by Diana Palmer
She studied his broad, hard face with faint awe. It was strangely satisfying to know she had that effect on him.
“You’ve been a long time without a woman, haven’t you?” she asked haltingly.
His eyes began to glitter narrowly as he sat there, stiff and unyielding. “Is that what you think?” he asked sharply. “That I was so desperate, all I needed was a woman’s body?”
“Wasn’t it?” she asked, and held her breath for the answer.
The glitter got worse. “You really believe that I could use you like that, knowing you’re a virgin?” He got to his feet. “Thanks for the character reading, Maggie. It’s been fascinating. Let’s go home.”
“I wasn’t trying to stop you,” she reminded him quietly.
He laughed bitterly. “Of course not,” he said with contempt. “Why should you? If I got you pregnant, I’d be wide open for a lawsuit. You’d be on easy street for life.”
Her face went bone-white, but she didn’t say a word. She started picking up the picnic things and loading them into the car, putting the trash in the trash cans. And she didn’t say one word to him all the way back home.
When they got back, he was even worse, roaring around like a cyclone, growling about business, complaining about Maggie’s lack of cooperation when she tried and failed to get a businessman he wanted to talk to on the phone for him. Finally she lost her temper and slammed out of his study, leaving him alone with his bad temper.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THAT EVENING SHE was careful to sit beside Lisa at the supper table and encouraged her to talk so that no one would notice her unusual quietness. At the head of the table Saxon looked no more disposed to conversation himself, brooding and darkly oblivious as he picked at his food.
Maggie escaped upstairs at the first possible minute, despite the fact that Saxon had gone straight to his study when the meal was finished. She couldn’t face questions about the day she’d spent with her new boss without blushing, and that would have led to some interesting comments.
She sat in front of her mirror for a long time, brushing her hair with slow strokes while she relived every minute of his bruising, compelling ardor. It had been a long time since a man had tried to make love to her, and not once had she responded to another man the way she’d responded to Saxon. If the other car hadn’t come barreling down the road, she’d have given in to him completely there under the trees, without even the thought of protest or modesty. She couldn’t remember feeling such a blazing inferno of hunger. She still ached with it, burned with it. Just the memory of the afternoon made her body tingle with excitement. She’d loved the touch of his warm hard fingers on her skin, their expertise so evident that she bristled with envy for the women he’d learned it with. She closed her eyes and trembled with a silvery longing to be back in his arms again, to be cherished, to be...tutored. What would it be like to share his bed? she wondered hungrily, and her eyes flew open. She was going to have to get herself firmly in hand. An affair with Saxon Tremayne was a dead end, and she had the rest of her life to think about. Experiencing him as a lover would ruin her for any other man, and she didn’t dare risk that. Life without him was going to be hard enough anyway, without that.
She thought ahead to the day she’d leave Jarrettsville, leave him, to go back to her job in Defiance. It was as bleak as winter to her mind. Just to sit and look at Saxon was pleasure enough for an entire day. To be touched by him was heaven itself.
She stood up, hating her weakness even as it washed her in yearning.
A sound caught her ears. She paused. It came again, louder, from the room next door that was occupied by Saxon. She hesitated for an instant before she went to it and stood listening.
It came again. A groan. A hard, rough groan, like that of a man in horrible pain, penetrated the thick wood.
She started to knock, then thought better of it. She opened the doorknob and pushed. It was unlocked.
She stepped into the brown-carpeted room, her eyes falling hungrily on Saxon’s big body spread out on the thick quilted coverlet that was done in creams and browns to match the Mediterranean decor.
“Saxon?” she called softly.
He turned his head in the direction of her voice, and she could see harsh lines of pain carved into his pale face.
“Maggie?” he whispered huskily.
“Yes.” She went to him, compassion softening her voice, and sat down gingerly on the bed beside him, feeling the warmth of his body radiating to her thigh. He was wearing trousers and his shirt, the jacket and tie thrown on a chair and his shoes sitting beside the bed.
His fingers felt across her thighs for her hand, in her lap, and he grasped it tightly. “Stay with me,” he said in a taut tone. “I need you. God, I need you...”
“I’ll stay,” she said soothingly. Her hand, unbidden, went to his broad forehead to brush back the disheveled silver-splintered darkness of his hair. His brow was hot to her cool fingers. “I’m right here. I won’t go anywhere. What can I do to help? Is it a headache?”
“Damnable headache,” he corrected, wincing. “Tablets—in the top drawer of the bedside table.”
She let go of his hand and found the prescription bottle, reading the directions before she asked if he’d already taken any of them. When he shook his head, she toppled two of the white tablets into her palm and went to fetch a glass of water from the bathroom.
After he’d taken the tablets, he lay back heavily on the bed, his hair dark against the cream-colored pillowcase.
“It will take twenty minutes or so,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, it must hurt abominably.”
“What a tame word for it,” he growled.
She smoothed his hair again, remembering his vicious words as they left the roadside park. Probably the headache had started then, and caused him to react to her the way he had. It was pain and frustration, not hatred, that had caused him to be so hostile. Now she understood, and the sting went away.
“I was damned cruel to you, wasn’t I?” he asked curtly, as if he could hear the thoughts going through her mind.
“Yes, you were,” she told him, not pulling her punches.
He managed a wan smile. “I wanted you,” he said quietly. “The last thing in the world I expected was a carload of tourists to roar by.”
She felt herself tingling at the thought of just when those tourists had interrupted them. “It was a pretty public place,” she murmured.
“I didn’t know where I was at the time, and don’t pretend that you did either,” he muttered. “You were just as involved as I was, and if they hadn’t happened along, we’d have—”
“I’d have come to my senses,” she replied curtly, trying to convince herself.
“Like hell you would’ve,” he taunted.
She tried to smother a smile and lost. “Leave me a few illusions, will you?”
He laughed softly and sighed, pressing a hand against his forehead. “It was delicious, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Just the two of us, no distractions, the wind blowing and the leaves rustling, and the taste of you in my mouth...”
“If you’re trying to embarrass me, forget it,” she told him, fighting the urge to throw herself on him and kiss the breath out of him. “I’m twenty-six years old, and I don’t think I can be shocked anymore.”
“Do tell?” he murmured. “When I finally get you in my bed, we’ll see about that. Or do you still have doubts that I’ll manage that before you leave here?”
“I don’t want to have an affair with you, Saxon,” she said quietly. “That doesn’t come under the terms of our agreement. I’m here to help you cope.”
“And that’s all?” He caught her fingers and raised them to his mouth, teasing their tips with his tongue, his lips, until she felt again the fiery longing to lie with him.
“How’s your head?” she hedged, trying to ignore
the sensations he was arousing.
“Getting better by the minute,” he murmured. He pressed her palm against his mouth and traced its delicate lines with the tip of his tongue.
“You need rest...”
“I need you,” he breathed, tugging on her wrist. “Lie with me for a minute. Let me touch you the way I touched you this afternoon.”
“We shouldn’t...” she protested.
“Maggie, we’re both adults,” he reminded her. “Grown-up people, not children playing with fire. We both know the risks, but I’m not going to take you like this. I’m far too tired to do you justice, and my head aches like hell. I just want to hold you against me. Is that so outrageous?”
“You make me sound like an adolescent prude,” she grumbled. “And I’m not. I’m just cautious. I’m stupid about men and women in beds, hasn’t that occurred to you? I don’t even know how to protect myself, because I’ve never had to!”
“You don’t have to now,” he returned, glowering. “Not yet, at any rate. I won’t seduce you tonight. Would you like that in writing and notarized?”
“I’d like to pour a bucket of hot oil over your head, that’s what I’d like,” she muttered venomously.
“It feels as if someone already has,” he returned, and looked it.
She melted. It was diabolical of him to use his pain against her, but she couldn’t refuse him.
“I can’t believe this is good for you,” she murmured as she eased down beside him on the bed.
He seemed to tense as he felt her body sliding alongside his, but after an instant, his arms slid around her and he moved, pillowing his heavy head against her warm breasts.
He sighed wearily. “Oh, God, that feels good,” he whispered achingly.
Yes, it did, she thought, relaxing herself as the weight of his head made her feel the most exquisite pleasure. If it gave him peace, it was so little a sacrifice for her.
He relaxed there for a minute without moving, but almost inevitably, his lips began to inch forward, burning through her thin blouse as they found the slope of her breast.
“Saxon,” she whispered.
He ignored the soft plea. “Don’t talk,” he murmured against her. His teeth nipped at her sensually through the layers of fabric that separated them. His hands under her lifted, pressing her body hard against his mouth, and it became suddenly hungry, demanding.
She caught her breath. Fool, she taunted herself before she felt the first sensuous waves hit her. Fool. You knew this would happen!
He rolled over, taking her with him, so that she was lying on her back with his massive body above her while his mouth played relentlessly with her soft curves through the fabric.
“Help me undress you,” he whispered against her throat. “I want to touch every inch of your skin with my lips.”
“I want it too,” she managed unsteadily. “But not like this—not now. Give me time, Saxon!”
“Why should I?”
Her eyes closed. “Because I’ve got to walk in with my eyes wide open,” she said simply. “I’ve got to be willing to take the risks. I—I don’t do things on the spur of the moment. I can’t.”
He laughed softly against her silken skin. “I told you not more than a minute ago that I wasn’t going to seduce you. Didn’t you hear me?”
“What would you call taking my clothes off?” she muttered.
“Exciting,” he whispered wickedly. “Gloriously exciting. But I wasn’t going to undress all of you, baby. Only the upper half—so that I can feel these,” he whispered, brushing his lips maddeningly over her breasts, “deliciously bare.”
She wanted that, too, with a surge of hunger that knocked her right off balance. Her body trembled slightly, and he felt it, along with the almost imperceptible lifting of her body.
“We both want it,” he breathed, halfway removing his weight so that his fingers could find the buttons.
“What are you doing to me, you sorcerer?” she accused with weak humor as she lay perfectly still and let him slowly, sensually, unfasten the buttons.
“Preparing you,” he whispered just above her lips. “Getting you used to me, so that when the time finally comes for us, you won’t be afraid to give yourself freely.”
“Will the time...come for us?” she asked through taut lips as she felt his expert fingers toying with the front clasp that held the lacy wisp of her bra together.
“Inevitably,” he replied in a slow, tender tone. “It’s been building since the day we met. You haven’t missed me any less than I’ve missed you.”
Her eyes went liquid. “Have you...missed me?” she asked.
“More than I can tell you,” he replied. He unfastened the clip and slowly eased the fabric away, so that she was bare from the waist up, so that the faint chill of the room washed over her, emphasizing her lack of clothing. “But not,” he breathed, his fingers poised over her, “more than I can show you. God, Maggie, I wish I could see you,” he ground out.
“There’s very little to see,” she whispered lightly, aching for his touch on her body in a warm, sweet yielding.
His fingers lowered, and she trembled as they made contact with the taut peak, very tenderly tracing it, and the softness surrounding it, while his face seemed to harden and go rigid.
“You want this very much, don’t you?” he asked, confident of her response because of the things the reactions of her traitorous body were telling him.
“Can’t you feel that?” she asked on a gasp.
“I can feel it,” he agreed tautly. “But I want to hear it. I’m not used to making love blind, Maggie. This is the first time I’ve touched a woman since it happened.”
“Is it very different from being in a dark room?” she asked unsteadily.
He bent over her, and his mouth smiled against her lips. “Maggie,” he breathed as he took her mouth, “I’ve never made love in the dark.”
Before that soft taunt could register, he was kissing her, and touching her, and her body was lifting in unholy torment to beg for the slow, lazy fingers that were introducing it to such exquisite pleasure.
She wondered how a human body could survive this kind of torture—aching with hunger, burning with a fever that no amount of ice could soothe, wanting. Wanting!
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, holding her still against him, his hands at her back, soothing, his mouth gently touching all over her face as he brought her down from the wildness of the plateau they’d reached together.
She couldn’t seem to stop trembling, and pressed closer, drawing his strength into her. “Saxon,” she moaned.
“It’s all right, honey,” he whispered softly. “Calm down now. It’s all right.”
Her arms clung around his neck. “Is it always like this?” she asked with a ghost of a laugh. “Do people go crazy like this, until they’re on fire and burning up?”
His fingers smoothed back her wild hair. “It usually takes a lot more than what we did to cause that kind of reaction, Maggie,” he said at her ear. His lips brushed the lobe. “I barely touched you,” he breathed.
“I know.” She laughed nervously.
His arms contracted, swallowing her closely. “God, you’re sweet,” he ground out, rocking her roughly. “Sweet, like honey, to taste, to kiss. You make me want to curl up with the pleasure.”
She sighed into his thick hair. “There couldn’t have been much of that, for you,” she murmured. “I don’t even know how to touch you.”
His breath seemed to catch. “It boggles the mind,” he murmured.
She nuzzled her face against his. “How’s your headache?”
“What headache?” He chuckled.
She smiled, closing her eyes. They seemed to fit together beautifully, despite the disparity in their sizes, as if she had been created for him.
“Sleep with me,”
he whispered, tightening his arms. “Go and put on your gown and sleep with me, all night.”
She wanted to. Her body screamed for it. But her practical mind reared its ugly head.
“No,” she said gently.
“Why?”
She smiled wistfully. “Because we wouldn’t sleep.”
He chuckled at her ear. “Probably not. But, honey, it’s going to happen. The only question is when, not if.”
She knew that too. If she stayed here, it was inevitable. And how could she possibly leave him? It had been agony the last time; she’d never have the strength until he actually sent her away. And no matter what his motives were, it wouldn’t make any difference. She was too hungry for him to care—that was the really frightening thought.
“Then not tonight,” she whispered.
“All right,” he agreed after a minute, and his arms tightened for an instant before he let her go. “Not tonight.”
She sat up, putting herself back together. “Can I get you anything else before I turn in?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be all right now. I want you to drive me down to Bilings Sportswear in the morning,” he said suddenly, his face faintly brooding. “I’ve got to clear up that mess before I do one other thing.”
It was good to see him involving himself in business again, she thought, and felt a stirring of pride at having been partially responsible.
“All right,” she said. “What time would you like to leave?”
“Nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ll see you downstairs at seven.” He grinned. “I’ll touch you downstairs at seven,” he amended.
“Why, you lecherous thing,” she gasped.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You let me touch you up here. What’s different about downstairs?”
“I’m going to bed before you compromise my principles,” she informed him, rising.
“That might be wise. Maggie!” he called as she opened the connecting door.
“Yes?” She turned expectantly.
He started to say something and apparently thought better of it, because his face closed up. “Nothing. Good night, honey, sleep well. And thanks for the...sympathy.”
