"Yes, now."
He stroked into her partway, retreated almost to withdrawal, stroked again, retreated again. The third stroke, powerful and sure, brought the knowledge that she had wanted this through all the weeks of telling herself and Matty and anyone else that it was impossible – all that time she had wanted this. This man, above her, inside her.
She met the fourth stroke, fully, completely, wrapping her legs around him, wrapping herself around him. And there was no more counting.
They found their rhythm, or it found them. Beating with the life that pulsed in each of them and with the life that pulsed between them. Hard and driving and inexorable. A pounding climb to the summit. Heart hammering, body straining with the rarefied air, but so close to being able to open her mouth and just swallow a star … so very close … if she could just reach a little higher. Could she?
"Yes." He panted, as if he'd heard her question. "Taylor."
Higher … higher … and – yes, she had the star, swallowing it into herself, its power bowing her back, throwing her head back, shooting rays to her toes and fingers and everywhere in between.
"Cal – Cal!"
His response wasn't a word but a sound.
"Yes," she told him, as he'd told her.
His muscles clenched, turning to granite under the pressure in seconds instead of the eons geology demanded. His head went back, and only the pulse of him inside her defied his stillness.
With a murmur of her name, he dropped down to her, wrapping her in his arms.
* * *
Cal came back from the bathroom, donned another condom and returned to her, exactly as he had been before, and she opened her arms to welcome his weight.
But instead of simply lying in each other's arms, he began pressing slowly inside her. Not as fully as before, but effectively – definitely effectively, as her inner muscles clenched around him.
"Cal? Already?"
"Apparently." Behind the laconic drawl was the hint of a cocky grin.
It changed to intensity as he slid deeper, then stilled.
Supporting himself on his elbows, he put his fingers through her hair, holding her head in his hands as he had before. He brushed kisses at her hairline, from her temple to her ear, then back. The other side. Her forehead. And started all over.
She accepted the sensation of those kisses, as her palms stroked lightly, absorbing the texture of the bones of his shoulders, tendons of his neck, muscles of his back and the flesh of his throat. Over and over, his lips touched her, and her hands touched him. Until they had set up a new motion, rocking against each other, for each other,
Rocking between the friction of his body against hers, with the prickly hairs on his chest rubbing her nipples to hardened tenderness, and the softness of his kisses and her touches.
She held on to that rhythm until she couldn't live another second without digging her fingers into the hard flesh of his buttocks, urging him. He filled her, harder and deeper, yet with the same slow tempo they'd created. She locked her legs around him, her movements also blending with the tempo. Even her breathing and her heartbeat had found that same rhythm, consistent, relentless, exhilarating.
And in the next pulse of her blood, she was over the edge, exploding in tremors that arched her off the bed. Cal growled low in his throat, then stiffened. Taut.
"Taylor."
Her eyes filled with tears, though she smiled as he collapsed against her once more.
* * *
Her tears had dried to faint tracks, and she still had no will to move when Cal shifted, rearranging their positions with a murmur about not wanting to crush her. Too late. She was already pulverized. Exploded into dust that would never reform in quite the same order.
She rested her head where his shoulder met his chest, and knew that making love with Cal had reordered her. Like the cards she'd tried to shuffle, the pieces of what she wanted and what she expected and what she hoped for had fountained up into the air, then fallen back to earth. All the same elements were there, but in an entirely different configuration.
* * *
Taylor's hair was spread across his pillow.
It was also spread across the bare arm he had under her neck. It tickled with any move she made. Between the tickling and the cool air beyond the quilt pulled up to their chins, goose bumps had bloomed across his arm. He didn't move it.
Words – sometimes whole words, sometimes fragments – bubbled into his head. Before they could threaten to bubble out of his mouth, he snatched at something else to say. Something neutral. Safe.
"Is everybody in your family a redhead?"
She blushed as, under the quilt, he brushed his hand lightly over the proof that her red hair came from nature. Though why she would blush at that gesture, he couldn't imagine when he had touched her there more intimately – deeper. The thought stirred a tightening in his groin.
"More or less. My sister's hair is lighter, one brother has more brown in it."
"What's the order of the kids in your family?" he asked to distract himself from other thoughts. This must be what an addiction felt like.
He wanted to mock himself – carrying a woman to bed for heaven's sake. It was like getting in a taxi and saying, "Follow that car." Something you'd always heard about but never expected to do in your life.
Now he'd done one of them, and had no inclination to apologize for it. He'd certainly had no inclination to regret it when he'd followed her down to the bed. Not then, not the second time, and not the third time, when need had awakened him sometime after sunset, and he had set about the enjoyable task of waking need in her.
"Three older – two brothers and a sister – and a younger brother, and I love them all dearly. They're great people. You'd love them, too. Everybody does."
Now she'd caught his genuine attention. "Why'd you say it like that then?"
"Like what?"
"With a sigh."
"Oh, nothing, really."
"For a lawyer, you're not much of a liar."
She chuckled. "I don't know if I should feel insulted over your opinion of my profession, complimented that you don't think I'm a good liar, or insulted that you don't think I have the requisite skills for my profession!"
"Tell me."
She turned on her side, resting one hand on his chest. Could she feel the hammering of his heart? Did she know how much he wanted her again, right now?
"It's not them. Truly," she said. "They are great, and I do love them. It's me. I just don't have a niche like the rest of them. My sister is the brain, winning all the academic prizes and getting straight A's. My oldest brother is the financial whiz. My next older brother is the people person, able to connect with everybody and a leader of everything. And my younger brother is the jock – played every sport, and in great physical shape. So what was left for me?"
"All of that."
Her lashes swept up as her eyes opened wide. "Me? No. I'm the ordinary one among the extraordinary Larsen kids." The smile left her voice as she added, "I think that's part of why—"
"Why you got sucked into high-powered lawyering."
"Sucked into it makes it sound like I had no hand in it, Cal. I'm responsible for that period of my life. I embraced it. I wanted that kind of success at that time. And, yes, I suppose some of it was trying to prove to my family that I was as good as them. Or maybe to myself – until I realized the cost."
"Or maybe by then you'd proved you were as good as or better than your sister and brothers." Her lips parted, but he gave her no time to get words out. "You're smart – gotta be, or you never would have succeeded in that big law firm. You're enough of a financial whiz to have your own practice. You're good with people – I don't know about in your other job, but I've seen you come into an area like this that isn't used to outsiders and turns to its own first, and you've won these people over. Folks in Knighton are crazy about you."
"People have been very warm and welcoming, and—"
"They aren't that way
to me."
"They could be if you let them."
"I'm not complaining," he said dryly. "It's better this way. I like it like this. And you just proved my point that folks are warm and welcoming to you because of who you are. They're reacting to you. And as for being in great physical shape, I can testify to that."
She blushed. Not just her cheeks, but her throat and shoulders and breasts. He suspected he would never see her blush again without wanting to kiss every pinkened area.
"You have all your siblings' specialties wrapped up in one. I figure that makes you the most extraordinary Larsen kid."
She stroked his chest, fingering the hair on his chest. "Tell me about your family, Cal."
"Nothing to tell. I don't have one."
"But you said … about being filthy rich. You must have had a family."
"Never was much of a family, and they're all gone now."
"I don't understand. What—"
"You have chocolate at the corner of your mouth."
* * *
Chapter 9
« ^ »
His diversionary tactic was blatant. But if she repeated that she wanted to know about his family – well, he already knew she did. She could say she hoped it would help her understand him. He probably knew that, too, and the odds were even better that he wouldn't like the idea of her understanding him better.
"I do?"
Automatically she reached up, but he wrapped his fingers around her wrist before her hand reached its destination.
"Let me." He closed in.
"It can't be much, if you have to look so close."
The last word was mangled as his tongue darted out to sweep her skin. He repeated the action, then kissed her almost primly, before returning to the corner of her mouth, teasing it with his teeth, sucking it in between his lips and licking once more, before backing up a good, oh, two inches.
"All gone?" Her question and her smile were breathless.
"No."
"It's still there? But—" She wiped at the corner of her lips, still damp from his exploration.
"No. You don't have chocolate at the corner of your mouth."
"But you said…" And then it clicked. "Did I before?"
"No. It was never there, so it can't be gone." He straightened, then dropped back beside her. "Just like…"
His family.
She held her breath, afraid even that automatic movement might give away how much she wanted him to talk to her, how afraid she was that he would withdraw again.
"If he could have, I think my father would have rolled in money, like Sin does in whatever muck he finds, to get the smell of it deep into his pores." His voice was emotionless. "Of course that wouldn't have been dignified. Instead, he satisfied himself with wallowing in the trappings – cars, houses, boats, servants. And the proper wife. With the proper background and the proper pedigree. No mongrel for him. Only a thoroughbred would do. Then, when he had her, she became another trophy for his case. No more valuable than any of the others.
"No, that's not true – she was more trouble than the others, and that made her less valuable. After all, the cars and boats and houses he could hire other people to take care of while he put his energies into what was really important – making more money. But it was harder to do with a wife, not that he didn't try.
"My mother was what the family liked to call delicate. By the time I was old enough to understand, separating cause from effect got tricky. She was on pills a lot. Sometimes she had a private nurse. Even when she didn't, there was almost always someone around murmuring, 'Remember what the doctor says about taking your medication, Janice.' God, I hated those people – the doctors, the nurses, the aides."
With his neck propped up by the pillow, he was staring toward where the wall met the ceiling. She rested her hand on his arm. His stare never wavered, he didn't so much as twitch. She thought he might not even have felt the touch until he spoke again.
"Don't feel too sorry for me. I was insulated from it in a lot of ways. My mother's maiden aunt lived with usher own wing, actually. She had the bluest blood of the East Coast blue bloods, and not a penny to her name. Family story is that her father considered her too rebellious, so he wrote in his will that he wasn't leaving her anything and no one in the family had better give her any money of her own, but that the family was obligated to take care of her – that would teach her humility, he said. He was a fool. Eva never did learn humility.
"She had a back like a ramrod and face that looked as if she faintly disapproved of everything and everyone around her. But she was one hell of an old broad." His laughter was hoarse but sounded genuine. "God, how she would have hated being called that. I wish I'd thought of it when she was still around."
Even without the laugh, his voice had gentled when he spoke of his aunt. Taylor wondered if he knew that.
"She'd roll up slacks that looked like hand-me-downs from Katharine Hepburn's grandmother and take me on what she called rambles. Climbing over the rocks, going through the woods. Telling me about the ocean and trees and weather and sky – Nature she called it, always with a capital N. When I was a little older, she taught me to ride. And she taught me to sail. That was the real escape. Out there on the water. With Aunt Eva, mostly. Sometimes alone. Just a scrap of lumber, a bit of canvas, some ropes and your own skills to eke the most out of the breeze and outwit the ocean."
"You loved it."
"Yeah, I loved it."
His voice had an odd flatness she didn't understand any better than she understood why a man with that kind of feeling for the ocean had landed in landlocked Wyoming.
"Was it always just you and your aunt?"
A flicker crossed his face, as if a pain had clamped down on him.
"No. On her good days, my mother came along. The summer I was eleven was a good one for her. She came along a lot. The end of August, we were out when a storm blew up. It was rough seas and I think all three of us were pretty giddy with just getting back in safely. Mom challenged me to race from the boathouse up to the house through the rain. I won. I went to the closest doors – French doors in from the terrace – and burst in."
He came to a halt, staring unblinkingly, and Taylor waited. If he turned away now, if he dammed it all up again, would he ever break through?
"My father was screwing his assistant on the couch."
Horrified for him, Taylor tried to fathom what an eleven-year-old boy must have felt. All she had to go on was the man before her now, but that told her more than he probably thought. Did he think the uninflected harshness of his words revealed no emotion? To Taylor it screamed of betrayal and anger.
"I tried to block Mother, but she was too close behind me. She stood there, dripping rainwater onto the floor, while Father got up, unhurried, unapologetic. And she said over and over that she didn't understand, because he'd never even liked that upholstery."
His croak of laughter brought tears to Taylor's eyes. She blinked hard. Cal wouldn't like tears, not tears for him.
"She offered him a divorce. It might have saved her, but he wouldn't let her go, and she didn't have the strength to leave without him releasing her. He didn't want a divorce. Why the hell should he? He had things the way he wanted them.
"I was sent off to boarding school that year – two years earlier than planned, and summers I went to camps. The holidays … well, Mother didn't have many good days after that. She died when I was seventeen. Official cause of death was heart failure – guess there's no arguing with that.
"If it hadn't been for Eva, I'd have taken off then. But she didn't have any money and neither did I, except what Father gave me for an allowance. I can't say he was cheap – have to keep up appearances, you know. But it didn't matter. He knew I wouldn't take off without Aunt Eva. I asked her to come. Said I'd get some sort of job to support us – pumping gas, working at a burger joint. Anything. She said no."
"She was protecting you."
"Maybe. I got mad. Said she was like the rest o
f them, only cared about money. She said she wouldn't dignify that with an answer – she said things like that, and you believed them. I didn't go back to that house for a while. After Eva and I patched it up, it was mostly slipping in to see her. Especially after Father blessed me with a stepmother."
Taylor must have made a sound, because he glanced toward her, his mouth twisted.
"No, not the assistant. Much too low-class for Father. Another blue blood. Only Christina was anything but delicate. Give a wounded man a choice of being in a pool with a shark or being between Christina and something she wants and a smart man would take the shark.
"I'd met Christina at college. Thought I was in love. Got engaged, and took her home to meet Aunt Eva. Christina had other ideas. She zeroed in on my father from the second we walked in the door. Two months later she was my stepmother."
"Your fiancée? Your father married – oh, Cal!" A tear slid down her cheek.
He shook his head without looking at her.
"Better him than me. Didn't take long for me to realize my ego was a small sacrifice to pay for not being married to her. If I'd had any doubts left, they were answered when Aunt Eva started having strokes. Small ones at first. Then worse.
"Christina wanted her out – had wanted her out before that, but hadn't succeeded in chipping away at Father's attachment to having a real, live blue blood under his roof. For once Father's obsession with appearances paid off. How would it look if he cast off an elderly, infirm relative? That was even more important to him than money, so Aunt Eva wasn't shipped to some nursing home. She needed round-the-clock care, but she got to stay in her haven as she called it.
"But it was provisional. I'd graduated by then, and Father made it clear that I was to join the family corporation – assume my proper role was how he put it. Once I turned twenty-five, I would inherit enough stock from my mother's estate to be a real thorn in his side on the board. It was never stated as an outright threat, but there was always the understanding that if I didn't toe the line, Aunt Eva would be yanked out of the only home she'd known.
"She lived three more years. That last day, she gave me a journal she'd kept. She couldn't talk very well, but she said to read it. After she died, I stayed up all night, reading. One of the last entries, after she'd started having the strokes, she said she was sorry – sorry she hadn't said yes when I wanted to pump gas. She'd been so determined to not run away, because her father had never thought she was tough enough to stick out his punishment, and she'd been determined to show him she was as tough as he was. And in the end he'd won, because she'd stayed in the prison he'd put her in."
MATCH MADE IN WYOMING Page 12
