by Janet Dailey
With the click of the closing door, Chase moved, bending slightly to slip an arm under the back of her legs and pick her up. She linked her hands around his neck and started nibbling on his neck, tasting his skin and the tangy after-shave lotion while he started up the stairs.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve wanted to carry you up these stairs in these past weeks?” he asked softly. “Or how hard it’s been to walk past your door every night?”
She made an agreeing sound while her lips feathered the shell of his ear, her teeth taking a playful nip of the lobe. She was floating on a new emotional high that was languorous and lasting. When her half-closed eyes noticed they were entering her bedroom, she drew back slightly to lazily study his compelling profile.
“We can’t shut the door,” she reminded him.
“I know.” He stopped, looking at her possessively. “I’ve had my fill of closed doors. Besides, I gave my word that I wouldn’t expect you to share my bed—so I thought it would be best if we shared yours.”
She laughed softly because he was keeping to the letter of his promise to her. Reaching up, she took off his hat and gave it a little toss. It landed on a chair.
“Be my guest,” she murmured and curved her hand along his jaw to turn his head and draw his mouth toward hers.
The kiss was gentle and deep, more ravishing and seductive than hard passion. It was a slow-burning flame that melted them together as Chase let her feet slide to the floor and turned her against his length. His hands moved to slip the straps of her nightgown off her shoulders and slide them down her arms. Then they were against her flesh, pushing the clinging material down past her waist and over her hips. She gave a little twist of her hips to help shed the garment and heard his half-smothered groan at the movement. While his hands wandered over her naked curves in a sensual rediscovery, her fingers began working on the buttons of his shirt, unfastening them and tugging the tails free of his waistband. She helped him shrug out of the shirt to bare his chest to her touch. His flesh was hard and vital beneath her hands as she felt the raw energy rippling through his muscles. Abandoning her lips, his mouth traveled slowly to the curve of her neck, investigating the hollow of her shoulder. She arched closer, the dark cloud of his chest hairs brushing the sloping mounds of her breasts. The buckle of his belt scraped her tender flesh, causing her to flinch briefly before her hands moved to get rid of it.
As she unfastened the snap of his Levi’s, he murmured against her throat. “It’s easier if we get rid of the boots first. Where’s the bootjack?”
“I don’t have one.” The fevered tremor in her voice brought his mouth to her lips in a hungry kiss before he slowly lifted his head. “I’ll be your bootjack.”
Her hands spread across his chest to push him backward and sit him on the edge of the bed. The small distance and new perspective gave him an overall view of her nude body, a sight his gaze admired openly. Under the stimulation of his look, her breasts seemed to swell, the nipples growing button-hard with desire. She almost forgot the purpose of the separation.
“Give me your foot,” she said, and Chase leaned back on his hands, raising one leg.
She cupped the leather heel in her hand and turned, swinging a leg across his to straddle it and presenting him with a delectable view of her backside. She grasped the back of his boot with both hands, ready to pull when he pushed—only he didn’t push. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him staring at her bottom.
“Ready?” she prompted him, flushing a little with embarrassed pleasure.
His mouth quirked slightly when he realized he had been caught looking. He lifted his other foot with a show of reluctance and placed it gently and carefully against one cheek. “It seems almost a crime to put a boot on something so round and shapely, but if a man had a bootjack like this, he’d be putting his boots on and taking them off all day long, just for the chance to enjoy the scenery.”
She felt the hard imprint of his boot on her soft flesh as he pushed and she tugged at the boot in her hand, slipping it off. Then she repeated the procedure with the other boot, this time with a stockinged foot against her rump. As Maggie bent to set the boot beside its mate, a pair of hands caught hold of her hips and pulled her backward. Her gasping cry of surprise was a mixture of alarm and laughter as Chase planted a kiss on each rounded cheek of her bottom before he let her wiggle around to face him.
“Why haven’t I ever noticed before what a beautiful bottom you have?” he demanded with mock gruffness and tilted his head back to meet her gaze. “Do you suppose I was too busy looking at your beautiful face?”
“Possibly,” she conceded with a sharply twinkling look. “I noticed what a nice bottom you had that first time at the river.” It was crazy how careless and carefree she had begun to feel. The intimacy was natural, spirited. Maggie didn’t feel obliged to flirt or tease or be sexily provocative, which had all been a part of the foreplay with Phillip to manufacture passion through skill and technique.
“You noticed my bottom, did you?” Chase mocked and started to pull her closer, but she slipped out of his hold with a twist of her hips and knelt to pull off his socks.
As she stepped away to tuck them inside his boots, Chase stripped out of his jeans and shorts and half-turned on the bed to drape the Levi’s over the far corner so nothing would fall out of his pockets. When she walked back toward the bed, he reached out to take her hand. She slipped her fingers into his large palm and let him pull her forward to stand between his legs. There was so much written in his eyes that she grew dizzy reading the sensual messages and swayed toward him.
A sun-browned hand slid up to hold the weight of a pure white breast and carry it to his mouth, where his tongue and teeth licked and played with the rosy crest. A heady weakness trembled through Maggie. Her fingers curled into the springing thickness of his hair, cupping the back of his head and pressing him more tightly to her breast. Then he was moving, the moist inside of his mouth seeking her other breast. Her limbs were weakening, forcing Maggie to brace her knees against the bed while she leaned more of her weight on Chase. Even that only helped for a short time; then she began sinking.
His arms caught her, twisting her and drawing her down to the bed. As she lay flat on her back, he shifted his position to bring his face level with hers. Lying on his side, he raised himself up on an elbow and looked at her while his stroking hand caressed her. She spread her fingers through the rough hairs on his chest.
“The other day Culley told me I had forgotten how to be a woman,” she said softly and slanted him a glance through her lashes. “You were the first one to teach me how to be a woman, Chase. Will you show me again?”
His mouth lowered onto hers and kissed her with drugging insistence. He pulled her closer and levered himself onto her. She felt the stiffening muscle rising from his loins, hard and virile. She had a second to marvel at the physical differences of a man and a woman as his hands slid under her hips to lift them—and how perfectly God had made them to fit together and the awesome pleasure each could find in the enjoyment of the other, an enjoyment all the more beautiful and natural because it was born of emotional commitment to the other.
They were joined in a sweeping rush of sensation that engulfed them both. It bound them together with a wondrous urgency, a sexual brilliance that radiated between them. In the long-ago past, they had glimpsed this closeness, this raw demand, this insistence, little knowing that it could always be that way. That it could never be an end, because they could never know enough of it. Even now, all they could know was that they couldn’t get enough of each other.
Chapter XXXIII
Snuggled against his chest, Maggie trailed her fingertips across Chase’s flat stomach. The earthy warm smell of him was all around her, and she felt utter contentment.
“Are you asleep?” she murmured. The hand on her waist had stopped moving a couple of minutes ago. The rise and fall of his chest was steady.
A thumb and forefinger pinched th
e skin over her ribs. A faint yelp escaped her throat as she jerked from the fleeting pain. “Does that feel like I’m asleep?” His voice was low and deep, rumbling through his body beneath her ear.
“No,” she admitted.
His right hand moved to stroke the back of her head, his fingers gliding into the dark curls to grab a handful and tug gently to force her head back. He looked down at her face, studying the features, as if memorizing the way they looked. With his left hand, he thoughtfully traced the curve of her chin.
“Will you believe me when I say that I experienced something that I never felt with any other woman when I made love to you just now?”
“Yes. It was different—special,” she corrected, and she lowered her head when Chase eased the pressure on her hair. “For me, too. I never felt like this with Phillip.”
There was a dismissing rush of breath. “Phillip was old enough to be your father.”
In retaliation for that remark, Maggie pulled at the hair on his chest. He breathed in sharply and grabbed her hand. “Be careful when you imply that Phillip was too old to be a good lover. When I married him, he was only a few years older than you are now.”
His hands gripped her shoulders and waist to lift her so that her head was lying on the pillow near his. The rawness of possession burned in his expression. “I would rather forget that you have had any lover other than me.”
“Perhaps you would, but that isn’t the case.” She wouldn’t let him attempt to erase Phillip from her memory. “He was good to me, Chase, when I needed someone very badly. Phillip was a good husband and a good father to Ty.”
“Yes.” Reluctantly, he smiled in grim resignation. Finding her left hand between them, he lifted it and kissed the gold band around her finger. “I am your husband now and Ty is our son. The papers will be ready next week to petition the court to legally change his name to Calder—with your permission, of course.”
“When did you find that out?” she asked while he continued to keep her hand folded in his.
“Yesterday—at the attorney’s.”
“Is that where you were?” Part of the time, anyway, she thought, and studied his work-roughened hand.
“Yes.” He rubbed his thumb across her fingers. “I seem to spend more time in offices and behind a desk than I do on a horse anymore, but I guess that goes with the territory. After being penned in with those attorneys all those hours, I wasn’t in a very good mood when I came home last night. When I discovered you hadn’t waited up for me or even left a light on, that didn’t improve my disposition. And I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch, so—”
Her gaze lifted in surprise. His face was so close to hers, it was almost a blur. “Didn’t you have dinner last night?”
“No.”
“But I thought… even Ty said you’d probably stop at—” Maggie didn’t say it because she didn’t want him to know that she had been even briefly jealous. “There was food in the refrigerator. You should have fixed yourself something.” She recentered her gaze on his hand.
“Where did you … and Ty … think I had dinner?” He was already guessing the answer. “You thought I ate at Sally’s.”
“It was a logical place,” she admitted with a show of indifference. “I’ve heard she’s a good cook.”
His low chuckle held the hint of satisfaction. “You didn’t like the idea, did you? So you re-arranged the furniture to set a trap for me.”
“No.” Maggie denied that. “I just thought it would look better if a few things were shifted around.”
“But it bothered you just a little that I might have been with Sally last night,” he said in a mocking tone that insisted she admit it.
“It was possible.” She flashed him a look that dared him to deny it. “After all, it had been a long time since you’d had sex with anyone. I mean, you were here every night.”
“So you thought I went to her because I wasn’t getting it at home.” There were lines slashed in his lean cheeks as he smiled at her. “I admit I was frustrated as hell, Maggie. When I told you I didn’t care whether or not you shared my bed after we were married, I meant it. I wanted Ty, and I would have married the devil’s own daughter to get him. But seeing you every day, the mother of my son, started me wanting. I seem to have an itch that only you know how to scratch. That’s the way it was sixteen years ago, and that’s the way it is now.”
As he moved, she was pulled under him. He was heavy on her, the heat of his body burning her skin. “Scratch me, Maggie.” It was a half-growl against her lips before his mouth crushed them. Her arms went around his broad, muscled back as the bedcovers were kicked aside.
It was nearly noon before either of them was inclined to get out of bed. Chase was the first to get up. Maggie stayed under the sheet and admired the hard, lean flanks of his backside as he pulled on his pants. He glanced over his shoulder. “Hungry?”
“A little.” She swung out of bed on the opposite side and walked to the closet. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.” She slanted him a provocative look over her shoulder. “You have the hungriest eyes.”
A knowing smile touched his mouth at her double meaning, a dark light dancing in his eyes. “Then fix me some food first, woman.”
There was an easy intimacy between them all day, spiced with a running undercurrent of excitement. After lunch, Chase helped her clean up, warning her to take due note of his action, because she may never see him with a dish towel in his hands again. While she moved his clothes to her room, he began repairing the broken door, whistling as he worked.
When the job was finished and the mess cleaned up, he took a shower to freshen up. While he was in the bathroom, Maggie changed the sheets and made the bed.
She heard the shower stop and called, “Would you fill the tub with water for me, Chase? I want to take a bath.”
His muffled response was affirmative, and seconds later she heard water running in the tub. She laid out clothes for each of them on the bed and slipped out of the short, cotton houserobe. When she entered the bathroom, the tub was billowing with scented bubbles and Chase was standing at the sink lathering his face with shaving cream, a towel wrapped around his waist.
His gaze met hers in the mirror. “Do you mind if I shave while you bathe?”
“Of course not.” She tied the mass of black curls atop her head with a strand of red yarn. “I like company.” Turning off the faucets, she immersed herself into the tub, filled with luxuriant bubbles and warm, scented water. “And thanks for drawing my bath—complete with perfumed bubbles.”
Chase paused with the straight-edged razor in his hand and studied the reflection she cast in the mirror as she reclined in the tub. “I remember when I saw you bathing in the river. I don’t know which way is sexier—bathing in style, or bathing in the raw.”
Maggie relaxed in the tub, letting her hands idly play with the mounds of bubbles while she watched Chase shave. It was either a very slow process, or he was deliberately taking his time. She studied the flatly roped muscles of his back and shoulders and the bulging strength of his upper arms. His hair was damp, nearly black. He rinsed the razor in the water running from the sink faucet and stroked the blade down his cheek, exposing the darkly tanned skin beneath the lather.
“An electric razor is a lot quicker,” she said for conversation.
“Maybe quicker, but I prefer the blade.”
She let her expression tease him. “I suppose an electric razor isn’t ‘he-man’ enough for you.”
“Careful,” he warned with amusement, and she laughed. “A blade shaves closer. I thought I might need a smooth face tonight.”
“You might.” There was faint color in her cheeks as she dipped the bath sponge into the water. “Would you wash my back when you’re through?”
There were traces of shaving lather on his face when he crossed over to the tub. Kneeling beside it, he took the sponge from her hand and scrubbed her back. Maggie closed her ey
es, relaxing under the rough, massaging action.
“You can keep that up all day,” she murmured.
“If I hadn’t already taken a shower, I’d climb in there with you.” He stopped and tossed the sponge in the bubbly water in front of her.
As he started to push to his feet, her glance fell on his left arm. A coldness ran through her when she saw the white scar that slashed crookedly across his forearm, and she remembered that it had been caused when she had stabbed at him. She reached out to cover the mark with her hand and block out the unpleasant reminder.
“What’s going to happen to us, Chase?” Her voice was low, flatly questioning.
He knew precisely what she was thinking. He caught hold of her hand, gripping it hard. “This isn’t paradise. There are scars and flaws in all of us. God knows we’re going to have our share of trouble, so don’t go looking for it, Maggie. All we can do is hold on tight to what we’ve got—and pray to God it’s enough. We just have to hold on,” he repeated, his voice hard with conviction, “and take it as it comes.”
She lifted her gaze, meeting his with a quiet sureness. The chill remained, but she could face it. “Yes.”
His mouth curved in approval and he dropped a kiss on her lips. “Hurry up and get out of that tub. Ty will be coming, expecting dinner to be on the table.”
Ty noticed the change almost immediately. One of the first things he said was: “You look beautiful tonight, Mom.” Chase caught her glance and smiled. “Our son has an eye for beauty.”
Ty’s gaze darted between his parents, sensing the closeness and the warmth—the secret looks that left him out. He had been aware of the strain between them before and had kept hoping they would start getting along with each other. Now that it had happened, he wasn’t altogether comfortable with the change.
That night Maggie was lying in bed when Chase came out of the bathroom and turned off the light. She turned back the bedcovers to let him slide in beside her and snuggled under the arm he wrapped around her.
“Did Ty seem quiet to you tonight?” she asked.
