by Janet Dailey
Hungry for the taste of him, she urged him back to her lips. His devouring kiss only made the throbbing in her loins more intense, and the fine mat of hairs on his chest sensually tickled her breasts, which had been so sensitized by the manipulations of his hard tongue. She writhed against him, inviting a greater intimacy, oblivious to the scrape of the rough denim jeans against her bare legs.
When he pulled away from her to unfasten them, Layne rid herself of the encumbering sleeves of her robe. When Creed sat up to simultaneously push off the jeans and long underwear, the yellow cat appeared and strutted over to him, attempting to rub its head against his arm. Creed impatiently brushed it aside.
The cat glared at Layne and marched away in a huff, its long tail slashing the air. Her glance followed its offended departure, then swung to Creed as he lowered himself alongside her once more. His lean male flanks glistened in the firelight.
“I think Fred’s jealous,” she murmured and curved her hands around the strong column of his neck to bring him the rest of the way down.
“He’ll have to get used to it,” Creed said against her lips.
Just the touch of his mouth and the feel of his hard male body was enough to arouse her already eager flesh. She arched against him.
“I want you, Creed,” Layne said, admitting all that her actions had been telling him.
“Not yet,” he said thickly. “I’ve waited for this too long, and now I’m going to take my own sweet time about making love to you.”
With his hands and his lips, he kissed and caressed nearly every inch of her until Layne was trembling with the rawness of her needs. It was abundantly clear to her that a person didn’t need to be a skilled lover to know all about loving.
When she thought she could endure the agony of wanting to love him no longer, a lithe, powerful leg nudged her legs apart. She wanted to gather him in, hold all of him to her, but Creed levered the upper half of his body away from her.
“No,” she whispered and pulled at him.
His resistance was only a temporary thing as he responded to her urgings and eased his weight onto her. “I’ll be too heavy for you,” he warned.
“No. You’ll never be that,” Layne murmured and rubbed her lips over his mouth.
Then he was taking her and driving into her, their lips and bodies fusing in a glorious union of souls and flesh that lifted them both. They strained together, trying to deny the physical laws that kept them two separate beings. Yet, in a swirling moment of sheer ecstasy, their essences mingled and it didn’t matter.
The firelight was flickering soft and low, burning steadily but without the leaping flames with which it had so hotly begun. Her head was resting in the crook of his shoulder, their bodies still partially entwined as if reluctant to let go of that moment. Layne sighed blissfully and sensed the inquiring look Creed sent her.
“I feel all warm and soft as butter inside,” she declared softly.
His hand roamed across the flatness of her stomach to the underswell of a breast. “You feel more like a woman to me,” he murmured huskily.
“Oh, really?” Layne tipped her head back so she could see his face. “And what does a woman feel like?”
“All round and soft, with skin like milk.” The faint smile left the edges of his mouth as his gaze darkened to search her face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” she assured him with a small shake of her head. But his question made her remember that it was only the people a person loved who could hurt them. “Love” was a word she used cautiously, and she was hesitant to attribute it to this warm, wonderful feeling she had. She settled back on the comfortable pillow of his shoulder and shut her eyes to savor this moment of quiet closeness.
“Tired?” Creed asked and lightly stroked her hair.
“Mmm.” It was an affirmative sound.
Layne felt the pressure of his mouth on her hair, then there was just the warmth of his body and the feel of his strong arms. She drifted off, not really intending to sleep, instead finding that plateau somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness. She snuggled closer to him, burrowing into his chest like a cat. She knew when he pulled the robe over her to keep her warm, and smiled at the caring gesture.
Chapter 9
A sensation of coolness stirred Layne. She pulled at the blanket on her shoulder to hug it around her neck. When she did, there was a draft on her feet. Suddenly the hardness of the bed made an impression on her, jolting Layne into remembering where she was.
But Creed was gone. She sat up and the robe slipped down. Impatiently she picked it up and pushed her arms through the sleeves as she got to her feet. When she paused to snug the robe tightly around the middle and belt it, she noticed the pumpkin-colored cat sitting in all its majesty by the kitchen door, a very smug look on his face.
“Thanks, Fred,” she murmured. “I wondered if he was still here.”
With a swish of its tail, the cat planted itself in the doorway as she approached, daring her to cross. But Layne wasn’t intimidated by its territorial behavior and simply stepped around it.
Creed was standing near the counter when she entered the kitchen. His back was to the doorway. He sent a half glance over his shoulder that didn’t quite reach her. On the back porch the clothes dryer was tumbling.
“Fred told me you were out here,” Layne said as she walked up to him and slid her hands around him to the front of his flatly muscled stomach. She pressed her cheek against his back. “I missed you when I woke up.”
“Did you?” It seemed a noncommittal response. “I made some coffee. Would you like a cup?”
Slowly she withdrew her hands and pulled away from him, trying to decide whether his reception was a cool one or her expectations for a more ardent greeting had been too high.
“Sure.” She swung around to the front of him where she could see his face.
His dark glance moved over her briefly, inspecting her features with an almost casual interest. “You look rested.” A second cup was filled with coffee for her.
“Was I asleep long?” Layne had no idea when Creed had brought her to the house, let alone when she had fallen asleep, so there was no reason to look at the clock.
“A half hour. Forty-five minutes at the most.” He turned away from her and walked onto the back porch.
“What have you got in the dryer?” She followed him.
“My undershirt,” he said. “Unfortunately I left your jacket and my shirt out by the pond.”
Taking a sip of her coffee, she studied him over the brim of the cup. He was so lean and brawny, roughly male and rugged. His features were too strong and too harsh to ever be pleasing to the eye, yet they were intriguing; he looked like a wild animal that possessed an indomitable spirit and fierce pride.
Her glance strayed down his muscled arms to his large hands as they tested the dryness of his shirt, then tossed it back inside the machine. Her skin still retained the tingling impression of the intimate caresses of those hands, caresses that had sometimes been rough simply because they didn’t know their own strength.
Yet there had been a purity to his lovemaking that had taken it beyond a mere physical act. Layne felt the curling heat in the pit of her stomach and the swift rise of some powerful emotion that choked her throat with its sweet intensity. A misting of tears welled in her eyes as the desire surged to be held by those big, strong arms.
A tiny quiver of surprise licked through her. She was actually in love with this big brute. If she had been reluctant to admit it before, it had only been that she hadn’t wanted to mistake the heat of passion for something more. She leaned her shoulders against the door frame, a little bemused by her discovery.
His knee pushed shut the door to the clothes dryer, then his glance took skipping note of her. “Don’t you think you should go get dressed? Mattie will be home shortly,” Creed advised her somewhat critically.
Layne straightened from the door frame as he approached, effectively putting herself in his path.
The smile on her lips was warm with the inner knowledge of her feelings. Creed halted only inches from her, so she was eye level with his massive chest and its dark whorl of chest hairs. Her pulse was stirred by her nearness to the man she loved.
“Knowing Mattie”—Layne couldn’t resist sliding a hand up the sinewy muscles that roped his chest—“I doubt she’ll say a word if she finds me walking around in this robe in front of you.”
Her hand continued its upward travel to curve along the nape of his neck while she stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, taking care to hold the coffee cup to the side of her body. Initially, his lips were unresponsive to the warm pressure of her mouth. But that didn’t last as his arm hooked her waist to drag her hips into contact with his length while the driving force of his suddenly demanding mouth arched her backward over his arm.
His hand invaded the folds of her robe to take possession of her breast and roughly massage it, pinching the nipple into hardness. Her gasp of mixed pleasure and pain was consumed by his tongue, but it gentled his touch and turned it restless, gliding to her shoulder and arched throat.
When he lifted his head to gaze down at her with his eyes three-quarter lidded, Layne was conscious of the labored edge of his breathing. There was a faint grimness about his mouth even as he studied her kiss-swollen lips.
“We make a pair, don’t we?” Creed muttered. “Beauty and the beast.” Layne started to smile until she noticed that he wasn’t amused by it. “It’d make quite a story, wouldn’t it? A modern version, of course.”
“I suppose it would,” she conceded. “But I’d never even thought about it.”
His glance raked her face. A split second later his hold on her loosened and the hand that gripped the side of her waist used its strength to swing her out of his way. She was left standing free as Creed brushed past her to enter the kitchen.
“That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? Doing research so you can write some stories for the paper,” he stated without turning to look at her until he had finished.
A troubled darkness clouded the olive color of her eyes. Layne dropped her gaze to the coffee cup in her hand and followed him into the kitchen, not wanting to continue her lie. Yet it didn’t seem fair to tell him the truth about her relationship to Mattie when Mattie didn’t know. It put her in an awkward position, and there wasn’t time to work out who rightfully deserved to know the truth first. Creed was expecting a response.
“Of course,” Layne said, trying to sound airy.
“Your ordeal this afternoon should make good material for a story,” Creed remarked as he turned to refill his coffee cup.
“I’d just as soon forget about that.” Layne suppressed a shiver at the memory of those icy minutes in the water. “I prefer writing about other people’s experiences.”
“You’ve had more than enough time to accumulate all the research you’d need to write several articles.” Creed studied her with a sidelong glance, a large hand resting negligently on the band of his low-riding jeans. “Why have you stayed on?”
She released an uncomfortable laugh. “You almost sound as if you want me to leave.”
“I can’t think of a reason for you to stay,” he said evenly.
Layne stiffened at the stinging content of his words. “Not even you?” Her hurt question bordered on a demand to know exactly where she stood with him.
A cold, ruthless light flared in his narrowed eyes. “Don’t try to kid me, Layne. As Stoney would say, I’ve been to see the elephant. Maybe it amuses you for the time being to play around with a man like me, but it won’t last. I’m just an oddity to you.”
“No.” The denial sprang forcefully from her.
“Don’t be concerned about sparing my feelings,” Creed told her with a faintly contemptuous curl of his mouth. “I’ve wanted to make love to you. I suddenly realized there wasn’t any reason why I shouldn’t enjoy that beautiful body of yours, since it was so willingly being offered to me.”
A confused pain flickered across her brow as Layne turned away from him to face the counter. “I can’t believe you didn’t feel something,” she accused and abruptly set the coffee cup down.
“Oh, I felt something all right.” He wandered over to her. His hands took her by the waist and turned her to face him. His dark gaze was sexually alive to her. Slowly and deliberately, his hands slid down to clasp the rounded cheeks of her bottom and insinuate her lower body to his thrusting hips, making his state of arousal blatantly obvious. “And I still feel something.”
Shaking her head in mute denial, Layne looked anywhere but at him. “You don’t mean what you’re saying,” she declared tautly and pushed at his arms.
“Don’t I?” The thickness of want was in his husky voice as he bent his head and rubbed his mouth along the curve of her neck. “I could lay you down right here on the kitchen floor and take you again. If that sounds crude and heartless, you can blame it on the beast in me.”
That absurd excuse merely enraged Layne. With a violent shove, she twisted away from him. It was a full second before she realized that she would never have been able to escape from those powerful arms if Creed hadn’t wanted to let her go. She was hurt, angry, and confused all at the same time, but mostly angry.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like this, but I’m not buying any of this nonsense you’re handing me!” Layne informed him in a hot rush of temper.
Creed smiled. “I’m just making sure you have plenty of subject matter for your stories—the perils of ranch life, sexual harassment on the job—”
“You’re crazy.” She frowned at him incredulously.
“I’ve thought that since the day Mattie hired you,” he admitted tersely. “I don’t know who or what you are—or what your game is—but I’m damned sure you aren’t here to write any articles for a newspaper!”
His statement rocked her. Layne paled, unable to think of anything to say to refute him, and her senses were too disturbed by the recent contact with him to allow her mind to think clearly. His look hardened at her silence.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he muttered, almost angrily.
“Creed—” She rushed to explain but the buzzer sounded to signal that the clothes dryer had automatically shut off. Creed went striding by her to silence it and retrieve his undershirt. At almost the same instant Mattie entered through the back door, carrying a sack of groceries.
As she leaned against the door to push it shut, the suddenly speculating gleam in her faded green eyes slid first to the bare-chested Creed, then to the robed Layne. “Well, what have we here?” murmured Mattie.
Bending, Creed removed his insulated shirt from the dryer and let his glance linger for a small second on Layne. “Layne fell in one of the ponds this afternoon and I fished her out.” The shirt was pulled down over his head, hands jammed through the sleeves.
The very abruptness of his answer, coupled with the grim way Creed had eyed her, prompted Mattie to guess. “And now you wish you’d thrown her back in, is that it?” she joked dryly.
“No …” Creed paused to send a long, considering look at Layne while he pulled the hem of his shirt down around his waist. “I have no intention of letting her off the hook.”
Layne had hoped Mattie’s arrival would bring an end to the conversation but it appeared that Creed was going to pursue it. She couldn’t let him question her about her reasons for staying on the ranch, not in front of Mattie.
“I’d like to talk to you later tonight, Creed … privately,” Layne said with an underlying thread of taut appeal.
His hard study of her continued while he appeared to weigh her words. “If you like,” he finally conceded, then reached around the corner for his jacket and hat, hanging on a wall peg. “It’s time I started the evening chores, anyway. Come over to the house after supper—and we’ll have your talk.” There was the smallest inflection of sardonic mockery in his voice.
The hat was on his head and he was pulling on his coat as he nodded to Mattie and wa
lked out the door, slamming it with a small bang.
Mattie raised an eyebrow at his noisy exit. “It sounds like he’s in a rotten mood,” she observed and eyed Layne. “You look a little pale yourself. Are you sure you didn’t catch a chill from that dunking?”
“No. I’m all right.” Layne glanced at the door through which Creed had gone before slowly following Mattie into the kitchen.
Her thoughts were already turning to the promised meeting with Creed later that night, but it was difficult to string them together in any semblance of order when her body was flooding her mind with impressions of the heavy caress of his hands and the heady taste and smell of him.
The sack of groceries was set on the kitchen counter. “Good. There’s fresh coffee made,” Mattie noticed as she slipped out of her coat and unwound the scarf from around her neck to hang them both on the wall pegs by the back door. “I’m going to sit down and have a cup before I start supper,” she announced. “Do you want one, Layne?”
It was a full second before the question registered. Layne reacted with a vaguely guilty start and answered quickly, “No. Thank you.”
She watched Mattie pour a cup for herself and continued to stare at her when she carried it to the table and sat down. A reluctance to tell Mattie the truth tied her tongue. But it wasn’t just a desire to get to know Mattie better before breaking the news that she was her natural mother which was keeping Layne silent any longer. Other reasons had come into play. The mere fact that she had waited so long made it awkward to confess now.
And she couldn’t be sure how Mattie would react. There was a chance she’d ask Layne to leave, and Layne wasn’t ready to go. She wouldn’t have been willing under ordinary circumstances, but the way she felt toward Creed made it just that much more definite.
“Is something wrong, Layne?” Mattie said, questioning the way Layne was staring.
“No. Nothing.” Layne’s quickly lowered glance noticed the loosened front of her robe, created by the intimate invasion of Creed’s hand. With a trace of self-consciousness, she pulled the overlapping fold more tightly across her body.
