Payne’s cool gaze started at her feet and was a scorching blue flame by the time it tangled with hers. While another man might have made a compliment, he didn’t bother. He didn’t have to. She’d read everything in his gaze and it was a lot more thrilling that any token remark he might have made. A man of action, he strolled across the room, tilted her chin up and very deliberately kissed the strength right out of her backbone. Emma senses instantly caught fire and she sagged against him, offered her lips up for his taking.
All week long he’d been desperate, hurried, seemingly unable to help himself when it came to being with her. He’d been driven, for lack of a better explanation. But tonight he was different. There was a reverence in his still-hungry touch that made the backs of her lids burn, an unspoken emotion boiling under the surface of this particular siege.
Emma allowed him to set the pace, fell into his rhythm. He kissed and suckled, rubbed and kneaded, slowly slipped her gown off her shoulders, then stood back and admired her as it fell into a satiny puddle around her feet.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Payne told her, his voice oddly thick.
Emma smiled. She certainly felt that way when he looked at her like that. Like she was dipped in chocolate, rolled in icing, covered in sprinkles with a cherry on top and he hadn’t had a good sundae in...never. A warm flutter winged through her belly, making her breath catch in her throat.
“Thank you,” Emma finally managed. She stepped forward, slowly unbuttoned his shirt and slid her palms over the wide expanse of his chest. Supple skin, firm muscle...masculine perfection. “You’re pretty damned beautiful yourself,” she said, feeling her lids flutter beneath the weight of delicious sensation. Touching him made her drunk with longing, made her want to wrap her legs around his waist and sink onto his sex--the ultimate fix.
As though he’d read her thoughts again, Payne’s gaze burned even hotter. He shrugged out of his shirt and shucked his pants and boxers, kicking them aside. His dick jutted proudly forward, huge and mouthwatering, just like the rest of him. He nudged her backward toward the bed, kissing her all the while. Emma felt the cool quilt at her back and a hot man on top of her and the sensation was...indescribable. Her womb contracted, coating her folds and a hot, insistent buzz beat upon her clit, making her squirm toward that part of him she so desperately needed.
Murmuring masculine sounds of pleasure, Payne kissed and licked his way down her body. Her neck, her breasts, a long deliberate trail down her abdomen, stopping only long enough to sample her bellybutton. Then he parted her curls and blew a steady stream of hot air against her weeping flesh.
Emma opened wider for him, shamelessly baring herself to him. He dragged a finger down her folds, dipped deeply inside, gathering even more juices, then painted her outer folds and aching clit with them. She bit her lip and squirmed beneath his ministrations, felt her stomach tremble as he dabbled and played. Then, without warning, he fastened his mouth upon her and she arched up off the bed, so intense was the sensation.
He sucked hard, slipped a finger deep inside of her and hooked it around, locating a patch of super-sensitive skin she hadn’t known existed. He worked his tongue against her clit, massaged her inside until Emma thought for sure she would pass out from the pure joy bolting through her. She writhed beneath him, knew that release was coming and when it did, would come hard.
Just when she was certain he couldn’t do anything more to please her, anything more to surprise her, he pressed a knuckle against the rosebud of her bottom and half a second later her world shattered.
She came violently, so forcefully that she skated the fringes of passing out completely. Her head thrashed from side to side, her back arched away from the bed and she fisted her hands in the quilt, hanging on to consciousness as a silent yawning scream of release tore from her throat.
Sweet God, Emma thought, then Save me, as Payne suddenly loomed between her legs--his gaze, intent and desperate and filled with some sort of hidden meaning she couldn’t understand, bored into hers--and then thrust deeply inside of her and she came again, this time harder than the first. It was savage yet tender and her silly heart melted right along with the rest of her body.
Payne paused, seemed to be making sure she could take the rest of what was to come. Utterly drained but strangely energized, Emma smiled faintly and flexed her feminine muscles around him, drawing him deeper into her body. “Don’t stop,” she said, breathing heavily. “It’s insulting.”
* * *
Payne plunged back inside of her greedy little body, felt her legs wrap around his waist, her heels dig into his ass, urging him on, and raced as hard and as fast as he could toward release.
He could still taste her on his lips, could have fed between her thighs all night. She’d been warm and sweet and wet and delicious and he’d been damned lucky he hadn’t come when he’d tasted her.
He’d wanted things to be different tonight, to show that he more than desired her--that he needed her--but somewhere past the first kiss, the first brush of her hands across his chest, he’d lost sight of that goal because his senses had been clouded by another. He’d wanted to be tender, to be gentle, to make love to her in that cool, methodical way that he’d painstaking perfected, that his reputation was known for.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t.
One taste of her, one her touch from her and he became an animal, unable to control even the most basic urges. Payne knew there was nothing gentle in the way he was taking her--he’d fucked her half-way across the bed already and if he didn’t back off, he’d undoubtedly fuck her right off the mattress, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Instead, he seemed to be determined to take her so hard and so completely that the idea of ever making love to another man would get jarred right out of her stubborn little head.
Later, when the blood returned to his brain, he would realize that this probably wasn’t the best course of action--in fact, that it made absolutely no sense.
But for the moment, while she tightened around him, bit at his shoulder, clawed, screamed, grunted and groaned from his brutal bedding, it made perfect, logical sense.
He could feel release spinning like a tornado in the back of his balls, preparing to sweep down the length of his aching dick and erupt into her and the idea that his seed was about to flood her womb--that he’d been so caught up in taking her that he hadn’t taken precaution--was such a friggin’ turn-on, he dug his toes into the mattress, angled deeper and came hard. He should have been scared, no terrified, and yet he wasn’t.
A long, keening groan tore from his throat and his back spasmed from the force of the climax. When the last contractions pulsed through him, Payne carefully withdrew, then rolled onto the mattress next to her and pulled her to him.
Breathing heavily, limp as a dishrag all over, he pressed a kiss at her temple. “I don’t want this to be over, Emma,” he said, laying it all on the line.
She turned and looked up at him. “Who said it has to be?” She paused, ran a hand over his chest. “My tub’s big enough for two. Wanna share a bubble bath?”
Utterly spent, Payne chuckled softly. “That’s all I could share at the moment.”
Emma disentangled herself from him and started toward the bathroom. She shot him a droll look over her shoulder. “Don’t get up. I’ll do it.”
“What?” he asked innocently. “Did you need my help?”
He must have drifted off to sleep because when he next awoke--it couldn’t have more than a few minutes, he could still hear the water running into the tub from the bathroom--Emma was standing next to the bed, her face a white mask of pain and anger. Payne blinked, pulling her into focus.
And that’s when he saw it.
The pocket-watch dangled from the chain around her fingers and spun slowly, much like the alarm suddenly swirling in his belly.
“When did you find this?” she asked, her voice ominously controlled, completely out of character.
“Tonight,” Payne answered truthfully. He
sat up, glanced at his pants lying in the floor and a horrible suspicion took hold. “Did you go through my pockets?”
Had she been doing that all along? Payne suddenly wondered. Had she been using him? Staying close to him so that if he did find the pocket-watch before her, she could take it from him? Granted in the beginning he’d used much of the same strategy, but he would have never taken it from her.
“Watch your back, man,” Guy had said. “Sounds like this chick is capable of putting a knife in it.”
Oh, no, Payne thought, mentally shaking his head. This could not be happening. He could not have allowed himself to be hoodwinked by a girl. He could not have allowed himself to get knocked so far off his game--to be such a bad judge of character--that she had completely pulled the wool over his eyes and made a fool of him. He set his jaw so hard he feared it would crack and an image of his drunken, miserable father loomed largely in his mind.
Emma studied him for a long moment, then her lips formed a smirk and she shook her head. “Wondering if I’m that ruthless, Payne?” she asked, once again using that uncanny ability of peering into his head. “Wondering if you’ve misjudged me? Don’t,” she said. “It’s insulting.”
She dropped the pocket-watch into his lap, then marched to her door and opened it. “Get out.”
“Emma--“
She glared at him with so much hatred he felt himself flinch, and in that instant he realized he’d made a terrible mistake. “Get out,” she repeated.
And she meant more than out of this room--she was kicking him out of her life as well. Panic made his throat tighten and his stomach sour.
Rather than provoke her further, he silently gathered his things, then paused at the door. “Emma, let me explain. Look, I’m sor--“
“Save it,” she said, her gaze trained on the hardwood floor beneath her bare feet. “Goodbye Major Payne.”
She gave him a none-to-gentle shove past the threshold, then quietly closed the door. Unfortunately it wasn’t thick enough to disguise the soft thud of her forehead hitting it, or the quiet sobs which issued gut-wrenchingly from the other side.
Payne squeezed the pocket-watch so hard he felt it cut into his palm. His chest ached and the urge to go right back in there to her and apologize until she had to believe him was almost overpowering. Unfortunately, if he’d learned anything about Emma Langsford over the past few days, he’d learned that she did everything on her own time schedule and listening to him, or better still, forgiving him, weren’t in the scope of her composure at the moment.
Possibly not ever.
Way to go, Specialist, he thought with a bitter grin as he glared at the pocket-watch in his bleeding hand. Mission accomplished.
CHAPTER 13
“Leaving so soon, dear?” Norah asked as Emma handed over her room key. “I thought you’d planned to stay through the weekend.”
Emma swallowed. She couldn’t tell her the truth, that there was no longer any point in staying. “Something’s come up,” she said vaguely.
Norah printed out her receipt and indicated where Emma should sign. “Well, we’re sorry to hear that. If you’re ever back in the area, we do hope you’ll stay with us again.”
It was unlikely that she’d ever be back in the area and she was years away from being able to afford to stay there again--unless someone else was picking up the tab, anyway--but that was hardly worth mentioning, so Emma merely smiled and waited for her receipt.
If she wouldn’t have had to wake Norah up last night, chances are she would have packed her bags and left right after Payne had walked out of her room. That’s what she’d wanted to do, because knowing that he was in the room next to hers had been utterly excruciating.
Whatever Emma might have expected out of him, his cheating at his own rules hadn’t been it. In fact, she hadn’t been able to decide which had been the greater betrayal--that he’d found the watch and had failed to tell her, or that he’d automatically assumed the worse from her when she’d confronted him with his own duplicity.
Did you go through my pockets?
Mr. Impassive might have mastered hiding his thoughts from everyone else, but for reasons she couldn’t begin to explain--a twisted act of fate, she imagined--she’d never had any problem peering into that frighteningly pragmatic mind.
Point of fact, she’d accidentally kicked his pants when she’d walked back to the bedroom from the bathroom, and the pocket-watch he’d told her that he didn’t believe existed either had come sailing out of his pocket.
She’d been so stunned--so shocked and hurt--that it had taken every iota of willpower she possessed not to hurl right there on the spot. Brian Payne, a man she’d come to respect because his honor was such an integral part of his personality, had lied to her.
Actually, it was the same sort of lie of omission that she’d employed when she first met him, but now that she was on the receiving end of one, she couldn’t say that she altogether appreciated the difference.
Subtle, hell.
A lie was a lie, no matter how one tried to spin it.
He’d said that he’d found the watch last night, but she couldn’t imagine when and, considering that he hadn’t told her about it, she had no way of knowing if that was the truth or not as well. He’d seemed sincere enough, but then she never imagined that he’d have found it and kept it from her to start with. This was precisely the sort of pointless circle her brain had been spinning in all night long, and between the head-ache it had given her and the heart-ache compliments of Major Payne, Emma was feeling pretty damned bruised at the moment.
She’d watched him lump her into the same category as those money-grubbing step-mothers he’d had--a little tidbit he’d shared over the course of the past few days--and she’d been so devastated by the unfair comparison that it had been all she could do not to cry. Thankfully, anger had saved her long enough to keep the flood back, but the instant she’d gotten him out of her room, Emma had dropped her head against the door and the let the gates of her despair open.
Dropping that pocket-watch--her future--back into his lap had been the proudest and most disappointing moment in her life, one she imagined would ultimately define her. She wouldn’t have taken the damned thing--despite rumors to the contrary, she was not ruthless and had fully believed that Payne had known that, too.
Clearly she’d been wrong.
But letting it go--knowing what it was costing her-- had been pretty damned hard, also. Emma let go a bracing breath and accepted her receipt from Norah.
Regardless, Payne had won fair and square--he had put his hand on it first and per their rules, he was rightly entitled to it. She didn’t know what he owed Garrett, but she hoped like hell it was worth it. He’d betrayed her trust and broken her heart for it.
Emma murmured a distracted thanks to Norah, then turned to go.
“Oh, wait!” Norah said. “I’ve got something for you.”
For her? Emma thought. What? More cookies? She brightened marginally, thinking she could use a little sugar therapy.
“Brian Payne checked out early this morning as well, but left this for you.” She grabbed an envelope from beneath the desk and handed it to her. “He told me to make sure that you got it and I’m such a ninny, I almost let you walk out of here with out it.” Embarrassed, she shook her head.
Emma’s heart jolted into an irregular rhythm. Payne had left her something? She accepted the envelope with slightly shaking hands and new from the uneven weight that it held Robert E. Lee’s pocket-watch. Her mouth parched and little spots danced before her gritty eyes, forcing her to sit down in the nearest wing-chair near the door.
She carefully opened the envelope, confirmed that the watch was in there, then pulled out a note that he’d left for her. His crisp masculine scrawl filled a little piece of paper she recognized from the pad in her room.
Emma,
Sorry’s inadequate, but I hope that you’ll believe me when I say that I’d intended for you to find the watch all along
. I knew you’d never let me pay you for it without actually finding it first--your word was worth more than my money, right?--but that had been my plan, such as it was.
You needed to prove that you could find it first and you needed the money. I don’t begrudge you that or think any less of you for wanting it, despite the way it might have appeared last night.
I merely needed the watch, but it’s not worth what it’s cost me.
Take it and start vet school, and always know that I never intended to hurt you.
Yours,
Payne
P.S. Matilda was wearing the damned thing last night. That’s how I found it. Evidently Norah had been at the estate sale, but her name hadn’t been on our list. I thought you might have been wondering...
Matilda had been wearing it? Emma thought, astounded. The pig? She thought back, remembered seeing the top hat and tuxedo and...and a pocket-watch. That’s what he’d hung around for. He hadn’t wanted to talk to Matthew--he’d wanted to talk to Judith and get a look at that watch. And he’d wanted her to find it first, then he’d planned to buy it from her? Emma paused, considering.
If she had found it first, had proven herself, then she imagined she would have allowed him to buy it from her. She would have won the bet for Hastings, would have had the money from Payne to reimburse Hastings for initial payment, as well as the extra to get started in school. Payne would have had the pocket-watch to present to Garrett and everyone would have been happy.
Even Payne, who would have plunked down thousands of dollars simply to be able to hand the watch over to Garrett.
Though she’d tried to worm it out of him, Payne had never told her what he owed Garrett, but it had to be something substantial--something important--to go to all of this trouble. Trouble he could have avoided by simply finding the watch himself and moving on. What on earth would prompt him to--
Men Out of Uniform: 6 Book Omnibus Page 29
