Colton Showdown

by Marie Ferrarella

  To his thinking, Hannah’s first time should be memorable in a good way. That meant, first and foremost, it should be with someone she really cared about, not with some sweaty pervert who’d paid top dollar for her, and secondly, it should be with someone who was around her own age, not some old man with a ton of money to throw around.

  That ruled him out as well.

  Granted, he wasn’t an old man, but he was twelve years older than Hannah was. As far as he was concerned, that meant that the woman whose face haunted him was way too young for him.

  Those two reasons should have been enough to harness any and all his stray thoughts, as well as all the urges that seemed to be mercilessly and ceaselessly battering his body.

  All that was more than logical and reasonable. After all, he prided himself on being a logical and reasonable guy.

  So why was it that he couldn’t make himself remember any of those reasons for more than a few seconds at a time?

  Chapter 13

  The rustling noise barely registered on the perimeter of his consciousness.

  But it was enough.

  Tate sat up, instantly awake and alert, straining to make out the sound he believed he’d just heard. For a second, there was nothing.

  Had it just been his imagination, or was there someone moving around in his apartment?

  And then he heard it again.

  Rustling.

  Movement.

  There was definitely someone out there.

  Tate was out of bed and on his feet, the weapon he kept beneath his pillow in his hand and ready to fire before another two seconds had elapsed.

  Mindful of not making any noise that would alert whoever was there, Tate slowly turned his doorknob and eased the door open in what felt like slow motion. He started to look around. The moment he did, he saw her.

  Hannah.

  Her body language told him that she was completely at ease and she wouldn’t have been if there was someone else in the apartment with them.

  She might have been at ease, but he certainly wasn’t. Not from the moment he realized what she had on.

  He could feel every fiber of his body come to rigid attention and hold its collective breath.

  Hannah was wearing the nightgown she’d wistfully pointed out to him during the shopping spree he’d taken her on.

  She was wearing the nightgown and nothing else.

  The moonlight that had entered, uninvited, through the bay window and was painting everything in the room in soft, golden hues, was doing the very same thing along the outline of her body.

  If Tate hadn’t known that it was impossible, he would have sworn that he’d come precariously close to swallowing his own tongue at the very sight of her.

  He knew that the temperature around him had gone up at least twenty degrees—if not more.

  Belatedly, he lowered his gun and drew in an inordinately large breath. Only then was he able to ask her, “What are you doing up at this hour?”

  Hannah almost jumped as she turned around to face him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” she told him. Her expression was the most sincerely apologetic one he’d ever seen on a person.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He forced himself to look only at her face. Even so, Tate could feel his body temperature rising even more as she began to drift toward him. “I sleep with one eye open anyway—occupational habit,” he added with a self-deprecating smile. “Why can’t you sleep?”

  “Worried, I guess.” She raised her eyes to his and the part of him that wasn’t overheating was absolutely mesmerized. “And restless,” she added. “I feel as if I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “Well, given the hour, I think the logical suggestion would be to go to bed.” He did his best to keep his voice steady, but it was getting more and more difficult just to concentrate on what he was saying and not on the woman he was saying it to.

  Especially since she had somehow managed to get so close to him, he could feel her breathing.

  “Hannah,” he began, his throat closing so tight he was less than one step away from gasping out the rest of the words.

  Her eyes never left his and he felt as if he was drowning in them.

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  He was digging his fingernails into his palms now, trying to distract himself any way he could. It wasn’t working.

  “Didn’t we get a robe to go with that?”

  “No.” She thought a minute, then shook her head. “I did not see one hanging next to it. Why?” She looked down at the clinging nylon, then back up at him. “You don’t like it?”

  If anyone else had asked the question, he would have said it was an out-and-out calculated attempt at seduction. But this was Hannah asking, and it came out as just another innocent question.

  The trouble was, he was not having an innocent reaction to the question, to her or to the nightgown. Highlighted as it was by the moonlight, it was the last word in transparent and consequently left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

  Just as well since, in this particular case, his imagination couldn’t have begun to do her the kind of justice she actually deserved.

  Nothing he could have conjured up held a candle to what he saw now.

  He had to tread lightly here because he was picking his way through land mines that could go off at any second at the slightest misstep.

  “It’s not a matter of not liking it—I do,” he assured her with feeling. “It’s a matter of trying to remember that I’m the one who is supposed to make sure no harm comes to you.”

  Hannah seemed to be able to see between the lines and hear what he wasn’t saying. “You wouldn’t harm me,” she told him with the certainty that only belonged to the pure and the innocent.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, if I were you,” he said as he continued to struggle with himself, trying his best to ignore the very real ache as well as the breathless passion that were all but running wild throughout his entire body.

  Sainthood, he thought. He was definitely a candidate for sainthood if he managed to walk away from this and leave her untouched.

  “But I am,” she told him. “Just as I am sure that you are a good man and that you make me feel very, very safe.” Her eyes were open wide, as if her very soul was communing with his. “And I still mean what I said the other day. Except that I no longer just like you. I love you.”

  She reached up to touch his face and he caught her hand in his.

  That, it turned out, was his first mistake.

  “Hannah, you don’t—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish because she closed the last bit of space between them and now her body was against his, creating sharp arrows of desire that instantly shot all through him.

  “Hannah, don’t,” he whispered, struggling against what he was feeling. Struggling not just against himself, but against her as well.

  He was a man destined to fail and he knew it. Even so, he was not about to surrender his conscience without a fight.

  “Don’t what?” she whispered, taking his hand and placing it on her small, perfect breast. The moment she did, she drew in a long breath, igniting at the point of contact.

  Her heart began to hammer wildly—he could feel it beneath his palm.

  Tate tried to pull his hand back, but the light pressure from hers was enough to keep it just where it was. He was forced to fight not just his own desires, but hers as well, and he knew that he was badly outnumbered—and pretty much doomed to fail.

  “Oh, Hannah,” he groaned just before the last of his defenses crumbled and he capitulated. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he framed her face in his hands.

  Just as when he’d kissed her for the first time, she told him, “I’m not,” and meant it.

  Any sliver of hope Tate might have had of rallying and pulling away from her and his own consuming desires vanished in that moment.

  Tate had no choice but to bring his mouth down on hers. The second he did, he succumbed to t
he very taste of her.

  When she rose on her toes, lacing her arms around his neck and pressing her body against his as she kissed him back, Tate lost all ability to think, to reason, to hold himself in check. All he could possibly hope for was to be able to give her a small measure of the sheer pleasure she’d created within him with that incredibly delectable mouth of hers.

  The rest all took place in a swirling haze that infiltrated his head.

  Scooping Hannah up in his arms, his lips still sealed to hers, Tate carried her into his bedroom and set her down on his bed. The moment he did, he lay down beside her and proceeded—with great care—to open up a brand-new world to her.

  Just as she, with her eager innocence, questing fingertips and unknowingly wicked mouth, opened up one for him.

  Hannah wasn’t altogether sure what made her so very bold or why she knew that, after all this time of being reserved and guarded with men, this was right, but she did.

  Just as she knew in her soul that Tate was the one man she was meant to be with, meant to give herself to, and that it was all right. That what she was doing was right, even if there were no vows to sanction it, no ring on her finger. Right, despite the fact that he was not one of her own people, but an outsider.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  What she was feeling defied definition and was too great to be confined within such narrow things as traditions and timeless rules. She loved him and yearned for him beyond all understanding, beyond the borders of sanity.

  Something had told her the first time she’d felt his hand on her arm that he was the one and that they belonged together. Together for a day, a year, for a lifetime—together for however long it was destined to be.

  And should their paths be suddenly pulled apart, she knew she was going to love him until the last breath was gone from her body—and quite possibly beyond that.

  So it was with something comparable to sheer abandonment that she threw herself into Tate’s embrace, that she absorbed every pass of his lips along her skin, every caress of his hand along her flesh.

  Abandonment yielded a euphoric ecstasy.

  There were things happening to her, things a girl raised the way she had been hadn’t even begun to dream about or imagine. Wonderful, delightful things that felt like intoxicating, blissful explosions all throughout her body.

  She didn’t know where to race within her mind in order to absorb everything, cherish everything.

  It overwhelmed her.

  Until he suddenly caught her hand, stopping her.

  She looked at him, wide-eyed and confused. “Am I doing it wrong?” she asked.

  “No, you’re doing it right. Too right,” he told her. He wasn’t ready for the final ascent and if she’d touched him like that one more time, she would have made it begin.

  The darkest, hottest and deepest spot in hell had been officially reserved for him when he died and he knew it. He was afraid he didn’t have the will or the power to stop himself.

  Only Hannah could do that and she wasn’t stopping him.

  With every twist and turn of her body, every sound that came from her lips, she was doing the exact opposite. She was urging him on.

  He caught her hands a second time and she looked at him, dazed and confused.

  “No, Hannah, we can’t do this.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in a small, puzzled voice. “Don’t you want me?”

  “Not want you?” he repeated. “Oh, God, I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you.”

  “Then I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you do this? Why won’t you make love to me?”

  “Because it has to happen the right way. Not here, not on the run. It should be a feast, not a snack. Your first time should be memorable—a banquet, not a sandwich snatched up in haste.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and held her to him, his own heart racing as he struggled to bank down his chaotic emotions. “You deserve the best of everything,” he told her.

  She raised her head, her eyes meeting his. “I have it right here,” she whispered, her meaning clear. And then she smiled up at him. “You are a good man, Tate. A noble man.”

  “That’s me, noble,” he echoed, doing his best to rouse his sense of honor and use it to smother the smoldering embers of his desire.

  “Would it be too much to ask you to sleep in my bed with me?”

  “Hannah—” he began with a warning note.

  “Just to sleep,” she emphasized. “I would feel safer.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  “In my village, people who are to be married do it. They have a bundling board between them so that each stays on his or her side of the bed.”

  And no one ever leaped over the board, right? he thought sarcastically. But she looked so earnest that when she followed her request with “Please,” he couldn’t bring himself to turn her down.

  “All right,” he said reluctantly, in his heart knowing that this would be the biggest challenge he had ever met.

  They had no board, so they used an old broom he found shoved into the pantry, laying it between them on her bed.

  Hannah fell asleep almost immediately.

  Tate did not.

  Instead, resigned to a sleepless night, he watched as she slept. And somewhere in the middle of the night, it occurred to him that if he actually were capable of loving anyone, Hannah would have been the one he loved.

  Chapter 14

  Hannah woke up slowly, by degrees, reluctant to abandon the comforting embrace of sleep. Afraid of what she might find when she was awake.

  The kidnapping had done that to her, stolen her peace of mind, thrown her headlong into a world where she did not belong. Shown her the brutality of life. Robbed her of her natural bent toward pure happiness without hesitation.

  When she finally opened her eyes to find Tate next to her, propped up on his elbow and just looking down at her, a bemused smile curving his mouth, a sense of relief washed over her. Last night hadn’t been a dream and its effects burst on her mind all over again.

  And once it did, the expression on her face matched his.

  “Good morning,” she murmured softly, stretching beneath the blanket.

  Though she was covered, Tate could clearly make out the outline of her body. Make it out and feel himself responding to her all over again.

  Damn, but he didn’t recognize himself, not even a little. This new person he’d become was in love with a woman he hadn’t even made love to. How the hell had that happened anyway? Granted, sex had never been a driving force for him. He’d always enjoyed the intimacies with women, then moved on because there was so much else going on in his life.

  The prime elements in his life were, and had always been, his family and his career. Finding someone to share his bed—and, ultimately, his life—had never once been a priority with him—or even a distant third.

  If he were being completely honest about the subject, had it turned out that he was never to find the right woman to spend his life with, well, he wouldn’t have felt incomplete. There was so much else to occupy his time and his mind.

  But one night with Hannah—just watching her sleep for God’s sake—had changed his resolute position—and he couldn’t even say why. He just knew that it had. Knew that he would do whatever it took to keep Hannah safe. And that, if he could, he would keep her in his life for as long as he feasibly could before letting her go back to her world.

  Not that he wanted to keep Hannah against her will, because he cared far too much about her to do that to her. But if she seemed the least ambivalent about going back, he would do what he could to persuade her to remain in his world, rather than to return to the quaint world she’d always known.

  With a slow, light movement, he brushed aside the lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes.

  “Good morning, yourself.” He could go on looking at her like this forever, Tate thought and for a moment, wished that circumstances were such that he could. “Did y
ou sleep well?”

  She smiled and nodded. “Very well, thank you.” He noted that there was nothing shy or withdrawn about her smile anymore. It was the smile of a woman who was confident about the brand-new world she’d been initiated into.

  Hannah stretched again, more languidly this time, and he felt himself losing ground fast. “You keep doing that and I’m going to forget all about getting up.”

  A delighted laugh escaped her lips as she deliberately stretched again, this time watching his eyes as she did so. There was mischief in her own.

  Suddenly pulling her to him so that her body fit against his, Tate told her, “You have no one to blame for this but yourself.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” she answered, doing her best to look solemn. She didn’t even come close to succeeding.

  The next moment, there was no more time for talking as she sank into his kiss.

  It took them almost two hours before they finally were dressed and able to leave the apartment. Both hungry, Tate was taking her out for breakfast. Hannah had protested the need to go out, saying that she was more than happy—and willing—to cook for him. He stuck to his original plan, saying that he didn’t want her to feel obligated to wait on him in any manner.

  “You have all the time in the world to stand over a hot stove when you go back to your village,” he told her. “You deserve to enjoy being spoiled a little.”

  She inclined her head in agreement, saying nothing. She felt a little guilty about it, but right now, she didn’t want to think about going home. She dearly loved her brother and his family and there was no denying that she missed them, but there was something wonderfully alluring about New York City and the world that Tate had opened up for her. Though she knew she didn’t really belong in it, she wanted to be able to “visit” it for just a little while longer.

  When they came downstairs to the foyer, Hannah nodded a greeting at the doorman on duty, but the main focus of her attention was the man whose arm she’d slid her own through.