Shameless

by Tara Janzen

  She turned to face him, to reason with him or abandon herself to him, she didn’t know which. He fit himself to her even more intimately, and for a long, intense moment her breath wouldn’t come, let alone words. His gaze held hers, fiercely intent, shot through with desire and his need for her, only her.

  “No.” A single word finally came, denying him. More words followed in a voice so soft, even she barely heard it. “We aren’t what we were, Colt. We can’t be. We’re not kids anymore. We can’t pick up where we left off. Life doesn’t work that way.”

  “I don’t want what we were. I want what we are.” His voice was much steadier than hers, with plenty of conviction to back it up.

  Sarah forced away a sudden sensation of defeat. He was stronger than she, stronger and smarter, and more realistic. For she still mourned what they’d had together. In the privacy of her loneliest nights she remembered what they’d been and she missed him. She’d missed him for ten years, well past the point of common sense, or reason, or reality. He’d become the unreachable dream, the unfulfilled fantasy. He wasn’t ever supposed to have shown up in her living room wanting her, tempting her. Those wishes, those daydreams of a broken heart had died a long time ago. He wasn’t supposed to have come back. It was too late, too damn late.

  “We’re nothing, Colt. That’s what I’m telling you,” she said, willing her voice above the intimacy of a whisper. “You’re a—a Navy officer in California, and I’m a pharmacist in Wyoming. There’s no connection.”

  Except, she added silently, for the miles of emotion tangling around her heart and tying her to him. Except for the charge of desire she felt with every pulse beat, the jolt of her senses every time he touched her. Except for wanting him, and remembering him, and always and forever missing him, there was no connection.

  She should be stronger.

  A wry smile touched the corner of his mouth. “You’re wrong. I’m still the same man I always was.”

  “You were a boy, just a boy,” she insisted, looking away.

  He cupped her chin with his hand, and against her will she obeyed the silent command and met his gaze.

  Lamplight shone along the lean, hardened planes of his face. His voice grew quiet and serious, like the azure-fired depths of his eyes. “I wasn’t a boy that night with you, Sarah, and never again afterward.”

  Something in his words hurt her, as if she had stolen something from him.

  “I wasn’t the one who left,” she instinctively said in her defense.

  “You weren’t the one who couldn’t stay.”

  Unheralded, thunder crashed against the sky in a flash of blinding light, startling her and sending her deeper into his arms. The lights in the house flickered, then died, and they were left in the graying darkness of an overcast twilight. His hands tightened on her.

  “Whatever else you’re thinking,” he said, “you have to know we’re right together. Can’t you feel it?”

  She felt it, and it scared her senseless, but she said nothing.

  “I feel it.” He spoke low, his voice taking on the edge of a plea. “I feel it right down through the center of everything I am, and I’ve only felt this way with you. That has to mean something.”

  A long time ago she’d called what he was feeling “love,” but she wouldn’t make a fool out of herself by throwing that powerful word into the conversation. Love was impossible.

  “I’m not saying things are the same. They’re not. I remember—” He broke off and swore softly, his hands tightening on her again. Glancing down for a second, he took a breath, then faced her again. “I never forgot, Sarah. I never forgot anything. I remember how you came to me, how you touched me. I remember how you surprised me.” For an instant a smile creased his cheek, a flash of mischief warmed his eyes. “Lord, how you surprised me.”

  Her face burned. She knew what he was talking about, and she thought it was terribly impolite of him to mention their past intimacies. Impolite and alarmingly exciting, those memories of what she’d done to him, how and where she’d kissed him, and what had happened after the kissing.

  “Things—things are different now,” she stammered, wishing there was someplace to look besides his chest, or his bare, sleekly muscled belly, or the stretched material at the front of his pants.

  “Things are different,” he agreed. She felt his breath in her hair, his mouth on her brow. “But you’re still going to know I’m the man on you, the man inside you . . . taking you over the edge.”

  Yes. She answered him with a silent, near-physical yearning. She knew he spoke the truth, and he made the truth sound like heaven.

  A whisper of cool air on her skin warned her of what he was doing to the buttons down the front of her dress. His mouth roamed over her face, kissing, licking, gently grazing her with his teeth, actions that had immediate effects up and down her body. Not a word of protest could get beyond any one of those effects. He was kissing her and undressing her, and nothing else mattered. No amount of sense and rationality could hold back the wave rolling over her. She needed to feel him, his hands on her, his body, hard and male, sliding against hers. Abandonment it would be, heaven.

  Colt sensed the tension leaving her body, and sensed pliancy and submission take its place. For all his need of her, he felt a predatory satisfaction in winning her once again, in making her his.

  He pushed her dress over her shoulders and down her arms, letting it slide to the floor with a rustling caress. He caught sight of a pink slip trimmed in beige lace, the tiny satin straps rounded against the flat white elastic straps of her bra. Both were so very feminine. Both were pushed aside.

  Her reaction was instinctive—she caught the lingerie before it fell away and revealed her breasts. He didn’t mind. She was softly female in his arms, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, ever held. The crush of her slip against his chest entranced him. Her fragrance surrounded him, fascinating. He ran his mouth down her throat, across her collarbone, tasting and tracing the lines of her body. By the time he reached her breast she was completely his. His name sighed from her lips as she clung to him, letting her clothing fall where it may, reveal what it might.

  His world started coming together, pieces fitting into slots, gears meshing. She’d always been good, so easy, so easy to make good love with. Her responses were genuine, hotly erotic—like the way she lifted her hips against him—and nothing helped him more. He drew her breast deeper into his mouth. God, she was sweet, so utterly female.

  He slid his hands up her thighs and beneath her slip, then worked down her underthings till the hosiery and panties pooled around her ankles. He slipped them off her feet and rose in front of her, his hands sliding over softer, more giving curves, over satiny skin and soft lingerie.

  He liked taking her clothes off. He liked it the way he liked breathing. He liked rediscovering what he’d worked so hard to forget.

  Her hair still reached her breasts, straight and silky, so artless, so feminine, so Sarah. With the tiny straps hanging loose on her arms and her hair tangling over her shoulders, she looked unbound, willing.

  He kissed her mouth, running his tongue over her teeth, remembering all the times he’d held himself in check when they’d been younger, remembering the day he hadn’t and how intense their lovemaking had been. She moved against him, and he automatically returned the favor, and pressing her back against the wall, kissing her harder, pushing her for more.

  He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it. He’d been trained to conquer, and tonight she was his purpose, his ambition. He bunched her slip in his hand and drew it up over her hips, holding it at the small of her back as he slipped his other hand down her body, his fingers sliding into moist, soft folds, into mystery. She moaned into his mouth, starting an avalanche of sensation and arousal he wanted to drown in.

  Whispering half-formed thoughts, incoherent urgings, she moved against his hand, then turned the tables on him, reaching down to free him from his pants. She worked at his button, his z
ipper, his underwear, half inept, and he let her fumble. He let the anticipation lift him to a fever pitch, until she shoved his clothing off his hips. Then he was the one being conquered, the one being taken. She stroked him and stole his breath, telling him she remembered too—how to please him, how to make him hers.

  “Sarah . . .” He groaned her name, his arm tightening around her, as if he was afraid she might try to leave him, release him, when what he wanted was to be captured completely. He hadn’t forced himself on her just for something quick, easy, and empty. He needed her clinging to him, coming apart in his arms, all over him. He needed her weak with fulfillment to make him strong.

  He kissed her eyelids and her cheeks, and the corners of her mouth, indulging himself in her pleasure, emotionally sinking into her. Pushing against her, he measured himself against her readiness, waiting for her to want him. When she did, it was sweet death—the passion of her mouth on his, her hand guiding him to the source of her heat, and her taking him in.

  He swore, none too gently, and apologized, but he kept pushing into her, withdrawing a ways, then coming on again and sliding deeper, hitting a rhythm of the purest physical pleasure. His world narrowed down to the joining of their bodies and the joining of their mouths, to the slick friction of taking her and loving her.

  Warm currents raced and pulsed through Sarah’s veins, converging in private places like cascading pools, each more sublime than the last, magnetic and fluid, a lodestone for the driving, tumid length of him. Their kiss was wild, crazily out of control. When he shifted his hold on her, lifting her higher to meet his thrusts, the rest of the world followed the wildness. She gasped his name.

  Colt needed no more stimulus, no more incentive than her first sweet contraction to trigger his own release. He sank into her, his body going rigid as the first shudder ripped through him and the others followed, all of it rolling over him and back on itself, endlessly. Timeless catharsis. He’d wanted her. He’d wanted her so very badly. Just this . . . only this.

  * * *

  Sarah was limp, completely wrung out, and held on to Colt for dear life. His muscles quivered, and his breath was heavy and ragged in the crook of her neck. She didn’t know how he stayed on his feet, for hers wouldn’t hold her, not yet. She needed him for support, and his body stayed warm, and hard, and reliable, firmly there despite all the latent remains of passion racing under his skin.

  A totally irreverent thought crossed her mind: Maybe once every ten years was enough of this sort of thing. A person wouldn’t last long doing it every day.

  She’d been engaged once, to a man she’d dated for over a year, and in comparison to what had just happened between Colt and her, she and her fiancé had barely managed the most casual of sexual relations.

  Colt was not casual, never had been, not when it came to her. She could take it for one night, though. She dipped her head and kissed his neck, stealing a taste with her tongue. He was salty with sweat, hot, wonderfully male, and probably addicting. The important thing was not to fall in love.

  “Did I hurt you?” His grip on her relaxed, letting her slide down the length of him to the floor. A mistake, judging by the quick hiss of his indrawn breath and his muttered curse.

  “Did I hurt you?” she asked.

  “No.” He lifted his head from her shoulder and recaptured her mouth once, fiercely. “But I’ll give you another chance at it.”

  And so it went, on into the night. He took everything she had and more than she’d thought possible to give. In return he poured all of himself into her, filling her with more than her fantasies had imagined, more passion than she thought she could bear, more love and sadness than she could absorb.

  She knew she was being used. Of that she had no doubts. But the time for saying no to him had been in the church basement, and he was so tender, so painfully honest. He’d made no promises to get into her bed. He’d hardly spoken at all.

  He hadn’t needed to, she admitted on a quiet sigh, pulling her quilt up higher on his shoulder. She hoped she didn’t do anything ridiculous, like never wash her sheets again, but he smelled so good. Not good in the traditional sense, like rain-washed forests, or baking bread. His scent was more animal, muskier, deep and comforting, especially when she was drifting off to sleep half in his arms, just breathing him in.

  He was asleep now. She’d awakened only moments before, still thinking the same thoughts she’d had throughout the evening—or, in truth, since his mother’s death. She’d known Amanda’s son would come home. The rest of it had been a mystery, but he was there in her bed, and dawn was only a couple of hours away.

  He was so beautiful. Moonlight shone along his hair and the hard curves of his arm, down to his broad hand lying open on the patchwork quilt. His face held a look of concentration, but his breathing was even. He’d woken once with a jerk and a gasped cry. She’d held him and talked to him, reassured him she was there. Then she’d kissed him on the cheek, like a mother with a child, and he’d responded soundlessly, like a lover, rolling her over and covering her with his body.

  The trick, she reminded herself now, the important thing was to not make a fool of herself when he left in the morning. Surely she could drag together enough pride to get through a clean good-bye. She must have a whole storehouse of unused pride locked up somewhere inside herself.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of warm, love-sated man. In the morning she was going to wish she’d been stronger.

  But tonight . . . tonight she was sleeping with Colton Haines.

  Six

  Sarah had been right. She woke up alone, and with a quick, stabbing pain she wished she’d been stronger. The breath she forced herself to take did not have the desired calming effect. Instead, it tingled all the way up her nose and pushed the waiting tears nearer to the surface.

  Her bedroom blurred into a watery vision of flowered wallpaper and maple furniture. The draped curtains at the windows masked the brightness of the day, but the quality of light told her it was well past dawn. He’d probably been gone for hours. She wondered if he’d thought about waking her, or if he’d been glad to get away unnoticed and dry of any tears she might have shed.

  She was nobody’s fool, not even Colton Haines’s, but one-night stands were a bit beyond her experience. And he—damn him—he’d given her two, her only two. She wanted to strangle him for leaving her without a word. She wanted to hit him hard, knock some sense into him. But all she had was the pillow he’d slept on, and all she could do was wrap her arms around it and cry all over it, cursing him for leaving her. She knew how to hurt and hate and love at the same time. He’d taught her all about it a long time ago.

  If sex had any power whatsoever as an antidote to grief, then she hoped he felt better. She hoped he was on his way to California feeling a whole lot better than when he’d blown back into her life like a wild summer storm.

  She felt worse.

  Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. She was a woman, not a girl, and she was supposed to know better than to get herself hurt. She’d ridiculously underestimated his potential effect on her emotions, though. Fool.

  A ragged sob burst free, getting past her willpower and her anger. She clutched his pillow tighter, buried her face deeper, and that made everything worse. The scent that had been so comforting when he was sleeping next to her was torture when she was alone. She’d be washing her sheets all right, just as soon as she got herself out of bed.

  He was the one who had talked about feeling something right every time he saw her. Which he’d made a grand effort to do once this decade, she reminded herself. She’d said no such thing—but, Lord, how she’d felt it.

  She groaned and rolled over onto her back, pulling his pillow on top of her chest. Shameless. No other word described what she’d done, what she’d allowed to happen, inviting him inside like that. Yes, he’d been shivering, but he could have shivered himself back to the Regent Motel and she’d have been none the worse.

  Her tears welled up, spill
ing onto her cheeks. What a terrible liar she was. She no more could have sent him to the motel to grieve alone than she could truly hate him. She had high hopes of maturing beyond being in thrall to a pathetically one-sided infatuation, but until that happened she wasn’t going to beat herself over the head for taking what he’d offered.

  As a lover he was passionate, overwhelmingly so, and mostly tender, but rough in ways that had at times left her breathless. She hadn’t been loved as well since . . . since the last time they’d lain together.

  And he hadn’t lied. She would always give him that, even though it put her in a less than saintly light. She’d known when he’d first kissed her in the church what he’d wanted. He’d wanted her, and a true and redeeming pleasure had blossomed inside her at the knowledge, a pride that went beyond appearance and accomplishments to a purer essence. Colton Haines had still wanted her, after all the years, all the changes. He’d still wanted her—for one lousy, glorious night.

  She slugged his pillow, grunting with the power of her punch, giving the down a good uppercut.

  “Ouch,” another voice answered, and she froze with her fist buried in fluff.

  “I guess that’s for me,” his softly modulated Wyoming drawl teased her from across the bedroom. “Unless you always wrestle with the bedclothes in the morning.”

  She peeked over the edge of the pillow for confirmation of his presence before squeezing her eyes shut and sinking back into the bed. He hadn’t left her. He was standing in her doorway, filling it up with his hard, muscled body, dressed in a pair of jeans and a dark western-cut shirt.

  “I have coffee,” he said, and with a start of alarm she realized he was coming closer.

  She popped her head above the pillow, wiping hastily at her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, hoping to hold him off. “I’ll be out in just a minute.” The last word left her on a squeak as he sat down on the bed, very close indeed.