The thought of Nicholas Rafter having a separate life outside that cabin, outside the capitol building, intrigued her, and she said, “And who tightened your brace for you—one of your overnight guests?”
Nick’s brows quirked. “Do I detect jealousy?”
“No!” She stamped a foot, and pain shot through her at the sudden movement.
“Glad to see you angry,” Nick said. “It’ll get your mind off what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching for her waist, he grasped the hem of her sweater and with the greatest of caution he eased her right arm out. “Now bend over—there, that’s it,” he said, his hand warm on her rib cage as he extracted her head from the sweater’s neckband.
She blushed at the exposure of the swell of her breasts above the simple white bra. Why hadn’t she worn her one sexy, lacy bra? She tried unsuccessfully to hide herself with her free hand, but Nick only laughed. “Your bra shows less than any bikini top.”
Nevertheless his eyes raked over her clea¬age before he drew the sleeve down over her left arm. He circled around behind her, and her eyes closed at the deceptively gentle touch of his hands on her back. As though he sensed her fear, he whispered at her ear, “Relax, I’m not going to ravish you.”
Swiftly, deftly, his fingers worked at the buckles on the brace straps, adjusting the tightness in increments until he heard her indrawn gasp of pain. His hand slid up beneath the heavy curtain of her hair, massaging her neck. “I can’t deny I don’t take some small amount of pleasure in your pain,” he whispered, his voice seductive. “But that part’s over, for the day at least.”
“I’m not into the pain thing.” I don’t think.
“Well, maybe, that’s because you haven’t ried it.
For a moment She stood transfixed by the hypnotic touch of his fingers along the column of her neck. But when his hand moved aside her hair and his lips brushed the nape of her neck, her knees buckled with the unexpected sensualness that burned her skin like a raging fever. She stood motionless, like a doe before the hunter, waiting for the kiss that would initiate the death of her innocence.
Nick caught her up and laid her on the bed, and before she could stop him his fingers had released the snap of her jeans and unzipped them. He began to jerk at the pants legs, and She flailed her legs in terror. But he continued with grim determination until she was stripped of the jeans and lay clad only in her bikini panties and bra.
Expecting to be assaulted, She watched Nick through the sweep of her thick lashes, her heart beating in roller-coaster dips. But he straightened from her and crossed to the dresser to remove a faded blue woolen shirt. Before She could move he began to slip it over her arms.
“I can do that,” she said as his supple fingers fastened each button.
“True,” he acknowledged, continuing to fasten the buttons, “but I can do it much quicker.”
She found her breath suspended when he knelt to reach the shirt’s hem that fell just above her knees and his hands brushed her thighs. His dark head was so close she could have reached out and run her fingers through the thick, lustrous hair.
“You’ve got great legs, Julie Dever,” he rasped, his hand trailing the soft line of her thigh. Then his lips compressed in a moody line, and he moved away. When he began to shuck his own pants, She turned her head, her lids squeezed shut. A few seconds later she felt the give of the mattress and the warm, scratchy woolen blanket being drawn up over her. It seemed as if hours stretched by while she held her breath, waiting for the slightest movement in her direction. Actually only several minutes passed before she heard the quiet, even tempo of Nick’s breathing.
Reassured, she slipped into a deeply needed sleep, awakening only once during the night when Nick brought her another pain pill. In the darkness she could barely make out his face above hers as he tilted the water glass to her lips. She was vividly aware of his body, so powerfully virile, stretched only inches away from her. Obediently she swallowed the pill. “Thank you,” she whispered.
It would be so easy to fall in love with Nicholas Raffer, she thought sleepily. Wasn’t that what all captives did—transfer their affection to their captors, or some wildly insane reaction like that? But Nick was not actually her captor, he was not holding her there against her will.
Yet he was a wealthy senator, and she was only a small-town girl, a free-lance reporter who never knew where her next dollar was coming from. And he had hated her before the two of them had even met. So the idea of her becoming infatuated with the man was absolutely absurd, her mind whispered—even as her body nestled closer against the broad chest, seeking the warmth of Nick’s sinewy length.
Chapter Three
The mournful shriek of the wind, the insistent pelting of the snow against the bedroom win-dow, aroused her from a deep sleep. She lay there in her snug cave of blankets, orienting herself. A slow blush suffused her suntanned skin as she vaguely recalled Nick’s hard, warm body that she had cuddled against sometime during the night and the muscle- corded arms that had enfolded her and held her throughout the early-morning hours.
When she found her imagination vividly conjuring up pictures of Nick’s dusky hands caressing the intimate curves and valleys of her body, she mentally chastised herself. To surrender to Nick’s passion would be the most foolish thing she could do, because for him it would only be a casual fling. And for her—for her, she was afraid, it would be something much more.
She was glad that Nick was already up and gone, probably hunting again. She forced herself to get out of the warm bed, cringing at tboth the pain and the cold hardwood floor beneath her bare feet. Now that it was Monday morning, she could telephone the wrecking yard that had towed away her car and see about getting it repaired before the day was out. And then she had to check on Pam. If luck allowed, the doctor might discharge her friend in time for them to drive on to Santa Fe.
But the room’s refrigeratorlike cold demanded she first stoke the fire. She padded into the living room, her arms wrapped about her. She poked at the dying fire, thinking how nice it would be to have a bath. What had it been, two days since she had last bathed? She probably smelled worse than the musky old deer Nick stalked. But the brace made bathing out of the question at the moment. And her hair—she had not even bothered to look in a mirror. She no doubt looked like Medusa.
The best she could do was brush her teeth. Gingerly, for every movement was one that induced pain, she undertook that task of hygiene – with Nick’s toothbrush. If he noticed, she would doubtlessly pay for that. He seemed to enjoy inflicting his own brand of pain on her.
It was only then she noticed the world of white outside the living-room window. A howling maelstrom lashed around the cabin. She turned on the radio, and the announcer was in midsentence informing his listening audience that New Mexico’s worst snowstorm of the year was ravaging the Rocky Mountains.
What if Nick’s Blazer had slipped off into one of the gorges that banked the canyon’s road? The worry for Nick excited her into activity, and she began to pace the floor, forgetting her plans to telephone the wrecking yard and Pam. Absentmindedly she reheated the coffee that Nick must have made before he left at dawn, but all the time her gaze anxiously went to the window, hoping to see some sign of the blizzard abating.
She was unsteadily pouring herself another cup of stale coffee when the door swooshed open and Nick came in, buffeted by the wind. Clumsily, She whirled about and the hot coffee splashed on her fingers. With a shriek of pain she dropped the coffeepot.
Nick’s gaze rapidly took in the situation: her clad only in his shirt, standing in the kitchen with shards of glass lying in the coffee that puddled at her bare feet. Quickly he dumped the wood he carried on the hearth and crossed to her.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, half in tears as he swept her up and put her on the couch.
Nick eyed her flushed face with arched brows that were white. Even his beard was white so that he looked like some fierce Nordic raider. He retrieved a damp cloth from t
he kitchen and began to wipe away the coffee that had splattered on her feet. “You wear the look of a woman glad for her lover’s return,” he said lightly.
“I—I was just relieved ... I didn’t want to be left here alone.”
As he began to scrub the cloth along her calves, she became unnerved by such an intimate performance on his part. She fixed her gaze on the ice particles trapped in his hair and on the forest of his long black lashes. “You didn’t go hunting?” she asked uneasily.
“No.” He concentrated on his task. “The blizzard makes it too dangerous to leave. I chopped a fresh supply of wood in case we get snowed in for a couple of days.”
She jerked her leg away. “We can’t get snowed in!” she wailed.
Beneath Nick’s high slash of cheekbones the indentations on either side of his chiseled lips betrayed his amusement. “Oh? Why not?”
“We—I—I’ve got to get back to work.”
“I’m sure the Sun can get along without its ‘Speculator’ for a few days. As I’ve said before, you’ve got great legs—for a dwarf.”
For the first time she realized she was sitting before Nicholas Raffer dressed only in her scanty underwear and his shirt. The outrageous situation she was in, the pain in her shoulder, the strain of the past two days— all of these combined in a furious eruption.
“I’m not a dwarf `` and it’s all your fault I’m stranded here, Nick Raffer!”
Nick sprang to his feet and threw the cloth into the kitchen sink. “I’m going to be as glad to get rid of you as you are me!”
She tried to get up from the couch, swearing she’d walk back to Roswell if she had to, and Nick snapped, “Sit down—before you trip and break your other collarbone!”
She wanted to stick out her tongue or hurl an ashtray at him, but she knew she was being childish about the situation. There was nothing either of them could do about the weather. She would simply have to wait it out and hope the blizzard let up before nightfall. She gathered the blanket around her and watched with tight lips as Nick prepared bacon sandwiches. It was all she could do to mutter a polite “Thank you” when he brought her a sandwich and a glass of milk.
He slumped down into the easy chair across the room with his own plate, and she watched from beneath lowered lashes as he ate his sandwich in moody silence. For the first time she noted the lines of fatigue around the finely carved lips and at either side of the sensually flaring nostrils. And there were sun-squint lines at the outer corners of his eyes that she had never noticed. No wonder he was tired. For two days he had been getting up at dawn to hunt, then waiting on her the rest of the day.
When next she cast a glance at Nick, his eyes had closed and the sandwich lay half eaten on the plate in his lap. Asleep, he did not look nearly so ferocious. In fact, she would have liked to see him without the beard, close up.
She remembered him as being a devastat ingly handsome man. And yet there was something about the rugged growth of beard and mustache, the careless way his overly long dark brown hair fell at an angle across his broad brow, that made his face much more exciting than the male-model image the newspaper and magazine photographs cast him in.
As a young teenager she had often fantasized being kidnapped by someone senusous and solicitous. And isolated in the cabin with a man like Nick— it could have been a fantasy come true . . . if one ignored the fact, she thought grimly, that the two of them were enemies.
As quietly as she could, she got up and took the plate from Nick’s lap. After she had put the half-eaten sandwich in the kitchen, she took the blanket off the couch and covered Nick. She was about to turn away when his hand shot out and grabbed hers. At the contact with him her stomach knotted as if she had been running. Why did he have that power to make her knees weak? No other man had ever had that control over her.
Nick’s black-fringed eyes riveted her where she stood, seeming to look into the far comers of her mind as if he were searching for something that she herself was not even aware was hidden there. At last he said simply, “Thank you, Julie,” and closed his eyes as if prepared to sleep.
After a moment she pivoted and went into the bedroom, bewildered. She told herself that she should be angry with Nick, that everything that had happened was his fault. She lay across the bed thinking of a hundred ways she could tell him off, of how she would snub him if they ever met again.
But somehow in her dreams her scathing words of contempt became twisted with his whispered words of seduction, so that when she opened her eyes and found Nick bending over her, she thought it was still part of her dream. “Julie,” he said huskily, “you were moaning. Are you all right?”
In the room’s semilight she could just make out the hazy contours of the fierce counte¬nance. Her right hand slipped up to touch the squared-off line of the bearded jaw. “Nick,” she murmured sleepily. Then she saw the sudden light of desire flicker in his eyes, and she rapidly blinked her lids to clear the confusion from her sleep-fogged mind. “I thought that—I was dreaming that ...”
“What were you dreaming, Julie?” he asked.
His face was so close to hers, his hands resting on either side of her head, that she found it difficult to concentrate on what she was saying. Her head moved slowly back and forth. “I don’t remember,” she lied.
One brow shot up. “Oh?” His fingers brushed aside the wisps of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she whispered, disconcerted by the chiseled lips that hovered just over hers and the bold blue eyes that seemed to devour her. “It must be that awful Third Day of promised pain.” If he would just go away so she could compose her emotions! Her heart beat so wildly she knew he must hear it. “I—I’m thirsty, though. I’d like to get a drink.”
She tried to lever herself up, but Nick caught her in his arms and lifted her from the bed, standing her on her feet. “Is that better?” he asked with a smile that told her he was well aware of her ploy.
When his gaze slid downward to the soft, full curve of her breasts displayed in the opening of his shirt, she blushed and tried to cover herself. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?” he said with a laugh and gathered her against him.
She turned her face away from his kiss, and his lips burned the delicate hollow of her ear. She stood paralyzed by the unbearable pleasure of his touch, unable to move as he kissed the pulse that beat at her temple, all pain forgotten except the kind of pain he induced. His mouth slipped down to capture hers, his hungry lips playing lightly across her softer ones. His kiss demanded nothing but tempted her with the delight of the pleasure to come.
She swayed against him, her lips parted, her lids fluttering closed in impatient expectation. When his hands imprisoned her hips, his thumbs massaging her pelvic bones, her hips arched toward his, wanting something more. Then, abruptly, she jerked away, astounded at how easily she had given herself up to his passion.
“Find someone else to add to your list of conquests,” she said in a tight voice, unable to meet his darkened eyes. She whirled away and fled to the safety of the kitchen. But even then she was thwarted, for when she shakily tried to reach a glass in the cabinet she almost knocked the sugar bowl over.
“See, you need me,” Nick said behind her as he set the sugar bowl back in its place.
She spun around, feeling cornered there in the small kitchen with him. She searched his countenance for some sign of anger, but his expression held only indifference. Warily she watched him as he took a bottle of Bollinger from the refrigerator and two wineglasses from a cabinet. He poured out the sparkling liquid and passed her a glass.
“To the blizzard’s end,” he said with a sardonic smile.
“I’ll second that,” she murmured, sipping the wine. Her gaze went to the window, and it did seem that the snow was not falling so heavily. Perhaps she would not have to spend one more night with Nick after all. If nothing else, she could spend the night sitting in the hospital lobby. But she knew she could not
stay in the cabin with Nick.
She looked back to find his eyes on her, and once again her heart trip-hammered at his nearness. “I think I’ll try to call Pam,” she said, trying to edge past him.
Nick crooked a hard smile. “You’re a coward, Julie. I feel sorry for whatever man it is who has your cold heart.”
She felt like a trapped animal as she tilted her head back to look up into Nick’s mocking eyes, but her words were full of bravado. “I don’t have a cold heart!” she blustered. “It’s just—just that you don’t make me feel. . . that way.”
“Oh?” Nick clamped his hands on the kitchen counter at either side of her. “After what happened a few moments ago I was left with a different impression.”
“Well, you got the wrong impression about me,” she said. She had a distinct suspicion that the conversation was going from bad to worse.
“Perhaps you have the wrong impression about me,” he said, his gaze resting on her mouth, where her tongue nervously played across her lower lip.
“Hardly!” she countered and pushed aside one of his hands, escaping her imprisonment. Too easily. She half expected him to follow her into the bedroom, and her heart was thudding like a jogger’s by the time she reached the telephone. She was somewhat surprised, therefore, as she dialed information for the hospital’s number, to find herself alone.
The telephone in Pam’s room was busy, and she could only hang up and hope to reach Pam a little later. Rather than get trapped in the bedroom, she returned to the living room, taking a seat at the couch’s far end. She sipped at her wine as she covertly watched Nick move easily about the room while he prepared dinner—fried venison steaks—or r¬plenished the fire.
Made For Each Other Page 3
