by BETH KERY
She shook her head and gave a mirthless bark of laughter. “Do you really think I’d just drop everything and leave my entire life here?”
“I thought you said you’d always wanted to see the world,” he said, suddenly looking grim.
“I do, but—”
“Is it me, then? You don’t want to go with me?”
“No!” she exclaimed before she could censor herself. She paused, her breasts heaving against his chest, willing him to understand with her eyes. “I’d love to travel around the world with you. It’d be . . . incredible.”
His expression softened. He stroked her cheek. “I’m glad we agree on that, at least. So there’s no problem.”
She closed her eyes briefly in frustration and rolled away from him, hating the absence of his smooth, warm skin.
“There is a problem, Chance. I refuse to live off you financially. I’m not going to even consider a crazy proposition like that when I know I don’t have the money to do it.”
He sat up abruptly as she began to dress.
“I told you that I have plenty of money—”
“I’m not living off you, Chance. I’m not going to be some kind of kept woman,” she said abruptly, cutting him off. She regretted her harshness immediately when she looked into his eyes. Longing flooded her, so potent it stole her breath for a moment. She fastened her bra and pulled her blouse around her as she tried to recover her voice. He still hadn’t moved when she turned to face him.
“You’re the adventurer, Chance. I’m just a small-town girl with a small-town life. This is where I belong,” she said, blinking back tears.
“Your life is as large as you want it to be,” he said somberly.
She gave him a tremulous smile. “I didn’t set the boundaries of my life. They were just given to me. You’re the one who was born into a world without any limits. And it should be that way,” she said, her gaze on him warm . . . loving. “You’re the last person on the face of this earth who belongs in a tiny world, Chance Hathoway.”
“So that’s it?” he asked after a tense moment. “You’re refusing to come with me?”
“I can’t,” she repeated, her longing making her sound desperate.
“I’m falling for you,” he said starkly. “I think I might have fallen good and hard from the first second I saw you walk out of that lake. Don’t bring this to a halt before it’s really had a chance to get started, Sherona.”
“I’m not purposefully halting anything. It’s just that I belong here, and you . . . don’t. We both know that.”
His face looked set and grim as he stood up and grabbed his clothing.
Chapter Ten
He left town the next morning. To say that Sherona was miserable was a blatant understatement. They’d spent the night together, touching and making love almost constantly, as if they wanted to store up a deposit of caresses and murmured words and ecstasy to last them a lifetime.
Which is perhaps precisely what they were doing, Sherona thought presently as she opened up the diner.
She let the door close behind her. For a few seconds, she just stood in the dim diner and stared. She could maneuver around the thirty-by-fifty-foot space blindfolded. This place was where she’d seen her parents working side by side with congenial familiarity, where she’d first learned the value of hard work and prepared meals for thousands of people.
These walls held her entire world, and she’d always been comforted by that knowledge.
She wasn’t sure whether to thank Chance or curse him for making her feel suddenly imprisoned by the confines of Vulture’s Canyon.
Later that night, after she’d exhausted herself at the diner and returned home, she checked her e-mail. Her attention was immediately caught by Chance’s address. They’d exchanged e-mail addresses, but she hadn’t expected him to be in contact so soon.
She opened the message and read:
I’m not going to make it easy for you to forget. Look for one of these every day. I miss you like hell already.
She opened the attachment with a trembling hand. She stared at the image of herself lying on her side, naked and bound. Her eyes looked enormous. How had he managed to catch the nuances of expression on her face, those unlikely combinations of wariness and curiosity, anxiety and blatant arousal?
She shut her eyes and felt the burn. Damn him. He knew she’d longed to participate in the fantasy, to leave with him . . . to see the world. Did he think that tempting her in this fashion would alter the limits of her world?
The captured image of her eyes in that photograph haunted her that night, making sleep elusive.
Fortunately, Derek returned home the next afternoon, giving her something to focus on other than herself and her morbid thoughts. Her brother was in good spirits after his fishing trip and gladly agreed to help her unload a new shipment of supplies that had been delivered.
“You know how Mike’s dad is an accountant over in Carbondale?” he asked her as he helped her carry some packages of paper into her office for the printer. Sherona nodded. “Well, he’s offered to let me intern with him next summer. It won’t be paid or anything, but he says I can stay rent-free at their house, and I think it’d be great experience, don’t you?” he asked, dropping the armload of paper onto the copier table with a loud thump.
“Yeah, I do,” Sherona agreed, her eyes going wide. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be working at an accounting internship until your senior year.”
“I know, that’s why this is so great,” Derek enthused. “What?” he asked when he noticed her staring at him, a small smile on her face.
“Oh, nothing. You’re just growing up so fast.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m in college, Sherona, not the third grade.”
“I know. Oh, never mind,” she said, waving her hand as if she were making her emotional moment vanish. “Let’s go finish before the dinner crowd gets here.”
“Okay,” Derek agreed, pausing next to her bulletin board. “Hey, they drew the numbers today for the lotto jackpot. Mike and I heard about it in the car on the way home from Prairie Lake.”
“Did they?” she asked distractedly, her mind already on what she needed to prep for dinner. “I’ll have to check them.”
“You don’t have to. I memorized them.”
She glanced back, something about the flat quality of Derek’s voice grabbing her attention. She wasn’t surprised that he’d memorized the numbers. Derek had an exceptional talent for numbers and math, thus choosing accounting as a major. Was it her imagination, or did Derek’s face go pale as he stared at her ticket?
“Ha. Don’t tell me,” she joked uneasily. “I picked all the winning numbers.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said.
“Of course. Story of my life,” she said, grinning and turning toward the storeroom.
“You picked five of them, though.”
Sherona came to a dead halt on the threshold at the sound of Derek’s quiet voice.
“I did not.”
The color had definitely washed out of his face, she realized. He turned to look at her, his dark eyes wide with shock. His nod of affirmation went through her like a lightning bolt.
“You paid for a multiplier for the five numbers. I think they said the five-number winners got two hundred and fifty thousand each. With the four-times multiplier, you just won a million dollars, Sherona.”
* * *
Two weeks later, Chance sped down the familiar country road, his mind ablaze with anxious anticipation. Sherona had called him four days ago, but he’d been on a shoot in the dune fields of the Empty Quarter in the United Arab Emirates, where cell phone coverage was nonexistent. He’d only received her message when he’d checked into his hotel in Najran.
He’d been on a plane within six hours of hearing her message.
She’d said she’d received some important news and hoped she could speak with him as soon as possible. He’d been sending her e-mails and a single photo a day, as promised, bu
t she’d never once acknowledged his messages. Her phone call had sent a shock through him. He’d tried to call her, but the reception was spotty. He hadn’t been able to get through to her until he was at Heathrow, waiting for his flight to the states.
“Is everything all right?” he’d demanded immediately when he’d finally heard her voice coming clearly through the phone connection. He’d begun to suspect that the difficulty in contacting her wasn’t on his end, but with the remote location and surrounding hills of Vulture’s Canyon.
“I’m fine.”
He’d breathed out a sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t alarm you,” she’d said worriedly. “I just . . . I have some good news.”
“Can you tell it to me in person?”
“What? I mean . . . I’d love to,” she’d said earnestly.
“Good. Because I’m about to get on a plane to St. Louis.”
He’d called her once he’d landed and was in a rental car, driving to Vulture’s Canyon.
“Can you meet me at the forest preserve?” she’d asked when he’d called her.
“The forest preserve?” His body had perked into alertness.
“Yes. I’ll meet you in the parking lot in . . . forty-five minutes?”
“I’ll be there,” Chance had said.
And now he was.
He pulled into the forest preserve entrance, wildly curious about the news and brimming over with excitement at the thought of seeing her again. He couldn’t help but be optimistic given the hopeful tremor in her voice when she spoke to him.
He immediately saw her standing next to her car when he reached the lot. He swung his vehicle next to hers and bounded out to her.
She leaned against the trunk of her car, watching him with huge eyes. He immediately wanted to hug her so tight she couldn’t breathe. He’d missed her like he’d left a vital organ behind when he’d left two weeks ago. All he wanted to do was touch her again, meld with her, but something about her sober expression stilled his desire to wrap her in his arms. He came to a halt a few feet away from her, suddenly wary.
A small smile tilted her lips. Her auburn hair was loose, fluttering around her cheeks. She looked so pretty, wearing a pair of jean shorts that showed off her long, shapely legs and an old T-shirt that had been washed so many times, it looked touchably soft. It hugged her full breasts, teasing his senses. She didn’t usually wear such obviously sexy clothes, did she?
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Of course I came. I would anytime you asked.”
She smiled full-out then. It hit him like a punch to the gut. He started toward her, caution be damned, his arms outstretched. She moved so quickly, slipping away from his arms, that he blinked in shock.
“Sherona?” he asked, staring over his shoulder to where she’d come to a stop after eluding him.
“That was cruel of you, to send me those photos every day.”
“I wasn’t being cruel,” he said. “I wanted to remind you of what we have between us.”
“Do you think I need reminders, Chance?”
His gaze narrowed as he studied her. He couldn’t quite interpret her expression.
“You know I would have come with you if I could, don’t you?” she asked.
He swallowed thickly. “I do know that. I was just trying to make the point that you could if you wanted to.”
“I couldn’t, though. Not then.”
His nostrils flared slightly. “What do you mean, ‘not then’?”
“I have a secret, Chance.”
He stared at her in openmouthed amazement that segued to arousal in a second. There had been a playful, slightly singsong quality to her voice. It struck him with a jolt that the expression he hadn’t been able to identify was pure excitement. She practically vibrated with it. Her little avoidance of his arms had been a goading tease, he realized when he saw the gleam in her dark eyes and the small, electrical smile on her pink lips.
“Tell it to me, then,” he demanded, turning toward her and taking several steps in her direction. She backed away from him, her grin widening.
She was a witch, he swore.
“You’re going to have to make me tell you. But you’ll have to catch me first,” she said quietly.
Then she was running toward the woods, long legs pumping, her gorgeous ass daring him with every lunge.
“Son of a—”
He tore after her.
* * *
At first, Sherona suppressed giggles with effort as she ran into the shadowed forest. She hadn’t planned to say or do anything so outrageous when she went to meet Chance today. But after sitting there for a few minutes and recalling all their erotic interludes in the forest, including the first time they’d seen each other, her excitement at seeing him had mounted to unbearable levels. Seeing his much-longed-for face and long, lean body had sent her passion to unprecedented heights.
Her mirth faded after only a moment of being on the path, however.
She could hear him behind her, his rapid footfalls informing her he was closing in fast. Her heart felt as if it would burst straight out of her chest. Her breathing came ragged and harsh. She ran faster, trying to elude him and yet wildly excited to be caught at once.
“I’m playing with you, gorgeous, just like you’re playing with me. I’m going to catch you.”
She whimpered and put on another burst of speed. The evenness of his voice when he spoke both alarmed and thrilled her. She understood. He didn’t even sound winded. He was toying with her, knowing perfectly well he could capture her anytime he wanted.
His footfalls pounded closer now. She imagined she could feel the male heat resonating off him, although she knew that couldn’t be true. If he were that close, he could grab her . . .
. . . take her.
A shiver tore through her. Her scissoring thighs stimulated her sex, making her hot and aroused. She tried desperately to increase her speed, but it was difficult on the uneven forest path, her feet having trouble getting traction. Chance’s tread sounded much more steady and rapid than her own. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes wide in trepidation, and she tripped when she saw how close he was to her.
He immediately caught her, the abrupt halt of her movement rattling her brain. He spun her and jerked her back against him, his mouth covering hers.
It was a conqueror’s kiss, no doubt of it, forceful and ravenous. She whined when she registered his familiar taste. His hands moved over her body in a bold claim, cupping the sides of her breasts, squeezing her waist, molding her ass to his palms before he gave her a sharp spank.
“You’re caught now, aren’t you?” he breathed out as he ravished her throat with his hot mouth.
She twisted against him, wiggling, her softness against his hardness. He captured her wrists and pinned them behind her, leaning over her until she arched her back, pressing her breasts against his chest. It thrilled her that he held her for his consumption so easily. She cried out in excitement when he bent his tawny head and nipped at her breast. Then he enclosed a tip in his mouth, laving at her nipple with a stiffened tongue through the cloth of her bra and shirt. Sherona’s mewl of pleasure was like a wild animal’s cry in the forest.
He lifted his head but continued to kiss and take tender bites of her breasts as he pushed her to the side of the path. The world suddenly spun, and Sherona found herself facing the trunk of a wide oak tree. Chance’s hands were at her waist, unfastening her shorts with deft haste. He pressed his groin against her ass, making his arousal flagrantly known to her.
“What am I going to do?” he asked, his gruff voice sending a thrill through her.
She bit her lower lip. “Fuck me?” she asked shakily.
“You’d better believe it,” he said, shoving her shorts down to her knees. Her underwear followed. “Put your hands on the trunk,” he ordered. He sounded angry, but Sherona knew he was really just tense with
arousal. She did as he said while he held her with one arm looped around her waist, making sure she didn’t elude him this time. She felt his breath coming in pants against the skin of her back and his hand moving around her bare ass as he unbuttoned his jeans.
A moment later, he shoved his hand between her thighs, but his touch on her pussy was gentle enough. Sherona shrieked as he rubbed her clit, quick and ruthless.
“You’re soaking wet,” he mumbled. “My little captive likes to be chased.”
Sherona leaned against the tree, her mouth going wide when she felt the thick, swollen head of his penis press against her slit.
“You’re never going to run from me again, are you?” he rasped, his fingers delving into the flesh of her ass.
“I can’t promise that,” she managed between clenched teeth. She pushed back against him, longing to feel his big cock lodged deep inside her. He spanked her briskly and she stopped.
“If I don’t run, you couldn’t catch me,” she rasped.
“Good answer, because I’ll always catch you, Sherona. Always,” he muttered thickly before he thrust. She screamed. One second she’d been empty, and the next she was filled with Chance’s cock. Overfilled. He began to thrust immediately, not giving her time to recover from his abrupt penetration. Nerves that registered the sting of his forceful, total possession began to burn with pleasure. His pelvis slapped against her ass repeatedly as he pounded into her, the arousing sound mixing with the wild heartbeat in her ears and his grunts of pleasure.
They became two animals in that moment, a male claiming his mate, two creatures straining and pumping and pushing, feeding an atavistic flame until they’d explode with it. He slammed into her, his hands holding her captive to his pistoning cock, until Sherona gave a plaintive, desperate scream.
She knew she’d be sore tomorrow, but right now her pussy burned unbearably, craving more. She pumped against him with the little leeway his tight hold gave her, wild with excitement. He responded by slapping her ass with each driving downstroke, riding and prodding her to the finish line. She gave a disbelieving cry when she crossed it and orgasm shattered her awareness.
