Lana's Lawman

by Karen Leabo

  In a very few minutes Sloan had a small, cheerful blaze going. He offered more wine, but she declined. She was feeling relaxed now, finally. Any more wine and she might just fall asleep. But wasn’t that the point?

  Sloan joined her on the sofa. He put his arm around her, and for a long time they were silent, simply staring into the dancing flames.

  “You’ve stopped shivering,” he finally said.

  “Mmm, it must be eighty degrees in here. Don’t you think about utility bills?”

  “Lana, the last thing I’m thinking about tonight is my gas bill. All I can think about is you.”

  She sighed as he kissed her, but gently, with passion firmly banked. It was Lana who deepened the kiss, winding her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. It felt so completely right, familiar and exciting at the same time. And a little scary, as if she were a virgin all over again, testing Sloan’s limits as well as her own.

  She knew she was crossing the line when she moved into his lap. But something had taken hold of her, something wild and animalistic. She felt control slipping, draining away … and she didn’t care.

  “Sloan?” she said between kisses.

  “Mmm?” He switched his attention to her ear, and she almost forgot what she’d wanted to say.

  “Uh, why don’t you forget about the fold-out bed?” She pulled back a bit, then smiled faintly. “You look like you’ve just been poleaxed. Did I shock you?”

  “Uh-huh. Yeah. Totally.” It was one of the only times Lana had seen him anything less than one hundred percent sure of himself.

  “I’m sorry. I know it sounds like I don’t know my own mind—”

  “Hush, Lana.” He kissed her again, almost ruthlessly, as if some inner dam of control had broken.

  All right, so she didn’t know her own mind. All she could think of was Sloan. She was drowning in the man, smothering in his passion. But somehow the heat of impending sex overrode everything else—all her worries, her second thoughts, her reservations. Nothing else mattered.

  For the next few hours life would be suspended. And maybe, just maybe, she thought with her last vestiges of rationality, if she let herself go tonight, she would find the strength tomorrow to deal with things.

  All at once Sloan put a wrenching end to the kiss. “I want you, Lana, with every cell in my body,” he said, breathing hard. “But not if you’re going to regret it afterward.”

  He sounded fierce. She felt a moment of doubt, then squelched it. She knew what she was doing. They weren’t teenagers anymore. “I can’t promise I won’t feel overwhelmed—you have that kind of effect on me. But I can promise you I won’t run away like before, with no explanation.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. Abruptly he shifted her off his lap, stood, and scooped her up into his arms as if he didn’t have a single reservation about what he and Lana were about to do. “You think it’s warm in here? Wait till you feel the heat in my bedroom.”

  She laughed, then quickly sobered. “Ah, Sloan. If we’re going to … um, we have to use … ahhh … some kind of … oh, you know, birth control.” That had to be the hardest sentence she’d ever tried to articulate. She couldn’t think clearly with her face pressed against his corded neck, smelling his intoxicatingly male scent.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said with utter assurance.

  “I should have … I mean, it’s been so long since I had to worry about anything like that. Bart had a vasectomy.”

  “Would you kindly not mention your ex-husband while I’m seducing you? I’ll protect you. Further explanations aren’t really necessary.”

  Oh, what was she thinking? He had her brain all muddled. “I’m already pretty well seduced, you know,” she said as he lowered her gently to the floor beside his bed.

  He kissed her thoroughly, his fingertips flirting at the neck of her sweater. “You mean I’m just going through the motions?” he murmured against her skin. “You’d rather I get on with it?”

  “Oh, no,” she objected. “Please, continue on.” She collapsed in total surrender onto the bed. Even as her desire-misted thoughts focused on how good his touch felt, a detached part of her recognized that this wasn’t the same boy who’d made love to her in frenzied abandon ten years before. Then he’d been all eagerness and trepidation. Their couplings had, of necessity, been hurried and furtive.

  The leisurely fashion in which he approached her seduction now made her thankful that they were consenting adults, that they had privacy, and an entire night. Her stomach swooped and she felt a warming sensation all over her body as she anticipated the wonders they could explore between them.

  Sloan had been right. It was warm in his bedroom, but not due to any artificial heat source. She felt a flush coming on. Reading her mind, Sloan peeled off her sweater, then paused to simply admire, even if she was wearing her most sensible white bra. Suddenly she felt a little embarrassed. It had been a very long time since any man had appreciated her body. Certainly Bart had lost interest at some point during her pregnancy, and their lovemaking had been swift, perfunctory, and infrequent after Rob’s birth.

  She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to see that fire in a man’s gaze, the hunger.

  “You’ve changed a bit since high school,” he said. “I know, because my memories are pretty damn vivid.”

  “I’m fatter, you mean?”

  “No! Curvier. More womanly. More …” He sat on the edge of the bed and covered her breasts with his hands, and she sighed with pleasure. Her insecurities were showing again, like the hem of a tattered slip. She knew she wasn’t fat. Why had she said that?

  “You’re even more beautiful,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Back then I wouldn’t have believed it was possible. I thought you were the most beautiful creature on earth.”

  “And I thought you were the most dangerously good-looking, exciting, intelligent boy I’d ever known.”

  “Intelligent?”

  “Well, you could talk about something besides football and cars.”

  Sloan leaned down and kissed her again, and she got the message. He’d had enough talk about old times. He wanted to create some new memories, and so did she.

  She had no trouble focusing on the here and now, not when Sloan was massaging her breasts and rubbing his thumb across her nipples, making them ache and pucker against the confinement of her bra. She couldn’t even wait for Sloan to do the honors; she reached up and unhooked the front clasp. Her breasts sprang free, and Sloan buried his face in them with a soft groan.

  Instinct took over then. She wrapped her arms around his head, reveling in the feel of his thick, soft hair against her chest and bare arms. She wiggled beneath him until he was nestled between her thighs. Even though they were both still fully clothed below the waist, the feel of his weight pressing against her so intimately sent her pulse racing.

  She wanted more, but Sloan seemed intent on taking his time with her, exploring each new level of intimacy with exacting thoroughness. His fingertips played along her ribs like an angel’s hands on a harp as he kissed her breasts. His mouth was warm against her nipples, and she squirmed in exquisite torture.

  Abruptly he pulled away, and she started to object when she realized he meant to finish undressing her, and then himself. She shivered with renewed delight. He spanned her waist with his hands, then slowly moved them lower, sweeping her stirrup pants downward. He could have taken her panties too, but he chose to leave those on while he divested her of everything else.

  Boring white cotton. Why hadn’t she dressed with more imagination? She had some prettier things. Fearing Sloan might be put off by her conservative underthings, she started to remove them herself.

  He stopped her. “No. I want to.”

  “I don’t always dress like a nun,” she said with a nervous hiccup of laughter.

  “Mmm, I never saw a nun with her clothes off, so I can’t comment. But you’d look sexy to me in anything—Frederick’s of Hollywood or virginal white cotton, m
akes no difference.”

  That was because he’d never seen her in Frederick’s of Hollywood, she thought a little defensively. Next time he would.

  He leaned over to kiss her abdomen. Then suddenly he whisked the panties down to her knees and his kiss became more intimate. She gasped from shock as a bolt of white-hot sexual desire coursed through her.

  Chuckling softly—over his power to reduce her to a mass of excited hormones, she imagined—he quickly undressed while she watched, fascinated by each new body part he bared. Physically they really weren’t the same two kids they’d been last time they’d seen each other naked. Childbirth had given her those “womanly curves,” as he’d so charmingly put it. But maturity had given him a complement of firm muscles and more than a light dusting of crisp body hair. There was a diamond-shaped patch of it on his chest that narrowed to an arrow pointing down toward his …

  Oh, my. She swallowed, trying not to gape. He was a magnificent male specimen, all right. That lean promise of youth had been fulfilled in ways she’d not been able to imagine.

  “Come here.” Sloan pulled her to her feet, then drew back the covers. She scooted under them, grateful when he climbed in after her and pulled her against him, where she could feel all those magnificent planes and angles she’d just feasted her eyes on. He pressed his erection against her without apology, and she thrilled to think that his excitement was for her.

  So far he’d been pacing their lovemaking, but Lana couldn’t stay content with that very long. Her desire to be in control of her fate slipped over into all aspects of her life, even this one. She’d never been one to simply lie back and accept, even during lovemaking. Without warning she wrapped her arm around Sloan’s neck in a loving headlock. With her other hand she grasped his rock-hard arousal.

  He gasped, then groaned. “I wondered how long it would take before you tried to take control,” he said. “Not that I’m objecting.”

  “You’d better not,” she said, squeezing slightly. “You’ll hurt my feelings.”

  “Mmm, you’d better watch yourself, young lady, unless you want to end things earlier than expected. You’ve already got me so excited, I don’t know how long I can hang on.”

  Such a delicious dilemma. She had him at her mercy. Even the slightest movement of her hand brought a groan of pleasure from him.

  “All right, that’s it,” he said, rolling abruptly away from her. She felt a pang of panic until she realized he was only retrieving something from the nightstand. She was glad he’d remembered. In her present state of frenzy, she’d have forgotten.

  Securely sheathed, he returned to her and drew his arms around her with unbearable tenderness. “Lie back, Lana. I’m coming home.”

  At that moment Lana realized how little control she really had. He was one strong, aroused male, and before she could snap her fingers, he was on top of her, his powerful erection pressing for entrance into her body.

  She tilted her hips to accommodate him. He grasped her behind the knees and spread her legs wider, then slid within her warmth, and for a few precious moments they were as one, rocking to a pagan rhythm guiding them from some mystic source within them.

  It didn’t last long, but it didn’t have to. Lana felt herself rising, almost apart from reality as the pleasure built pressure, spreading, pushing itself into every cell until she exploded with it.

  Her cries of passion were all that Sloan needed. He built to his own crescendo.

  Moments later the fantasy mist of their encounter lifted, leaving them clinging and perspiring against each other, sharing the unified breathing of the ultimately satisfied.

  Still joined to her, Sloan reached behind him and pulled the sheet over them to ward off the sudden chill. Making love to Lana had been more exciting, more satisfying, than he’d imagined even in his wildest fantasies. But he couldn’t escape from the questions that plagued him even as he held her and stroked her.

  Would she ever have come to his bed if she hadn’t been so distraught over the custody suit? Were they two consenting adults with a possible future ahead of them, or was he a panacea for her aching heart, a security blanket of affection and acceptance she clung to because just then she had nothing, no one else?

  Would she even want him in her life once she’d straightened that life out? Or would he forever remind her of a weak period when she behaved—by her way of thinking—less than admirably?

  He couldn’t discount his own shortcomings either. What he and Lana were flirting with was a relationship, where there was supposed to be an equal give and take, sharing, trusting … loving. He didn’t even know if he was capable of that. His previous attempts, with Lana included, had all been bona fide disasters.

  He was right to be cautious of Lana’s ability to follow through this time. But what if he were the one who couldn’t finish it?

  EIGHT

  Friday night might have been magnificent, but Saturday morning was downright awkward. Sloan awoke to find his arms disappointingly empty. When he cracked his eyes open, he spotted Lana, sitting upright against the headboard with her knees curled into her chest and the blanket drawn up to her chin. Her eyes were huge, the way they might have looked if she were watching an unattractive bug crawl toward her up the blanket.

  Not an auspicious start to the day.

  He reached across under the blanket and grabbed her toes. She let out a startled shriek, then laughed. “Don’t do sneaky things like that to me. My nerves are shot.”

  “Lana, what are you doing all the way over there?” he asked, his voice still rough from sleep.

  “I was fidgety, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Well, I’m awake now, so why don’t you come back over here and fidget where I can put my arms around you?”

  She did, though a little reluctantly it seemed. And when he hugged her to him she was as stiff as a tree branch. “Lana, come on. You act about as pleased to wake up with me as you would Jack the Ripper.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean to be so …” She made an obvious effort to relax. “I’m a little nervous, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know what comes next.”

  “I have a pretty good idea of what I want to happen next.” He accompanied this suggestion by stroking her slowly from shoulder to thigh, skirting the edge of her nipple by a fraction of an inch.

  She sighed and relaxed another degree. “We can’t just keep making love for the rest of our lives. Eventually we’ll have to—”

  “Eventually will come soon enough,” he said, growing more bold with his caresses. “It’s early yet.”

  He managed to melt the rest of her reservations with a well-placed kiss. He could have felt guilty about seducing her so shamelessly, but he didn’t. She was going to have second thoughts about their lovemaking. He knew that. So would one more small indulgence make any difference?

  But she wasn’t quite the same woman as she had been the previous night. Lana was still responsive, and generous, and able to drive him to the brink of insanity with one touch, even one look. But that morning she held something of herself back. Even as he plunged within her and found a nameless ecstasy, he mourned the loss of the firebrand she’d been the night before, the woman with nothing to lose.

  At the same time, there was a part of him that was relieved she wasn’t seeing him as the solution to all her problems. He still had his doubts about whether he could provide what she needed. He talked a good game, and he was Johnny-on-the-spot when it came to fixing roofs and criticizing ex-husbands. But in terms of strong emotional support, he was largely untested.

  She didn’t climax this time, and he worried that he’d rushed her, but she merely shook her head and said that sometimes it didn’t happen. “I still adored every minute of it. You’re a better lover than I remember.”

  “I would hope so,” he groused, his male vanity only slightly mollified. He’d better be an improvement over a groping, overeager, sex-starved teenager. Now at least he was
a groping, overeager, sex-starved adult.

  “It’s the closeness I care about anyway.” She rubbed her cheek against his arm. “Being turned on and having an … well, you know, is terrific, but it’s not the ultimate reason I made love with you. I wanted to feel close. That’s something men have a difficult time understanding, I think.”

  “Yeah, men are a little more climax-oriented than women, on the average, I guess.” That was as close as Sloan came to discussing feelings. But maybe it wasn’t time for that yet, he decided. He was, after all, supposed to be taking this thing one day at a time, cautiously, so that no one got any nasty surprises.

  Ah, hell, who was he kidding? If she turned away from him like she’d done before, it was gonna hurt.

  Lana turned onto her side, facing him, and put her head on his shoulder. “Sloan—” She paused, weighing her words. “Whatever happened to your parents?”

  Where had that question come from? Sloan wondered. He could have sloughed it aside with a glib rejoinder. Truth was, he felt uncomfortable having to admit the truth about his folks. He wasn’t particularly proud of his efforts with them. Or lack of efforts.

  But this was Lana, and if she was asking, it wasn’t out of morbid curiosity. For some reason, she needed to know.

  He took a deep breath. “Dad’s been in and out of jail since I can remember, mostly in,” he said, trying to sound casual. “After I moved away, he used to call me sometimes, but it was usually to ask for money or to help get him out of the slammer. Last time I talked to him, he told me Mom had split.”

  “That’s terrible! When did this happen?”

  “About five years ago. That’s when I changed my phone number and hoped like hell neither of them would find me again. They might be my flesh and blood, but they weren’t parents, not in any real sense of the word, and I don’t want to associate with them anymore.”

  Lana shivered slightly. “That’s so sad. Both my parents are gone too, but at least I have fond memories of my mother. She was a little nutty about some things, but she loved me. I never doubted that.”