by Lilian Darcy
She sank back with her spine arched. Suddenly she was seated on the wooden tread of the stairs, reaching up for him, eyes half-closed and hair threatening to tumble from its high knot. He went after her, chasing the taste of her mouth, chasing her body heat. He ended up bracing his fingers on the stair edge, his weight looming over her.
She pulled him lower. His face fell between her breasts and she gasped and threw her head to one side. He felt the heat-perfumed mass of her hair drift onto his hand. The soft mounds of her breasts against his cheeks and nose and lips felt like warm satin.
Her thighs parted and squeezed his ribs, half supporting him while he rolled a little. He slid her top up, clumsy with desire. Cupping her with one hand, he thumbed her hardened nipple, then replaced his thumb with his mouth, through a lace and net bra.
She dragged herself back, higher up the stairs, and held his face between her hands. Her eyes were still enormous, filled with a wild light and a soft flame of doubt. Throbbing, damming himself back, he realized she was still debating this. He pressed his lips together, struggling with a code of honor that said it had to be her own decision, made freely.
“Okay, I’ll show you the bed,” she said at last, on another gasp of air.
Her fingers feathered up his neck and into his hair and she stretched to kiss him, her mouth hungry and full of promise. Lucas discovered he was shaking, and that he hadn’t breathed for the entire time she’d studied his face.
They scrambled the rest of the way up the stairs, breathless. There were just two bedrooms built into the roof line, both of them small, and he had to duck his head through the low doorway of the slightly larger one. Beside a double bed covered in fresh white sheets and a faded patchwork quilt, Reba crossed her arms, pulled her tank top over her head and unsnapped her bra.
Both garments fell to the floor in a pale heap and she turned to face him, straight-backed, arms at her sides, giving him the sight of her bare breasts and peaked nipples like a gift. Her eyes were huge and her breath came in shallow pants.
And he knew so totally that she just—didn’t—do—this, she just didn’t bring men to this cabin to make love, on a regular basis, or ever. Letting her make the decision on her own wasn’t enough.
Not with a woman like Reba.
He knew what he wanted. Even if the corporation didn’t buy the ranch, he wanted a piece of it to take away with him. He wanted a piece of Reba Grant, her passion and her intensity, to take away with him in the form of his memory of how she’d feel in his arms, writhing beneath his touch.
But knowing what he wanted wasn’t good enough.
Instead of wrapping himself around her as he wanted to, instead of lifting her against him and pulling at her jeans, he allowed himself just one soft brush of his knuckles across those jutting gifts. They were fuller and rounder than he’d expected them to be, with the crests even bigger and darker than his imagination had painted them.
Then he placed his hands on the knobs of her shoulders, looked into her eyes and said, “Wait.”
She seemed to understand exactly why he’d stopped. Instead of taking it as a way out, however, or even giving herself any further pause for thought, she lifted her chin, looked at him with narrowed, glittering eyes and said, “No.”
“Why, Reba?”
“Because I want this. And so do you. Don’t ask questions. Do me the courtesy of believing I know what I want.”
“I’m not offering anything beyond—”
“I’m not asking for anything beyond. This is now. That’s all. It’s more than I—way more than I expected, even an hour ago, but—” she made her hand into a fist over her stomach “—it feels right, here. It feels necessary.”
For another moment Lucas hesitated, and Reba felt the possibility of rejection slam into her.
Could he?
He couldn’t!
He wanted this every bit as much as she did. She knew that. He hadn’t denied it. The only way he’d reject her would be if some decent, chivalrous, protective instinct overcame him, and he decided that his making love to her right now was a favor she’d be better off without.
Despite the depth she’d glimpsed in him yesterday, Reba wasn’t convinced that a corporate prince like Lucas Halliday possessed any such chivalrous instincts. She certainly didn’t want him to possess them, right now. Gordie McConnell had them, and she was sick of them! Lucas was accurate in what he suspected about her narrow previous experience, and she didn’t want that to get in the way.
Yes, Lucas, you’re right, I’ve never done anything like this before.
Anything like this.
She and Gordie had made love, yes, but Gordie would never have done so in the middle of a working day, with no advance planning, in a location not previously designated as appropriate. And that burned her. So much about her life, and the crossroads she’d reached in it, burned her right now.
Dear Lord, she was nearly twenty-seven years old, she was about to have her home pulled out from under her like an old blanket off a horse’s back. She was going to make love to Lucas now—a rough analysis of her mental calendar told her it should be safe—and she’d think about the ramifications later. She was going to do this before something in her soul atrophied into dry wood and she lost the ability to even imagine a different life for herself, let alone go out and find it!
“There’s no doubt you know what you want.” Lucas’s voice caught on several of his words, and she felt his gaze on her peaked nipples like a caress. “Don’t you care what I want?”
“If you don’t want this…me…my body, then there’s been something very wrong with your signals, since yesterday.” She drew in a deep breath, felt her breasts lift, saw his tongue lap against his lower lip. His jeans strained at the front. He stepped closer to her, but not close enough.
“I’m talking about the ranch,” he said.
“You think this is about—” Anger tightened her scalp. She dragged in a shaky breath and tried again. “You think I’m trying to sell you the ranch, right now, with this? That’s— That’s—”
“No! Hell, no, Reba!” Another step, urgent, that brought him toe to toe against her. He slid his hands up to her elbows. “I just wanted you to consider whether doing this—making love—” the word melted on his tongue like syrup “—would feel different if you knew my decision on the purchase.”
Again, she didn’t hesitate. “If you’ve made a decision, I don’t want to know. Because it wouldn’t make a difference. Okay?”
He nodded, touched her hair, her neck, let his hand trail lower, and bent his head to her mouth. “Yeah, you’re right, I guess,” he said, on a soft growl. “Wouldn’t make a difference to me, either.”
For the first time, she held him. She ran her palms up his strong back, and learned the pattern of his muscles, on either side of his spine. She helped him wrench the unwanted T-shirt up and over his head, put her tongue to her fingertip then, looking down, touched the moisture to his nipples. They hardened into little beads as it evaporated, and she felt a coil of pleasure and satisfaction deep inside.
She could do this to a man. She could do this to Lucas Halliday. And she wanted to do a whole lot more.
“Tell me what you like,” she said, branding him with kisses between every phrase. “Show me. Touch me in all the places you want. With your hands. With your mouth. Teach me, Lucas.”
“Hell, haven’t you ever—?”
“Yes. Yes, I have. But not like this. Nothing like this.” She reached for the front of his pants, fumbling a little as she snapped them open. She began to ease the zipper down, and he took a hissing breath. “Did I catch you?” she asked.
“No. Keep going. Yes, like that.”
She did, even more slowly, feeling the straining ridge of cloth and man pushing at her hand. When he was free, she slid trousers and underwear down in one movement. She dropped low in front of him and let her mouth explore the texture of his thigh on the way. She knew exactly where he wanted to be touched, but k
ept that pleasure from him, stringing it out.
He couldn’t stand it, pulled her back up and hauled her toward him so that they were pressed together from her breasts to her knees. His thigh eased between her legs, and she knew how hot she must feel to him, how full and ready.
“Take off your boots and your jeans,” he said. “Let me look at you.”
The old bed creaked as he sat and levered his own boots off. He kicked them beneath the bed, beyond the hem of the quilt, and she did the same. Then he watched while she shimmied her jeans down her hips, and she could tell he liked everything he saw.
“I didn’t…uh…come equipped for this,” he said, reaching for her. “If we need to set limits, can we set them now?”
“It’s okay. The timing is— No limits.” She brushed his mouth with hers, lifted his hands and brought them to her breasts.
“None?”
“Anything that feels good. Anything that’s a part of this.”
“Touching you, Reba, that’s everything.”
They kissed until her bones softened to liquid, and she no longer knew where her body ended and his began. His mouth was everywhere. She gripped him the way she’d have gripped a bolting horse, only who was bolting, who was out of control? Him, or her?
She leaned back on her hands and he knelt in front of her, on the braided woollen rug, trailing his lips down her jaw, her neck, to her breasts and beyond, to her sweet core. She bucked and twisted and sank into the bed, clenched her fists against the flood that swept her away, then felt him slide higher and seek entry. She was so swollen and ready that he slipped into her in a single movement, and a sound wrenched out of him, making his body vibrate against her chest.
“Reba, you’re so beautiful, so strong. The way you moved just now…”
He thrust and she rocked, clinging to him, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back. She loved his weight on top of her and the almond smell of his hair in every breath she took.
Their climax came freely, and ebbed in a series of aftershocks that jerked both their bodies like whips. Reba didn’t know what to say, whether to say anything at all, so she kissed him again, touching her mouth to his softly, as if each kiss was a word of tenderness or thanks.
“Hey…” he finally whispered.
“Hey,” she answered back.
Chapter Four
“You okay?” Lucas asked. He was watching the way Reba winced and shifted in the unforgiving, creaky office chair, his eyes bright with perception, as usual—perception and suspicion.
And, yes, okay, she didn’t feel very comfortable right now. Who could, with this tightness coming and going? The pregnancy book she’d bought talked about false contractions—irregular, tight rather than painful, normal and nothing to worry about. This was apparently them, and normal or not, she didn’t like them.
There wasn’t a lot of tenderness in Lucas’s question, she noted. The hard, calculating shell of a successful business man appeared to be back in place, making Reba question the other qualities she had thought she’d discovered in him last September, as well as the heat and exhilaration and happiness she would have sworn they’d both felt, the first time they’d made love.
“My back’s a little sore, that’s all,” she answered him, playing it down. “I’ve been on my feet a bit too long tonight.”
As soon as she’d waded through this confrontation with Lucas, she would ask Carla about the way her body felt and the way it should feel. She would consult the doctor, give in her notice to the steakhouse management tomorrow, spend the next three months flat out in bed, if she had to.
“You’re looking after yourself, I hope,” Lucas said. “You’re getting the proper prenatal care?” Again, it sounded like an accusation, rather than a sign of his concern. Where was the man who’d lain in bed with her, so hungry and so tender?
Reba lifted her chin. “The doctor thinks I’m doing great, especially considering the one I lost.”
“Is that what happened? Is that possible?”
“Yes!” Her scalp prickled with anger, and acid rushed up into her throat. She carried a child fathered by a stranger, it seemed. “I lost this baby’s twin, although I didn’t realize I was still pregnant for another month and a half. Good grief, Lucas, you couldn’t possibly believe I staged it, could you? Staged any of it? How could I?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes, as if totally at a loss, and images of last year flashed through their minds, once again. September and November, Indian summer and winter’s first chill. They’d known too many different emotions together, in too short a time…
Reba sat in the Indian summer shade on the bank of the creek and watched Lucas casting his line for trout. He stood in the water in thigh-high wading boots borrowed from her father, with his legs braced wide against the current. The muscles in his back rippled and tightened as he whipped his body back then forward to make the cast.
For half a second, the nylon filament caught the sun and made a scribble of light against a background of cool green shade, then the delicate fly silently hit the water and the line disappeared. Lucas’s whole focus arrowed to the task of working the rod and the line.
Reba’s breath caught and tightened in her chest as she watched him. It was like vertigo, and she was frightened of it—not sorry that he would be leaving tomorrow morning. She would need some space by then, and some time to think without the storm of sensual distraction that built inside her whenever she was with him.
This relationship wasn’t meant to last.
They both knew that.
It’s a turning point, that’s all, she thought. A window thrown open in my mind.
Lucas had already caught three good-size fish, enough to cook and eat outdoors for lunch, over an open fire. In the expectation that he would fish as well as he seemed to do everything else, Reba had packed the pickup truck with the appropriate accompaniments, and soon they would drive the mountain track up to the cabin, where her grandfather had once made the ring of stones that the Grant family had been using as a picnic hearth on summer days for nearly fifty years.
And she had no doubt as to what she and Lucas would do up there after the meal was over.
For the last time?
They ate the fresh fish with bread and butter and salt and lemon, washed down with ice-cold mouthfuls of light beer, and then they didn’t have to say a word, they just doused the fire, opened the door of the cabin and went upstairs.
In the small, tidy bedroom, Reba wondered if she’d ever be able to come to this place again without thinking of Lucas. Their awareness of each other, and their impatience, seemed to crowd the air and make it sing.
She knew she’d remember it every time she saw the dappled light dancing through the windows as a breeze moved the tree branches, every time she smelled the scent of lavender, because of the flowers she’d put here and the homemade sachets that scented the cotton sheets.
Pulling her top over her head, she felt Lucas’s touch sear across her body. His hands curved around her ribs, brushed across her breasts, made her neck tingle. They tried to help each other undress, but just ended up laughing and kissing, fighting their uncooperative clothing.
“Are we in a hurry, here, or something?” he whispered.
“So slow down.”
“Can’t.”
“Neither can I.”
They only managed to do that when they got to the really important part—the part where they couldn’t talk anymore, because their breathing was coming too fast and every sense was too overwhelmed. Then he held her and slid into her with a teasing control that had her pulling at him, crying out for more, until they both exploded, with pulses of light behind her closed lids like fireworks, or stars.
That night, she drove into Biggins, parked her pickup quietly in the far corner of the steakhouse parking lot and slipped across Main Street to Lucas’s motel. He took her into Cheyenne for a long, slow meal and then brought her back again.
“I’ll need to head out
of here pretty early tomorrow to make my flight to New York,” he told her, at the door of his room.
“I’m not expecting a goodbye breakfast.”
“My father should make his decision on the ranch within a few days. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything yet.”
“Will you stop apologizing about everything, Lucas? It’s fine.”
“Yeah?” His eyes narrowed and his expression turned thoughtful, searching.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she insisted. “Not an offer of purchase on the ranch. Not some kind of ‘I’ll call you’ line, whether you mean it or not. I don’t think there’s been anything in what either of us has said to each other or how we’ve acted over the past few days that’s made me expect this to go on. It was right for now, that’s all. And I’m happy. If you are.”
“Very happy. Hadn’t expected…any of this.”
“No. Same here. Little gift from life, at the right time.”
“The perfect time.”
They looked at each other. For a long time. His gorgeous eyes glinted at her in the darkness. The shape of his mouth made her ache. The woodsy male scent of him enveloped her like a cloak and her center of gravity dropped to somewhere low, low in her belly and stayed there as hot and heavy as one of her grandfather’s river-worn hearthstones licked by flame.
“This is supposed to be goodbye,” Lucas said. “But…uh…do you want to come in for a minute?”
“You think it’s only going to take a minute?” she whispered, winding her arms around his neck.
He groaned and muttered something, stole a hungry kiss from her mouth, and they barely made it through the door.
Three weeks later, she began to suspect that she had to be pregnant.
A test confirmed it, and in the second week of November, now feeling horribly nauseous for much of the time, Reba heard through the town grapevine that Lucas was back at the ranch, staying in her old family home now that the sale was finalized.
