She held on. He didn’t give her much choice. His hands slowly glided down her spine to her hips, lifting her, forcing her to wrap her legs around him for security. Security, on the other hand, was becoming an elusive commodity. Her pelvis was intimately cradled against his flat stomach, and her breathing suddenly wasn’t normal.
“There must be something else you’re afraid of besides mice,” she said frantically.
He considered exactly how delicious it would be to make love to her in the pool, and then banished the fantasy before it went too far. “Sure. My dad’s temper. I figure I’ll still be afraid of it when I’m a hundred and three.”
Greer’s eyes worriedly studied his. “He wasn’t…mean to you as a kid?”
“Mean, no. Mad a lot, certainly. I was a rambunctious kid. But my father’s reprimands were all noise; he wouldn’t hurt a flea. Of course, I didn’t know that when I was young. I’d hear that roaring voice and shake in my boots. The last time I heard it, he was ticked at something he’d done wrong-and I still shook in my shoes. I was six inches taller than he was, but I still shook in my shoes.”
She chuckled. “I’d like to see you shake just once,” she said suspiciously, finding it hard to believe that a roaring father or a harmless mouse could upset this particular man’s equilibrium.
“Can do,” he murmured, and she stopped smiling. His hands loosened their hold on her bottom and her body was suddenly free, free to slide down the length of his. His mouth had gently dropped on hers before she realized they were in deep water, that his feet could touch bottom but hers couldn’t.
Ryan had no intention of letting her drown. Not in water. In a slow, languid motion he crushed her mouth, felt her lips part beneath his, and gently, coaxingly touched tongues with her. If there had been an audience of millions, he wouldn’t have much cared.
Above the water, Greer could hear laughter, from a thousand miles away. And the sound of children cavorting in the babies’ wading pool. And a roaring in her ears that might have been the distant ocean. Ryan’s kisses were gentle, coaxing, layered one after the other until her lips felt swollen and overwarm and trembling. But that was above the water.
Below, she could feel the hardness of him pressed against her. His hands possessive on her hips and thighs. The heat of his body, an honest primal heat that he made no effort to hide from her.
He wouldn’t hide. And Greer had never thought of herself as hiding from emotions; she was simply an expert at controlling them, at taming those rare unruly feelings that had no place in her life. All five senses seemed to be working against her today. Her heart refused to listen to her head. Her arms tightened around Ryan’s neck, and her hips rubbed against his. She broke off from his kiss to bury her lips in his throat, and she clung to him, feeling the hot sun beating down, hearing his ragged breath.
She loved this man. She loved the way he made her laugh, she loved the way he protected her, and she even loved the way he challenged her. In a minute, she was going to feel frightened about the consequences of that love, but not yet.
“Greer?”
She kept her eyes closed, buried in the crook of his shoulder. “Unwise to start something like that in the middle of a crowded pool,” she mentioned.
She heard the breath escape his lungs. “I want to make love with you.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve wanted to make love with you from the day I met you.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m not going to push you,” he whispered.
“Yes, you are,” she murmured. “Or I wouldn’t be getting this feeling that you don’t give a hoot in hell that a dozen people are watching us.”
“I don’t.”
“I know that.”
“Greer. Stop inviting.” His hands clamped around on her slowly moving hips, to stop their seductive nudging against him.
“Why?”
“Because I need to be sure you really want this as much as I do.”
“Do I actually have to scream yes in front of all these people?” she teased softly. She felt his eyes searching hers. All she did was look back at him, but the next moment they were leaving the pool so fast she was breathless.
Chapter Eight
Ryan automatically locked the door behind them. His eyes skimmed the corner motel room, noting water-blue carpet and furnishings, the small balcony where draperies stirred restlessly from the ocean breeze, the king-sized bed. He saw, yet paid little attention.
His eyes weren’t about to leave Greer for very long.
She’d parted the drapes and flung open the glass doors of the balcony the minute she stepped into the room. Their silence was immediately broken by the distant crash of surf, the faint scream of a gull on the beach.
They hadn’t spoken during the short time it had taken Ryan to check in or during the climb to their second-floor room. He hadn’t said anything because he couldn’t. Right or not, fair or not, he hadn’t wanted to give her a chance to change her mind. Knowing that grated against his conscience, but nothing could stop the pulse, the beat, the flow of desire he felt for her.
She turned from the balcony, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet as she stepped back into the room. Lashes shuttered her eyes, those beautiful, vulnerable, soft brown eyes…
Her hair had dried in soft wisps, and her face was in partial shadow, half as fragile as cream, half shaded a muted gold. The room had that dusty stillness of late afternoon. The feeling of life focused around Greer, the texture, look, scent of her.
She raised her eyes to his, and he heard the tiny sound of her breath catching. Her eyelids closed, then opened. Slowly, she reached behind her neck to undo the straps of her halter top. Ryan didn’t breathe. The straps fell forward, revealing the smoothness of her neck and throat and a hint of swelling white flesh. She reached behind her again. The room was so silent he could hear the sound of her unlatching the clip at the back. The top fell, for a moment trailed in her hand and then slipped to the floor.
Though her skin had long been sun-dried, the suit had still been slightly damp. Her nipples were tiny, puckered, chilled. Her breasts were virgin-white next to her tan, all smooth, firm flesh, impossibly soft. She stood tall, just slightly shivering, looking at him. He still couldn’t move. He’d dreamed of her exactly like this, not just the nakedness but the beauty of her, the pride and softness, her sensuality, her vulnerability.
“Ryan-”
“Come here,” he murmured, but he was the one to take the four steps to her. Taking her had been the only thing in his head moments before. That fierce primal desire hadn’t diminished, but it had gentled. Now he reached out not to claim but to reverently touch, and not her body but her face.
The pads of his thumbs brushed along her cheekbones; his fingers whispered into her hair; he smoothed her eyebrows, traced the line of her chin. Her bare breasts were less than an inch from his chest; he didn’t move that inch. He wanted all of her. But slowly. He didn’t want to miss…anything.
Brown eyes met his. “Ryan? What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“Nothing. Nothing at all, love.” Did he look too grave? He smiled for her.
“There was, though. You were upset while you were checking in.”
“A little.”
“More than a little.” The very smallest smile curled her lips. He hadn’t realized until that instant that her smile had been missing. “You were about to belt the desk clerk when she looked around for our luggage. And you looked even more irritated when you signed in.”
He drew in a breath, admitting quietly, “I hate motel rooms. And especially…for you. The woman said nothing. But if she’d even looked at you sideways-”
“You were afraid it bothered me, checking into a motel for the express purpose of making love?” She tilted her head, as if determined to see the hidden emotion in his eyes. “I think it’s rather exciting, actually. Deliciously illicit. Wanton. All that stuff.”
“All that stuff,” he echoed faintly, and teas
ingly shook his head at her. She had the look of an innocent virgin testing out those words for the first time, but that wasn’t what moved him. It was Greer, worrying about his feelings more than her own. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Tell me the place doesn’t matter.”
“The place doesn’t matter.”
“Nothing matters,” he agreed, “except you.”
His mouth lingered an inch from hers and then dropped, centimeter by centimeter, until his lips touched hers and sank in. To his surprise, she was suddenly trembling all over, and when her bare breasts grazed his chest, she breathed against his mouth in a hollow gasp.
He could feel her pulse quicken along with his own. Her skin warmed; so did his. She was already part of him. The only thing left was the claiming.
Blood beat in his throat in a steady dull throb. He discovered that her lower lip was irresistible. And that the shell of her ear could keep him entertained for hours. That her throat was softer than warm cream, that her nipples were infinitely sensitive to the slightest touch.
She kept trembling. Such fire…he’d never expected such fire. Where he wanted nothing more than to savor and linger over each new discovery, Greer was clearly impatient. He would have smiled, had there been time.
Her lips trailed feverish kisses over his face and neck. Her hips moved tantalizingly against him. When he stopped with ragged breath to look at her, she reached up for his mouth again. When his hands skimmed inside her suit bottom, she barely gave him the chance to take it off her before she pressed herself length to length to him, her eyes closed and her whole body still fiercely trembling.
He gathered her up, pushed back the bedspread and placed her on the pillows. For one stark instant, he caught a glimpse of something dark and haunted underneath the sensual glaze in her eyes. Then she raised her arms, urging him down to her.
He dropped his suit and slid onto the bed next to her. She instantly enfolded his body, her hands feverish, her long legs curling invitingly around him. The male animal in him could no more have held back a response than stopped breathing, yet the speed with which she was asking to be taken was not what he wanted. For her. “Easy,” he whispered. “Let me love you, Greer. Let me just…love you.”
She went still so suddenly he almost smiled. With exquisite care he bent his head to the swell of her breast, capturing the small tight peak with the swirl of his tongue. Leaving it moist, he played with the other, while one hand stroked her flat stomach, learned the roundness of her hip more intimately. His lips trailed down to her navel, believed it virgin, and let his tongue do a lazy, thorough deflowering. Her skin…nothing had ever tasted as good as her skin.
His own was burning. He had never wanted a woman as much, but the process of knowing her this first time could easily have taken him years. He would not have guessed her nipples were so sensitive. He could not have known that she would tremble, that her eyes would take on such darkness, that her fingers would curl and uncurl on his skin… There were a thousand things he needed to know if he was to be a good lover for her. There was no way he could have known any of them ahead of time. Knowing a woman as a lover was different from knowing her in any other sense.
Every instinct told him to be careful, slow, gentle, because she was Greer, because she had taken a very long time to accept the love that was growing between them…every instinct except that primal hardness pressed against her, which teased unmercifully when she writhed against him. And when his fingers slowly dipped between her thighs, Greer moved, her hands pushing him away, her pelvis cradling his in unmistakable demand. “Easy,” he whispered.
Easy? Greer thought in despair. Suddenly nothing was easy. What had been natural and wonderful moments before was going desperately wrong. Still, she whispered, “Now, please, Ryan.”
“Not yet…”
“Yes. Please. Please…”
She knew what he wanted. Every womanly instinct told her he wanted a seductress, an uninhibited lover who took and gave pleasure with ease. And for a while, she’d almost believed she could be that woman for him.
When they kissed in the pool, incredibly powerful emotions had surged through her. The feelings hadn’t diminished when they’d come up to the room. When she removed her top, she’d felt proud of her body for once, proud to offer herself to him, glad that she felt no shame in wanting him.
Those emotions had been as real as the lush surge of desire she’d felt when bare skin had touched bare skin, as real as the love she felt for him. But old ghosts had intruded from nowhere. From an awareness that it had been a long time since she’d been with any man, that she might be awkward. From an awareness that the tepid sexual relationship she’d shared with her ex-husband was not the sort that Ryan would settle for, that he would not be fooled. And inside, deeper, she still bore the scars of an adolescent girl who’d fought the sexual side of her nature. She’d had to, to survive.
Her present sexual feelings were confused by the memories. Greer had a sudden terrible need simply to be held, to explain, to tell him she needed to go slowly, that she was uncertain. But she couldn’t ask that. Ryan would surely feel contempt for a twenty-seven-year-old woman who wanted only to be held.
She was trying so hard to be a cream-lace-on-pink-satin kind of woman, but she couldn’t stop trembling. Pleasing him mattered so much. She loved him. Too much.
“Greer?”
She heard the question in his voice, but she could also feel the beat, the warmth of him pressed against her belly. “Now,” she whispered. “Don’t slow down, Ryan. Not for me. Please…”
She felt a slight hesitation in him and wound her arms tighter around him, whispering something, she didn’t even know what. Her body arched, her fingers whispered over his skin. With a low groan, he slid into her, surging deep, filling the yawning hollow inside her.
Her eyes closed in sheer unexpected pleasure. For a moment, all the ghosts went away. He felt…wonderful. She felt different, the way she’d felt earlier in the pool, high on the touch of him, high on his warmth and those incredibly powerful surges she felt when she was near him. For the first time, she glimpsed something huge, special, secret, inextricably linked to the woman in her. Her body was about to burst from some elusive force that was just out of reach but so close…
“So beautiful,” he murmured. “Your skin, your taste, the look of you. Come with me, Brown Eyes. Come with me…”
She wanted to. She so desperately wanted to. But she was also terribly afraid Ryan wanted something from her…that just wasn’t there.
***
The sun had gone down. Dusk filtered in. The tide splashed in the distance, a lazy, early evening tide, a lulling, rhythmic murmur that never ceased.
“Greer?”
She opened one sleepy eye.
“What on earth are you doing way over there?” Ryan inquired mildly. His voice was groggy with sleep.
He reached out one long arm and tugged her closer to his bare warmth. She didn’t tell him that she’d assumed he would prefer no contact after lovemaking. Her ex-husband had always wanted to be left alone afterward.
Ryan had other ideas. He fussed with her arm until it was tucked under his waist, then lay down again and dropped a leg over her to bring her closer yet. She would have smiled at all his engineering, if she’d been less tense. As it was, she made her body go languid…and that wasn’t so hard to do.
His chest was warm, his hand soothing a caressing stroke up and down her back. Her cheek fit perfectly in the crook of his shoulder, and she sighed, not able to stop loving the warmth of his arms around her. Not trying.
“Are you going to tell me what all that was about?” he whispered lightly.
“Pardon?” her eyes blinked open on the vein in his neck.
“I was just curious about whom I was making love to.” He leaned over to press a kiss, first on her forehead, then on her nose. Blue-grave-blue-eyes focused on her startled brown ones, though there was a faint, even gentle, smile on his lips. “You worked very hard to
cheat yourself,” he whispered. “I’ve been trying to figure out why for an hour, and I can’t. You’re going to have to give me a clue.”
“I don’t-what are you talking about?”
He said nothing, just continued to press another series of kisses down the side of her face, into her neck. When she stiffened, his arm tightened. Except for that, his touch was petal soft.
“You weren’t…pleased?” she whispered hesitantly. “Ryan, it’s been a long time since I-”
“I know that.” He raised himself up on one elbow and started stroking her hair back from her forehead, over and over. “Would you look at me?” he whispered.
Her lashes fluttered open.
“You’re my Greer again,” he murmured. “Now you’re my Greer again. A little shy, though you don’t like anyone to know that. Sensual as a kitten who wants to curl up in the sun. And certain things…certain things were you, weren’t they, Brown Eyes? Your breasts are extremely sensitive. You like the lightest touch. And you’re a born hedonist, my lady. You like to be rubbed; you like the feel of skin against skin. No. Open your eyes.”
His tone was light, but she obeyed him because there was something else in his voice as well.
“I failed you, Brown Eyes. Not the other way around,” he said quietly. “Pretending isn’t the way, though, honey. What bothers me is that you felt you needed to.”
She suddenly couldn’t possibly meet his eyes. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said lightly, slipping out of his arms, trying not to hurry, trying to ease away from him as if the only thought in her head was to take a languid stretch after lying still so long. “I’m starving,” she announced. “Do you realize what time it must be? And it’s getting cold.”
She crossed the room to push the balcony doors closed. Her heart was trying to trip over itself. Ryan was silent behind her, at least for a moment.
“I’ll order up a meal,” he said finally. “Since you’re suddenly that hungry.”
“No.” She turned to him with a brilliant smile and then reached rapidly for her swimsuit. “I have to go home.”
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