by Jan Freed
And his had been ripped out one too many times already.
* * *
LAURA KEPT HER EYES closed, acutely aware of the purring engine, the butter-soft leather beneath her thighs, the faint scent of sandlewood cologne feathering her senses.
Her anger had faded along with her champagne buzz. Apparently she had no pride where Alec was concerned. And her purposes were much better served by getting him alone.
She opened her eyes and rolled her head. His hard clean profile, lit by the glow of the dashboard, filled her with deep pleasure. Although he didn’t so much as glance her way, the current of awareness that always connected them crackled and hummed with increased voltage.
He knew she watched him, all right.
“It’s okay, you know,” she said softly.
His long fingers tightened on the wheel.
“I understand what you’re trying to do, even though I don’t agree.”
“Is that so?”
The powerful car swept into the entrance of her apartment complex and cushioned them over a series of speed bumps. Laura waited for Alec to park and cut the engine before answering.
“Yes, that’s so. But that doesn’t make it any less pathetic.” Opening her door, she slid quickly out of the car.
Alec caught up with her under the light in front of her door as she dug through her purse. He leaned a palm high on the door frame, his body curving over hers.
“Mind explaining that little bomb?” he rumbled in her ear.
Hoping he wouldn’t notice her trembling fingers, she pulled out a key ring, inserted the proper key and glanced up. “It means that denying what’s between us won’t make it go away. That’s a coward’s solution.” She shoved her shoulder against the wood and lurched over the threshold, taking care to leave the door open.
Heart pounding, she switched on a lamp and headed for the kitchen. Acting on instinct alone, she paused to bend over and remove a piece of lint from the carpet. Lord only knew if he followed, or what he thought of the view. He wasn’t making a sound.
Resisting the urge to look over her shoulder, she moved on. “Would you like a nightcap? I don’t have any Scotch, but I’m sure I can scrape up something.”
In the relative privacy of her small kitchen, she held her breath. The silence stretched.
“No.”
Her shoulders slumped in relief. Some deep feminine intuition warned her his rigid self-discipline was weaker now than ever before. She would never have a better chance at breaking through to the lonely man underneath.
“You don’t mind if I have one, do you?” She risked a peek around the kitchen wall.
He paused in midprowl. “No.”
Laura ducked back into the kitchen. He’d left the front door open. An escape hatch. She reached up and pulled down two liqueur glasses from a set she’d bought at a garage sale. It took some rummaging to find the dusty bottle of Kahlúa left over from a trip to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
She’d driven there from Austin two years ago with a group of master’s degree graduates bent on celebrating in the border city. It was the last time she’d let herself forget her career goals and live for the moment, for herself.
Until tonight.
She poured the dark syrupy liquid into the glasses and took several deep breaths. Plastering a smile on her face, she scooped up the drinks and ventured into the living room. Alec stood in the doorway staring out into the night.
“Here we are. I hope you like Kahlúa. It’s one of my favorites.” She set one glass on the lamp table and sat on the sofa, patting the cushion beside her. “Close the door and sit down, Alec. You’re air-conditioning the porch.”
His wary gaze flicked to the extra glass, then back to her. “I said I didn’t want anything.”
“I promise not to get you drunk and have my way with you.” Not without your cooperation, anyway. “It’s only liqueur, for heaven’s sake. What are you afraid of?”
Something flashed in his eyes like a subliminal frame on a movie screen. She wondered what the message was. Judging from his blank expression, he wasn’t going to rewind the scene for her benefit.
He closed the door, picked up a liqueur glass and settled on the opposite end of the couch.
“Okay, Laura. You’ve piqued my curiosity. What’s this all about?”
Stalling, she took a sip of Kahlúa. The rich coffee-flavored liqueur steadied her nerves. “It’s about us, Alec. About our relationship. There’s something I have to ask you. Something I need to know.” She sensed his body bracing. Her own muscles grew taut. “What I...feel, when you’re near me. I want to know if it’s just me or if you feel it, too.”
He leaned back slowly, a sultan among silk pillows, his lashes screening a gleam of male satisfaction. “That all depends on how you feel, Laura. Can you be more specific?”
She wanted to throttle him. But perhaps there was a better way. She was a copywriter, after all.
Assuming a dreamy expression, she dropped into the resonant chesty voice of a true alto. “I feel...like I just got out of a hot tub. Languid. Heavy. Weak. But at the same time, breathless. As if something wonderful is about to happen. Am I making any sense?”
Instead of answering, he took a sip of Kahlúa, the reflexive movement of his throat gaining her rapt attention. A sluggish sweet heat stole through her veins.
“I feel,” she went on, “like my senses are amplified. Right now, for instance, I can see your pulse throbbing. There, between your collar and ear, where your hair breaks into curls. I can see where your beard grows heaviest, too. That’s easy. Your skin looks almost blue in those places.”
She closed her eyes and turned away, intent on describing her sensations. “I can hear you breathe now, slow and steady. Well, not so slow. And you’re grinding your teeth again.” A smile tugged at her lips. “You do that when you’re upset—did you know?
“I can even smell you, Alec. Let’s see, there’s Scotch. And Sam’s cigar. And of course the sandalwood cologne you wear. And...and...”
Eyes still closed, she turned back toward Alec and inhaled the unique intoxicating scent that was his alone. Words failed her.
“And you,” she said, opening her eyes.
Beneath heavy lids, his eyes glittered.
“How do I make you feel, Alec? I need to know.”
“Why?”
The anguish in his voice wrenched her. Leaving his emotional vacuum was ripping him apart.
She gentled her voice. “Because if you can honestly say you don’t feel anything for me, I’ll tell you good-night and send you home. But if you feel even a fraction of what I’m feeling now—” she put her drink down before the trembling liquid spilled “—then it’s time we find out exactly what we’re dealing with.”
“Meaning?”
“Make love to me, Alec.”
Her heart thudded painfully. She couldn’t make it any plainer than that. Couldn’t make herself any more vulnerable.
He closed his eyes and lifted a hand, pressing the heel of his palm to one temple.
“Alec?”
Breath suspended, she watched him lower his arm and open his eyes at the same time, his expression hard, cynical, weary beyond measure. A chill skittered up her spine.
“Laura—”
“Is it our business agreement?” she said, desperate to prevent his rejection, unsure she could live through it. “Because we can work things out. Other couples have worked togeth—”
“Laura, please. Don’t make this any harder. That’s not the only reason it won’t work.” With a soft curse, he rumpled his hair. “Look, you’re a romantic, a cockeyed optimist. You think if you dig deep enough into my soul you’ll strike gold. But anything worth saving was stripped away years ago. I’m all tapped out, nothing left but a black empty hole.”
His mouth twisted. He swirled his liqueur and stared into the dark liquid. “I can’t give you what you want, partner. I sure as hell can’t give you what you deserve. But there’s a man out there
somewhere with your white picket fence and two-point-one children. Go dig around for him, if you have to. But for God’s sake, leave me alone.”
Even forewarned, the lance of pain shocked her. She’d been so close to reaching him. He wanted her—she knew it. Yet, out of some twisted notion of protecting her, he’d rejected everything she longed to give him.
She lunged to her feet. “How dare you presume to know what I want! How dare you make decisions for me! Don’t tell me you can’t love, Alec McDonald, because seeing you with Jason tells me different.”
She hugged her stomach in an effort to control her shaking. “You? Tapped out? My God, you’re holding in so much emotion, it’s giving you an ulcer!”
“That’s enough, Laura.” Alec set his glass down and rose, looking grim and very large.
Common sense told her to shut up. She compromised and backed away. “What are you afraid of? Tell me. Why do you insist on living like a robot? Avoiding relationships, avoiding life?”
His eyes glittered in warning. “That’s enough, Laura.”
“The great lord and master has spoken, is that it? Well, I’ve got news for you, partner. I only take orders from real men, not wimps who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman if she was delivered with an apple in her mouth!”
Something broke in his eyes.
She took one step backward before catching herself up short.
Alec advanced slowly—wild, savage, alien. “Oh, I know what to do with a woman, all right. Just ask the doctor who worked on Susan three years ago.”
She stared at his snarling visage, but held her ground.
“It took eight stitches to sew up the gash I put in her head, Laura. Eight. Not exactly something a robot would do, is it? But then, I’m not really a robot. I’m more like my old man. God knows he told me so often enough.” Stopping inches away, he chuckled, a bitter ugly sound.
Laura winced. Wanting to ease his torment, she raised trembling fingers to his jaw.
He thrust her hand away. “Damn it, woman, what will it take to make you hear me? A bash on the head? I’m good at that. Real good. Susan’s not the only one I laid open, you know. When I was sixteen, I slammed a wrench against my old man’s skull, too. Would have kept on slamming it if I hadn’t already thought he was dead.”
In spite of herself, she gasped. “Wh-why?”
His eyes glimmered with pain and a peculiar triumph. “Because I am what I am, not what you want me to be. Because like father, like son. Because blood will tell, and mine is bad through and through.”
Struggling with the image he’d created, Laura shook her head. “No, no. Why did you hit your father in the first place?”
Alec leaned forward, as if to make very sure she understood. “Because it seemed like the thing to do, since he’d just murdered my mother.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LAURA STARED at the feral agony in Alec’s eyes, at the violent rise and fall of his chest, at the corded tendons of his neck. He seemed balanced on the edge of some personal hell. One poof of breath could send him tumbling over.
This was what she’d always sensed beneath his reserve. Pain and self-doubt of such magnitude the wonder was he’d managed to keep his sanity.
His lip curled. “I’m a real prince, all right, with royal scum running through my veins. I can’t change my genes, and neither can you. Don’t even try.” He dragged in a ragged breath. “Let me go, Laura.”
She should have listened. The ugliness she’d glimpsed through the crack in his control should have scared her silly. But he hadn’t left on his own. He’d asked her to free him.
She raised her chin. “Tell me you don’t want me.”
His eyes darkened with fury. His lips clamped in a thin line.
He couldn’t say it! He’d shown her his private hell to frighten her away, because he was scared to death of himself. Of what he might do to her.
This time she succeeded in touching his rigid jaw. He flinched beneath her fingertips.
“Your father’s the beast, Alec, not you. You’re nothing like him, no matter what he told you. You’re good and loving and honorable. I know that as surely as I know you won’t hurt me. As surely as I know Susan’s injury was an accident.” Noting his dumbfounded expression, she stroked his bristled skin. “Tell me what happened.”
He covered her fingers and pressed them still against his cheek, but didn’t remove either of their hands. Dazed wonder filled his eyes, before memory clouded their depths.
“I came home early, heard Jason crying in his room and went upstairs to check. He was eighteen months old, too big for his crib, really, but we hadn’t gotten around to buying him a bed.
“His foot was caught between the crib spokes. He was...hysterical. I got it free and calmed him down, then went looking for Susan.”
He squeezed Laura’s fingers until she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
“She was in bed...our bed. With the gardener. Can you believe it? The gardener. There wasn’t an original bone in her body. I kicked the guy out, and we argued. She came at me with her nails, and I...I flung her away.” His jaw clenched.
“And?” Laura prompted.
“And she hit her head on the edge of our dresser. There was so much blood, I thought...”
He thought he’d killed her, Laura knew. “Was she conscious?”
Alec came back to the present. He slid her hand off his jaw, released her fingers and stepped back. “Oh, yeah. She was conscious. Gloating, more like it. I’d finally given her an excuse for uncontested custody of Jason. It was the only thing keeping her from divorcing me before. Not that she really wanted Jason. She just knew I did.”
Laura lowered her head. Hateful woman. No wonder Alec distrusted relationships. He’d never been exposed to a loving one. Until now.
With one step she closed the gap between them, his white-pleated chest filling her vision. Focusing on a row of shiny black studs, she followed them up past a stiff bow tie and square jaw to a mouth that snagged and held her gaze. A mouth that rivaled the most sensual courtesan’s for all that it tightened under her scrutiny.
Something between a laugh and a groan escaped him. “I’m not made of stone, Laura.”
Her head snapped up. The first stirrings of feminine excitement rekindled deep in her belly. “Prove it.”
His eyes flared hotly, her words kerosene on a banked fire. Still he held back. “Once I touch you...I won’t stop, Laura. I won’t be able to stop. Not this time.”
She met honesty with honesty. “Alec, I’m so afraid.”
A ripple of emotion crossed his face, leaving cold flatness in its wake. “I understand.”
She reached out and gripped his forearm. “I’m afraid I won’t please you,” she explained, her fingers trembling against the fine-woven cloth.
His entire body stilled. He looked from her hand into her eyes, his own questioning.
In answer, she laid her cheek against his chest. The heart beneath her ear thudded almost as hard as the one beneath her breast. When his hand cupped the back of her head, her eyes drifted shut in pleasure. For one glorious moment, she basked in the simple joy of being held by Alec.
There was no turning back, she knew. Nor did she want to. This complex enigmatic man was worth risking her pride, worth giving her heart. He insisted he had nothing to give in return, but she’d glimpsed the gold waiting to be tapped. His habitual mask of indifference hid tenderness, deep loneliness and the pain of past betrayal. How could she deny him comfort? How could she deny herself the true passion she’d glimpsed only with him?
Ear still against his heart, she slid her hand up his arm, marveling at the biceps unsoftened by two layers of cloth. Her fingers rounded his shoulder and skimmed past his collar to sink into the raven curls at his nape. As his heartbeat accelerated, she smiled in pure feminine satisfaction.
Tilting her face, she let him see all the emotion overflowing in her heart. She’d waited a lifetime for this moment. This man.
> “Don’t stop, Alec. I don’t want you to stop.”
Carnal desire exploded in his sapphire eyes. She welcomed the fierce intensity of his descending face, moaning when he kissed her roughly, ravenously, as if he was starving and she his first sustenance in weeks. His uncontrolled passion excited her, emboldened her. She lifted her left hand and framed his jaw, pressing her right palm against the base of his head in a silent plea to deepen the kiss.
Instantly his body crowded forward, forcing her to stumble backward or be crushed by two hundred pounds of solid muscle. Her spine bumped the wall, and he pressed against her, conjuring sensations and images from another time, another wall. She hadn’t known what to expect then.
Anticipation swirled through her.
Alec lifted his head. “I’ve waited so long. You feel so good,” he said thickly, peeling off his coat.
The action pushed his erection against her belly. Her eyelids drooped.
He flung the garment aside and yanked his bow tie loose, stripping it from his neck and reaching up to fumble with the row of ebony buttons. His gaze burned, never leaving hers as the tiny studs popped one by one onto the floor.
A curious lethargy seized her body, leaving her too weak to participate. But she could watch. And the sight revealed as he shrugged off his shirt took her breath away.
Broad shoulders, lean waist and sculpted muscles twisted and strained, as much a product of genes as regular weight training. His skin glowed golden, smooth and unblemished over sinew and muscle. A dusting of black chest hair arrowed down beneath his satin cummerbund, completing an image of consummate virility.
He dipped his head suddenly and captured her mouth, as if he couldn’t bear losing contact a moment longer. She tasted a hint of Kahlúa and the delicious essence of Alec and was jolted from her trance. She needed to touch him. To get closer.
Her palms glided up a washboard stomach to his chest, rubbing in ever-widening circles. When she grazed his nipples, he flinched.
“You’re driving me crazy. I’ve got to see you,” he murmured against her lips.
Hot kisses nipped down her cheek and throat. A part of her registered the lace at her shoulders slipping down, his thumbs hooking under her bodice, her breasts springing free...
