Harlequin Special Edition November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2

by Lilian Darcy

  She could hardly deny it—and didn’t see any reason to. Everything inside her was throbbing, aching, wanting. “It’s been a while for me.”

  “For me, too,” he told her.

  “More than three years?” she challenged.

  “No,” he admitted. “But it’s been more than five years since I’ve been with someone who mattered.”

  And her heart, already precariously perched, toppled over.

  “Be with me now,” she said, reaching for his pants.

  But he caught her hands and gently lowered them back to the bed. “We’ve waited too long to rush it now.”

  He tugged her panties down her legs and added them to the growing pile of clothing on the floor. He shifted farther down the mattress, stroking his hands along the outside of her legs, then circling her ankles and sliding her feet back so that her knees were bent and wide. Then he lowered his head between her thighs and zeroed in on her feminine center. It only took one touch—one slow stroke of his tongue—and she shattered.

  She cried out, shocked by the immediacy and intensity of the sensations evoked by his touch. The pleasure was so incredible. So overwhelming. It was simply...too much. The release was as much emotional as physical, and as her body was still shuddering with the aftereffects, she felt a tear squeeze from her eye.

  But Sutter wasn’t nearly finished yet, and he was already driving her toward the next peak. With his lips and his tongue, he nibbled and stroked, deliberately drawing out her pleasure. He’d always known how to take his time, how to extend the enjoyment of lovemaking for both of them. But right now she wanted him so badly that the pleasure was almost painful.

  “Sutter...please.”

  This time she flew. One minute she was lying on her bed, the next she was miles above it, high up in the sky, soaring on the razor’s edge of exquisite sensation.

  As she floated slowly back toward the ground, his mouth moved up her body. He trailed kisses over her belly, between her breasts. His lips skimmed over a nipple, his tongue swirled around it. And new pleasure started to build all over again.

  She reached between their bodies, wrapped her fingers around the hard length of him and stroked him slowly, enticingly. His mouth found hers again, and his tongue slid deep into her mouth then withdrew. A teasing advance and retreat. She arched her back, tilted her hips, wordlessly begging for the completion they both wanted, needed.

  “Tell me you want me,” he demanded.

  “I want you, Sutter. Now.”

  Always.

  But of course she didn’t say that aloud. She was going to enjoy what they had together here and now without worrying about tomorrow. There was no past and no future—there was only the present.

  He stripped away the last of his clothes and quickly sheathed himself with a condom. Then he rejoined her on the bed, parting her thighs and entering her in one hard thrust. Sex with Sutter had always been good, and she knew that was incredibly rare. He’d been her first love and her first lover, and they’d learned a lot together. While their initial couplings might have been a little hesitant and awkward, they had never been disappointing. Sutter had always been thoughtful and patient, more concerned with her pleasure than his own.

  Obviously that hadn’t changed. He gave her a moment to catch her breath, then he began to move inside of her. Slow, steady strokes that started the tension building all over again. Long, deep strokes that seemed to touch her very core. Then harder and faster, until their hearts were pounding in tandem and they were racing together toward the ultimate pinnacle of pleasure.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the midst of the sensual haze that had descended on his brain, Sutter heard something chime. For a moment the sound was completely foreign to him. It sounded again, followed this time by an elbow in his ribs.

  “Your phone,” Paige mumbled sleepily.

  With sincere reluctance, he shifted so that he was sitting up in her bed and reached down to the floor for his pants and the phone that was tucked in one of the pockets.

  When he pulled it free, the illuminated screen informed him that he had three new messages. Three? He scowled at the phone, but immediately scrolled to his in-box to check the messages.

  His annoyance shifted to concern when he realized that they were all from Jenni.

  Please call as soon as you get this message.

  Need to talk to you ASAP.

  Dammit, Sutter, this is important!

  He touched his lips to Paige’s forehead before he eased away. “I have to make a phone call.”

  “’Kay,” she said, but she didn’t move from her facedown position on the bed.

  Her hair was spread out over the pillow like an inky spill over pale blue cotton. Her skin was paler—the color of fresh cream, the texture of finest silk. He drew the covers back a little farther than was necessary so that he could admire more of that pale skin, the line of her shoulders, the slope of her spine, the twin dimples low on her back, just above the sweet curve of her buttocks.

  She’d always been beautiful, but the skinny girl he’d first fallen in love with had grown into a very shapely woman. A very passionate woman. And though he sincerely wished the flood had never happened, it was hard to be sorry when it was the event that had brought him home—and back to Paige—again.

  “Cold,” she murmured.

  He tugged the sheet up over her again; she sighed contentedly.

  He moved toward the door to have his conversation in the hallway so he wouldn’t disturb Paige. He punched the familiar number and the call was answered on the first ring.

  “What’s going on, Jenni?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jenni?

  Though she was admittedly half-asleep and Sutter’s voice sounded as if it was coming from far away, Paige had no doubt that she heard him speak another woman’s name.

  She strained to listen to what he was saying, but he’d closed the door so she could hear the murmur of his voice but wasn’t able to decipher any specific words. But she knew that he was on the phone with Jenni—the woman who worked as a trainer at his stables and who drank margaritas. Which proved that their relationship wasn’t strictly that of employer and employee.

  Not that he’d denied it. In fact, he’d admitted that they were friends, but that description was both vague and open-ended. Especially considering that she’d told her family that she and Sutter were friends—and now she was naked in her bed after tangling up the sheets with him.

  She rolled over onto her back and let out an exasperated sigh. She was being ridiculous and she knew it—Sutter wasn’t the type of man to take her to bed if he was romantically involved with anyone else. And she’d never been the jealous type. Of course, she’d never had reason to doubt Sutter before. He’d always been the one person she knew she could count on, the one person who would always be there for her. And then he wasn’t.

  But he was here now, and she wasn’t going to spoil what had been a wonderful evening with irrational questions or unfounded accusations. She couldn’t deny her curiosity, though, and when he returned to the bedroom, she kept her tone light and asked, “What was that about?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted, snuggling up behind her and wrapping his arms around her. “Jenni was kind of vague on details, aside from the fact that I’d better fix things or start looking for a new trainer.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I guess I’m going back to Seattle to fix things—whatever those things are.”

  “She just calls and you go running?”

  “It’s my business, Paige. My responsibility.”

  He didn’t even talk to her about it, or ask for her opinion or input. He just made the statement matter-of-factly, as if it should be of no consequence to her. She swallowed. “So when are you g
oing?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She didn’t want to ask, but she had to know if he’d meant what he’d said when he’d promised to stay in Rust Creek Falls. “How long will you be gone?”

  “That I don’t know,” he admitted. “Until I get back and assess the situation, I wouldn’t even want to guess.”

  “Try anyway,” she suggested. “Days? Weeks? Months?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know, but I don’t expect it would be too long.”

  So Paige let it go. Because she couldn’t force him to give her an answer, and she couldn’t force him to stay. And she was an idiot, because she’d fallen for his smooth lines and sexy smile—hook, line and sinker. And he was leaving her again.

  She wanted to bang her head against the wall, but right now her head was cushioned against a nice fluffy pillow and Sutter’s arm was wrapped around her middle. She should tell him to go. If he was planning to leave, he might as well go now. Her throat tightened and her eyes burned as she wondered if she was ever going to learn.

  Oblivious to her inner turmoil, he snuggled closer and his breathing soon evened out, confirmation that he was sleeping. She stayed in the warm comfort of his arms and tried to convince herself that everything was going to be okay, that this time they would make it. But she couldn’t stop the tears that slipped from her eyes.

  * * *

  Sutter woke up alone.

  Paige’s pillow was still indented from where she’d slept and he could smell her perfume on the sheets, so he figured she hadn’t been up for very long. Still, he was disappointed that she’d managed to slip out of bed without waking him. He would have enjoyed easing into the day with her—or easing into her, he thought with a grin.

  He sat up in bed, scrubbed his hands over his cheeks. He needed to shower and shave, then he wanted to make love with Paige again. They’d come together several times through the night, and still his body wasn’t close to being sated. No matter how many times he had her, it was never enough. He never stopped wanting her.

  He considered the possibility that she might be in the shower, but he couldn’t hear the water running—which eliminated another one of his fantasies. So he showered alone and shaved with a disposable pink razor he found in the cupboard under the sink, and then he made his way downstairs. “Paige?”

  There was no response.

  In fact, he suddenly realized there was no sound at all. There was no scent of coffee brewing or breakfast cooking, no footsteps in the kitchen or anywhere else. Then he saw the note propped up on the counter, in front of the empty coffeepot.

  It didn’t take him long to scan the brief message, and as quickly as he did, his euphoric mood plummeted.

  Sutter—

  I’m really glad that we’ve found our way back to being friends again. But as wonderful as last night was, it would be a mistake to let it happen again. What we had was in the past, and I can’t let myself think that we have a future together. Have a safe trip back to Seattle and I hope when you come home again that what happened last night doesn’t make things awkward between us.

  Sincerely,

  Paige

  Sincerely? For real? He was head over heels in love with her and she’d signed a kiss-off note with an impersonal sincerely?

  He skimmed the message again as if doing so might enable him to decipher some hidden meaning, because the words on the page didn’t make any sense to him.

  “...as wonderful as last night was...” Okay, at least she got that part right. Making love with her had been not just wonderful but phenomenal. Even after five years, he’d remembered every little detail of how and where she liked to be touched. And he’d taken great pleasure in pleasuring her, cherishing every soft, sexy sound she made, glorying in the instinctive and sensual movements of her body, loving the way she said his name when he was buried deep inside of her.

  “...it would be a mistake to let it happen again.” He shook his head over that. It would be a mistake to let it not happen again. And he was honestly baffled to think that she could make love with him as openly and passionately as she had the night before and not believe that they were meant to be together.

  He refused to accept it. He grabbed his phone and called her cell. After the fourth ring, the call went to her voice mail. He waited five minutes and tried again, but there was still no answer. He tried sending a text message, asking where she was. She ignored it.

  He considered tracking her down, and Rust Creek Falls wasn’t so big that he couldn’t do it. He wanted an explanation—something more than a scribbled note that didn’t make any sense to him. If it was really over, he wanted her to look him in the eye and tell him.

  He didn’t care that he was expected back at Traub Stables. Nothing was more important to him than Paige. But when she failed to answer his third phone call and another text message, he decided that it might be smarter to give her some time. If she was feeling half as churned up inside as he was right now, it might be better for both of them to talk when her emotions had settled.

  Since he’d promised to return to Seattle, he would do so, even though he suspected that promise had set Paige off—that she’d assumed his decision to go back to Washington was an indication that he intended to return to his life there. But after last night, how could she not know that his life was with her, wherever she was?

  Or maybe her disappearing act this morning had nothing to do with his trip. Maybe she’d simply decided, as she’d stated in her note, that their relationship was in the past and she was ready to move on—without him.

  But that explanation didn’t sit right with him, either. If she’d made the same claim twenty-four hours earlier, he might have believed it. But the connection between them when they’d made love had been more than the joining of bodies—it had been the merging of hearts. Yeah, he knew it sounded corny, but it was true. And that was why her decision to end things when they were just getting started again completely baffled him.

  As much as he puzzled over it, he couldn’t come up with an explanation for Paige’s abrupt change of heart. What he did know was that the next time he saw Paige, they were going to figure things out once and for all. And by “figure things out” he meant that he was going to tell her he loved her, and when she finally admitted that she loved him, too, he wasn’t ever again going to let her go.

  But before he could start on the long journey to Seattle, he had one stop to make.

  * * *

  She was a coward.

  At the very least, she was weak—especially where Sutter was concerned. And that was why Paige had slipped out of her own bed and escaped from her own house in the early hours of the morning while the man she loved was still sleeping. Because she couldn’t handle another goodbye. And because she knew that if he took her in his arms and promised to come back, she would wait for him, counting the hours, the days, the weeks. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that again.

  There weren’t a lot of places that she could go without running into someone she knew, and there were even fewer places within walking distance. She hadn’t considered that his truck was parked behind her car until she stole out of the house with her keys in hand and realized she wouldn’t be able to get out of the driveway. At that point, any rational person would reconsider the plan and perhaps acknowledge that it was both impulsive and desperate. But she wasn’t feeling very rational; she was feeling impulsive and desperate. And so she started to walk.

  She didn’t have a clear destination in mind, and it was probably by habit more than design that she turned in the direction of the elementary school. But once she thought about it, the school seemed like a logical choice. Because it was a holiday, she knew there wouldn’t be many people—if any—at the site today, and she was right.

  She made her way down the barren hall to her classroom and looked around at the open space. It wouldn’t
be too much longer before the desks and cabinets were brought in and displays were tacked up on the pristine walls. But right now it was as empty as Paige felt inside, and she sank down against the wall and let the tears flow.

  A long time ago she’d been certain that she’d shed all the tears she was ever going to cry for Sutter Traub—obviously she’d been wrong. She’d had other relationships in the five years that Sutter was gone, but not one of those relationships had ever ended in tears. Because she’d never cared enough about any other man to mourn the end of their relationship.

  Apparently she was destined to always love the one man who wouldn’t stay with her.

  He’d said that he was looking forward to a future with her, but all it took was one phone call from Seattle and he was gone. He hadn’t even asked her to go with him this time. Of course, she couldn’t have gone if he had asked. She had students who needed her and a lot of preparations still to make before the holidays.

  As she wiped at the tears, she accepted that he was already on his way back to Seattle. He’d tried to call, several times in fact, but she hadn’t answered any of his calls. In the end he’d sent her a text message, telling her that he was on his way to Seattle and he’d call when he got there. She hadn’t responded to that message, either. But she’d taken it as a sign that she could return home without worrying about their paths crossing.

  Sure enough, his truck was gone from her driveway when she turned onto North Pine, but she wasn’t ready to go into the house yet. Not while the memories of last night were still so fresh in her mind and deeply entrenched in her heart. Groceries, she decided. She needed to stock up on supplies, which meant that she’d have to make a trip into Kalispell.