by Lucy Monroe
He felt an immediate and powerful reaction below his belt. He’d been semiaroused all evening, but now he was so hard, he was like to bust through his zipper.
He sucked in air like a man who’d been kicked by a bull.
She went stiff and stopped moving. “Jake?”
“What?” He sounded surly and he hadn’t meant to, but it was taking all he had not to do something about the hard-on in his pants.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“You’re, um…excited.”
And that surprised her? “If I didn’t react to the feel of you this close, I’d be dead from the neck down.”
She choked on a laugh. “You’re definitely not dead.”
“No. Neither are you.” Her nipples were pressing against his chest in a way designed to drive a sane man loony.
“When I’m with you, I feel more alive than I did promenading in my first trunk show.” The breathless pleasure in her voice finished the job her body had started.
“Good,” he managed to get out, though his mind was turning off and instinct was taking over.
Maybe she’d been right and this wasn’t such a good idea.
He let one hand drift down to settle against the top curve of her bottom and used the other to press against her back. He wanted to be naked with her, but he had to dance right now.
She wiggled against him and it excited him no end, but he got the impression she was trying to find a less intimate position. “You’re acting like you’ve never danced with an aroused man before.”
“I haven’t.”
He’d have to travel halfway around the world to believe that one. “Right.” What other condition could a man be in dancing with her?
Bella’s small hands slid up his chest, leaving a burning trail of sensation in their wake, and locked around his neck. “I don’t let my dates hold me this close and to tell the truth, I don’t dance much either.”
“Too busy flirting?”
“Too busy working. I can count the number of men I’ve dated in the last year on one hand, Jake, and it wouldn’t even use all my fingers.”
She sounded like she was trying to tell him something.
“Were you coming off a bad relationship?” Something worse than having her private life splashed all over the gossip papers?
“I’ve never had a serious relationship.”
It was his turn to stop and stare down at her. The top of her head gave nothing away. “Never?”
“I told you, I was too busy working.”
“So, what are you saying? You’re a virgin?” He asked it jokingly as he started moving again, and about fell over when he felt her nodding against his chest.
She pulled back a little so he could see her face. “My parents raised me to see sex as a commitment and I’ve never been that committed.”
“You didn’t even experiment?” She was too beautiful to be that innocent. It simply wasn’t possible.
“I didn’t have time.” The clarity in her velvet-brown eyes compelled him to believe her. “My job required all the hours of my day not dedicated to going to school and sleeping. If I wasn’t modeling, I was exercising, or taking a class in nutrition, weight lifting, photography… If I thought it would help me do my job better than anyone else, I did it. I knew I had my size against me so I was determined to make it up in other ways.”
“But you’re twenty-six.”
“I know how old I am,” she said, sounding a mite testy. “When I finished with school, I started working longer hours and traveling.”
“Men must have wanted you.”
“Maybe. Not the right kind. I didn’t want them.”
“You want me.” But he wondered what she meant by the right kind.
“Yes, and to tell you the truth that scares me to death.”
“Why?” Did she think he wouldn’t take her inexperience into consideration when he made love to her?
“Because I was more devastated by the thought of never seeing you again than I was when my last boyfriend broke up with me and we’d been dating for weeks. He’d even mentioned marriage.”
She was saying that this thing between them was more than physical for her. He liked hearing that, because no woman, no matter how sexually tempting, would have gotten to him the way she did if there wasn’t some primitive emotional link there.
“Don’t let it scare you, honey. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Will you be able to help it? You said it. You want me, but it’s physical for you.”
“It couldn’t be this strong and only be physical.”
She didn’t believe him. He could see it in her eyes, but he didn’t know what to say to convince her. So he pulled her against him again and danced some more. Words were his sister’s stock in trade, not his.
But Bella’s silence got to him.
It felt loaded, like the calm before an unbroken horse started bucking.
“I can’t promise you forever.” Not yet, maybe never. He didn’t know what he wanted from her besides time to sate a desire that grew with each passing minute. “But I can promise you it will be worth it.”
“That was never in question,” she muttered against his chest.
He hoped it would be enough, because he had to have her. They danced in silence for several songs, his body slowly getting more and more aroused by the sensation of having her so close to him.
It was a really stupid thing to do.
How was he supposed to walk back to the table without letting the whole restaurant know what kind of condition he was in? Heck, he didn’t know if he could walk, period.
He set her about six inches away from him, his hands settled on her waist.
Her eyes opened, the dark brown irises hazy and unfocused. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s either carry you out of here over my shoulder and up to my room, or get myself back under control.”
“I probably wouldn’t fight you if you did the over-your-shoulder thing…” Her voice trailed off, her cheeks staining pink in an unexpected, but charming way.
He glared at her, though, his libido having gone into nuclear meltdown at her words. “Don’t say things like that.”
She jerked, her eyes going wide. “I’m sorry.”
“You’d be sorrier if I took you up on it.”
“Would I?” Her expression was back to hazy.
It was all he could do not to curse to hell and back, out of frustration because it was obvious she was turned on just as badly as he was. Only, if he took her to bed tonight, there was no saying she wouldn’t leave Texas in the morning.
He wanted more than a feverish night of coupling and she deserved more. She was a virgin.
She’d also as good as admitted she had feelings growing for him besides passion.
She needed tender taking care of. Not to be the recipient of the result of a build-up of lust gone out of control.
“Come to my ranch with me.”
“Christmas is in two weeks.”
“So? Do you have a lot of Christmas shopping to do yet? I’ll help you.”
“Seriously?”
If it meant getting to spend the time with her, he’d go to the next town-council meeting, and those were about the word in boring. “Yes.”
“I’d really like that, but…”
“Are you worried about staying at my ranch with me all alone?”
“I don’t know you well,” she said, hedging.
“My sister lives with me. Her name is Lise.”
“Lise Barton, the writer? I love her books!”
“Yep. Did that tip the invitation in my favor? Because if it did, I can even get you a whole collection of signed copies of her books.”
“You make it sound tempting.”
“It’s a cruel blow to a man’s ego for him to take second place as enticement behind a bunch of books.”
Bella’s expression turned all too serious and vulnerable. “You’re n
ot. You’re too enticing, if you want the truth.”
“Oh, yes. I always want the truth from you.”
“Will your sister be there the whole time?”
“No. She’s there for the next couple of days and then she’s going off on a research trip to Paris.”
He waited to see if knowing they’d be alone for several days would turn Bella off the idea.
“I’d like to come.”
The temptation to pick her up and carry her all the way to his ranch right that minute was so strong he had to force himself to step away from her and let her go completely. “Can you travel early tomorrow morning?”
She nodded, her eyes mirroring doubts he had no trouble reading.
“It’s going to be all right.”
“Yes.”
“We can’t walk away from this.”
“I don’t want to.”
Those four little words had him smiling off and on for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Bella climbed into Jake’s big black Suburban. “This thing is huge.”
“You should see my pickup truck.”
“You have a truck too?”
“Of course I do. I run a ranch, but I like this for town driving.”
“Most people would not consider this a town vehicle.”
“I’m not most people.”
She looked at him…dressed more casually than she’d seen him to date, in a pair of jeans and tight-fitting ribbed T-shirt under a black-and-navy-checked flannel shirt…and had to agree. He was more man than any other male she’d ever known, except maybe her brother who was a mercenary…and then it was a tie.
It took a few hours to reach the ranch and they talked the whole time. His father had died only a few years ago and from all Jake said, Bella couldn’t grieve the man’s loss. He sounded like one of the coldest human beings she’d ever heard of. Way different from her own affectionate and caring father.
When she told Jake so, he nodded. “The ranch was the only thing that ever really mattered to him. He would have had a heart attack if he’d lived long enough to see me signing drilling rights over, but it’s made me enough money to keep the ranch a going concern despite the shaky beef market.”
“You really like living on a ranch?” She couldn’t imagine being raised in such isolation. Miles from the nearest neighbor.
“You’ll love it too.”
Maybe. She’d had her fill of people, especially in the past weeks when the tabloids had done their best to assassinate her character along with the bad-girl reputation Lexi valued so highly.
“I’ll only be there for a week or so.”
“We’ll see.”
She tried not to read too much into those two little words, but she liked the sound of them and she smiled. “Yes, we will.”
The ranch house was big, but not ostentatious. The wrap-around porch was painted white and so was the trim, but the rest of the house was a soft, buttery yellow.
Roses grew along the front of the porch, though they weren’t in bloom. It wasn’t snowy or anything, not like back home around Christmas, but it was winter…even in Texas.
Jake came around and opened her door, lifting her from the SUV with two hands around her waist. He didn’t put her down, but held her up, her face close to his, her feet dangling six inches off the ground.
“I have to kiss you.” The stark need in his voice acted like an aphrodisiac on her senses and she didn’t even think about playing hard to get.
It had been there in the car, shimmering between them the whole way here. This wrenching hunger to connect on an intimate level.
“Yes.”
Jake bent his head, blocking out the winter sun and mesmerizing Bella as his lips came closer to hers, the sunlight creating a halo-like glow around his head. His green eyes, turned dark by the shadow, stayed open too and they watched each other as their lips met for the first time.
His hard mouth pressed gently against hers and passion flared in his eyes, while pleasure radiated from her lips outward in wave after wild wave of sensation. Her whole body shook even though he’d done nothing more than touch her lips with his. Oh, but how he used those lips.
He hadn’t even invaded the interior of her mouth with his tongue, but she felt her body changing and preparing for an intimacy she’d never known.
His hands were hot brands on her waist and he tasted like every dream she’d ever had.
If she weren’t experiencing it, she would have thought such a reaction from something as basic as a kiss was impossible.
Her nipples stung with needle-sharp prickles as they tightened into hard buds and her breasts swelled against her bra, aching with an unfamiliar need to be touched. Her feminine core grew damp and needy and she pressed her thighs together, but all that did was to increase the throbbing sense of emptiness.
He backed her up against the SUV, his big body pressing into hers with insistent demand.
He was aroused again. The evidence was hard against her stomach and unlike the night before, she didn’t attempt to pull back. The primitive woman inside her was glad she could excite him like this. If she was going ballistic over a kiss, so was he.
In a wholly instinctive move, she reached down between them and rubbed the backs of her fingers along the hard length of him.
He groaned like a man coming out of hell, or reaching for heaven.
So she did it again, this time lingering on the tip, rubbing her finger over the broad, blunt end of him.
His tongue made an abrupt and no-holds-barred assault on her mouth as his body moved against hers with unmistakable intent. She was trying to figure out a way to get her legs around him so she could get closer when his mouth tore from hers. In the next instant, he stepped back, letting her feet land abruptly on the ground.
He was breathing hard, his eyes a brilliant green and his skin flushed with excitement. Her own lungs felt like there was a metal band constricting them and heat radiated throughout her body with furnace-like intensity.
He leaned forward, his hands braced against his thighs like a man who’d been running hard and fast. “That damn near got out of hand.”
“If that was only a near miss, what does really out of hand feel like?”
He did that groan thing again and she sort of slid down the truck until she was barely standing.
He said, “Come inside and find out.”
Chapter Four
“I can’t.”
“You’re not ready?” He sounded incredulous, and after that kiss, he should be.
So she corrected him. “I can’t walk.”
He didn’t laugh, even though it should have been funny. She should be joking, but she wasn’t.
He silently stepped forward, then picked her up and swung her over one shoulder just like he’d said he wanted to do the night before. He’d gotten halfway to the house before she realized they had an audience and it wasn’t a silent one.
Cowboys stood around laughing like hyenas on speed.
One of them called out, “Hey, boss, you bringing home a woman or a sack of potatoes?”
“Do you feel like a sack of potatoes?” Jake demanded, actually sounding worried about the possibility.
She put her hands on his backside so she could lift her torso and look the cowboys over right side up. “No. I feel like a martini…but I’m both shaken and stirred.”
Very, very stirred. The presence of an audience did not lower the level of pheromones swirling in the air around them one bit, or the sensations pouring through her most sensitive places because of them.
He laughed at that, his chuckle low and sexy, and she found herself grinning. She liked his laugh.
The cowboy who’d spoken tipped his hat at her. “Ma’am.”
Another said, “Shorty, you maybe just might have to give up your name to half-pint there.”
Though she heard the humor in the cowboy’s voice, that got rid of her grin real fast. “The next one who calls me short is going to learn all abo
ut what my brother taught me after assassin training in the Special Forces.”
Joshua hadn’t trained to be an assassin but these grinning loons didn’t need to know that. And she might be little, but she carried a mighty punch.
Joshua had taught her that.
Another cowboy laughed out loud. “She’s all right, boss.”
“I like a woman with spirit,” another one said.
“Get your own,” Jake growled before sweeping into the house and kicking the big door shut behind them.
“Señor Jake, what is this you are doing?”
The woman’s voice reached Bella and she wanted to shout out her frustration. Wasn’t there privacy, even in the house? Then she remembered the sister and gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted to do was meet her favorite author when all she could think about was getting the woman’s brother into the nearest bed.
Jake said something in Spanish and the woman clucked her tongue, then responded in the same language.
Bella made out the word for sister and bad, but the rest of it was incomprehensible. She’d only had one semester of Spanish in high school. She got a glimpse of a living room decorated with simplicity for comfort, lots of hardwood floors and then some stairs. Jake’s broad shoulder jolted her stomach as he took the stairs two at a time.
He carried her straight into a bedroom and shut the door.
She assumed it was his, but at that point, it could have been the housekeeper’s and she would have offered to change the sheets afterward.
He dumped her on the bed and she bounced. “Now I feel like a sack of potatoes,” she teased.
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
She sat up in the middle of the big mattress. “What happened to your sister?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard the word bad.”
“Eva thinks I’ll come to a bad end if I go around carrying beautiful women over my shoulder.”
“Oh.”
“Lise flew out early for her research trip,” he said with the air of a man admitting some deep, dark sin.
Which surprised her, so it took a second for the import of his words to fully register.
They were alone.
The hallelujah chorus was going off in her head while her body continued melting from the inside out, her desire not in the least abated by her tummy-jolting ride up the stairs.
