Beneath the Stetson

by Janice Maynard

  His smile faded, replaced by a searing look in his deep brown eyes that made her toes curl. “The only woman whose opinion interests me is you, Bailey.” He curled an arm around her waist and dragged her closer. “But I think I’m done talking.”

  Wild elation streaked through her veins. His arms were hard and strong, binding her without mercy. She kissed him recklessly, clumsily, as if somewhere a clock counted down the seconds they could be together. The air in the room was charged.

  “Take off your boots,” she demanded. Her fuddled brain knew the priceless antique quilt on Gil’s bed shouldn’t be damaged. He released her only long enough to obey, toeing off each one and facing her in his sock feet.

  He should have looked more vulnerable, less of a threat. But somehow that wasn’t the case. “Any other orders?” he asked, the words mild despite his hot, determined expression.

  She nodded slowly. “Now the belt.”

  Like the boots, the belt was constructed of expensive hand-tooled leather. Gil unfastened the buckle and made a production of sliding the length of cowhide through each loop. When it was free, he coiled it and tossed it on a chair. His jaw flexed. His chest rose and fell rapidly with each labored breath. “Whatever you want, Bailey.”

  The way he looked at her made her body go lax with arousal, even as her hands fisted helplessly at her sides. Her thighs pressed together. Where her body prepared for his, she was damp and ready. She had known sexual desire in the past, but never this writhing hunger that turned her insides into an ache that consumed her.

  Paralyzed suddenly by the knowledge that she wasn’t really a femme fatale, she fell silent.

  Gil seemed to read her hesitation. “You were on a roll,” he muttered. “Don’t stop now.”

  Apparently her bent for bossiness entertained him. She shifted from one foot to the other, realizing suddenly that her clothes were far too tight, much too hot. “The shirt,” she said. “Unbutton it slowly.”

  Eight

  She had created a monster. Straitlaced Gil Addison showed a definite talent for stripping. If he had loosened his shirt buttons any more slowly, Bailey might have lost it and ripped the fabric apart with her two hands. But she had asked and he had answered, so all she could do was watch as he tormented her.

  When the shirt hung open, he stopped. She hadn’t requested that he take it off, and he was obeying the letter of the law. His silence rattled her. What was he thinking? The uncertainty dried up any further desire to script this encounter. Her momentary lead in the dance no longer appealed.

  They were separated by a distance of only three or four feet. Close enough for her to see the shadow of late-day stubble on his chin. The evidence of his masculinity underlined the differences between them. Bailey knew how to use a weapon and could even bring most men down using her training in martial arts.

  Many people would describe her as tough.

  But Gil...Gil was the real deal. His sleek, long-limbed body rippled with muscle. His olive skin gleamed with health and vigor. He was a man capable of defending those he loved. At the peak of his physical strength and power.

  Bailey’s heart twisted. Hard. What would it be like to be loved by Gil Addison? Clearly, he had loved his dead wife once upon a time. And of course he loved his parents and his son. But to be a woman loved by a man like Gil...that would be an incredible thing. In the present context, though, that thought was a fantasy, one she might as well put out of her mind.

  Tonight was about human need. Sex. That was all. She and Gil were drawn to each other, because they both spent too many nights alone. So during this brief moment in time, they were going to cling to each other and enjoy the pleasures of carnal excess.

  Perhaps Gil was more intuitive than she realized, for he abandoned his sexy pose and stalked her, backing her up until her hips hit the bed. “You aren’t saying much,” he taunted. “Cat got your tongue?”

  She curled an arm around the bedpost, clinging in hopes that her shaky legs wouldn’t give out. “Just admiring the view.” It wouldn’t do to let him know how much seeing his beautiful body in the privacy of his bedroom rattled her.

  He shrugged out of the shirt and let it fall. Taking her free hand, he placed it flat over his heart. “Feel what you do to me.”

  The rapid thud of his heartbeat was unmistakable. Without thinking, she rubbed gently, as though she could absorb his life force through her fingertips. Touching him was both intimate and arousing.

  Gil groaned and closed his eyes. Was it possible that he was as turned on as she was? Experimentally, she scraped her thumbnail across one flat, brown nipple. Gil put his hand over hers, trapping it against his hot skin. “Don’t poke the tiger, Bailey. I have plans for tonight, and they don’t involve coming too soon like a callow teenager.”

  His blunt speaking made her cheeks flame. “I want to please you. I need to know what you like.”

  “You do please me, in every way. I love your strength and your integrity. And I love the way you treat my son.”

  “He’s lucky to have a dad like you.”

  Gil caressed her cheek, his gaze hooded. “I spend much of my time being Cade’s father. I know that role inside and out. Tonight...” He paused and she saw the muscles in his throat contract. “Tonight I’m just a man. A man who wants you.”

  She slipped her arms around his neck, appreciating the distinction, even if it wasn’t wholly true. Gil could have any woman he wanted, but in a town like Royal, such a relationship would be tricky. Sleeping with Bailey was less complicated. She understood that.

  Resting her head on his shoulder, she whispered the bare, honest truth. “I want you to make love to me Gil. More than I’ve ever wanted another man. Don’t make us wait any longer.”

  * * *

  Gil felt the sting of strong emotion in his throat and his eyes. Bailey Collins was the most fascinating, unconsciously sensual woman he had ever met. Now that she was here―in his bedroom, about to make a number of his more torrid fantasies come to life―all he could think about was how soon he was going to lose her.

  He slammed the door on those images. Who and what he needed was right in front of him...literally. Bailey was warm and real and so very, very beautiful. Running his hands though her hair, he imagined what it was going to look like spread across his pillow. “In other circumstances, I might insist that anticipation is half of the pleasure. But tonight, I’m in no mood to delay anything at all.” He unfolded her arms from around his neck. “My turn, lovely Bailey.”

  As her cheeks turned the color of a ripe tomato, he undressed her bit by bit, supporting her arm as she stepped out of her clothes. His surmise had been right on target. She wore naughty undies beneath, this time pale pink trimmed in mocha lace. The tiny bikini panties and matching bra were ultrafeminine, reminding him that despite the toughness she exhibited in her job, Bailey was all woman.

  She seemed reluctant to dispense with the final layer that shielded her full nudity. So he matter-of-factly shucked his jeans and boxers and socks in a couple of quick moves. Bailey’s eyes widened. The expression on her face was gratifying.

  He was fully erect, and aching to possess her. But first he was going to have to coax her into relaxing. “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he complained. “Is that deer-in-the-headlights look you’re giving me because you’ve changed your mind or because I’m going too fast?”

  She licked her lips, arms crossed beneath her breasts. “Neither,” she said quietly. “I’m enjoying the moment.”

  “Could you possibly enjoy the moment under the covers? I’m getting cold feet.”

  That made her giggle, and some of the rigidity left her posture. “I’m on board with that.”

  He tugged her close for a quick kiss and then turned back the covers on the large, wide bed. His sheets were soft white cotton, scented with sunshine. The
housekeeper was a big fan of using a clothesline, and truth be told, Gil liked it. The smell made him think of being a kid.

  When he helped Bailey crawl beneath the sheet and the quilt, however, childhood was the last thing on his mind. His brain blanked for a moment, all his senses absorbing the novel and gratifying sensation of feeling Bailey’s arms and legs tangle with his. She was soft, so soft. He held her tightly, burying his face in her hair.

  “I’ve imagined this moment for weeks,” he admitted, flattening his palm on her belly and teasing her navel with his pinkie. It would almost have been enough just to hold her. To revel in the knowledge that she had come to him of her own free will and wanted to share his bed.

  Bailey kissed his chin, her hands roving across his pecs and his shoulders. “Does it measure up?”

  He wedged a thigh between hers and groaned as his thick, almost painful shaft rubbed against her leg. “I’m not sure. I’m having trouble believing this is real. I don’t want to wake up in a minute and find out I was dreaming.”

  Without warning, her hand closed around his erection. “I’m real,” she said. “We’re real. Here. Together.”

  When she began stroking him, his eyes closed involuntarily. He had been leaning over her on one elbow, but now he fell back on the bed, his hands fisting in the sheet. Holy hell. It wasn’t the effects of extended abstinence making him insane. It was the way she touched him. Her gentle movements were exactly right.

  The first sexual encounter between a man and a woman was supposed to be fraught with pitfalls, neither partner knowing the other’s preferences. Bailey was putting paid to that idea. Everything she did was gut-level perfect. Now she was the one leaning over him, her silky hair falling around them as she kissed him softly. Kiss/stroke. Kiss/stroke. The sequence made him dizzy with lust.

  His sex quivered every time her lips found his. He held the back of her neck to deepen the kiss and to make sure she didn’t stop what she was doing. But soon, far too soon, he had to call a halt. Sucking in raw lungfuls of air, he shook his head, half-crazed with hunger. “Enough,” he croaked. He hovered on a knife-edge of arousal.

  As he predicted, the moon had found its way into his bedroom, the silver orb framed by his window. The drapes were open. Shafts of white light spilled over Bailey’s face, giving her the look of an ice queen. But no ice queen ever emanated the kind of warmth that could save a man’s life. Gil hadn’t fully understood the depths of his loneliness until he brought Bailey to his home and to his bed.

  He had told himself repeatedly over the past few years that being Cade’s father was more important than anything. And it was. A sacred obligation. But Gil was neither a monk nor a saint, and in this instant he realized how sterile he had allowed his life to become.

  Every cell in his body cried out at the indulgence of touching Bailey, of kissing her. Like flowers blooming wildly in the once-barren desert after a storm, he found himself drunk with pleasure. She rolled with him in the bed, laughing softly as they bumped noses.

  “This is nice,” she said, the voice more prim than her actions. “I never knew Gil-the-sex-maniac existed.”

  “You’re not naked,” he complained.

  Sitting up, she reached behind her back and unfastened her bra, dropping it at the foot of the bed. Now, the moon painted two perfect breasts with a magical palette of light and shadow. Bailey dragged her hair over one shoulder, her head cocked as she tried to read his expression. He, unlike his partner, was cast in semi-gloom.

  “Is this what you had in mind?”

  “Getting there,” he muttered. He slid his hand between her smooth thighs and stroked the center of her panties. The scent of her came to him, warm and heady. “These, too.” Rising to his knees, he shoved the offending scrap of nylon down her hips.

  Bailey lay back, arms above her head, and let him finish the job. The moon took her natural beauty and made it supernatural, as though a fairy or a sprite had come to him in a mirage. Touching her was the only way to prove she wouldn’t fade away.

  Kneeling between her legs, he leaned forward and mapped her body like a blind man, his caresses making her whimper and stir restlessly. Her face, her throat. Each lovely breast. The narrow span of her waist. The flare of her hips.

  He stopped there, breathing hard. Running through the back of his mind was the knowledge that he was missing something very important, something key to this moment.

  Bailey put a hand on his thigh. “Do you have condoms?” she asked softly.

  He sensed that the question embarrassed her. “Yes.” Leaving her momentarily was unthinkable, but he would never do something she would regret. After sheathing himself in latex, he went back to her, his hands shaking as he sprawled on his side.

  She turned her head to look at him, her lips curved in a smile that made him want to drag her beneath him like a caveman. But his evolved side held sway...barely. Tonight was about more than his sexual starvation. It was about pleasing Bailey.

  He parted her sex with gentle fingers and tested her readiness. Warmth and wetness met his touch. Inserting two fingers into her tight passage, he played with her until she began to beg.

  “Now, Gil. Please. Now.”

  Surprisingly, her urgency enabled him to chain his own impatience. Though his arousal pulsed and throbbed like a raw, aching nerve, he found himself entranced with tormenting Bailey. Locating the tiny nub that was her nerve center, he rubbed softly, exulting when she cried out and arched her back as the climax rolled over her.

  When she was limp and still, he began all over again.

  * * *

  Bailey didn’t know what she had done in a previous life to deserve such a night of enchantment, but she wasn’t about to complain. Her world had narrowed to the confines of Gil Addison’s bed. Nothing beyond that perimeter mattered for the next few hours.

  Her body sated with pleasure, she struggled to focus her fuzzy thought processes. She was aware that Gil watched her, hawk-like, his features masked in the semidarkness. His back was to the window, so while he could look his fill of her nakedness painted in lunar glow, she was less able to gauge his mood.

  She lifted a hand and let it fall. “You’ve destroyed me,” she said, the words slurred. Her orgasm had been intense, unprecedented. To realize that he could draw such a response from her was daunting. What if tonight’s affair ruined her for other men?

  When he touched her again, she flinched.

  Laughing softly, he spread her legs and positioned the head of his sex at her core. “I want you to remember every second of this night,” he said hoarsely. “Because I’m going to make love to you until neither of us can remember our names.”

  Bailey believed him implicitly. Heat radiated from his big body, warming her chilled skin. Now that her pulse had settled back to normal, the room was cool.

  Gently he stroked her swollen folds with his shaft. She was so sensitized that the caress was almost too much. Incredibly, as he brushed her intimately, her body began to thrum again with the need for him, the urgency to have him inside her.

  Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to turn on a light. She wanted to catch every moment of the insanity, to revel in every nuance of expression that crossed his face as he pleasured both of them.

  Her breath caught when he cupped her bottom and canted her hips. “Now,” he promised, the single syllable guttural. “Now, Bailey.”

  He was thick and hard. Her flesh yielded to his penetration slowly. On the heels of her earlier climax, this claiming was overwhelming. She shook her head from side to side, incredulous that such feelings were real. Nothing in her past had prepared her for Gil.

  He held her tenderly as he took her with the confidence of a man who knew what he wanted. What she wanted. Kisses interspersed with raw lunges that took him all the way to the mouth of her womb. His arms quivered as he kept his weight from cru
shing her into the bed.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling the power, the potency. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders, marking him as hers. She could fall in love with him so easily... For many weeks she had watched him from afar, seeing the respect people afforded him, witnessing the joy in his son’s face, understanding the position and influence Gil wielded in the community.

  Tonight, though, her feelings went far beyond admiration. Gil had taken her heart. Perhaps he didn’t even know it. Perhaps it didn’t even matter. For a stolen moment in time the only real measure was how they each gave and received pleasure.

  She clung to him as he thrust wildly, his force shaking the bed. A tendril of heat curled in her lower abdomen, spread throughout her pelvis and burst into full flame as she pitched over a sharp edge in the midst of Gil’s hoarse shout of completion.

  * * *

  They must have dozed in the aftermath. When she opened her eyes, the moon had shifted and was barely visible in the corner of the window. The room was quiet. Gil lay half on top of her, his face buried in the sheet. Despite the chill in the air, they were both sticky with sweat.

  She eased to one side, wincing when he muttered in his sleep. Stealthily, she moved an inch at a time until she could free herself and slide from the bed. After using the bathroom and freshening up, she pondered the possibility of a hot shower. The lure was impossible to resist. A thick terry-cloth robe hung on the back of the door, so she dropped it on the floor in arms’ reach and turned on the water.

  Soon, steam filled the roomy enclosure. Clearly, Gil had spent money on modernization at some point. Bailey applauded his choice. The bold turquoise and amber tiles reminded her of Spain’s artistic influence in Texas architecture.

  The water was hot and reviving, chasing the chill from her bones. She didn’t bother with her hair, keeping it mostly dry. Though Gil had invited her to spend the night, she was already feeling anxious about “the morning after.” Perhaps it would be better to say farewell and head on home very soon. Things that seemed perfectly natural and normal under the hypnotic effects of moonlight could develop into awkward realities in the cold light of day. She didn’t want to spoil a perfect memory with an uncomfortable goodbye that left her feeling empty and lonelier than when she started.