The Harder They Fall (Intimate Moments)

by Lovelace, Merline

  Unfortunately she severely underestimated the power of anticipation. Hot little needles pierced her the instant she spread her legs and scooted forward. The needles grew to swordlike proportions when road vibrations added their torment to the press of her body against his. Every ripple of his muscles as he leaned into a turn, every flex of his thighs as he shifted in the seat did a separate and distinct number on Lissa’s screaming nerves.

  By the time he aimed the Harley up to the hill to the trailer, fishtailed to a stop and dodged Wolf to drag her inside, her mind had turned to mush. The way he backed her against the wall and locked his mouth on hers didn’t help matters, either. When they finally came up for air, her knees were so wobbly she would have crumpled if she hadn’t been propped against the wall.

  Eyes lit with blue flames burned into her skin wherever they touched. Her mouth, her throat, the jerky rise and fall of her breasts above the scoop-necked tank top all felt the heat. Planting both palms beside her head, he gave her a wolfish smile.

  “You remember Marsh’s description of a Saturday Night Special?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “Want to hear how Reece describes a Friday Morning Delight?”

  “Is…?” She swiped her tongue along her swollen lips. “Is today Friday?”

  With Evan’s breath hot on her cheek and his chest hard against the tips of her breasts, she couldn’t remember her name, much less the day of the week.

  “You start fast,” he told her in a husky whisper. “Up against the wall. Clothes ripped off. Muscles torqued. Bodies sweat slick and hot.”

  “That sounds…interesting,” Lissa said faintly.

  “You finish slow. On the floor. Or the couch. Or any other handy horizontal surface. Lots of touching. Tonguing. Tasting.”

  A glimmer of reason pushed its way through the sensual haze his words evoked. He was giving her the option. Fast, slow or both.

  Or neither.

  She could feel him rock-hard and straining inside his jeans. Feel his chest muscles quivering against her breasts. He had her caged against the wall and so darned hot for him she was blistering from the inside out. Yet still he was giving her the option.

  The last of Lissa’s barriers crumpled. She didn’t love him. She’d learned the hard way not to fool herself into believing this ache around her heart had anything to do with love. Yet the fact that he would haul her into the trailer like a caveman dragging his prize into his lair, then practically give himself a hernia holding back caused a funny little quiver in her chest.

  The need clawing at her throat became a molten, liquid flame. Slowly she slid her hands inside the waistband of his jeans.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she murmured hoarsely. “Let’s forget Reece and Marsh’s specials.” The snap on his jeans gave with a pop. “I’m more interested in your version of things.”

  Evan’s version, she discovered in the following instant, took her straight from semicoherent to lost. Totally, completely lost.

  When he flashed her a wicked grin, the power of speech deserted her.

  When he buried his hands in her hair and dragged her head back for his kiss, her knees gave out.

  And when he followed that tongue-swallowing kiss with a bumpy ride down the hall to the bedroom, she dissolved into helpless giggles.

  The narrow hallway wasn’t designed to accommodate oversize men transporting medium-size women in their arms. Lissa’s knees banged the wall. Evan’s shoulders scraped the doorjamb. They got wedged in the doorway for a ridiculous moment before he figured out the right angle to get them both through.

  She was still laughing when he dumped her on the bed and stripped off his shirt. Her giggles stuck in her windpipe, though, when he heeled off his boots and jeans.

  A lump formed in Lissa’s throat. Evan fully clothed and standing stranded in the road had set off warning alarms all through her body. Evan with his shirt hanging open and his jeans riding low on his hips earlier this morning had caused a serious malfunction in her central nervous system.

  But this Evan… This lean, muscled, naked Evan stopped her heart. She barely had time to admire his awesome symmetry before he planted a knee on the bed and proceeded to relieve her of her clothes as well.

  He did it with such style, such flair.

  Such blinding speed!

  Lissa formed the fleeting thought that Evan’s younger brothers had probably taken a few tips from him in developing their particular specials. Then his gaze did a slow slide down her body and she forgot about his brothers, forgot about the specials, forgot everything except the awe in his eyes when they came back to hers.

  “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

  Beautiful? With her nose no doubt glowing like Rudolph’s after that wild bike ride, her hair still damp and sticky from being crammed into the helmet, and goose bumps pickling every inch of her skin in the chill pouring from the trailer’s swamp cooler?

  On second thought, maybe it was the croak in Evan’s voice that raised those tiny bumps. It certainly puckered her nipples into tight, hard points. All Lissa knew was that when he joined her on the bed, she was past caring how she looked.

  Within moments, she was past caring about anything except the intense, intensifying pleasure it gave her to touch and be touched by him.

  The slow, exploring stroke of palms against skin swiftly gained speed and heat. The erotic dance of tongue to tongue gave way to greedy little shoulder and breast and tummy kisses. When Evan traced a wet trail up her body to tease an aching nipple with his mouth and teeth, Lissa’s back arched. His hands, his wild, wonderful hands, stroked and kneaded and generally played havoc with every one of her senses.

  But she didn’t grasp how skillfully he’d primed her until he kneed her legs apart. The first stroke of his thumb against her oversensitized flesh almost sent her into orbit.

  “Evan!”

  His breath washed hot and damp in her ear. “I’m right here.”

  He certainly was! He was all over her, his scent, his mouth, his slick, muscled body. Frantic to give him the same maddening pleasure he was giving her, she wedged a hand down his stomach and curled her fingers around his rigid shaft. It filled her hand, hot and hard and already dewed at the tip.

  To her satisfaction, her touch produced an instant and electric reaction, just as his had a moment ago. Sucking in a sharp hiss, he went utterly still. Two strokes later, he jerked away.

  She saw him dive for the edge of the bed and grope frantically for his jeans. Heard a mumbled curse, then a ripping sound as he tore open a condom. A heartbeat later, he repositioned himself between her thighs.

  If Lissa wasn’t already coming apart at the seams, the expression on Evan’s face at that moment would have unraveled her. There was no sign of the smooth, sophisticated attorney. No evidence he even existed.

  Blue eyes burned into hers. His hair was rough where she’d thrust her hands through it. His rugged features were flushed with a desire so intense it singed his cheekbones. Her heart thudded when he gathered her in his arms and crushed his mouth with hers.

  He came into her with an easy probe, stretching, filling. Withdrew. Began a rhythm that was soon too slow for either of them. Within moments, they were panting, their bodies slick and hard and straining with a need that engulfed them both.

  The explosion that came crashing down took Lissa by surprise. It was so swift, so shattering, she hardly felt her muscles contract, barely registered the searing sensation that gathered at her center before it detonated. She arched her back, thrust her hips up. A groan tore from the back of her throat as the pleasure took her.

  Evan stilled, his hands buried in her hair, his body taut on hers. Dimly she heard a hoarse murmur, whether his or her own she wasn’t sure. Vaguely she sensed his fierce struggle to wait while she rode the waves. They were still rippling through her when he picked up the rhythm again, only faster, harder.

  The swamp cooler was battling a fierce afternoon when Evan took his tur
n in the Fiberglas coffin that served as Lissa’s shower stall. Tepid water dribbled from the single, rusted faucet. The showerhead was set so low he had to poke his backside out the curtain to bend enough to rinse the soap from his upper torso.

  Despite his awkward contortions, a fierce satisfaction thrummed in his veins. A hefty measure of that satisfaction stemmed from the three incredible hours he’d just spent in Lissa’s bed. Yet, as impossible as it seemed, those hours were only a prelude to the pleasure that now pierced him at the sounds drifting down the hall.

  She was in the front room, singing. Or more correctly, humming. Like a playful bird riding a summer breeze, the liquid notes dipped and soared and rippled joyously. It was the first time Evan had heard her sing since the day he’d unintentionally sicced Hawthorne on her. The first time he’d heard her singing live, anyway.

  He’d picked up a half dozen of her CDs in San Diego and listened to them late at night this past week. Amplified and backed up by singers and a band, her clear, ringing voice was a powerful instrument that lingered in his head almost as long as the image of the woman behind it.

  He liked it better like this. Unaccompanied. Unamplified. Just Lissa humming out a lilting melody that could have been a hymn or a love song.

  He stopped cold, one foot in the shower stall and one on the fuzzy pink rug beside it. An odd sensation rippled down his spine. An even odder one curled in his stomach.

  Frowning, Evan grabbed the towel. It was too soon to think of love. Too soon to think of anything other than when and how he was going to maneuver Lissa down that narrow hallway into bed again. He was still trying to convince himself that constituted his top priority when he joined her in the living area.

  She was at the sink, washing out the breakfast dishes they’d left on the table hours ago. Her humming cut off abruptly when he appeared, and Evan needed only one look at the shy smile she aimed his way to instantly rearrange his priorities. His number one order of business from this point on was to find ways to keep a smile on her face. Which might be a challenge considering the possible heartache that waited for her in LaGrange.

  Never one to dodge the inevitable, Evan claimed first a kiss and then the dish towel hanging from a hook beside the sink.

  “Since you survived your first experience on a Harley with no noticeable scrapes or bruises, want to take the bike into LaGrange instead of your pickup?”

  Her soapy hands stilled for a moment, then swished a sponge vigorously across a plate. “I’m not planning a trip into LaGrange.”

  “You’re going to have to face him sooner or later.”

  “Says who?”

  Yanking the plate from the dishpan, she ran it under the rinse water and plunked it in the drainer. The crockery piece clattered ominously against the others already stacked there. Evan plowed ahead despite the obvious warning.

  “Wouldn’t you rather know what he wants than sit here and stew about it?”

  “I’ve got a good idea what he wants.”

  “A piece of Missy Marie?”

  “What’s left of her, anyway.” A fistful of knives and forks landed in the strainer with a jangle of metal. “That’s what they all want.”

  “You want to define ‘they’?”

  She caught the subtle coolness behind the question and ceased the sponge attack on Josephine’s casserole dish. Her eyes were troubled when they lifted to his, but she answered with brutal honesty.

  “Not you, Evan. I don’t think you’re one of the vultures who are still so eager to pick my bones.”

  “You don’t think so, huh?” The dish towel wrapped around a dripping coffee mug. “Let me know when you’re sure, will you?”

  Pink crept up her cheeks. “Hey, gimme a break here. You’ve pretty well turned my world on its ear in the past twenty-four hours. I’m still trying to figure out which end is up.”

  That was better, Evan decided. Much better.

  “Let me know when you figure that out, too, will you?” he said ruefully.

  She looked a little startled at the idea he might be as confused right now as she was. Setting the mug aside, he braced his hands on the counter and bracketed her hips.

  “This is all pretty overwhelming to me, too, Lissa. I didn’t expect you to keep me awake almost every night last week. I didn’t plan on coming back to Paradise. And I sure as heck didn’t anticipate what just happened between us.” His mouth kicked up. “I’d hoped for something along those lines, you understand. But I didn’t really believe my luck until I felt you shudder beneath me.”

  The pink in her cheeks flamed red. “I’m having a hard time believing it, too.”

  “Hmm. Let’s see what I can do to make a gen-u-ine believer out of you.”

  Evan intended it as only a light, teasing kiss. Yet the moment his lips brushed Lissa’s, the flame they’d just doused leaped instantly to life again. He jerked his head up, confounded by the heat that stabbed at his groin.

  Well, hell! He hadn’t counted on this grand slam to the gut every time he touched the woman!

  He backed away, fighting something akin to sheer, male panic. Lusting after Lissa and wanting to keep a smile on her face instead of that tight, closed look she too often wore was one thing. This sudden desire to tumble her back into bed and keep her there for the next twenty or thirty years was something else again.

  He was slogging through quicksand here, sinking deeper with every step. In the back of his mind he could almost hear his brothers snickering. The last Henderson standing was about to go under.

  To allow time for his panic to settle, Evan channeled his thoughts away from the unmade bed at the end of the hall and back to the issue Lissa kept trying to dodge.

  “My boss wasn’t real happy with me for time off again. I’ll have to head back to San Diego tomorrow. You sure you don’t want me to ride into LaGrange with you this afternoon and confront your father?”

  “No.”

  “No, you aren’t sure, or no, you don’t want to?”

  “No, I don’t want to ride into LaGrange this afternoon or tomorrow or anytime in the foreseeable future.”

  “You can’t just ignore the fact that he’s there.”

  “He abandoned me, Evan. I didn’t walk out on him.” Wrapping her hands around her waist, she tried to disguise the hurt in her voice with a steel barb. “He’s had plenty of time in the past few weeks to make contact. For whatever reasons of his own, he’s chosen not to.”

  “We’re just assuming he knows who you are,” Evan reminded her gently. “The law of averages says he didn’t turn up in LaGrange by chance, but we can’t discount that possibility.”

  “I can. I figure he’s here for one of two reasons. To try to sell a story about his long-lost little girl to the media or to try for a cut of the money everyone’s convinced Doc and I stashed away.”

  “Let’s talk about that money.” Abandoning his dish towel, Evan hooked a kitchen chair and straddled it. “As I understand the matter, this character Jonah Dawes deposited a little over four million in offshore accounts over a five-year period.”

  “Four million, three hundred thousand and sixty-seven dollars, if you want to be exact,” Lissa said dryly. “Half of that he earned in commissions and from the bonuses he paid himself as my agent/manager. The rest…” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug she didn’t quite pull off. “I’ve paid back all but a few thousand of the rest.”

  “The warrants against Dawes are still outstanding,” Evan reminded her. “We could go after him. I got a tip that he may be in Casa Grandes, Mexico, living like some emperor in a mountaintop villa.”

  He didn’t tell her that the tip had come from his brother, who’d called in a few favors owed him by his counterparts south of the border. Or that one of those very accommodating law enforcement officials had generously offered to sidestep the extradition process and deliver the fat-assed gringo, bound and gagged, in the trunk of a car to any spot north of the border Marsh designated.

  “I don’t care where he
’s living,” Lissa said flatly. “I’ve put that whole sordid chapter of my past behind me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you still hiding out in Paradise?”

  “I’m not hiding. I’m… I’m…living exactly the way I want to,” she finished lamely.

  “Just out of curiosity, how long do you plan to live ‘exactly’ like this?”

  Her chin tipped. “As long as I can.”

  She didn’t like being pushed. And judging by the way she bristled at the question, Evan figured he wasn’t the only one doing the pushing. He’d bet Charley and Josephine had done their share, too.

  “So whenever I want to see you,” he mused, “I’ll have to carve a few days out of my schedule and ride back to Paradise, is that it?”

  Her chin went up another notch. “That’s it.”

  He was slogging deeper into the quicksand with every minute. As he pushed out of the chair and took her face between his palms, Evan suspected he might not ever make it back to solid ground.

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re one stubborn female, Ms. James?”

  A rueful smile came into her eyes. “A good number of people, as a matter of fact.”

  Chapter 13

  “I swear, you’re the stubbornest creature the good Lord ever put on this earth.”

  Josephine followed Lissa around the crowded living room, singing a now-familiar refrain. She’d been delivering variations on the same theme ever since Evan went home to San Diego three days ago.

  “Why did you let him get away?”

  Lissa drew in a long, patient drag of air heavily scented with nutmeg and cinnamon. Josephine had put one of her mouthwatering cactus pear tortes in the oven right after Lissa’s arrival.

  “He has a life,” she reminded Josephine. The feather duster in her hand flicked along a row of china cats lined atop her friend’s hutch. “And a job. He’s a big man in the district attorney’s office.”

  “Honey, from what I’ve seen of him, that man’s just plain big all around. You don’t find shoulders like that on your everyday average Joe.” A wicked smile tipped her peach-tinted lips. “Does the rest of him measure up?”