been this attracted to a man before, either.
“This should be a business trip, one to find the answers about your family’s history. Now that you’re here, it has turned into more.”
She lifted a brow. “What has it turned into now?”
“A fact-finding mission regarding us. Maybe constantly being around you will help me understand why you’ve gotten so deeply under my skin.”
Megan’s heart beat wildly in her chest. He wanted to explore the reason why they were so intensely attracted to each other? Did there need to be any other reason than that he was man and she was woman? With his looks, any woman in her right mind would be attracted to him, no matter th
e age. He had certainly done a number on Grace, without even trying. But Megan had been around good-looking men before and hadn’t reacted the way she had with him.
“I won’t crowd you, and when we get to Forbes you will have your own hotel room if you want.”
He paused a moment and then added, “I’m not going to assume anything in this relationship, Megan. But you best believe I plan to seduce the hell out of you. I’m not like those other guys who never made it to first base. I plan on getting in the game and hitting a home run.”
You are definitely in the game already, Rico Claiborne. She broke eye contact with him to gaze out the window. If nothing else, last night should have solidified the knowledge that her resistance was at an all-time low around him. Her self-control had taken a direct hit, and since he was on a fact-finding mission, maybe she needed to be on one, as well. Why was she willing to let him go further than any man had before?
“If you think I’m going to sit here and say I regret anything about last night, then you don’t have anything to worry about, Rico.”
He lifted a brow. “I don’t?”
“No.”
She wouldn’t tell him that he had opened her eyes about a few things. That didn’t mean she regretted not engaging in any sort of sexual activity before, because she didn’t. What it meant was that there was a reason Rico was the man who’d given her her first orgasm. She just didn’t know what that reason was yet, which was why she wanted to find out. She needed to know why he and he alone had been able to make her act in a way no other man before him had been capable of making her act.
“So we have an understanding?” he asked.
“Sort of.”
He raised a brow. “Sort of?” He started the ignition and rejoined traffic again. It had stopped raining, and the sun was peeking out from beneath the clouds.
“Yes, there’s still a lot about you that I don’t know.”
He nodded. “Okay, then ask away. Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
A corner of his mouth eased into a smile. “Yes, anything, as long I don’t think it’s private and privileged information.”
“That’s fair.” She considered the best way to ask her first question, then decided to just come out with it. “Have you ever been in love?”
He chuckled softly. “Not since Mrs. Tolbert.”
“Mrs. Tolbert?”
“Yes, my third-grade teacher.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He glanced over at her and laughed at her surprised expression. “Kidding you about what? Being in love with Mrs. Tolbert or that she was my third-grade teacher?”
“Neither. You want me to believe that other than Mrs. Tolbert, no other woman has interested you?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m a man, so women interest me. You asked if I’ve ever been in love, and I told you yes, with Mrs. Tolbert. Why are you questioning my answer?”
“No reason. So you’re like Zane and Riley,” she said.
“Maybe you need to explain that.”
“Zane and Riley like women. Both claim they have never been in love and neither wants their names associated with the word.”
“Then I’m not like Zane and Riley in that respect. Like I said, women interest me. I am a man with certain needs on occasion. However, falling in love doesn’t scare me and it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But I haven’t been in a serious relationship since college.”
She was tempted to ask him about that phone call he’d refused to take at her place the other day. Apparently, some woman was serious even if he wasn’t. “But you have been in a serious relationship before?”
“Yes.”
Her brow arched. “But you weren’t in love?”
“No.”
“Then why were you in the relationship?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “My maternal grandparents are from old money and thought that as their grandson the woman I marry should be connected to old money, as well. They introduced me to Roselyn. We dated during my first year of college. She was nice, at least I thought she was, until she tried making me choose between her and Jessica.”
Megan’s eyes widened. “Your sister?”
“Yes. Roselyn said she could accept me as being interracial since it wasn’t quite as obvious, but there was no way she could accept Jessica as my sister.”
Megan felt her anger boiling. “Boy, she had some nerve.”
“Yes, she did. I had just met Jessica for the first time a month before and she felt that since Jessica and I didn’t have a bond yet, she could make such an ultimatum. But she failed to realize something.”
“What?”
“Jessica was my sister, whether Roselyn liked it or not, and I was not going to turn my back on Jessica or deny her just because Roselyn had a problem with it. So I broke things off.”
Good for you, Megan thought. “How did your grandparents feel about you ending things?”
“They weren’t happy about it, at least until I told them why. They weren’t willing to make the same mistake twice. They were pretty damn vocal against my mother marrying my father, and they almost lost her when Mom stopped speaking to them for nearly two years. There was no way they would risk losing me with that same foolishness.”
“You’re close to your grandparents?”
“Yes, very close.”
“And your father? I take it the two of you are no longer close.”
She saw how his jaw tightened and knew the answer before he spoke a single word. “That’s right. What he did was unforgivable, and neither Jess, Savannah or I have seen him in almost eighteen years.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yes, it is,” he said quietly.
Megan wondered if the separation had been his father’s decision or his but decided not to pry. However, there was another question—a very pressing one—that she needed answered right away. “Uh, do you plan to stop again anytime soon?” She recalled he’d said he had stopped for gas while she was asleep. Now she was awake, and she had needs to take care of.
He chuckled. “You have to go to the little girl’s room, do you?”
She grinned. “Yes, you can say that.”
“No problem, I’ll get off at the next exit.”
“Thanks.”
He smiled over at her, and she immediately felt her pulse thud and the area between her thighs clench. The man was too irresistible, too darn sexy, for his own good. Maybe she should have taken heed of his warning and not come to Texas. She had a feeling things were going to get pretty darn wild now that they were alone together. Real wild.
Ten
Rico stopped in front of Megan and handed her the key. “This is for your room. Mine is right next door if you need me for anything. No matter how late it is, just knock on the connecting door. Anytime you want.”
She grinned at his not-so-subtle, seductive-as-sin hint as she took the key from him. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
She glanced around. Forbes, Texas, wasn’t what she’d imagined. It was really a nice place. Upon arriving to town, Rico had taken her to one of the restaurants for lunch. It was owned by a Mexican family. In fact, most of the townspeople were Mexican, descended from the settlers who had founded the town back in the early 1800s. She had been tempted to throw Raphel’s name out there to see if any of them had ever heard of him but had decided not to. She had promised Rico she would let him handle the investigation,
and she intended to keep her word.
“You can rest up while I make a few calls. I want to contact Fanny Banks’s family to see if we can visit in a day or so.”
“That would be nice,” she said as they stepped on the elevator together. The lady at the front desk had told them the original interior of the hotel had caught fire ten years ago and had been rebuilt, which was why everything inside was pretty modern, including the elevator. From the outside, it looked like a historical hotel.
They were the only ones on the elevator, and Rico stood against the panel wall and stared over at her. “Hey, come over here for a minute.”
She swallowed, and her nipples pressed hard against her shirt. “Why?”
“Come over here and find out.”
He looked good standing over there, and the slow, lazy smile curving his mouth had her feeling hot all over. “Come here, Megan. I promise I won’t bite.”
She wasn’t worried about him taking a bite out of her, but there were other things he could do that were just as lethal and they both knew it. She decided two could play his game. “No, you come over here.”
“No problem.”
When he made a move toward her, she retreated and stopped when her back touched the wall. “I was just kidding.”
“But I kid you not,” he said, reaching her and caging her with hands braced against the wall on either side of her. “Open up for me.”
“B-but, what if this elevator stops to let more people on? We’ll be on our floor any minute.”
He reached out and pushed the elevator stop button. “Now we won’t.” Then he leaned in and plied her mouth with a deep and possessively passionate kiss.
She did as he’d asked. She opened up for him, letting him slide his tongue inside her mouth. He settled the middle of himself against her, in a way that let her feel his solid erection right in the juncture of her thighs. The sensations that swamped her were unreal, and she returned his kiss with just as much hunger as he was showing.
Texas Wild Page 10