by Alison Kent
With the return of her space, came her sanity. Harley shook off her daze to the murmur of voices and the sounds of shuffling chairs, rustling paper, and hammers on nails. Never in her life had she lost all awareness at a single touch.
Gardner Barnes was a dangerous man.
Still, she went with him willingly. His insistent pace gave no quarter to the flurried beating of her heart. The man qualified as aerobic activity. Her pulse rate had reached optimum level and she’d barely flexed a muscle.
They cleared the barn door in a matter of seconds and Harley blinked at the sudden glare of the sun. Gardner didn’t say a word but neither did she. She couldn’t. Her senses were a riot, a whirlwind, a crazy jumble of perceptions. With nothing but his hand on her arm, he had reduced her to a bundle of frenzied nerves.
Wrong, Harley. Your jitters started about the time he gave you that be-my-love-slave look. Or when he said so much in so few words. A basket case, that’s what she was. A basket case waiting to happen.
Her denim skirt swirled around her calves. Her briefcase bounced against her hip. And even through the cotton fibers of her Navajo-patterned wrap, Gardner’s hand was warm against her arm.
He guided her around the corner of the barn, down the side, past a stack of straw-filled shipping crates in view of nothing but a sliver of the graveled parking lot and the rolling expanse of central Texas hills.
Then the barn wall was behind her, Gardner’s hands splayed flat on either side of her head. Two feet of tense air seethed between their bodies. His eyes blazed with green fire; his chest rose and fell with short choppy breaths.
And the denim-covered promise straining the zipper of his jeans told her all she needed to know about his fight for control.
Harley dropped her forgotten briefcase at her feet. A heady rush of feminine power chased desire through her blood. He wanted her and wasn’t ashamed to let her see exactly how much.
She touched her tongue to her upper lip. “How did you find me?”
“You told me where you were,” he said, grinding his jaw.
The tic of the muscle along his ear beat in meter with the pounding in Harley’s blood. “I didn’t think—”
“Shh.” He laid two fingers over her lips. “I said I’m through talking. Remember?”
Moving her lips against the rough pads of his fingers, she barely managed a nod because as he’d talked, he’d stepped closer.
“Good.” He withdrew his hand and touched her with his gaze. Only his gaze. First her face, then the length of her body, his heated glance lingering below her waist where she held her hands together.
“Lord, you’re gorgeous.” He smiled then and raised his head. “And you’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“A little.” What an understatement. Her anxiety was so obvious she didn’t know why he’d asked. But the play of her nerves wasn’t as much hesitation or anxiety as frustration and desire. She didn’t want to make a wrong move and destroy a chance at something she so desperately wanted.
His wrists hovered at her jawline; his hands on the wall supported his weight. With every ragged breath he took, his chest imperceptibly grazed hers. He spread his legs cowboy-wide and the denim of his jeans scraped the denim of her skirt.
Harley wanted to close all those distances—and more. To press her body against the solid length of his. To fulfill the promise of this first encounter. To take them both to a place where differences and pasts and futures didn’t matter.
What Harley wanted was her forgotten dream. Her illusion of perfect life.
One man. One woman. Forever.
His glittering gaze held her immobile. And then he lowered his head, touched her with nothing but the faintest brush of his mouth. It wasn’t the first taste she wanted. So she gripped the mountainous muscles of his shoulders, stepped in closer, and parted her lips.
His flavor came from the earth, pure, unseasoned, and male. His scent teased her, the fragrance a mix of fresh air and clean skin and… and Gardner. His was an aroma dark and potent, as elemental as the sun, as primitive as the land. She detected no hint of the shallow, artificial man she’d once thought he might be. And she was glad.
Needing more, she opened wider, teasing the seam of his lips with her tongue. She laid her palms against his chest, the muscles she touched honed to cowboy perfection, and not from hours spent training in the gym. This man made his living with his body. He was a man in a way Brad could never understand. A man who challenged her deepest spirit of womanhood.
She welcomed the gauntlet, sliding her hands up the starched chambray to encircle his neck. With the press of her fingertips at his nape, the slide of her tongue along the sweet length of his, Harley told him how she felt, how she wanted him.
Oh, how she wanted him. She wanted him until she ached, until she couldn’t be sure where passion left off and necessity began. She rubbed tiny circles at his hairline, pressed her body fully against his. The movements displayed her juxtaposed feelings, equal in sentiment, diametric in urgency.
Gardner responded by shifting the kiss, in position and in tone, frantically lifting the hem of her skirt. Cupping her bottom in his palms, he bunched the denim in his fists until it grazed the top of her boots, the backs of her knees, her lower thighs.
She parted her legs at the gentle nudge of air against her skin and at the insistent search of his fingers. His need to get close was a tangible thing.
It was Harley’s need, too. And it was eating her up.
He’d given her four days of visions and wild imaginings, all of it leading to this. His mouth on hers, his breath hot against her hotter skin. Her nipples peaked, begging. She clenched her thighs beneath his questing hands.
He tore his mouth away. The stubble on his jaw abraded her cheek. “This isn’t enough.”
“Yes.” Was it a breath? A promise? An unconscious invitation? No matter. Gardner seemed to know. He moved his hands to her waist and lifted her to sit on the nearest crate. He tossed his hat behind.
Without a word spoken, his mouth returned to hers, his hands on her knees pushing her skirt high on her legs. His fingers found the bare skin of her thighs and a groan rolled up his throat.
Harley struggled to get closer, the kiss all but forgotten. Her hands flexed, pulling at his shirt. He parted her legs and Harley opened wider; he stepped between and she scooted home.
Her lips were bruised and his were damp as he settled them against the base of her neck but the wetness was nothing compared to the slick heat he would find should he touch her.
And she wanted him to touch her. To take her. To ease the ache she’d lived with since the first time they’d talked on the phone. He slid his hands beneath her skirt, up her thighs to her waist, hooked his fingers in the band of her panties.
She lifted her hips and he rolled the scrap of satin and lace down her legs and over her boots. With his hands spread along her upper thighs, his thumbs in the crease where her hips met her legs, he teased the nest of curls between, and Harley knew she was ready.
Hugging his waist, she palmed his buttocks, the backs of his thighs. The muscle tensed and flexed beneath her touch. Responding to her. For her. Harley wanted to cry out, soaring with the power she held in her hands.
She slipped her fingers under the waistband of his jeans and grazed the skin beneath his Fruit of the Looms. This is madness, she told herself, reaching for his belt buckle. Wild and crazy, she added, moving to his button fly. She didn’t know this man at all, yet she knew him completely.
So when he closed his hand over her shaking fingers and stopped her, she wasn’t totally surprised.
“This is insane.” He breathed his echo of her sentiment across the kiss-dampened skin of her throat.
“I know,” she murmured.
“We have to stop.”
“I know.” What was she saying? What was he saying?
“Now, Harley. I can’t do… I don’t have… Dammit, Harley. Stop.”
Harley stiffened, pulling back all the emotion floating arou
nd her like sunlight. She jerked at his hold, trying to free her hands. She wanted to push him away and make a beeline for her Blazer before the red flush of humiliation spread all the way to her face.
She’d thrown herself at him like a buckle bunny of the worst kind and he’d roped her advance to a halt. He didn’t want her but he still wouldn’t let her go.
A muffled cry spilled from her throat.
“Harley.”
He released her hands and she scrambled to pull down her skirt. Then he took her by the shoulders, moved one hand gently to her chin.
“Harley, look at me.”
Reluctantly, she did. His eyes had lost none of their fire. The tendons on his neck stood in rigid relief beneath his bronzed skin.
“I didn’t mean for this to go so far so fast. And I don’t have a condom.” He stroked his thumb over her cheekbone, his smile gentle, his eyes kind. “You do crazy things to me, Harley Golden. You make me lose my mind. And you deserve better than a quick grope on a shipping crate.”
Harley lowered her lashes. Damn her blush-happy complexion. “I thought… I wasn’t sure…”
“About what?” he asked, trailing the tips of his fingers down her neck.
Desperately, she searched for an answer but her mind was a muddled mess. Gardner’s fingers had drifted lower. Lower still. “You stopped me. I wasn’t sure if—”
“If what? I wanted you?”
He’d reached the deep V of her neckline now, the point a good two inches lower than normal due to the loosened belt at her waist. He leaned forward, dipped his tongue in her cleavage, then moved up to nuzzle the base of her neck in a possessive kiss.
“You thought I’d changed my mind?” He loved the bruised skin with a healing lick of his tongue, then drifted higher and bit her again.
He was eating her alive. That had to mean he wanted her. Harley arched into him and told her old wounds to take a hike.
“Give me your hand,” he ordered.
She did and though shocked at the initial contact, allowed him to press her palm firmly to his arousal.
“This is how much I want you.” He cupped her fingers around the rigid length. “But this sure as hell isn’t where I want it to happen. And it will happen.” He squeezed her hand around him, ground himself against her palm, then let her go. “You know that, don’t you?”
Mouth dry, she nodded.
Bending down, he scooped up her panties and her briefcase. The briefcase he handed over. The panties he tucked into his back pocket. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
Boosting her down off the crate, he reached behind her for his hat, laced her fingers tightly through his, then headed toward the front of the barn.
Cognizance returned long enough for her to realize the parking lot had nearly emptied. Shadowy figures moved through the barn, cleaning, straightening. Gardner never stopped to look back. He never said a word. His sights were set on a crew cab pickup parked at a crooked slant against the fence on the far side of her Blazer.
He suddenly seemed to take measure of their two-vehicle situation. He stopped abruptly, bringing Harley up short. Tilting his head to one side, he asked, “Is that your Blazer?”
She nodded and managed a tremulous smile, the moment still thick with the tension of what had passed between them—and where they were headed.
“C’mon,” he said and took off again like a shot. Once there, Harley produced her keys from the briefcase with a minimal show of nerves. She climbed into the seat and Gardner loomed over her in the open door, one hand propped on the roof, one gripping the doorframe.
He stared down at her, his gaze intense and burning with so much life that she couldn’t resist the urge to reach up and kiss the sun-dimpled corner of his eye. He smiled then.
And Harley fell in love.
“You said you’d cleared your schedule to the end of the week.” He toyed with a lock of her hair, rubbing the strands between his thumb and forefinger with intense concentration. “Spend the time with me.”
“Here?”
He shook his head and looked up. “At my ranch.”
She offered him a private smile. “Is this ranch your family business?”
“One and the same.” Tucking her hair behind her ear, he asked, “Where are you staying?”
“At a bed-and-breakfast on Main Street.”
“Then I’ll follow you back and wait while you pack your things.”
“Is this our date?” she asked.
A grin, dazzling in its innocent charm, broke across his mouth. “I guess it is.”
Harley forced a pout. “A girl likes to be romanced, Gardner. Not ordered around.”
He patted his shirt pockets. “I’m fresh out of flowers and diamonds, Harley.”
“Then I’ll settle for a please.”
He dropped to one knee—actually dropped to one knee—removed his hat and took her hand in his. “Harley Golden, would you do me the honor of spending the rest of the week with me?”
“Not bad, Barnes.”
“Well?” He settled his hat back in place. “I’m waiting down here.”
“I’d love to,” she said, wishing in some renegade part of her heart that he’d asked something else and she’d answered the same.
Gardner got to his feet. With a brief nod, he indicated the crew cab dually parked twenty feet away. “I need to return the truck I borrowed. We can leave your Blazer at the airstrip.”
“The airstrip?”
“Yeah. It’s where I left the Cessna.” He leaned forward and kissed her, his mouth a consuming presence.
Then he slammed the door and walked away, his stride long legged and determined, his shoulders broad and capable of carrying a family’s weight.
The man owned a Cessna, used diamonds and flowers interchangeably, planned to put his kid brother through veterinary school.
And the white flag fluttering from his back pocket was her panties.
TWELVE
She wasn’t sure which was worse: Death from sexual frustration or sexual excitement.
A quick grope on a shipping crate sounded like heaven to Harley.
She reached for her gown. Halfway through the folding, she stopped and draped the blush-tone concoction of film and froth over her arm. The sheer lace breathed over her skin, gently roused the hairs on her arms.
Eyes closed, Harley succumbed, hearing the whisper-soft sounds of sheer chiffon against Fruit of the Looms, hair-dusted male skin, crisp sheets, a hardwood floor. Desire unfurled deep and low, then spiraled upward in an airy rush of bliss.
A cowboy. A ride-’em-and-rope-’em, range-bred, tight-jeaned, park-your-boots-under-my-bed cowboy. She’d never even dreamed.
Once they’d left the auction barn, Gardner had followed her to the bed-and-breakfast. His big truck loomed large in her rearview mirror, an intimidating, intoxicating presence, bearing down. A hunter, a predator, a man in pursuit of his woman.
She was his woman. And he was waiting outside, hat brim low, back snugged up to the wide-trunked oak, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, leg cocked, boot heel flush with the tree’s base. Harley stepped away from the foot of the bed, lifted one edge of the scalloped curtain and frowned.
At least he’d been waiting there when she’d hurried inside to pack not ten minutes ago.
She knew he wasn’t leaving without her. He’d made that point perfectly, eloquently clear. Staking his claim with strong hands and an eager tongue, he’d backed away from the doorway of her parked Blazer, his eyes bright, his lips glistening with the remnants of her kiss, and told her she had twenty minutes.
Harley touched her tongue to her upper lip, slicked it over her lower. The man definitely knew how to kiss. A week of such kisses was a daunting thought. A week of where his kisses could lead and… Harley shivered. No. She couldn’t think about it.
Her traitorous body thought of nothing else.
The exquisite play of his callused fingers on the skin of her thighs. The delicious, and entirely t
oo brief, flick of his tongue over the swell of her breast. His teeth, nibbling, his lips, sucking.
Trembling, her fingers found the reddish bruise at the base of her throat and her hands remembered. The muscles of his chest, his shoulders, and the firm arousal he’d been so willing to share.
Damn. How was she going to make it through the rest of the week?
Heavy steps trod on the tongue-and-groove oak flooring of the parlor outside her door. Boot steps. Headed her way. Louder. Then dead silence. The crystal doorknob turned; the hinges creaked. Harley clutched the nightgown to her chest and forgot to breathe.
Gardner stepped into the room. The door gave a click of finality as he eased it closed.
The room’s temperature soared and Harley’s heart was a wild pump of muscle, priming her body for possession by the green-eyed cowboy not ten feet away.
He removed his Resistol, turned it crown down on the glass top of the black iron table tucked up under the only window in the room. Then he reached into his pocket and dropped her panties into the hat.
This room was definitely too small for two people. Harley couldn’t move an inch without running into the air Gardner was breathing. So she stayed where she was, unmoving.
The air closed in, held her captive. And Gardner’s gaze swallowed her whole.
“Finished packing?” He nodded toward the nightgown she still hugged like salvation.
She glanced around the room, frantically searching for a reason she was taking so long. A reason more tangible than the sheer enormity of the step she was taking.
Unable to find one, she held up the nightgown and smiled. “This is all I have left.”
“Nice. I like it.” He unhooked his belt buckle, slipped the belt from the loops, draped the leather strip over the headboard.
“I thought you were in a hurry to get back to the ranch,” Harley managed.
“I am.” He tossed a box of condoms on the bed. “But some things will wait. Some things won’t.”
“You mean…” She tilted her head toward the bed.
“Yeah. I mean.” He gave a nod in the same direction and popped the snaps of his chambray shirt. Balanced on one foot, he tugged off the opposite boot. It thunked against the floor, then boot number two joined its mate.