by Tara Janzen
“How was the river?” she asked.
“Cold.” A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.
She laughed. “Didn’t seem to bother you.”
“I’m tough.” His gaze caught hers, and the moment of lightness passed. His darkening eyes, filled with a hundred messages, held her motionless beneath the flickering shade and muted sunlight sifting through the cottonwood trees. “I’m leaving, Sarah.”
She’d known the words before he’d spoken, and the answer she’d built in her heart was quickly on her lips. “No.”
He shrugged and lowered his gaze to take a bite of sandwich.
“No, Colt,” she insisted, feeling strong and right. “Nothing can be that bad. There’s no reason to leave.”
“There’s no reason to stay.”
She would have hit him for the thoughtless insult, if she could have hit him at all. Instead, she got to her feet, angry and awkward in her haste to get away. He just as quickly pulled her back down, holding her on her knees in front of him. The bed of the truck was hot through her jeans. His hand was tight around her upper arm, his gaze piercing.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, glaring at him, her anger unabated.
“Will you leave with me?”
“Yes.” There was nothing to hold her in Rock Creek except a lifetime of memories, some good, some not so good, and some downright bad. She was signed up for college in the fall, but she wouldn’t lose Colt for college. She wouldn’t lose him for anything.
“Will you make love with me?” His voice grew more intense, his grip tighter. “Now?”
She stared at him long and hard, then jerked her arm free. “Is this some kind of test?”
He swore and dropped his chin to his chest. When she made a move to leave, he grabbed her again, his hand wrapping around her wrist too tightly for comfort. “No, Sarah. This isn’t a test.” His lashes slowly lifted, and she saw all his hurt return. “This is real. I want you. I want to make you mine, because I’m leaving and I’m going to lose you.”
“You won’t lose me, Colt,” she promised, her tone softening.
A shuttered look of defeat shadowed his face. “Can’t have you. Can’t lose you. What in the hell am I supposed to do?”
She felt helpless. “What’s wrong, Colt? What’s happened?”
“My mom—” He paused and took a steadying breath. “My mom has a new boyfriend.”
“Is that so bad?” She didn’t understand. If anybody deserved a little happiness, it was Amanda Haines.
“He’s married.”
“Oh.”
“And I think she owes him money.” He didn’t think it, he knew it. The man was the landlord of his mother’s beauty shop, and there was never enough money to spread over the bills.
Dammit all. He worked two jobs besides running their small herd of stock. She could have his money, his school fund. All she had to do was ask. Or they could sell the damn ranch. It wasn’t much of a place to begin with and once he went to school, they wouldn’t be able to keep any stock on it at all.
It took Sarah a minute, but she finally pieced together what he was getting at. The awful truth didn’t change her reaction, except to make it sadder.
“I’m sorry, Colt.”
His eyes snapped up to hers, flashes of white burning in the cerulean depths. A sneer curled his lips. “My mother is a whore and you’re sorry. Thank you.”
She would have slapped him then for calling his mother a whore, but he was too fast, rising to his feet. She grabbed his arm instead and stumbled upright to stand in front of him.
“You’ve got no call to go—”
He silenced her with a quick shake of his head, but had nothing to say—nothing he could choke out around the growing lump in his throat.
Sarah saw the change in him and reacted immediately. “Colt, you’ve got it all wrong. Hell, half this town is sleeping with the other half, and they’re all married to somebody else, and it’s not just this town. My aunt who works in a bank in Cheyenne, she says those folks are fooling around all the time.”
“It’s different when it’s your mother.” He spoke the words as damning fact, not opinion.
“Different for you,” she said. “Not different for your mom. She’s just like everybody else, looking for some love.”
The look he gave her tore through her with searing heat. “Just like me, Sarah?” he asked, moving closer. “Looking for some love from you?” He slid his hands down over her hips and pulled her tightly against him, claiming her with the action.
“Colt . . .” Her voice trailed off, tremulous.
“Marry me tomorrow,” he whispered roughly, lowering his mouth to hers. “But be my wife today.”
Two
When he kissed hot and gentle, he was irresistible. His tongue laved and caressed the inside of her mouth, consuming but not devouring, turning tenderness into the pain of wanting and teasing into hungry desire. She responded on instinct alone, parting her lips to taste him more fully, welcoming all of him into her mouth.
Colt held himself in check, dying inside. Kissing her would never he enough. He was already hard.
He broke off the kiss and cupped her face in his hands, holding her gaze with his own. “Daniel and I camped out here over the weekend.” Confusion slipped into the passion clouding her eyes. He explained further. “Our sleeping bags are still in the barn, in the loft.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he touched his fingers to her lips.
“Don’t say no, not yet. Come with me.”
Despite his request, Sarah knew she could say no and he’d take her home. She didn’t say no, however, and she didn’t analyze why. She didn’t dare.
She wanted him. She’d wanted him for years, in the nebulous way girls dreamed about boys. When he’d asked her to the Valentine’s Dance, their flirtatious friendship had begun evolving into love. And with his first kiss he’d pushed her nebulous dreams aside, leaving an unfulfilled ache in their place. Months of those kisses had only sharpened her yearnings and clarified exactly what she was aching for. She just didn’t know how to take the final step. Saying no was comfortable in its way, familiar. It was a refuge beyond confusion and doubts.
But he’d asked her not to say no, not this time, not yet.
She went with him into the barn, her arm wrapped around his damp waist, his arm draped over her slender shoulder, holding her close with a promise of tenderness. The old structure smelled of the new-mown hay Colt and Daniel had baled and stacked the week before. Dust motes drifted through the rays of light slanting through the weathered and cracked boards.
They went all the way up into the loft. From the open hay door, Sarah could see the blue-gray river running clear and free, the tops of the cottonwood trees flaring out against the sky, and the mountains off in the distance pushing through low clouds.
Behind her, she heard him rolling out the sleeping bags, and a blush burned up her cheeks. She couldn’t do this, not even with Colton Haines. She waited for long moments, through the hushed noise of his movements and the silence that followed, building up her courage and the fortitude to say no. She turned.
“Colt, I . . .” The words died on her lips, as soft as the summer breeze ruffling the straight shock of pale hair slanting across his forehead. He was stretched out on the square of padded navy-blue nylon, his body relaxed, yet definitely waiting. One hand cushioned his head and one knee was bent, making a lightninglike pattern of muscular arm, naked torso, and denim-clad leg against the darker cloth. The fingers of his other hand were spread across his lower belly, drawing her attention to the open fastenings of his jeans.
Suddenly Sarah knew it wasn’t making love with him that frightened her; it was the thought of never making love with him, or of having him only one time and not having him again. For once she’d given herself to him, the tables would be turned. She knew it without understanding why. She’d be the one holding on to kisses past p
ropriety and prudence. She’d be the one with the hunger inside. She only had to look at him to know the truth.
All his strength was bared for her to see—the flat, taut planes and the work-hardened curves, every flexed muscle beneath the satin sheen of his skin. Watching him breathe was a lesson in the possibilities of perfection in a man’s body—and he was offering it all to her.
Her gaze followed the path of least resistance, up from his bare feet to the pulse beating in the hollow of his throat. She’d kissed him there, many times, and stopped herself from letting her mouth slide down to his chest. She wouldn’t deny herself again.
She lifted her gaze higher to meet his, and her heart broke at what she saw. His body was all grown up, mature and confident, powerfully male, but the vulnerabilities in his eyes were the essence of youth. The hurt was of a child, and the passion was of a young man who wasn’t at all sure he was going to get what he so desperately wanted.
He’d granted her the power to know these things, to care. He wasn’t hiding behind the arrogance she’d often seen him use. He hadn’t masked his need or his doubts, or his love for her.
She moved away from the barn wall, toward him, one step at a time.
Colt’s gaze was riveted to the sway of her hips, the slender length of her legs, and he forced himself not to move, to wait, to let her come to him. Her jeans had flowered cuffs, and flowers on the little triangles of cloth peaking out of the front pockets. The material matched the collar of her pink knit shirt. It was one of the things he thought was so cute about her, the way she was always matched up and proper on the outside, when he knew she was pretty scatterbrained on the inside. She forgot the craziest things, like where she’d left her gloves a minute after she’d taken them off and to downshift, ever. His last new clutch had been installed in her honor.
She walked through a shaft of sunlight, and the tension in him climbed higher. There was no one like Sarah. She was delicate and strong, sometimes too serious, smarter than anybody else he knew, and beautiful like the fairest of his dreams. Her face was sweetly curved, her skin reminiscent of cream and roses. The gray of her eyes was ever-shifting, full of surprises, yet constant. Her bottom teeth were slightly crooked, and he loved running his tongue over them.
Her mouth knew how to tease him, and often did. Her touch never grew demanding, but he hoped to change that before sunset. He wanted her in ways she probably had never imagined or heard about through whatever grapevine girls used to find out about sex. He wanted to change that too. His most reliable source of knowledge had been a generous older woman, a twenty-seven-year-old barrel racer he’d met the previous summer at a rodeo, who for all her tenderness had never once let him believe he was in love with her.
When Sarah stopped by his side, still standing, he resisted the urge to push himself up and meet her halfway. He wanted her to come to him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it had more to do with completeness than dominance. He didn’t want to undermine her decision with a wrong move, and at this stage, he figured he was in a prime position to make any number of wrong moves.
He’d underestimated her. Sarah sank to her knees besides him, needing little more than his acceptance of what she wanted to give. Her hand drifted across his abdomen, tracing muscles and feeling them tighten in her wake as if she was gathering reins. He moved his hand aside and stretched beneath her caress, granting her his unquestioning compliance.
His skin was warm, with traces of dampness from his swim still slickening his body. Her fingertips glided through the moisture, following a line down the middle of his chest to his navel and the fine dark hair that arrowed beneath his open pants. With only the barest hesitation, she spread her fingers and tunneled them through the silky strands until she held him in her hand.
His body froze. Then slowly, with a soft, ragged breath, he arched into her palm. His response opened the floodgates of a heated, sweet warmth in her and sent it washing through her with tidal strength. His arm came up and pulled her down on top of him, his mouth finding hers with unerring accuracy.
Colt kissed her, forgetting to breathe for long seconds from the pleasure of her touch. He covered her hand with his and held her to him, showing her one way to drive him crazy, and soon he was drawing deep breaths in a rhythm that matched her strokes. When he was sure he couldn’t take any more, he captured her wrist with his hand and rolled her beneath him, gentling the kiss.
Sarah moved with him, unresisting, following his lead in the familiar dance.
“I’ll never last if we do much more of that.” His voice was a rough murmur in her ear, edged with arousal and anticipation.
“I didn’t think lasting was the goal,” she whispered, and heard his soft laughter in reply.
“For what I want, lasting is very important.” He lifted his head, and that shock of hair slid down again to hang in front of his eyes. But nothing could disguise or tame the blue fires banked down to his very soul. “I want you, Sarah. I want you to remember me forever, not because I was the first, but because I was the best.”
He took her mouth in another sweet pantomime of love that transcended the simplicity of the movements. Everything inside her started to unravel in a slow, unwinding spiral. With each thrust of his tongue, the heat in her body rose toward an inevitable meltdown. He undid the buttons on her shirt and slid his hand around to her back to unclasp her bra. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he lifted his head and gave her a quizzical look.
“French,” she whispered, then was both curious and worried when he understood. With a flick of his fingers, he undid the front clasp, and her bra slipped aside.
Colt stared, knowing he never could have imagined such feminine perfection. Descriptions fell over themselves in his mind, tactile words like “creamily soft,” “luscious,” and “ripe,” and words that went straight to his groin, like “sweet on the tongue.” He wanted to gaze upon her, and he wanted to touch and caress, but the overriding command was to taste. Lowering his head, he pressed his tongue to her and relished her quick intake of breath.
Honeyed. Deliciously soft and firm. The taste of her breast, the feel of her in his mouth, finally pushed him into the place he’d wanted to be all day—beyond thought.
He slipped to the side of her, kissing her other breast, and began taking off her clothes, pushing her shirt off her shoulders and down each arm. He unzipped her pants with the cute flowered cuffs and sat up to pull them down over her hips, but he only got them and her cotton underwear partway off. His heart tightened at the sight of the soft curls between her thighs. His breath stopped. His chest hurt.
He looked up into her eyes quickly, instinctively asking for a permission he didn’t wait to receive. His breath returned in a sudden rush, and his gaze lowered, along with his mouth.
A shudder racked his body as he nuzzled her and inhaled her sweet female scent. Confusion ran through him like wildfire. He didn’t know what to do. He’d felt her body tense beneath him. He was frightening her, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t pull away. He tried to remember everything the barrel racer had taught him, but his instincts were a thousandfold more powerful than his memories, guiding him on paths he’d only seen in his dreams.
Shock sizzled through Sarah, along with erotic sensations of dizzying intensity. She clutched at the smooth nylon spread out beneath her. His hand slid up to hold hers, and she was clutching him instead of cloth. He entwined their fingers while he plied bewitchment on her body, his mouth wet and shameless and all over her.
Oh Lord, if she’d known what he was going to do to her, what he could do to her, she never would have found the strength to turn him away, not from the very first time he’d kissed her. Every stroke of his tongue turned her to flame. Every time his hand tightened around hers, the revelation of his love rushed through her.
She wanted to call his name. She wanted to sigh it in prayer. She wanted to love him forever and have him always be hers.
Colt could hardly account for what he was doing. Ever
ything was moving so fast inside of him. He was holding her hand, holding her tight, and still coming apart. He slipped his other hand down her leg, pushing her jeans off as he went. When he got to her boot, he offered a vow of gratitude for the impoverished condition of her footwear. The worn-out ropers were pitifully old, the leather slouched around her ankles, the whole boot stretched out to the point where his slightest tug had her foot free and her jeans half off.
To save himself from finishing before he’d gotten what he wanted, and before he’d had a chance to give all of it back, he moved up her body and captured her mouth. He wished he’d gone ahead and taken his own jeans off, before he’d gotten into the middle of something he didn’t want to stop, not even to make it better. But Sarah, sweet Sarah, seemed to know exactly what he needed. With her help and a minimum of interruption, he got rid of his jeans and came back to her, skin to glorious skin—and everything changed.
The urgency was still there, their breathing fast, their bodies painfully restless and in need, but their love, so close to consummation, was now a quieting balm on all the heat and passion.
Colt kissed her mouth with the barest caress of his lips, and her eyes opened, a light-suffused gray like the sky before dawn. He smiled.
Taking his time, holding himself against her, he bent her knee so he could reach her other boot and remove it. Her jeans followed, flowers and all, to a pile on the sleeping bag.
Then, and only then, did he push into her, just far enough to watch, with a satisfaction that bordered on arrogance, the dreamy way her eyes drifted closed, her lashes fluttering, her head tilting back.
It wasn’t enough.
“Sarah, open your eyes.” He pushed deeper and heard her soft, sighing moan.
“I can’t, Colt . . . when you do that.” But her eyes did slowly open. She wet her lips, her tongue skimming her kiss-bruised mouth in an artless yet utterly provocative gesture.
