"I've got a sweet tooth, all right," he'd said softly as he backed her up against the counter and leaned his body into hers. "You must have one, too. You spend half your life devouring me with those sultry eyes. I'd have to be blind not to know what you feel for me. Is this what you want, Tess?" he asked huskily, and moved his hips blatantly against hers, letting her feel the stark evidence of his desire for her. She blushed, but he wasn't looking. His eyes were on her parted lips. "God knows, I want you beyond bearing!"
Her mind had stopped working, shock mingling with fear. Before she could find the words to protest, his hard, hungry mouth covered hers, his hips pushing her against the counter behind her. His hands lifted her into the stark aroused curve of his body, and his tongue went into her mouth with enough lust to make even a virgin aware of his intent.
Tess had only been kissed once or twice, always by men who knew how sheltered her life was. Now she was being subjected to an embrace that only an experienced woman could have responded to, and it scared her to death.
She stiffened and pushed at his chest frantically, but her actions didn't penetrate the haze in his mind. One lean hand possessed her breast roughly while his leg suddenly stabbed between hers in an explicit movement that made her panic.
''Dane...no!" she panted, wild-eyed.
He barely heard her. "Yes," he groaned unsteadily. "Oh, God, yes, yes...!" His powerful arm contracted. "You want me, don't you, baby?" he'd asked blindly, his body shuddering as his mouth burned over her bare shoulders and throat, only to return, hot and heavy and rough on hers. "Don't you? Right here." He groaned harshly, his hands moving under her skirt, holding her bare thighs as he shifted her so that she could feel the blatant need of his body pressing hungrily at the threshold of her innocence.
She gasped, her heart shaking at the sensations the contact aroused. She moaned under his mouth, frightened.
"Here," he growled. "Right here, baby, standing up," he said shakily. His hands were on bare skin, touching her as no man ever had, as if his own need was paramount, as if she were simply a vessel for that need, to be used.
Then all at once, still breathing harshly, he let her slide to the floor and his head lifted briefly. His eyes were glazed, his body trembling faintly, like the strong, lean hands that smoothed roughly over her breasts as he crushed her mouth under his and groaned harshly. "This is too much for my back," he'd whispered. "We'll have to do it in bed, so that I can lie down...."
She knew it was the only chance she'd have to get away. She ducked and tore out of his arms. Her fear of him was so evident that it managed to penetrate the glaze in his eyes, the raging, headlong helplessness of his need. The threat of intimacy without emotion made her panic. She wept, her sobs loud in the room as she backed away from him, her gray eyes tragic and wide.
"Get away...from me!" she cried as he came toward her, his intentions written in his dark eyes. "Leave me alone!"
It registered, finally, that she was afraid of him. He'd been too drunk on her softness to realize it until he saw the wide, helpless terror in her eyes. He fought to breathe normally. He'd lost control. That was a first.
He stared at her, his expression slowly reverting to its usual impassivity, his eyes startlingly black. "That's what you've been asking for," he said in a cutting, harsh tone as he fought for sanity.
"No!" It was a cry from the heart.
"You wanted me," he spat. "Why else do you keep coming here?"
"I love you," she sobbed, shaken into telling the truth as she stood hugging her arms over her breasts.
"Love!" His eyes glared hotly at her as a visible shudder ran through his powerful body, still aroused and hurting. “All right, if you love me, come here. Prove it, you icy little tease," he added with a mocking smile that hid overwhelming frustration.
Her heart went cold, like the tears on her face. She looked at him with anguish. "I can't," she whispered. "You...you hurt me!"
Her fear infuriated him. It was Jane all over again, hating his lovemaking, taunting him, her sarcasm vicious and unforgiving. "No?" he asked coolly. "Then if you won't give out, get out," he added. "All I wanted from you in the first place was sex. My God," he ground out involuntarily as she shrank from him, "why not me? Surely to God you've had others...!"
Her eyes were as big as saucers, her flushed face red, her body shaking. And it dawned on him, too late, that there hadn't been any others. She couldn't look like that, even with him, if she were experienced.
He felt a surge of horror. "Tess, are you a virgin?"
She thought she might faint at the expression in his eyes. She couldn't look at him after that. She grabbed her purse and ran from the apartment. Without a word Dane watched her leave. He didn't go after her; he didn't call later to apologize. It was, he told himself, the only out he was likely to get. Let her think he'd done it deliberately. She made him vulnerable. He had nothing to offer her. It would be a kindness, in a way. He turned back into the apartment, his eyes as cold as he felt inside. He'd never trust a woman again as long as he lived. Not even Tess. A virgin. How could he have not known? He hoped he hadn't left too many scars....
He'd tried to consider it a lucky escape. Eventually, his pretended indifference and hostility had crushed the spontaneity right out of Tess, so that now she was quiet and polite and even a little shy when they were together. After her father died, Dane had offered her a job as a secretary. She had had nobody except him, and he'd wanted to help. It had worked fine, but only when he made her angry did he see any traces of the old Tess. Perhaps, he confessed silently, that was why he kept goading her.
Angrily, he started the car and drove to the office, to be met by the whole staff the minute he walked in the door. It shouldn't have surprised him that his employees loved Tess. She was forever doing things for them.
"Will she be all right?" Helen got in first, her big dark eyes worried.
"She's fine," he assured them. "Still drowsy from the anesthetic, but there won't be any impairment. She has to heal."
"When does she come home?" Helen persisted. "She can stay with me. She'll need looking after."
"She'll stay with me," he said, shocking all of them, including himself. "I'll take her down to the ranch. Jose and Beryl can take care of her when I have to be in the office. Did you get a temp for the next week or so?" he asked Helen.
"She'll be here any minute," she agreed. "Good typing and dictation speeds and her agency says she's discreet. No worries about loose lips sinking ships."
"Good." His eyes went involuntarily to the desk where Tess worked. It wounded him to see it empty.
"See if you can make any sense out of her appointment book, will you?" he asked irritably, glancing at Helen. "I don't even know what I have on my calendar today."
"You're having lunch with Harvey Barrett," she reminded him. "That's on the extortion case. This afternoon you were supposed to see a couple who want you to find their daughter—the Allisons— and a man who wants his wife watched."
"And this morning?"
She stared at the appointment book and shook her head. "Nothing urgent."
"Good. I'm going to the apartment to change and then I'll be at the hospital until lunch."
Helen frowned. "I thought you said she was okay."
He moved toward the door without answering. "If there's anything important, you can reach me in her room." He gave her the number.
"Okay, boss. Tell her she's missed."
He nodded. His mind wasn't on what was going on around him. It was on Tess.
Chapter Two
Tess moaned in her sleep as the pain caught her unawares. She'd been dreaming. Probably about Dane, she thought drowsily. She never dreamed about anyone else. That was almost comical, considering how badly he'd hurt her.
A sound penetrated her semiaware state. She opened her eyes in time to see Dane sitting down in the chair beside the bed.
"What are you doing back?" she asked, her body going rigid.“It's a workday."
&nb
sp; "I'm working," he said. "Looking after you."
The wording brought back unbearable memories of the time that he'd been shot—and what had followed. She closed her eyes on a wave of pain. "Please go away," she whispered huskily.
He took a slow breath. The anguish in her face made him uneasy. "You don't have anyone else."
That was true. Her grandmother had died a year ago.
Her eyes met his, and there was nothing in her face to betray what she really felt. "You're just my boss, Dane," she said quietly. "That doesn't require you to look after me."
He sat up, his forearms across his knees as he stared at her. "I've never asked. Maybe I need to. How much damage did I do that day?"
She flushed and averted her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said stiffly.
"Don't you?" he asked on a cold laugh. "We've waltzed around it for three years. I can't get near you, even to apologize."
"Why should you care?" she replied. "You wanted me out of your life. You got it. I wouldn't come near you now for a handful of diamonds!''
"Me or any other man," he said out of the blue.
She pulled the sheet closer, her eyes on the window, not on him. "Don't you have something better to do than bait me?"
"I'm taking you down to the ranch to recuperate."
She went white. She sat up in bed, her eyes like saucers in a face drained of life.
"Oh, my God, don't!" he said harshly. "Don't look like that!"
Her hand trembled on the sheet. "No," she whispered, choking on the word. "Not in your house, with you. Not ever!"
His eyes closed. He couldn't bear the way she looked. He got up jerkily and went to the window, lighting a cigarette as he stared out at nothing at all. He drew in a harsh breath of pungent smoke and let it out.
"I didn't realize you were a virgin," he said curtly. "Not until it was too late and I'd frightened you half to death. Don't you think I know why you don't go out with men?" He turned, pinning her shocked eyes with his. "Don't you think I care about what I've done to you?"
She swallowed, dropping her gaze to her cold, nervous hands on the sheet. "It was a long time ago...."
"It might as well have been yesterday," he said heavily. "God in heaven, stop pushing me away!"
She flushed. "I haven't."
He turned, moving back toward the bed, his face as drawn as her own. He paused beside her. "Tess, I know you're afraid of me physically. I'd have to be blind not to be aware of it. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want you where you'll be taken care of until you're back on your feet again. Beryl will be at the ranch if I'm not."
"I don't know Beryl. Helen says I can stay with her...."
"When Helen isn't at work, she's at ballet class. If she has any free time at all, she's eating pizza with her friend Harold. She means well, but you'd be alone most every evening, and all day while she's at work."
"I'd be all right by myself."
He moved closer, hating the way she stiffened. "Listen," he said through his teeth. "You saw a drug deal go down. You'll have to testify. The policemen didn't actually see the drugs being passed, do you understand? You're the only witness who actually saw them. One man is still loose, and he almost certainly knows who you are by now. Do you get the picture?"
"You can't mean what I think you do," she said slowly.
"The hell I can't! I dealt with this kind of vermin for ten years. I know what lengths they'll go to. You aren't going to be safe until they apprehend the second man and bring them both up for trial. I want you where I am, where I can take care of you. When I'm not home, my ranch manager is. He was a ranger back in the forties, and he's almost as good a shot as I am."
She put her face in her hands. It was agonizing to have to agree to what he wanted. She'd almost rather have taken her chances with the drug dealers.
"Hate me, if it helps," he said. "But come with me. Don't throw your life away."
She smoothed back her long, disheveled hair. "What kind of a life do I have?" she asked miserably. "Work and television don't add up to much."
"You're twenty-two," he said. "Years too young to be that cynical."
"Oh, I learned from an expert," she said, lifting her face. "You taught me."
Her expression made him uncomfortable. "I've never had anyone of my own," he said shortly. "My father left when I was a boy. He couldn't take the pressure of responsibility. I worshiped him, but my mother hated him, hated me because I looked like him. Jane said she loved me when we were first married, but she walked out on me and didn't look back." He leaned over her, his eyes black as coals. "You wanted to love me, and I wouldn't let you. I hurt you, made you afraid of me. Don't you get it, little girl? I don't know what love is!"
"You needn't look at me as if I'm any threat," she said defiantly. "I gave up on you years ago."
"Yes. I know."
She averted her eyes. "I don't love you. I had an inconvenient fascination for you that you put into perspective for me. You won't have to fight me off ever again."
His lean hand went to her face. He touched her cheek lightly, catching her chin when she tried to jerk away. His eyes probed hers relentlessly.
"That goes double for me," he said. "I won't ever touch you that way again."
She watched him, too aware of the warm fingers on her softly rounded chin. "You would have forced me," she choked out.
His face contorted. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn't. He'd been out of his mind. "You don't understand," he said bitterly.
She stared at him as if she didn't quite comprehend. He sounded tortured, haunted. "Dane?" she whispered.
He wouldn't look at her. "You were a virgin," he said huskily. "But I wasn't. I'd had women. You were soft and vulnerable and loving, and I wanted you in a way I...couldn't handle."
Wheels turned in her mind. Men were vulnerable sometimes; even in her innocence she knew that. She'd avoided the thought for years, but a part of her had realized how desperate he was for her that day, how hungry. "You scared me out of my mind," she laughed nervously. "Every time I went out with a man, I was afraid he might become like that, and I wouldn't be able to get away in time."
"That isn't surprising," he replied. "Will you believe that it hasn't been easy for me, either? You can't imagine what it does to me when you cringe every time I come close to you."
Her chest rose and fell slowly. She searched his eyes. "It was a long time ago, wasn't it? I suppose I blew it up in my mind until it was nightmarish."
He saw the faint softness in her eyes and hesitated. "Tess, is it only fear that you feel when you're with me?" he asked. His eyes fell to her mouth, to the helpless parting of her lips under the intent stare. His thumb moved slowly, the nail just lightly tracing the moist inner surface of her lower lip in a movement that made her breath catch. "Or is there something more, in spite of the way I frightened you?"
She pulled back frantically, oblivious to what he'd said at the last in her desperation to get away from that maddening touch. Her eyes widened and her heartbeat became rushed.
He had to drag his eyes back up to hers. His own breathing was uneasy. So it wasn't all terror. Something inside him thawed a little, even as he watched her futile attempts to hide what he'd aroused in her with that sensuous little brush of his hand. Amazing that in all his thirty-four years, he'd never thought of touching a woman's mouth exactly like that.
"No," he said, almost to himself. "It's a little more complicated than fear, isn't it?"
"Dane..."
"Your doctor says you can leave in the morning. In the meanwhile, there's a uniformed officer outside the door. He's been there since you were brought in, and he'll be there until I take you home."
She watched him nervously as he put out his cigarette.
He caught her scrutiny and his dark eyes slid to meet hers. "You make me want to be gentle. That's a first," he said quietly. He studied her thoughtfully. "Maybe I could make you want my touch, if I tried."
Cold chills worke
d down her spine. "No," she whispered huskily. "I won't let you touch me. Not the way...you did that day!"
"I've never been with a virgin, little one," he said, his voice deep and slow. "I've never been a gentle man, either, I guess, but I set new records on wildness with you. It made me take a long look at myself. I didn't like what I saw."
Her hands linked together and she looked at them, not at him. “I don't want to talk about it, Dane."
He had to search for the right words. "Haven't you realized by now that most men...that a man who loved you would want to be gentle? That it wouldn't be like that with someone who loved you?"
"How do you know if someone cares?" she asked with bitter cynicism. She looked up at him. "I thought you did," she said huskily. "I thought you liked me, at least, but you made me afraid of you so that I wouldn't be a threat to your privacy. My father didn't want me, either. He landed me with my grandmother because he didn't want me." She shivered. "Nobody ever wanted me...." She lay back against the pillows, looking ten years older than she was. "Please go away, Dane. I'm too tired to fight anymore."
Why hadn't he known how she felt? After all these years, he still knew next to nothing about her. Of course she'd felt rejected when her father left her with her grandmother; more so because of all his affairs. And then he'd planned to marry Dane's mother, further isolating her. She'd wanted someone to love, and she'd had the misfortune to pick a man who didn't even know what it was, who'd known nothing but resentment and dislike all his life, a man with a failed marriage behind him and a crippled body to boot.
He grimaced at the defeated expression on her face. He felt responsible for her anguish, as if he'd caused it. Certainly he'd added to it.
"Do you like horses?" he asked.
"I'm afraid of them."
"Only because you don't know much about them. When you're up to it, I'll teach you to ride."
Her eyes met his. "Don't do this to me," she said unsteadily. "Please don't. I don't need pity."
He started to speak, but he didn't know what words to use. He drew in a long breath.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 98
