by Claire King
“Oh.”
“There’s no reason you can’t come along.”
She crossed her arms over her chest in an automatic gesture of self-protection. Daniel wondered if she knew how transparent she was. “I think we’ve been over the reasons.”
“As friends.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t be friends.”
He shook his head mournfully. “God, you’re a mule.”
She sighed. He had no way of knowing how terrified she was of him. From his perspective, she was simply being stubborn. She could hardly stand having him think she was immature and unreasonable. She wanted his respect, if nothing else. “We can eat at the café. But you pay.”
He grinned at her, a startling flash of white teeth in that serious and handsome face. “That doesn’t sound like friends, that sounds like a date.”
“We’ll talk cattle.” Grace shrugged. “You can write it off as a business expense. Besides, I’m broke until some of my clients pay up. Middle-of-the-night cat examinations are very costly.”
He’d laughed when he’d got her bill for that. “All right,” he agreed with great reluctance. “I’ll spring. But don’t order so much food this time. That three-dollar salad you wolfed down last—”
“Wolfed down!”
Daniel rolled his eyes and started for his ATV. “Really, it was pretty appalling. And then you ate half my dinner.”
She knew he was teasing her, but she blushed furiously nonetheless. “I cannot believe you’d mention that.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not made of money.”
“Actually, you seem to be made of the same stuff that’s in my hair,” she shot back.
“Oh, very nice. Very delicate talk for a lady,” he said. “I’ll pick you up around seven.”
“I could just meet you there.”
“All right. Meet me there.” He mounted the four-wheeler in a smooth, athletic motion that actually made Grace’s throat go dry. “I’ll just pick you up.”
Grace laughed. “Okay.”
He nodded again, and without another word, started his machine and zoomed off.
Chapter 7
When she opened the door, his cool green eyes went on instant simmer. He flicked his gaze down her legs. “I’ve never seen you in a dress.”
And this one was a beaut. Soft material wrapped around her and tied at the front. Not too short, but when she sat he’d bet the ranch it’d hike up her thighs and cling. He was afraid he’d be salivating over it all night.
“I don’t have much occasion to wear dresses.” But she was glad she had tonight. He was wearing brown chinos and a neatly pressed dress shirt; she’d been as flattered by that as she would have been by roses and champagne. “It’s probably a little too dressy for the café, but I don’t have anything else clean but jeans. I haven’t had time to do laundry since I got here.”
“You look good.”
She smiled. “Thanks. You, too.”
“I’m sorry about my brother’s behavior today.”
“It’s fine.” She backed up a good five feet, to keep the mouthwatering scent of him out of her nostrils. “Do you want something before we go?”
“What have you got?” He watched her turn around the room, touching things, smoothing down her dress, checking her watch. He didn’t know what the hell she was so nervous about. He was the one who’d have to look at her in that dress all night.
She blinked. “Oh. Nothing, actually. I meant to buy some wine…” She trailed off, looking a little frantic. “You drink beer, though, don’t you? Or whiskey?”
He had to smile. “It doesn’t really matter, if you don’t have either one.”
“No.” She twisted her hands together. Oh, blasted shyness. Why couldn’t it be a nice, invisible disease, like hardening of the arteries, or nymphomania? Why did it have to manifest itself in such stupid ways? She’d spent an hour getting dressed up in this silly getup so she’d feel confident, and now she was acting like an excitable schoolgirl anyway. A long silence stretched between them while she worried over it.
“Well, did you get the serum tests set up?” Daniel finally said. He had to say something, or her face was going to burst into flames.
“Yes.”
“How’s Felcher’s horse?”
“Oh. Good.”
“You want to go?”
“Yes.”
She tripped on her high heels when she whipped around to grab her coat off the sofa, and Daniel reached out automatically to steady her, but she righted herself before she actually fell.
“Oops,” she muttered miserably.
He chuckled. “I like the way those shoes make your legs look, McKenna, but if they’re going to trip you up every time you turn around, maybe you should put your boots back on.”
She shot him a quick, fierce glower from beneath her lashes.
“I can wear heels.” She snatched up her coat. “I’m not a complete klutz.”
He grinned. “You must have just tripped on the carpet.”
He moved to help her on with her coat. “Right.”
She jerked away from his touch. “I can do it,” she snapped. Nothing in the world could have made her stand there and let him perform such a simple, masculine ritual when he was basically accusing her of being too uncoordinated and unfeminine to walk in a pair of one-inch pumps. He wasn’t her date, anyway, was he? God, the dress had been a stupid mistake.
“I know you can do it, I was just being polite.”
“Don’t be polite with me. It throws our whole relationship out of whack.”
He stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She tugged at her coat. He held the collar in his hand and she wanted it back. “You know what it means.”
Oh, more than anything in the world, he hated when a woman said that. “Why don’t you explain it?” he said tightly.
She gave him a mutinous look. “You take every opportunity to say insulting things to me. Give me back my coat.”
He exerted equal pull. “You tripped right in front of me. I just said if you were uncomfortable in those stupid shoes, you should take them off.”
“You implied I couldn’t even wear high heels, just as you have previously implied I eat too much, wolf down my food, and can’t bake.”
“I was joking!” He shook his head. “And you can’t bake. You told me yourself.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Oh. That’s just typical.” She was dragging with all her considerable strength now on the lapel of her good winter coat. “That is just typical.”
“What the hell are you talking about, you crazy woman?”
She glared at him and dug in. “‘Crazy woman’?”
“Crazy woman,” he repeated. “You hide it behind that quick brain and that incredible body, but you are certifiable.” He was shouting now, and hauling in the coat hand over hand, as if it was a rope. “Now, let me help you on with your coat so I can get something to eat.”
Her teeth were bared now. “Forget it, Cash. I can put on my own coat. You obviously think I’m a man, so don’t treat me like a woman.”
It was Daniel’s mouth that fell open this time. “What?”
She struggled two-handed, but it was like battling a tree trunk. His muscles didn’t so much as quiver under her assault. “You heard me,” she groaned. “Give me my coat.”
If there was one thing Daniel Cash understood perfectly, it was a battle. She was being an idiot—he thought she was a man?—and he didn’t want to help her on with her coat any more than he wanted two sharp sticks jabbed into his eye, but he was damned if he’d let her put her own damn coat on now!
He took a last jerk on her coat and caught her arm with his other hand at the same time. “I’m helping you on with your damn coat,” he said between his teeth. He slid his hand down to her wrist and started stuffing her stiff arm into the sleeve. “And when I’m done,” he muttered ominously, “you are going to apologize for being such an imbecile.”
Grace wanted very much to wrestle him to the ground and beat the pulp out of him, or at least wrench dramatically away and stomp off to her room, but she knew both schemes were pretty much out of the question. He wouldn’t let her get away with either one and she’d just end up looking even more foolish than she did now. But her face was flaming, with anger this time. She didn’t give a single thought to feeling shy.
“You’re assaulting me,” she said stiffly, her lips disappearing between her teeth.
“I’m not assaulting you,” he stormed. He jammed her other arm into its sleeve and jerked the collar up around her neck. “Though I want to, baby. I really want to.” He used the lapels of the coat to manhandle her around to face him. He started to do up the buttons.
She started to brush his hands away, then stopped, her hands at her shoulders.
Oh, God, what was she doing? She was mortified. Mortified. She couldn’t even lift her chin to face him. All indignation seeped out of her and she wanted to soak into the floor at her feet. Had she really acted like such a lunatic over a comment about her shoes? Was she so insecure and foolish?
Daniel, to punish her a little, was slowly, methodically buttoning every single button on her stupid coat. Making his point. Winning the battle, he decided. Hands down. She’d never again use that mouth of hers to confuse the hell out of him and make him feel like an idiot after—
His knuckles brushed her breasts as he reached the middle button. He heard the slightest intake of her breath as she felt the brief contact. His fingers froze.
He was aroused, and realized dimly he had been for several minutes. It was probably a little twisted, getting turned on while you were wrestling with a woman for the dubious privilege of helping her on with her coat, but Grace McKenna had been giving him the strangest ideas since the day he met her.
He let his knuckles brush her again, then rest on her chest, in the hollow between her breasts. He didn’t look at her, couldn’t. He had never wanted to want this woman, but knew he’d never wanted any other woman more.
He undid the button he’d just fastened.
Grace sucked in another breath. Good Heaven. She was torn suddenly between tears of embarrassment and something entirely different. What had changed, and when, she scarcely knew.
He watched his own fingers slowly unfasten the rest of the buttons on her coat. Still he didn’t look at her. The coat hung open and he slid his hands inside, brushing her waist, smoothing over her hips.
She wasn’t breathing at all now, Grace realized. And she certainly didn’t feel like crying anymore.
Daniel slipped his hands down the sleek sides of her thighs. Because she matched him so perfectly in height, especially with those troublesome heels on, he could almost touch the backs of her knees if he bent his own slightly. Ah, there. Silky nylons over heated skin. His arousal pulsed upward a notch or two. That, of course, was just a bump compared to the surge he got when he ran his hands back up the backs of her thighs and slipped them under her dress. Stockings, thigh-high, with not a thing between the tops of them and her panties. He slid a finger under the elastic tops of the stockings and made them both moan a little.
“I can’t believe you wear these,” he whispered.
“I bought them for a friend’s wedding,” she answered inanely. “They’re all I have.”
“Thank Heaven.”
His head was still bowed, his breath falling heavy on her breast.
“Daniel?”
“Don’t say it’s a mistake,” he whispered thickly. “Please don’t say it’s a mistake.”
She pulled his head up to hers. “I won’t,” she managed to say before he fused his mouth to hers.
He wrapped his arms tightly around her, then, when he found too much between them, levered his body away long enough to rip the coat he’d so recently thought he wanted on her body right back off.
“Grace.”
“I know. Hurry, Daniel.”
He scooped her bottom into his hands and she wrapped those impossibly long legs around his waist. He banged her back against the first wall he found. And pressed ruthlessly forward.
She cried out against his mouth, as frenzied as he. She pulled at the buttons of his shirt and found her normally clever fingers numb. So she used brute strength instead, and for the first time outside her job, was grateful for it. Buttons flew like buckshot.
“Bed,” he muttered when her hands dipped beneath the fabric of his shirt. “Right now.”
He carried her to her room, his wide, work-worn hands—the hands that just days before he had used to protect her against two men who’d meant her harm, she thought giddily—splayed across her bottom. He dropped her unceremoniously onto the bed and began to frantically yank at the rest of his clothes. His pants got stuck around his boots and he nearly toppled onto her before he managed to toe off the whole mess. He dropped down beside her and would have flipped up that slinky little dress and plunged inside, but he caught sight of her face in the dim light shadowing in from the living room.
That look. His brother had been right. She looked at him as though he’d hung the moon.
“Grace,” he whispered against her neck. “Grace.” Again, just to hear it.
Slowly now, calmer, he slid his hands down to her waist, slipped them inside the wraparound dress. The soft fabric seemed to dissolve under his hands and he found skin. He kept his mouth at her neck, nibbling, kissing, while he unwrapped her. Then he went onto his elbows so he could look at her.
Oh, man, where had she got that underwear? Not in Nobel, Idaho. He’d have know about it if there was underwear like that within fifty miles of his hometown.
It was shimmery and see-through, like a tightly woven gold spider’s web. He could see the deep color of her areola through it, and the already tight pucker of her nipples. And the soft, dark down between her legs.
He swore softly, an invocation more than a curse.
“Grace, you’re beautiful.”
Grace could not take her eyes off him. All her life, from the time she’d been tall enough to look in the bathroom mirror until this very moment, she had never believed a single person when they told her she was beautiful. Not her mother or her father, not the people who loved her, and certainly not any man.
But she believed now. His intense expression was testament to it.
He lowered his face to her breast, took a long, slow swipe with his tongue across her already distended nipple, making her arch off the bed. He ducked his head to watch with ardent concentration as her hips met his briefly, then returned that intense gaze to her breasts. He laved the other nipple through the glistening fabric of her bra, then took the wet, stiff tip fully into his mouth. When he pulled it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth, Grace cried out.
He undid the front clasp, swept the pretty bra aside so he could savor her prettier skin. He plucked at the dark crown of one breast with his fingers while he suckled luxuriously at the other, making her crazy. She thrashed about beneath him, her legs shifting involuntarily, her forehead beading with sweat.
“Daniel,” she gasped. “Please.”
“I will,” he muttered darkly against her damp skin, answering a question she didn’t even know how to ask. “Wait.”
He dragged his hand roughly down her body, cupped her. The gold webbing that covered her was already wet through. He peeled it down her legs, monumentally sorry to see it go. Whatever had happened to those cotton panties and the sensible bra he’d been fantasizing about for upward of two weeks, he didn’t miss them at the moment.
He slipped a broad, rough finger across her, skimming lightly over damp hair. She shamelessly pressed against it, wanting desperately for it to dip inside.
“You’re as wet as your mouth,” he said, his voice thick.
He was blatantly immodest, kneeling between her legs, and she felt an entirely rational anxiety when she looked at him. She’d had him in her hands, she’d seen him and measured the length of him, but never with the intention
of having him inside her. She was not a small woman, but that…well, that would never fit.
He was puffing like a bull in a breeding barn, his breath coming out of his nose in great gusts as he quickly protected himself. He looked down, caught the concern in her eyes, gave her a narrow-eyed look.
“You need to tell me now if you don’t want to go through with this, Grace.”
“No,” She shook her head, but couldn’t take her eyes off him. All resolve, all fear, eased from her heart as painlessly as Daniel has eased her clothes from her body. “I want to.”
He kissed her mouth, kissed her breasts, and slipped his finger inside to test and stretch her. And when she thought she might explode from that contact alone, he met her eyes, clasped her hands, and pushed inside.
She’d been very careful to shield her body from this final, intimate invasion—almost as careful as she had been to guard her heart—and it protested for a minute against a lifetime of protection. But he moved slightly inside her, and whispered her name against her ear, and she felt herself softening, opening, welcoming.
Daniel felt his vision gray. Every instinct that had formed his sexuality since he’d been thirteen howled at him. He wanted to pump his hips forward like pistons, take her fast, show her the kind of man he was. Strong and virile and ungoverned. But he held himself as still as he could manage, watching her. Sweat popped out on his skin, the muscles in his arms screamed as he held his weight off her. She’d whimpered when he’d joined with her, and it was only just dawning on him what that little gasp of discomfort might mean. She’d told him she’d never… But it had never occurred to him she was… Oh, man. If he hadn’t been so monumentally aroused, he would have slipped away from her in pure, male panic.
Her eyes focused slowly on his. And she smiled. “Lovely,” she said after a minute, and, impossibly, he managed to smile back at her.
“It gets better,” he promised her gently. He’d do anything to make sure it did.
It did. Blindingly, shockingly better. And when Grace reached for what she wanted, her hips slamming into his, he was there to give it to her.
