by Laurie Paige
His hands stroked down her back, cupped her bottom and lifted her into the cradle of his thighs as he spread his legs. A new awareness attacked her. Of him and the changes in his masculine body. Very, very masculine.
He released her mouth just in time.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she managed to whisper.
“No, you’re not.” He kissed her eyes, her temples, her ears, then down her throat. “It just feels that way.”
“For you, too?” She was amazed.
He smiled. “Not quite, teach, but close.”
He shifted her slightly, setting the tingles to surging again. She thought the sensations were too strong to be called so simple a name. She just didn’t know any other. Then he was kissing her mouth again, and she could no longer keep up with all the things happening to her.
She moaned and cupped his face in her hands, taking the kiss to unbearable depths of pleasure as she answered every thrust of his tongue with hers. She knew this wasn’t the ultimate pleasure and wanted more. She squirmed against him.
“Easy,” he said. He moved slightly, brushing against her again and again in that throbbing place she had known existed in a clinical way and now discovered in all the carnal joy of the human body.
His hands moved over her back, then one caressed along her side. They weren’t sweaty or grabby at all. His every movement gave her pleasure and increased her awareness of delight. It seemed so strange to find this… like a secret garden that had existed right under her nose.
But only this man had opened the gate and invited her inside. That was the key, she realized vaguely. He coaxed and and teased and playfully guided her along pleasure’s path.
It was incredibly wonderful.
Sam fought his own needs. He knew himself to be a physical person. He enjoyed using his body, whether for ranch work or other, more intimate labors. Right now, her needs were more important than satisfying an appetite of his.
He knew he could take her to bed. She was filled with the hunger of their kisses. Every caress of his had been designed to bring her maximum tactile pleasure. He wanted desperately to give her the total fireworks— the explosion of passion that would leave her sated and wondrous as she shared her first experience with a man. It was an odd feeling, one he couldn’t recall ever having before. And he couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair.
Knowing he wouldn’t, couldn’t take this all the way didn’t stop him from wanting to, or from taking a little more of her before he was forced to stop.
He caressed the lean line of her torso, moving up and up… a bit more… ah, the perfection of it.
Her breast fit his hand. It was fuller than he’d expected, but then she didn’t wear her clothing so snug that every curve was visible. With this woman, there were surprises. He wanted to discover all of them.
Only half-conscious of what he was doing, he skimmed down the red sweater, under it and back up to that perfect mound.
When she gasped, he drew back a little. She opened her eyes and stared at him, dazed, limpid and aflame with the passion he’d given her. He waited, wondering if she’d tell him to back off. It was even odds she’d never let a man touch her this way.
She didn’t speak, but stood there as if waiting for him to guide her. Passion was new to her, and she didn’t know what he expected. She didn’t even know exactly what she wanted.
He did.
With a groan, he shoved the soft knit of the sweater out of the way and dipped his head to her breast. Through the satiny material of her bra, he found the hard peak and rubbed it with his lips, then took the succulent tip into his mouth.
He felt the passion claim her once more. She locked her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through his hair. Her breath came quickly as he sucked her.
With one hand, he unfastened the back clasp and the material slid upward. He pushed it out of the way and his mouth met flesh—warm, sweet, woman flesh. He nibbled hungrily at the delicate pink tip.
When she arched against him, they nearly lost their balance. He turned and braced against the wall, using its support to keep them upright for he, too, was as far gone in passion as he’d ever been without being in bed. Opening his legs to a wider stance, he urged her to step inside.
He laved attention on each breast until he was nearly crazy with the need to explore more of her. Her skin was delicate, and he could see the tracings of veins that disappeared under the dark pink aureole that surrounded the rosy nipple.
She would be soft and delicate in other places, too. He wanted to go lower, to stroke her into bliss while he held her and kissed her mouth and her breasts.
“Kiss me back,” he said on a groan, returning to her lips.
She did what he said, raising her face to his in mindless obedience to the attraction. He was more than surprised by the passion between them. He was almost overpowered by it.
A white-hot surge of need hit him. He realized she had pressed herself solidly against him and was instinctively rubbing that part of him that wanted to bury itself in the hot welcoming center of her.
It would be sweet. It would be like heaven…
A screech from hell brought him back to earth.
“What the devil?” Sam said.
Molly clutched his shirtfront in fright. Then she realized what the scream was. “The cat. Something’s hurt it.”
She started for the door, then stopped and looked down in shock. Her bra and sweater were scrunched up almost to her neck. A tide of hot pink flowed over her face and neck. She had nearly gone outside half-unclothed!
“Stay here.” Sam was out the door in a flash, leaving her to fumble with her bra clasp, which suddenly wouldn’t close… oh, there, she had it.
She jerked her sweater down, then headed out the door as fast as her trembling legs would take her, her mind a welter of confusion. “Do you see her? Is she hurt? Is it a coyote?”
“No,” Sam called. “Stay inside while I look around.”
“I’ll get a flashlight.” She ran inside and searched through a drawer, throwing half a ball of twine, a pack of mailing labels, a box of matches and two clothespins on the floor before she found it.
She ran back out into the cold night air. The first day of spring had occurred that week, but the weather hadn’t caught on yet. It was still cold and rainy. She flicked the light around the backyard and saw Sam.
A black streak materialized beside her and disappeared into the kitchen through the open door.
“There she is. She’s inside. I think she’s okay.”
“Give me the light. I’ll look around a bit more.”
Molly glanced at the dark shadows of bushes and trees. The wind had risen in the last hour or so. The shadows danced eerily. Sam removed the light from her hand and headed back toward the gardening shed. She stood in the doorway and watched as he knelt and looked around.
When he finally returned, she asked what he’d been looking at or for.
“Whatever I might find” was his terse reply.
She studied his tense stance and frowning face. “You suspect something. Do you think someone was out there?”
He shrugged. “Probably a fox or a coyote,” he said without answering her question.
She peered anxiously out the window, but couldn’t see any signs of anything wrong.
“I have to go.” He locked the back door and made sure it was secure. “I should have left an hour ago, then we wouldn’t have gotten into… what we did.”
“Are you sorry?” she blurted. She realized she wasn’t.
“I…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’d like to remain friends with you. You’re the only one I have.” His smile was filled with irony.
“That’s not true. What about Chuck Nader and his wife? Others around here would open up if you’d make the first move.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a stern look. “You might try smiling and saying hello to people.”
“Yeah, I might.” He looked down at his shirt, looked
grim for a second, then began tucking it into his pants.
She must have pulled it loose. She could remember running her hands over his back, liking the feel of his firm flesh and the flex of muscles she could feel under the skin.
Heat rose to her face again. She’d never known she had the capacity to be a wanton. But perhaps every woman had. With the right man.
“I’m going.” He hesitated. “Is it okay if Lass stays?”
“Yes.” She nodded several times as if the answer wasn’t enough to convince him.
“Lock up after me.” He headed for the front door.
She followed and turned the dead bolt securely after him. He paused at the truck, raised a hand in goodbye and left a minute later. She watched until he was out of sight.
Sam attached the wire to the connector and made sure it was secure, then leaned on the corner post and looked at the sky. Not a cloud to be seen. Well, a few horsetails floating above the Pecos, but nothing to worry about.
Spring had painted the pastures in shades of vibrant green. The grama grass sprouted lush new growth. Actually the rains had arrived at just the right time that year.
Calves cavorted beside their placid cud-chewing mamas in several sections. It was time to move them to new ground. He twanged the electric wire once more to be sure it was firm, then went to connect the battery.
This was something new he was trying—moving the cattle across the pasture in blocks of heavy grazing, then “resting” the grass until it recovered. An electric fence provided a simple and cheap method to keep the cattle in the right section.
Down at the county road, he saw the postman stop at the mailbox. He decided to ride down and pick up the bills. He smiled a bit grimly. His mail rarely contained anything else.
Swinging up on a big-boned roan gelding that had a gait like a rocking horse, he headed down the ranch road, one eye on the stock fence as he went. A sense of accomplishment brought a lightness to his heart that had been missing for years.
The ranch’s affairs and his personal affairs were in good order. He’d paid off all debts to his attorney and the bank and had enough money to make it through the year. If the Good Lord was willing and the creeks didn’t rise… And if the rains kept coming so the pastures would grow. And if no one started a prairie fire. And… Well, the list could be endless, but today, he didn’t care.
His friendship with Molly was paying off. The owner of the local general store had actually smiled at him when he walked in the other day.
He grinned at that and whistled the rest of the trip. At the end of the road, the gelding sidled close to the mailbox so that Sam could lean down and collect the mail and the newspaper.
Feeling the friskiness in his mount, Sam chuckled as they wheeled around for the return trip. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I’ve got a touch of spring fever, too.”
He patted the horse’s neck in sympathy. “Poor chum, you don’t even know what it’s all about, do you? You just feel the urge without knowing how to take care of it.”
With a subtle shift of his body, he gave the gelding tacit permission to run. The big horse took off toward the barn and the oats he knew would be there for him.
Sandy, one of the two men he’d recently hired, waited by the stable door for them. “Somethin’ after you?” he asked when Sam swung down and handed the reins over.
Sam laughed. “Only kicking up our heels a bit. Must be spring fever.”
The young man grinned in understanding. “Come Saturday night, I’m heading for town. Come on, you bag o’ coyote bait,” he muttered to the horse. “Stop prancing around like a derby winner. You ain’t worth…”
Sam flicked through the mail while he crossed the unmowed patch of grass that constituted the lawn around the ranch house.
Nothing but bills, he noted as he leapt onto the porch without making use of the two steps hewn from giant cottonwoods and went into the kitchen. One letter was from the bank.
He opened it, expecting an advertisement for an investment opportunity the bank advised him not to miss. Instead he found one of his checks had been returned for insufficient funds.
Cursing under his breath, he called his attorney from the wall phone in the kitchen. “The bank says my check to you was returned. I don’t know why. I made a deposit last week from the spring sell-off.”
“I knew it was okay. Call the bank,” Chuck advised. “They probably credited it to someone else. Let me know when to send it through again. By the way, are congratulations in order?”
Sam was instantly on guard. “What for?”
“You and the schoolmarm. I’ve heard from three different sources that things are pretty hot between you two. One of them was my wife, so the women are speculating about you, too.”
Sam cursed aloud. “What exactly have you heard?”
“Well, you had your arm around her outside the movie the other night. Lots of folks saw that. Then there’s talk that you didn’t go to your house after you took her home that night.” The attorney’s voice took on a cautionary tone. “Don’t forget those prenup-tials. You need an agreement before you take the final plunge. You don’t want to put the ranch in jeopardy in case the marriage doesn’t work out.”
Sam gripped the phone, recalling scenes from Saturday night. Him with Molly locked in his arms. Kissing. Touching. His hands on her breasts. Her hands under his shirt, her eyes closed, her teeth clamped on her bottom lip as he kissed and sucked at her bare nipples. The wonder and confusion in her eyes when they’d finally come up for air.
Some friend he was. Because of him, people were talking about her, questioning her virtue. Because of his inability to control his baser impulses, she was the center of gossip.
After hanging up, he called the bank.
“That was an out-of-town check,” the woman in accounting explained. “It takes three business days to clear.”
With any of the other local ranchers, the bank would have held the check until the deposit cleared, but no one trusted him. Except Chuck. And Molly.
From the bank teller’s disapproving tone, Sam was sure the older woman had heard the gossip, too.
And he knew exactly where those rumors had started. He’d found footprints out by Molly’s shed. The detective he’d forgotten about in the blaze of passion had lost no time in letting Tisdale know.
“Is the money in my account now?” he asked, reining in the sarcastic remarks on the tip of his tongue. Molly would have told him such tactics only alienated people. Not that he gave a damn. At least, not for himself. But for her…
“Yes,” came the snooty reply.
“Thanks.” He hung up the phone none too gently, anger getting the better of him.
Grabbing the truck keys, he went outside and took off in a shower of dust and gravel. In fifteen minutes flat, he stomped the brakes in front of a two-story Tudor-style mansion and came to a screeching, skidding stop.
He leapt to the ground, slamming the door behind him so hard the truck trembled on its shock absorbers. Elsie Tisdale opened the door before he had time to knock.
“He isn’t here,” she lied, wringing her hands together at her waist. She was a short, skinny woman who reminded Sam of a plucked chicken. “William isn’t home.”
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Sam stepped by her and walked into the study, done up in the manner of an English gentleman’s club, to the right of the hallway.
William Tisdale, his former father-in-law, glanced at him, then screwed his face up as if he smelled something rotten. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I came to see you about a small matter.” Sam rocked back on his heels. “Such as the rumor floating around town about me spending the night with Molly Clelland.”
Triumph flashed through the older man’s eyes before he tried to assume an expression of righteous distaste. “Your prurient activities don’t interest me in the least.”
Sam strained to keep his temper under control. Tisdale was a bastard, he’d known that for two years, but he cou
ldn’t afford to let the man get the best of him. Lass depended on him.
He carefully unfolded his hands from fists and tucked his thumbs into his back pockets and assumed a relaxed stance. He smiled, and for the first time alarm flashed through the gray eyes across the desk.
Briefly he wondered how gray eyes that looked like mist in sunlight when they were Molly’s eyes only reminded him of vermin when they belonged to his former father-in-law.
“Maybe this will interest you,” Sam said softly. “A check in the amount of two thousand dollars paid to a certain fleabag detective from a, shall we say? somewhat shady law firm who also happened to receive a check for a like amount the same day from a certain rancher from hereabouts.”
“Oh, William, what have you done?” Elsie Tisdale had come into the room unnoticed by the two males. She hovered by the desk, her thin legs trembling like a tired roadrunner’s.
Tisdale’s face turned an interesting shade of purple. His eyes shifted from his wife to Sam, then away from both of them. “You can’t prove anything,” he blustered.
“I can prove invasion of privacy. That’s a felony.” Sam felt no triumph in winning a battle against his former father-in-law. He wanted peace and quiet and the opportunity to raise his. child without fearing for her future. That’s all he wanted.
Elsie gasped and made little sounds as if she were a chicken with a piece of corn stuck in its craw.
Tisdale stood and leaned over the desk. “Get out of my house. You’re not welcome here. You never were. You never will be. And don’t think that goody-goody teacher can help you. She’s as much a part of this as you are. If that dolt of a detective had had a camera, I could prove it.”
Sam straightened from his don’t-give-a-damn slouch. “Leave Molly out of this. If I hear one more word about her…”
He let the thought trail off, realizing he’d left himself open when a gleam appeared in the older man’s eyes. Tisdale now knew Sam had a vulnerable spot besides Lass.
“You’ll what? Sue me?” The older man thought he had the upper hand. His smile was full of malice. “You bring that baby here where she belongs and Saturday night will be forgotten.”
