She had watched the men often enough to have memorized the basic movements. She also had had a lot of practice doing unlikely maneuvers while dropping through the air. Being able to use her left hand and foot as stable pivot points was a definite treat after some of the complex dives she had mastered.
Besides, she knew that Jed wouldn’t tear a piece off her if she didn’t get it right the first time.
As if getting ready for a dive, she mentally reviewed all the moves she had to make. Then she turned the stirrup, stepped into it, and swung her leg over the horse’s fat rump.
“Hey, that was slick. You been practicing behind my back?” he asked, grinning up at her and casually swatting her leg in congratulations.
“That’s just what I was going to ask,” Reever said.
Tory froze. She looked from Jed’s smiling face to Reever’s unsmiling one.
“If I’d known you wanted something to pat and play with,” Reever said, giving Jed a cold stare, “I’d have found you a stray dog.”
The younger man took his hand off Tory’s leg as if he had been burned. He turned to face Reever.
“Thought I told you to ride the east pasture,” Reever said, giving Jed no chance to speak.
“I did. A few posts near the slough need work.”
“Then get to it.”
Although his tone was calm, there was a chill in it that made the words bite like an ice-tipped wind. Jed didn’t bother to point out that it was only two hours until dinner and he had already put in a full day. He just jerked his hat into place and left.
Tory began to dismount.
“I thought you wanted to learn how to ride,” he said to her in the same tone that he had used on Jed. “Or was that just an excuse to have Jed’s hands all over you?”
“They weren’t all—” she began hotly, only to be cut off by Reever’s slicing words.
“Shut up or get down. But if you get down, you can be damned sure that you’ll never learn to ride as long as I’m boss of the Sundance.”
She closed her eyes and her mouth and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, Reever was watching her with an expression she didn’t understand, as if he rather than she was being ripped apart. He walked over to the mare and stood looking up at her with winter-gray eyes. He was so close that she could feel the vital heat of his body. Except for yanking her out of the henhouse, he hadn’t been this close to her in all the weeks since she had cooked her first meal for the Sundance hands.
“The stirrups are too long,” he said, his voice calm as he stripped off his leather gloves and stuffed them into his hip pocket. He put his hand on Tory’s calf and eased her leg away from the stirrup. With quick, clean motions he took up the leather before placing her foot back in the stirrup again. “Rest your weight on the ball of your foot, not the arch. Like this.”
It took all of her control not to shiver at the touch of his hands on her leg. She felt chills all the way to her fingertips. She took a shaky breath as he went around the mare’s rump and adjusted the right stirrup. When his hands closed over Tory’s right leg, she trembled. She watched his hard, sun-browned hands move almost caressingly over her leg as he placed her foot just so in the stirrup. She wanted to ask him if he had to stand so close, if his chest had to brush against her knee, if her leg had to be pressed so intimately down the length of his hard, warm torso as he adjusted the position of her leg in the stirrup. The bare flesh of her ankle felt like it had been burned
And all he had done was touch her for just an instant with his fingertips.
“Now lift the reins and turn old Twinks to the right.”
Tory moved her left hand so that the left rein pressed against the mare’s neck. Immediately the horse moved away from the pressure, turning right.
“Walk her around the corral.”
Twinkle Toes would really rather have stayed put. She let Tory know that be refusing to budge. Tory kicked the broad barrel gently with her heels. The mare didn’t notice. Tory nudged her again. The mare stood firm.
“Honey,” said Reever dryly, hiding a smile beneath his mustache, “Twinks is so lazy and so fat she can’t tell your cute little heels from a fly. If you want to go anywhere, you’re going to have to use those long legs for something more than turning Jed on.”
Tory pretended it was Reever that she was kicking.
Her heels landed with a solid thump. The mare twitched her ears and began walking slowly along the inside of the corral.
“You just keep her headed around the corral while I get Blackjack,” he said.
In a few minutes Reever returned with Blackjack and a long lead rein that he snapped to the mare’s bit. He saw Tory’s mutinous expression and slanted her a hard glance.
“Little girl, I should be shot for letting you anywhere near a stirrup in those flat-heeled city shoes. I’m using the lead rein so that if your clumsiness scares the mare, I’ll make sure she can’t run away, dragging you behind. If that hurts your tender pride, get off.”
Tory looked down at her hands. White showed clearly in the knuckles that grasped the reins. With an effort she forced herself to relax. At least with Reever up on Blackjack he wouldn’t be able to touch her as easily.
He could look at her, though.
He could make her feel like he was touching her each time his glance shifted from her hands to her hips to her heels.
As they rode side by side, he gave her a running commentary on how she sat wrong, held the reins wrong, held her feet wrong, her hands wrong, her head, her spine, her hips, everything was wrong. The harder she tried, the more clumsy her movements became. Every time his hand brushed over her fingers while he rearranged the reins in her hand, or positioned her leg or her arms correctly, or put his hand on the small of her back to change her posture, it was all she could do not to fall out of the saddle.
Before the ranch was out of sight, she decided that she had made a mistake in wanting to learn how to ride. By the time they were over the low rise leading to Wolf Creek, she was fighting not to show her feelings. No matter what she did, it was wrong. No matter how hard she tried, she only became worse. Finally she pulled back on the reins, stopping the mare.
“You win,” she said, her voice achingly calm. “I’m convinced I’ll never learn to ride.”
He stopped Blackjack. “City girl, anyone as clumsy as you better learn to take a little criticism.”
“Try giving me a little sometime,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even, “and I’ll see how I take it.” She looked at him, her eyes silently asking for understanding, and added softly, “I’m only awkward around you, Reever.”
“Tough. I’m the only teacher you’re going to get on the Sundance,” he said, his voice flat.
She closed her eyes for a moment before saying, “Then school’s out.”
As she spoke, she dismounted with a speed that surprised him. He came off Blackjack in a single swift motion that placed him only inches from her. Instantly she stepped backward, only to bump up against the mare’s fat barrel.
“For God’s sake,” he said roughly. “Stop cringing like a whipped pup. I’m not going to touch you.”
Being compared to a cringing dog was the last straw for her pride and uncertain temper.
“How was I supposed to know that?” she asked. “You’ve done nothing but touch me since you came to the corral.”
His face hardened into an expression that made her wish desperately that she had followed her original plan for avoiding conflict with him by keeping her mouth shut.
“You sure as hell didn’t mind when it was Jed’s hands all over you,” Reever snarled.
The ice in his voice made her shiver. “It’s not the same when Jed touches me,” she said, her voice so tight that it ached.
“I’ll bet. He’s young, pretty, and has nothing but smiles and soft words
for you.”
“That’s not—” she began hotly.
Reever’s hard hand closed over her mouth, sealing in the words with surprising gentleness. He stepped closer, trapping her between his body and that of the docile mare. His thumbs traced the honey line of Tory’s eyebrows, touched the outer corners of her faintly tilted eyes and smoothed the hollows beneath her cheekbones before he lifted his hand to caress the trembling bow of her lips.
“Little green-eyed cat,” he said roughly as he bent down to her. “I’ve wanted to taste you since I looked up and saw you standing on the other side of my desk all those long weeks ago.”
His face came closer until all she could see of the world was the burning clarity of his gray eyes. Then his thick black lashes swept down, concealing the expanding darkness in the center of his eyes as desire exploded through him at just the touch of her breath on his mouth. With the hot, moist tip of his tongue, he traced the sensitive line of her lips until she shivered between his gentle hands.
“Open your mouth,” he said, his voice dark, deep. “Don’t you want to taste me, too?”
The warm glide of his tongue over the interior softness of her lips made her gasp. Instantly his tongue slid inside her mouth. His heat and salt-sweet taste and slow, caressing tongue sent currents of sensation radiating through her. She forgot to think, to breathe, to do anything except tremble between his hands. Heat claimed her, melting everything, even her bones, until all she could do was cling to his hard forearms when her legs refused to support her any longer.
His hands shifted, no longer gently pinning her head in place for his kiss. There was no more need. She wasn’t going to refuse or withdraw from him. He had felt her trembling and the telltale sagging of her weight against his strength, and he knew that desire was claiming her as surely as it had already claimed him. He picked her up and carried her just off the trail to a hollow where grass and wildflowers grew waist-high. Slowly he sank to his knees, lowering her into the scented embrace of softly crushed grass and flower petals.
Tory opened her eyes and took a breath that shook her to her toes. Reever’s wide shoulders blocked out the sky as he bent over her, easing his big, hard hands beneath her, arching her up to his hungry mouth. She wanted to say his name, to ask him why he was doing this and to tell him never to stop, but the look on his face froze the words in her throat.
His eyes were narrowed, the pupils wide, the rim of iris a hot crystal glitter that made her tremble with answering fire.
He mouth claimed her with a power that made her cling to him. Her hands moved blindly up his arms, across the bunched strength of his shoulders and then swept up beneath his hat, knocking it aside. When she rubbed her palms against his full, thick hair and her fingers found the warmth of his scalp, she gave a husky sound of pleasure. The sound made him shudder against her. His tongue thrust deeply into her mouth, filling her until she arched up to him and her hands clenched in his hair, holding his mouth against hers with all the strength in her young body. She felt as much as heard his harsh groan as he deepened the kiss even more, flattening her beneath him, letting her know the muscular weight of his body all the way to the soles of her feet.
“Am I too heavy for you?” he asked, his voice almost rough. “I’d make two of Jed.”
The glorious feeling of Reever’s body caressing her drove everything from her mind except the need to get even closer to him. She tried to tell him that, but when she opened her eyes, all she could focus on was the sensual line of his lips.
“Reever,” she said, and then again, as though the word were being torn from her, “Reever—”
When he heard the passionate breaking of her voice, his hands clenched suddenly and his whole body tightened like he was being stretched on a rack. Slowly he lowered his head while he watched her eyes. Despite the sensual tension in his body, his lips barely brushed hers, inciting rather than soothing the fires of her hunger. When his tongue slid over the inner softness of her lips, her honey-colored lashes quivered shut as she was overtaken by the sensations coursing through her. She knew nothing but his heat, his touch and the wild pleasure of his mouth slowly, completely, joining hers.
The sweet consummation of the kiss made Tory cry out.
Reever absorbed the sound as surely as he was absorbing her taste and the touch of her tongue against his. Her response was both innocent and abandoned, unskilled and unaware, hungry and hesitant. For a long moment he moved slowly over her, caressing her with his hard body, claiming her mouth with the same deep rhythms that he wanted to claim her body.
When he shifted slightly aside, she followed him instinctively, trying to maintain the unexpected, consuming intimacy of the embrace. When he thrust into her mouth again, she whimpered softly and arched against him without realizing it. All she knew was that her breasts were full and her nipples were aching, and when she rubbed against him, it started fires inside her.
“What is it, little cat?” he said, biting her mouth gently, drinking her sudden gasp. “What do you want?”
“Touch me,” she breathed in his mouth. “The way you did in the kitchen.”
She didn’t see his triumphant smile or the maddeningly slow movement of his hand toward one breast. Her eyes were closed and she couldn’t breathe for wanting his touch. When his hand stopped just below her breast, she made a breathless sound of protest. She tried to turn, to nestle herself into his palm, but he held her in place. Slowly his hands went from her ribs, to her breastbone, to her collarbone and then back to her ribs. He repeated the caress but came no closer to the aching peaks of her breasts. When he began a third time, she opened her eyes and looked straight into his.
The pale glitter of his eyes as he watched her was like lightning beneath the thick arch of his black brows. His face was taut, his lips slightly swollen from his passionate claiming of her mouth. She looked from his face to his teasing fingers. The weight of his hands had pulled the T-shirt tight, outlining her breasts clearly. There was neither loose cloth nor a bra to hide her arousal. The sight of her own nipples nuzzling against the thin cotton made color stain her cheeks.
“Reever?” she whispered.
His thumbs caressed the curves of her breasts but stopped well short of the hungry peaks.
“Yes?” he murmured, smiling narrowly as he watched her tighten and rise even more beneath the creamy cotton knit.
“Don’t you want to—to touch me?”
“How bad do you want it, little girl?” he asked softly, moving his thumbs slowly, circling her breasts below the nipples. “Bad enough to help me?”
“H-how?”
“Pull up your shirt.”
Her shock showed in the widening of her green eyes.
“I’m not wearing—” Her voice broke as his thumbs barely skimmed the aching nipples.
“I know,” Reever said, smiling and watching her helpless response. “Think how it will feel. Your skin and mine, nothing between us but heat and my fingers loving those sweet pink buds until you moan.”
Slowly, her hands shaking, feeling awkward and shy and almost afraid, Tory brought up the hem of her T-shirt. The air felt cool against her heated skin as the cloth climbed higher and higher. The material bunched beneath the swell of her breasts and caught on the rigid points of her nipples, making her feel even more awkward. She twisted slowly beneath his pinning weight, trying to remove the T-shirt entirely, only to end up with it tangled thickly under her arms. She twisted again, getting a firmer grip on the stubborn cloth—and then she forgot what she was doing as her whole body tightened in a wild rush.
Reever’s mouth had claimed one breast just as completely as he had claimed her lips.
Her hands clenched on the T-shirt as his tongue licked hotly at the captive nipple, ringing it in sensual fire. She began to shiver beneath his weight, and her breath came quickly. When he skillfully stroked the sensit
ive aureole with tongue and teeth, she cried out and wanted him closer, closer, needing the hard suckling of his mouth the way she needed breath itself. She arched against him helplessly, wholly lost. His hand captured her other breast, kneading it, rolling the tight peak between his fingertips, sending more sensual lightning through her body.
The twin assaults made Tory forget everything but the sweet, consuming wildness of Reever’s touch. Blindly her hands sought his back and shoulders. She tugged futilely at his shirt, wanting to feel his naked skin against her palms. He shifted aside slightly, giving her access to the snaps on his work shirt, but her hands were shaking so hard that all she did was get tangled helplessly in the blue cloth.
He looked down into the innocence of her flushed face and closed his eyes for an instant, his face tormented.
Then with a savage curse he pushed himself away from her. His smoky gray glance swept from her soft, passionately swollen lips to the T-shirt tangled just beneath her arms. Her breasts were full, firm, and their deep pink peaks glistened from the intimate touch of his tongue. Each short, shaky breath she took made her body tremble from her toes to her fingers still caught in the folds of his shirt.
“Did Jed make you want him like this?” Reever asked harshly, watching her with cold fire in his eyes.
“I never—wanted him.” The words came out in shivering breaths, for she could breathe no other way. “Just you. Just you.”
He looked at her for a long, aching minute, and then he closed his eyes as he fought to control himself. It was like tearing off his own skin.
“Too bad,” he said, yanking her hands free of his shirt and standing up swiftly. “I’ve spent all the time I can spare on a clumsy city girl.”
For a moment she lay without moving, stunned. She looked up at his hard face, unable to believe what she had heard.
Suddenly she realized that she was half naked, her T-shirt shoved up beneath her arms, her body begging for his. She flushed and then went pale. Awkwardly she tried to straighten her T-shirt, but her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t manage even that.
Too Hot To Handle Page 9
