“I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I lie in bed and think of all the things I want to do with you.” The words were only a level above a whisper, but each one scorched her. “I won’t interfere with your Vasaro. All I want—” He stopped, and when he spoke again his voice was rough with frustration. “You know what I want.” His stride lengthened and in another moment he had left her far behind.
4
It was almost midnight when she saw Alex walk away from the house and down the hill toward the fields.
She closed her eyes as she leaned her hot cheek on the cool glass of the windowpane. Merde, she wanted to go after him. Why did she have to feel this way? Lust wasn’t supposed to be this all-consuming. She couldn’t think or work or concentrate on the things that mattered to her. Alex’s presence had come to dominate every action, every moment. Soon she would be no good at all to Vasaro. He interfered with every—
But it wasn’t Alex Karazov who was interfering with her work, it was the way she felt about him.
She stiffened at the realization. Her lids flicked open as she straightened on the window seat. The enemy wasn’t the man himself, but the lust she felt for him. If the lust was satisfied, she would be herself again. Why had she been so stupid as not to understand so simple a fact?
Her heart was pounding so hard with excitement, she could scarcely breathe. She could have him. It would even be good for Vasaro if she had him. Rationalizaton? So what? To hell with it.
She jumped to her feet and moved quickly toward the door.
She didn’t allow herself time to think as she ran down the stairs and out the front door. The warm breeze brought the scent of the last of the lavender they would harvest the next day and pressed her white cotton nightgown against her body.
Alex was almost out of sight down the road and she hurried after him. He passed the newly planted rose field, his stride lengthening.
She didn’t know why she didn’t call out. She knew he would have stopped and waited for her.
She didn’t have to call out. Just before he reached the jasmine field, he halted and looked back over his shoulder as if he had sensed her presence.
His expression frightened her.
Her pace faltered before she reached him, and she paused uncertainly.
“No.” Alex’s voice was guttural. His gaze traveled from her tousled hair to the flowing cotton of her sleeveless nightgown to her slippered feet. He held out his hand. “It’s all right. Come.”
She moved slowly toward him.
He stared down at her, the line of his cheeks hollow with tension. “Yes?” he asked thickly.
She could barely get the answer past her dry lips. “Yes.”
His hand clamped on her wrist and he jerked her across the road and into the jasmine field.
Caitlin was vaguely conscious of the feel of the soft earth beneath the thin soles of her slippers, the heavy scent of jasmine, the moonlight edging Alex’s dark hair with silver as he dragged her farther into the field.
“Alex, where—”
“Here.” He stopped and turned to face her. “I can’t wait any longer.” His hands fumbled as he undid his belt and unzipped his jeans. “Get rid of that nightgown.”
She stared at him uncertainly. The flesh of his cheeks was pulled taut over the bones, and she suddenly felt the same fear she had known when he had turned to face her a few moments before.
“Hurry.” He stripped off his clothes frantically, his gaze on her face. “For God’s sake, no second thoughts now.” He was naked, starkly, boldly, aroused. He took a step toward her. “I couldn’t take it.”
He pulled the nightgown over her head and threw it aside. “Come here.”
She took a step toward him and was suddenly pressed against him, her naked breasts hard against the coarse hair of his chest. He rubbed against her, making low, choked sounds deep in his throat.
Her nipples were on fire. She was on fire. She moved against him, trying to get nearer. She felt as if she were being devoured. There was something wildly exciting about the intensity of his lust for her. “Alex, this is . . .” She drifted off helplessly. She didn’t know how to describe what they were doing.
He pulled her down to the ground. “It’s no good,” he said thickly. “I can’t hold—” He pushed her back on the earth and spread her thighs, his palms running feverishly up and down her flesh, feeling the textures of her. His fingers touched her, probed, sank deep.
She cried out, the muscles of her stomach clenching, convulsing.
“Tight,” he muttered, “God, you’re tight.” He moved closer. He said through clenched teeth, “I—want—in.”
She wanted him in. Her heart was pounding so hard, she couldn’t get her breath.
He stabbed deep into her with frantic force.
Caitlin’s entire body tensed as his presence in her body sent shock waves through every muscle.
He stopped, his face flushed, his eyes glazing with an expression of primitive pleasure. “Lord, that’s good.”
“Move.” She could barely force the words from her dry throat as her hands plucked futilely at his shoulders. “I can’t stand it.” She undulated her hips against him, trying to take more of him. “Don’t stop.”
“I’m afraid to move.” His eyes closed. “I’ve never felt like this before. I want to rip you apart, I want to—”
“I don’t care.” Caitlin lunged upward. “Move, dammit.”
A shudder went through him and his lids slowly opened to reveal light eyes shimmering blindly in the moonlight. “I . . . told you.” His voice sounded like a low growl.
Caitlin’s spine arched up from the ground, and she gave a low cry of wild satisfaction as he plunged deep.
“You like me? You like this?” His voice was hoarse, rasping as he thrust again and again. “Tell me.”
“I . . . like it.” She moved against him, trying to meet his thrusts with her own.
He went wild, beyond control. He covered her like a stallion would a mare and rode her. It was incredible, basic, elemental.
She felt his fingertips smoothing, massaging her abdomen, feeling the muscles jar and tense with each movement. It was almost as if he were measuring the textures and depth of their joining. It was an unusual caress, all the more erotic for its oddness.
“Now.” His hands delved beneath her body to cup her buttocks in his palms and lift her to each thrust. “Caitlin, give me—” He spoke through grated teeth, his nostrils flaring with each harsh breath. “No! I haven’t had enough. I—want—to go—on.” He moved desperately, his hips twisting. “Help me to go on.”
She couldn’t help him. She could barely help herself. Her head thrashed back and forth in the dirt of the field, and she could hear herself give frantic little cries as the tension coiled tighter and tighter with each movement of his body. She could no longer think coherently, but her senses were sending shards of messages.
Moonlight. Earth. Jasmine. Lime. Musk. Alex.
Alex froze, his chest rising and falling with the force of his breathing. “Damn, damn, damn . . . ,” he muttered desperately, and then something else in a language she didn’t understand as he began to thrust again.
Caitlin climaxed, the tension exploding with a force that sent a fiery release through every muscle and vein in her body. An instant later she could feel Alex spasm again and again within her, shuddering helplessly.
He collapsed on top of her, his hips still moving yearningly, as if he couldn’t stop even though he had already reached satisfaction. A moment later he lay still, breathing heavily, his flesh hot against her own.
Sweet Mary, what had happened between them? Caitlin wondered dazedly. She had never experienced anything like this intense encounter with Alex.
Alex’s breathing gradually steadied and slowed. “I’m sorry.” His voice was still uneven. “I was too rough. I lost control.”
“We both lost control.” She looked up at him. “You were very . . . primitive.”
“I come o
f peasant stock.” His lips twisted. “I have a tendency to be earthy.”
“It was . . . like something out of the jungle. Savage . . .”
“But good?” His hands were playing with her breasts, stroking, lifting, before cupping them in his callused palms. His speech again had that faint Slavic intonation. “You have wonderful breasts. I’ve been wanting to do this since the first night I met you. You liked me?”
“Yes.” She laughed shakily. “I seem to be pretty earthy myself.” She was suddenly conscious of the cool ground beneath her naked back and the rows of sentinellike jasmine stakes with their coiled bounty of climbing white jasmine standing tall on either side of them. “Renée said a bed would be softer, but this isn’t so bad. At least it’s good Vasaro dirt.”
“You talked to Renée about me?”
She shook her head. “She talked to me about you. She thought I was a bit retarded not to do this before.”
He moved off her and raised her to a sitting position. “And I thought you were a sadist. You nearly drove me crazy. Another day like today and I might have dragged you down on the ground in front of the workers. God, I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.” He helped her into her nightgown and began to button it. His expression suddenly sobered. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“No. Did I hurt you?”
He chuckled. “No, but Renée is right, a mattress will be a lot easier on the knees. Let’s go back to the house and wash off this dirt and—” He stopped as he saw her expression. “No?”
She nervously moistened her lips with her tongue. “I’d rather not.”
He stiffened. “Rather not go back to the house or rather not go to bed with me? I’m not always like this, Caitlin. I’ll try to be gentle with you next ti—”
“It’s not that. I just want to keep this . . . separate.”
His muscles relaxed slightly. “In what way?”
“I don’t want my mother to know. I’d prefer that no one knows. I don’t want it to change anything.”
“You’re still afraid I’ll interfere with your running of Vasaro.” His gaze narrowed on her face. “I told you I wouldn’t let what we do hurt you. If you want to keep me in the background, that’s fine.”
It was going to be all right, she realized with relief. “You don’t mind?”
“I’ll mind when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t move on top of you. And you’re going to mind the next time I’m inside you when I’m so frustrated I nearly tear you apart like I did tonight.”
“I won’t mind.” She felt a deep tingle between her thinghs as she remembered the mindlessness of their joining only minutes before. “You’ll see that it will be better this way.” She frowned. “Though I don’t know how we’ll manage to—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll work it out.”
Caitlin could already see difficulties looming on the horizon. “We could forget about this,” she said tentatively. “It would be the sensible thing to—”
“No!” He tempered the violence in his voice as he continued. “I told you I’d work it out. We both need this.” He buried his face in her hair and his voice was muffled. “I’ll make it all right for you.” He paused. “I didn’t protect you. Is it okay?”
Mother of God! She had completely forgotten about the possibility of getting pregnant. Stupid. How could she have been so stupid? She knew the answer, dammit. She had been in such a fever of heat that she hadn’t been able to think of anything but the act itself, and she hadn’t needed contraceptives since she had left college.
“Caitlin?”
“It’s fine. No problem.” From now on she would make sure there was no problem. It was perfectly natural for Alex to assume she would have protected herself. She was twenty-five years old and a responsible woman even if she hadn’t acted like one.
“You’re sure?”
“No problem.”
“Good.” He gently pushed her back down on the ground. “Then you won’t mind if we go back to the jungle and I indulge my peasant instincts.”
Alex didn’t join them in the fields at dawn the next day. At eight o’clock Caitlin saw the Lamborghini slide down the driveway and turn onto the road leading to Cannes.
“Where’s he going?” Renée’s gaze followed her own.
Caitlin tried to shrug unconcernedly. “How should I know?”
“Maybe you played too hard to get?” Renée shrewdly studied Caitlin’s averted face. “If a man doesn’t get what he wants from one woman, there are always others to play his game. I’d make sure he gets a big welcome when he comes back from the city.”
“I don’t care—” Caitlin broke off as she realized she did care that Alex had left without telling her, and Renée’s remarks were abrasive. Hard to get? She had given Alex exactly what he had wanted last night. Perhaps she had even been too accommodating. They had not returned to the house until close to three in the morning after innumerable feverish couplings. Now that the first edge was off his libido, Alex was no doubt less eager for her company and was going about his own business. She supposed she should have expected it. Men often grew bored when they got what they wanted from a woman. Her father had been the same with her mother.
Well, she had gotten what she wanted too, and she had no right to complain.
Still, he could have told her he wouldn’t be picking with them today.
Alex had changed from his suit to his work clothes and was sitting on the bed of the truck, talking to Jacques, when Caitlin brought her final basket of the day to the truck.
He smiled at her. “Hello.”
“Hello.” She kept her face expressionless as she emptied the blossoms into the tub.
“Come with me.” Alex levered himself down from the bed of the truck, grabbed Caitlin’s hand, and pulled her away from the truck. “Hurry.”
“I’m busy,” she said curtly, trying to pull her wrist away from his grasp. “I have to go to the maceration shed.”
“You’re not busy, you’re angry.” He waved at Jacques on the truck as he pulled Caitlin down the road. He lowered his voice to a teasing, melodramatic whisper. “You think I used you and threw you aside.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have any right to be upset with you. We both know what drew us together.”
“You have the right.” He stopped in the middle of the road and grasped her shoulders in his hands. “I promised to be kind to you. And to behave as you think I’ve done wouldn’t be kind.” He smiled and shook her gently. “Now, stop being angry and come with me.”
She could smell the familiar scent of him and felt her body react as mindlessly as it had last night to his touch. What did it matter about kindness or courtesy if he could give her this? “Where?”
“The Cottage of Flowers.”
The first thing Caitlin noticed as she opened the door was the crisp cotton sheet covering the mattress on the floor in the center of the room.
She paused in the doorway, her eyes widening in surprise.
“Come on.” He pulled her into the cottage. His blue eyes sparkled with boyish eagerness as he waved his hand with a flourish. “I scrubbed everything down and bought the linens in Cannes.” He nodded at the cooler by the far wall. “Wine on ice.” He grinned. “I even swept the birds’ nests out of the chimney so we could have a fire if the nights turn cool.”
She looked around dazedly. The cottage had been cleared of all debris and was pristine. “I see that you did. Why?”
“I told you I’d take care of it,” he said simply. “You said no one ever comes here, so no one will know if we do. You can have your Vasaro.” His hand gently stroked the tawny curls back from her face. “And I can have you. It’s a wonderful solution, isn’t it?”
It must have taken Alex hours to clean out the dirt and rubbish from the cottage. He had worked alone and in secret to protect her from anyone becoming aware of their association because that was what she had told him she wanted. He had said he believed kindness was important a
nd she could see the truth of his belief in those words as she looked around her.
“The sheets are wash and wear and I chose not to spread them with petals.” He met her gaze gravely. “I’m not a man who does that sort of thing. I hope you don’t mind.”
No, he would not give her romantic gestures because they would be a lie in their relationship. She felt a tiny twinge of sadness that she immediately dismissed as foolish. She had no need of romantic gestures when he gave her honesty, consideration, and the same lust that had brought them together. Her father had never given her mother anything but falsehoods and romantic trappings. She was much better off without satin sheets and rose petals.
She went into Alex’s arms as naturally as if she had done it a hundred times before and laid her head on his chest. “No,” she said. “I don’t mind. I always thought Philippe went a little overboard anyway. I’m sure his ladies were more interested in who was on top of them than what was underneath.”
“I’ll go first.” Caitlin quickly finished buttoning her shirt before tucking it into her jeans. “Give me ten minutes before you leave.”
“Why is it so important to you that no one know about us?” Alex asked idly as he raised himself on one elbow on the mattress to look at her. It was really a shame to cover up those luscious breasts and sinuous hips. Yet the coarseness of her work clothes was sensually evocative when he knew the smooth, glowing flesh that lay beneath it. And after these last five days of intimate exploration he felt he knew that flesh very well indeed. “I feel like the other man in an illicit triangle.”
“It’s not really important.” Caitlin avoided his gaze. “It’s just more . . . comfortable.”
“You think your mother would object?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Jacques and the other workers are earthy as hell. You wouldn’t get any flak from them.”
“I know.”
“Then, what is it?”
“I prefer to keep our relationship private.”
He shook his head, studying her. “It isn’t logical.”
Reap the Wind Page 9
