Sweet Wind, Wild Wind

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Carson’s lips shifted into a smile that warmed Lara all the way to her toes. “That’s my problem, not yours. You’re different from my usual women. Let me enjoy that difference and don’t worry about it. Okay?”

  The breath sighed out from between Lara’s unconsciously parted lips. “Okay,” she said softly.

  Carson’s arms shifted subtly, moving Lara closer without making her feel trapped. His hand stroked the satin length of her hair, silently urging her to rest her head on his chest. As she did, her arms slid more tightly around his neck. With every breath she took, she smelled his unique male scent, a heady mixture of warmth and soap and a clean, faintly citrus after-shave. She matched his slow movements easily, unconsciously, fitting so perfectly into his arms that it was as though she had been born to be held by this one man.

  Later, when Carson took Lara home, he did no more than brush his lips over her mouth and stroke her cheek with gentle fingertips. It was the same on the next date and the next. They talked and laughed and danced, and the weeks flew by. He never took her to the drive-in where couples groped and wrestled behind steamy windows. He never came into her apartment at the end of a date. Nor did he take her home to the Rocking B.

  At first Lara was grateful that Carson was so careful not to push her sexually. It was a distinct difference from the way she had been treated before by boys her own age, most of whom seemed at the mercy of their newly rushing hormones. She had no doubt that Carson wanted her. She was inexperienced, but she wasn’t ignorant. She knew exactly what caused the change that came over his body when he held her, kissed her gently, hugged her and kissed her and kissed her again before he slowly released her at the end of each date. And at the end of each date, Lara wanted more.

  It was almost three months before Carson slipped the leash on his control. They had been chased inside her apartment by a summer rainstorm that had washed out their mountain picnic. Lara had set up the picnic dinner all over again on the floor of her living room and had sworn not to use any furniture or electricity. They would sit on the floor, and when the sun set, they would just light a camp lantern and pretend they were back on Avalanche Creek’s lush meadow. As usual, Carson and Lara talked and laughed, and with each word, each moment, she fell more and more under his spell. She watched him with an intensity that she didn’t understand. Every breath he took, every movement of his body, every small touch of his fingers against her, sent shivers of awareness coursing through her. And every instant brought her closer to the moment when he would leave. Then he would kiss her gently, hug her and let her go. She didn’t want it to end that way today. She wanted more. She needed it in some mysterious, seething way that was so new to her that she had no defenses against it. She didn’t even know that she needed any defenses.

  Carson wanted more than chaste kisses, too. Lara could see it in the hot gold of his eyes reflecting the camp lantern and in the way his glance lingered on her mouth, her hands, her breasts. When it came time for him to go, he rose to his feet, pulling her after him. As usual he kissed her, held her, kissed her again; then he looked down at her parted lips silently begging for him. He made a husky sound that was almost a groan. His arms tightened around her like steel. In the flickering illumination of the camp lantern, his eyes were nearly pure gold, and like the light itself, they burned.

  “Carson?”

  “Little fox,” he whispered, “would it shock you to feel my tongue touching yours?”

  Lara hadn’t liked it when other men had tried that particularly intimate kind of kiss on her, but the thought of being that close to Carson sent a shiver of excitement over her. She went up on tiptoe, circling Carson’s neck with her arms, and then felt herself being lifted off her feet until her face was level with his. He fitted his mouth over hers with a single smooth motion. At the first hot touch of his tongue, she trembled and made a sound deep in her throat. Her arms tightened and her lips opened further as she tried to blend her mouth completely with his. When she moved her tongue over his, he tore his mouth away and let her slide down his hard body.

  “Did I – did I do it wrong?” Lara asked. “Shouldn’t I move my tongue, too?”

  Half laughing, half groaning, Carson hugged Lara close and hard.

  “You did everything just right,” he said hoarsely, fighting for control.

  “Oh, God, honey, you set me on fire all the way to the soles of my feet.”

  Her breath caught, and she looked up at him with blue eyes darkened by the beginnings of arousal.

  “Is that good?” Lara whispered. “Do you like being – “

  The words ended as Carson bent down and took Lara’s mouth completely. Long fingers tangled in her hair, bending her head back and arching her body so that her breasts pressed against his hard chest. At the same instant his other hand slid down to her hips, lifting her into the cradle of his thighs, rocking her slowly over the hot, erect male flesh that strained against his slacks. His tongue moved in the same sensuous rhythms as his powerful body, the same rhythms that she instinctively gave back to him with her own tongue, her own body.

  By the time Carson released Lara, she was dazed, trembling, half wild with feelings she had never known before. When his hands caressed the length of her body and then eased up over her breasts to seek and find the sensitive tips, her breath came in with a sound that was almost a moan. Her back arched again in a reflex as old as passion. He didn’t have to ask if his hands on her breasts pleased her; her eyes were half closed, her lips were parted and her nipples had hardened into points that showed hungrily against the thin cotton of her blouse.

  Gently, skillfully, Carson caressed the hard buds that had risen to his touch. Lara’s whole body quivered in response. She didn’t even know that he had unfastened her blouse and bra until she felt air bathing her flushed skin. The first touch of his fingers on her bare breasts was so exquisite that she moaned. When he plucked delicately at the eager nipples, she felt it all the way to her knees.

  “Carson?”

  The huskiness of Lara’s voice was like an intimate caress. It fed the fires eating through Carson’s control, burning him, consuming him. With one hand he flicked open the buttons of his shirt. Her eyes widened as she saw the dark thatch of hair curling across muscles and arrowing down to his belt buckle.

  “I want to feel your breasts against me,” he said quietly. “I want to watch those beautiful pink nipples nuzzle against my skin. Does that shock you?”

  Slowly Lara shook her head, sending tendrils of hair whispering across her breasts. His hands tightened on her back, bringing her gently against his chest. He turned slightly from side to side, caressing her sensitized flesh with each small motion. She made a tiny sound and threaded her fingers through the male hair, kneading his muscular chest like a cat. Her eyes closed slowly, and her head tilted back as she gave herself to the subtle, ravishing sensations of her breasts caressing him and being caressed in turn. Pleasure expanded through her in wave after wave, shortening her breath until she was dizzy. She called Carson’s name brokenly, barely able to stand.

  “Yes?” he asked, his tone deep, gritty.

  “I feel so strange.” Lara’s voice broke as Carson plucked at the tight pink crowns of her breasts, sending both fire and weakness radiating through her. As her knees sagged, she swayed against him.

  “Carson – “

  He steadied her even as he eased her down to the floor. “It’s all right, little fox,” he murmured, nuzzling her ear and then biting it delicately, making her shiver. “Everything’s all right,” he said soothingly, smoothly removing her blouse and bra as he spoke, fully revealing the rose-tipped beauty of her breasts.

  Lara heard the hiss of Carson’s breath coming in swiftly, suddenly, and opened her eyes. He was looking at her bare breasts with a sensual approval that made her feel weak. If she hadn’t already been lying down, her knees would have given way.

  “Tell me if I shock you,” he said huski
ly, bending down to her.

  “I’ll stop. I promise you.”

  Before Lara could ask what Carson meant, his mouth had replaced his hand on her breast. The kiss was so sweet, so hot, that she cried out, arching helplessly as her nipple became even more erect beneath the moist, searching caresses of his tongue. Her breath came quickly, raggedly, reflecting the wild pleasure he was giving her. Without knowing it, she rubbed her fingers through his thick hair and held his head hard against her breast. He responded with a taut, urgent suckling that made her breath come out in a fragmented moan. The wild race of fire through Lara’s body left her defenseless, violently sensitized, seething with hungers she had never known. When Carson lifted his head to look down at the wet, erect nipple, she reached for him with a cry, aching for the feel of his mouth loving her again.

  “Carson,” she said throatily.

  “More?” he murmured.

  But even as Carson spoke, he was lowering his mouth over Lara, pulling her deep inside, suckling hard on her until she made a ragged sound and her hips moved in the rhythms of his mouth tugging at her. His left hand kneaded her other breast, rolling the taut tip between his fingers, sending wave after wave of pleasure through her. Her eyes closed and her back became a bow that gave him her breasts with a sensual abandon that made him groan.

  The hoarse sound was another kind of caress shivering through Lara, another flame licking over her hot skin. Pleasure swept away all her thoughts, all her inhibitions. She didn’t even know the exact moment when he removed the rest of her clothes; she only knew that his hard, wonderful hand was stroking her bare stomach, her thighs, the midnight mound of hair at the apex of her legs. When he pressed lightly at her closed thighs, she shifted automatically, easing his way, too aroused to be hesitant or shy.

  And then his fingers found the hot, aching nub hidden in her softness. She gave a broken sound as her hips rose against his caressing hand. When she felt fingers searching the rim of her softness and then sliding inside her, her eyes flew open in a wave of surprise and unexpected pleasure. She saw his face – taut, expressionless but for his mouth drawn with restraint. He was looking at her as he touched her, and his eyes blazed with hunger.

  Suddenly his face changed as though pain were replacing passion. Slowly he began to ease his fingers from her body.

  “Carson,” Lara cried softly, lifting her hand to touch the hard line of his mouth. “It’s all right. I’m not frightened. You don’t have to stop. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  Carson closed his eyes and shuddered violently. He came to his feet in a single savage motion. For a moment he stood looking down at Lara, and then he said grimly, “You are your mother’s daughter, all right, but I’m not my father’s son. Using little girls just isn’t my style. I’ll find another way to get even with him.”

  Nausea rose in Lara’s throat as her memories churned queasily. She had never remembered that night so vividly, her naked vulnerability and Carson’s contempt like an impenetrable armor around him, her sickening eagerness for sex and his easy self-control, her trembling words of love and his cruel reminder of the circumstances of her birth.

  She had borne much sly whispering for being the illegitimate, unacknowledged daughter of one of the biggest ranchers in the state, but it had been Carson’s rejection that had nearly destroyed her. She had survived it but only at the cost of her ability to respond to men. Even the thought of being touched like that again literally made her go cold.

  Only in her dreams was she a woman again, held once more in the arms of the man she loved.

  Chapter Five

  Lara sat on the dark ridgetop, her knees drawn up to her chest and her eyes staring blindly at the lights below while the past burned through her like black lightning. There were no tears in her eyes to reflect her memories of the night that Carson had rejected her so cruelly, so completely. She had called his name and had heard her answer in the door closing behind him. She had cried then, once, but never again. Humiliation had ultimately burned away her tears. After that there had been only shame. That had not burned away. She wondered if it ever would.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.”

  For a moment Lara thought that the voice was an echo from her former dreams, when she had longed to hear Carson explain what had happened, why it had happened, what had gone wrong that she had loved him and he had had no love at all for her.

  But the voice wasn’t a dream from the past. The voice was here, now, beside her; so was Carson Blackridge. With a muffled sound Lara looked away from him into the limitless Montana night.

  “Don’t turn away from me, little fox,” Carson said softly. “Please. I’m sorry if I hurt you tonight. Seeing you with Spur made me jealous, and I lost my temper.”

  Lara’s head snapped around so quickly that her hair flew out, brushing over Carson’s hand as he reached for her. She had never heard Carson apologizing for anything. Not once.

  “Jealous? I doubt it,” she said finally. “A man who’s interested in one woman doesn’t spend the evening undressing another one. Or were you having some kind of complicated revenge on Susanna, too?”

  There was more than enough moonlight for Lara to see the sudden narrowing of Carson’s eyes and the flattening of his mouth.

  “I didn’t invite Susanna to the ranch, and I sent her on her way as soon as you ran out. She hadn’t undone any buttons but her own. As for me – “ Carson shrugged “ – I’m used to being alone in the ranch house. Half the time I go around without a shirt. I didn’t think that would shock you. Interest you, maybe,” he added, smiling slightly,

  “but not shock you.”

  Lara looked at Carson’s sensual, off-center smile and felt something in herself stirring as though awakening from a long, long sleep. The feeling frightened her.

  “Interest me?” she asked, her voice tight as she forced herself not to remember the one time she had curled her fingers into the warm mat of hair that covered Carson’s chest.

  “It worked, too,” he said bluntly. “If your eyes had been hands, I’d have been touched all over.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll leave that to Susanna,” Lara retorted.

  “I doubt it,” Carson said. “You don’t like the idea of me with another woman, and it shows.”

  Carson’s voice was calm rather than baiting. It was his very lack of inflection that was shocking, as though he had stated that Lara preferred her coffee black instead of with cream.

  “I don’t like the idea of sex, period,” Lara said, but her tone wasn’t as calm as Carson’s had been. Emotions seethed through her words, through her hunger, confusion, fear and a sexual denial so deep, so ingrained, that she didn’t even realize that it was underlying her other emotions, driving them, driving her. “I was – “ Her voice shifted, splintered. She swallowed. “I was revolted by what I saw.”

  Carson’s mouth flattened into an angry line. “I don’t believe you.”

  She shrugged. “It’s true. I don’t like sex. Period.”

  “You liked it real well four years ago.”

  “People change.”

  “Not without reason,” he retorted.

  Lara shrugged again, but her body was so tight it ached. She hated talking about sex, thinking about it, because every word, every thought, led straight back to the freezing humiliation of four years ago.

  Carson looked at Lara and saw again the shame that had come over her in the bunkhouse when he had mentioned the past. He also remembered the look in her eyes tonight when he had stood before her with his shirt open. He remembered her reaction when he had mentioned that other women didn’t run away from him. But most of all he remembered her shiver of response when he had gently bitten her palm. No matter how violently she protested, she was still vulnerable to him. He knew it. He could prove it.

  And he was going to.

  “When I touched you this morning, you trembled. That isn’t
the response of a woman repulsed by sex,” Carson said flatly.

  “I was afraid.”

  “Then it must have been because you were responding to me,” he retorted.

  Lara looked at her hand as though she could still see the marks of Carson’s teasing, sensual caress. Her throat closed and her breath caught. She swallowed hard.

  “You’re known for your temper,” she whispered. “You were angry with me this morning. You’re much stronger than I am. You even admitted that what you were doing to me was punishment for running away from you. It… frightened me. If you had decided to punish me more, there wouldn’t have been anything I could have done about it.”

  “Hell of an idea,” Carson muttered.

  With no more warning than that, his hard hands fastened onto Lara’s arms. Carson’s shoulders blocked out the moon as he bent over her. Before she could protest, she was lying on her back looking up into his face. Moonlight and night made a mystery of his expression. She saw his lips part, saw the white flash of his teeth and knew that he was going to kiss her with a lover’s intimacy. The moment was like her dreams – and her nightmares. He would kiss her and she would respond, and when he had her helpless again, he would turn on her, tearing out her soul, leaving her empty of everything but pain. She couldn’t go through that again. She simply could not. Carson sensed the sudden stiffening of Lara’s body as he brushed his mouth over hers. He felt the trembling warmth of her lips, tasted the freshness of her breath, and memories exploded through his body. He had never known anything half so sweet as the taste of her innocence when she had responded to his kisses long ago. He didn’t believe that she was still innocent. Anyone as naturally sensual as she was would have experimented thoroughly before she gave up on sex, if she had really given up on it Remembering her abandonment when he had made love to her four years ago, he doubted that she had given up anything that had obviously brought her so much pleasure. God, he had been a fool to walk away from Lara, no matter how much he had hated his father at the time.