His fingers didn’t stop with the buttons at her throat. Slowly, never taking his lips from her skin, he unbuttoned her calico dress to the waist. His lips were caressing the swell of her breasts in a way Grace had never imagined. It was wrong, she knew, but she didn’t want him to stop. Not ever.
He lifted his head from her chest, and a welcome breeze danced between them, cooling the skin where his warm lips had lingered. His lips found hers again, and Grace closed her eyes. This wasn’t hell; this was heaven. It had to be. Dillon slipped his fingers inside her calico and cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb across the nipple until Grace moaned. She’d never felt anything like this. Had never known that it was possible for such feelings to rise within her.
All thoughts of protest were forgotten, and Dillon laid her back into the grass. He kissed the sweat from her skin, and laid his mouth over her nipple, the wet heat of his tongue penetrating the thin chemise she wore beneath the calico.
When he inhaled deeply, sucking her nipple into his mouth, it was all Grace could do not to cry aloud. There was an insistent tugging between her legs.
Grace took Dillon’s head between her hands and pulled him to her. She had to feel his lips on hers again, couldn’t live another moment without that sensation, and as he locked his lips to hers, pressing her into the grass, the throbbing between her legs increased until she couldn’t stand it anymore, and a plea stuck in her throat. The little noise she heard was coming from her own mouth. Please. Please.
“Please stop,” she whispered when he lifted his mouth from hers.
“I can’t stop,” Dillon whispered. A hand slipped beneath her skirt while he moved his mouth over her breasts. “I want you too much, I’ve wanted you for too long, and it’s much too late to stop.”
Panic welled within in her as his hand settled over her thigh. She could barely catch her breath with Dillon’s weight on her chest, but her breathing came faster and heavier.
“I…I can’t, Becket.” She tried to snap at him, tried to force an icy disdain she didn’t feel, but still she recognized the fear in her own voice.
He must have heard it, too, because his hands stilled, and he lifted his head to look into her eyes.
“You’re serious,” he said in a gruff voice. His own breath was coming hard and fast, but there was no fear in his eyes. Just frustration.
Grace took the opportunity to scoot up and straighten her skirt. She still throbbed for him, and in another moment she would have forgotten herself and…
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Sorry?” Dillon pulled away from her, but stayed too close for her own comfort. She could still feel his heat and his anger. “Honey, you don’t do this to a man and then ask him to stop.”
“Do what?” Grace asked breathlessly.
Dillon grabbed her hand and thrust it downward, placing it between their bodies, and he pressed her palm against his swollen manhood. “This. You don’t do this to a man and then say…Oh, hell, never mind.” He released her hand and she yanked it away from him.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know.”
Dillon grabbed her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. “Don’t play the innocent with me, Grace Cavanaugh. I know better. Remember?”
Grace would have slapped him, but she was more stunned than angry. “You don’t know anything,” she said softly, and then she jumped to her feet and turned toward the house. She ran, buttoning her dress as she fled over the gentle slope.
She looked over her shoulder only once, to see if Dillon was following her, but all she saw was the faded green grass of the deserted rise and, in the distance, a flash of Dillon’s bluebonnets.
Chapter Ten
Grace sat in one of a pair of rocking chairs that adorned the rustic front porch. She rocked slowly, trying to clear the mist from her mind.
She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere. It had been a foolish fantasy to believe that she could live on the Double B with Dillon and Billy and Olivia, as if they were really her family. Grace knew she wasn’t especially good in the kitchen, and she never would have finished churning that butter without Dillon’s help, and she was hopelessly out of place among the animals. She’d almost fooled herself into believing that she could learn all that and more. But it was hopeless. As hopeless as Dillon Becket.
He had struck her from the beginning as being strong, certain of himself, in control. There was nothing that Dillon couldn’t do. Nothing got under his skin. And she had thought him so unlike the other men she had known.
But now it seemed the only difference was his ability to make her want him, and that frightened her. She’d always been in control where men were concerned. Rigid control. A kiss on the cheek or on her hand. Perhaps a brief touching of the lips. That was all she’d allowed. Lips, cold and wet, lips that made Grace shiver in revulsion, were all she had known. She had learned to single out the men who were likely to pursue a woman they saw as a challenge. Men who loved the chase as much as the conquest.
She’d learned to promise with her eyes what her body and her soul refused to deliver, and she’d learned to recognize when the game was up and it was time to move on. From one schoolmate’s home to another, to a holiday in Paris with one of those silly girls, and then back to the society she had learned to manipulate.
Only once had she stayed too long. Early on she’d made the mistake of playing the game with a man much too young. Margaret’s brother, a good-looking hellion with a reputation as a ladies’ man. Everything had gone perfectly, until one night when she found herself alone with Gifford. He had pressed her against the wall of his mother’s parlor, and tried to take what she refused to give. She could still feel his hands, harsh and rough against her skin, and his wet lips on her face and her throat. She could still hear the ripping sound as he tore at her dress, and the panic that had very nearly stolen her sanity as he’d covered her mouth with one hand while he lifted her skirt with the other.
It had been his mother who interrupted Gifford, with a gasp and a shielding hand over her eyes. Naturally the woman had managed to convince herself that Grace was at fault. Grace remembered being as hurt by that as anything else.
She’d remembered that always, as she’d made her way from one home to another, hardening herself against the world.
And now she found herself in Texas with the one man whose lips were anything but revolting, the one man who made her lose control. Dillon Becket knew nothing of the rules of the hunt, or if he knew he ignored them.
He wanted her, like all the rest, though he never spoke of love or marriage. No doubt he saved those avowals of love for women like Abigail Wilkinson.
She didn’t hear Billy until he was upon her, his boots clicking against the wooden porch. He lowered himself slowly into the other rocking chair and sighed, the sigh of a man who had been hard at work since sunrise. Soon the rocking of his chair matched her own.
“Mighty peaceful here at the end of the day,” Billy said, his eyes on the setting sun. “The older I get the more I appreciate settling this body down and restin’ my old bones.”
Grace didn’t say a word. She joined him in admiring the sunset, but any words she might have spoken were stuck in her throat. Billy and Olivia had all but ignored Dillon’s accusations and her outburst over the dinner table. On the morning following that scene, Grace had expected to find herself ostracized, even by those she had come to think of as friends, but that hadn’t happened. They let her know, with a smile or a tender touch of a hand, that they thought no less of her than they had before. That she was still welcome in their company.
“You hafta understand about Dillon,” Billy said, staring toward the horizon and away from Grace. “The last few years have been hard on the boy.”
Grace snorted, a very unladylike sound escaping from her throat, and Billy smiled.
“He had two older brothers.” Billy’s smile faded. “Jimmy and Nolan. They both died during the war.
Jimmy was killed at Gettysburg, and Nolan was sorely wounded there. He came home, but he didn’t live three months. Dillon didn’t know until he came home.”
Grace had stopped rocking, and Billy stared at her across a still and sun-filled space.
“Opal, that was Dillon’s mama, she was never the same after losing those boys. Now, Henry Becket was a hard man, and he tried to go on as if nothing had changed.”
“Dillon’s father?” Grace asked in a small voice, and Billy nodded slightly.
“Opal died five years back, and that was when Henry started to fall apart. All he could think about was this ranch. How to make it bigger and richer. For Dillon, I reckon, since the boy was all he had left.” Billy stared at her, a judging look in his pale blue eyes. “Henry made some foolish mistakes. The most foolish of all was, he bought a bull. Cost him a fortune, but he wanted to improve the herd. Then the durn animal died on him, leaving Henry with one heck of a loan to pay off.”
Grace said nothing as Billy took a deep breath and ran a beefy hand across the white stubble at his jaw. “Henry died not long after the bull, and the loan’s comin’ due in a couple of months. If Dillon can’t pay it off, he’ll lose the Double B.”
“But…he can pay it off, can’t he?” Grace asked in a small voice. She had learned, in a short time, how much the Double B meant to Dillon.
Billy shrugged his shoulders. “Depends. There’ll be some money comin’ in, in a few weeks. If it’s enough…” He let the sentence hang.
“Why are you telling me this?” Grace asked, her frustration coming through in her sharp voice. She didn’t want to feel any sympathy for Dillon Becket. She didn’t want to feel anything at all.
Billy smiled again, one of those small smiles that came so easily to his lips. “I just thought you might want to understand why the boss sometimes acts like a jackass. He’s got a lot on his mind, that’s all. But he does like you. A lot, if I know him at all.”
Grace shook her head and resumed her slow rocking. Like her? Of course he didn’t like her. Dillon Becket wanted her, and he felt responsible for her, and that wasn’t enough. Especially, she confessed silently, since she had fallen in love with the man.
“Well,” Billy continued as she shook her head. “I like you, and Olivia likes you, and we both want you to stick around the place.”
Grace snapped her head up to look at the older man. Had he heard or seen her with Dillon? How did he know she was thinking of leaving?
He chuckled. “You’d make a lousy poker player, Miss Grace. When I walked up onto this porch and saw that far-off look in your eyes, I knew you was thinkin’ about leavin’. The Double B’s bound to be real different from where you been livin’, but you’ll get used to it. If you’ll give it a chance.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Grace said truthfully. “But since I really don’t have anywhere to go, and no money to speak of, I won’t be leaving anytime soon.”
Billy looked satisfied with that answer and leaned his head back, closing his eyes and settling his hands over his chest.
Grace wished that she could feel just a little of the contentment that was etched on Billy’s face. Her mind was spinning, and her insides were churning, and all she could think of were Dillon’s lips and hands, and what she’d thrown aside when she’d run from him.
Dillon paced back and forth in the small room. Tonight it wasn’t the summer heat that was keeping him awake, but the knowledge that Grace was sleeping just two doors down the hall in Jimmy’s old room. Maybe it would have been easier if Olivia or Billy slept upstairs, but Olivia had a room downstairs at the rear of the house, and Billy had his own small cabin behind the bunkhouse.
He’d damn near raped her that afternoon, had come too close to losing control. It had never happened before, and it sure as hell could never happen again.
It wouldn’t have been so difficult if he hadn’t been certain that Grace wanted him as badly as he wanted her. He’d felt it in the way she’d pressed her body against his, and he’d seen it in her eyes before the fear had stolen in and ruined it all.
He wouldn’t have Grace afraid of him.
With a muffled curse he slipped on his pants, fastening two buttons and leaving the rest undone. He wasn’t likely to run into anyone this late at night. Olivia had been asleep for hours, and Grace had taken to retiring early herself.
There was a bottle of whiskey in his father’s study—his study, he corrected himself. That bottle hadn’t been touched since Henry Becket’s death.
Dillon had seen his father grow too accustomed to the comfort of the bottle, and was convinced it had contributed to his death. So he made a point of staying away from liquor. The only glass he’d given in to in the past year had ended up dumped on his head.
But for tonight, if the comfort of the bottle was the only comfort he was likely to get…
He stopped outside Grace’s door. There was no lock on that door, he knew. He could step right in and slip into bed with her. That was exactly what he wanted to do, but he didn’t dare.
He wasn’t even to the bottom of the stairs before he realized that someone else was awake, as well. There was a soft light in the kitchen, shedding its faint tendrils into the hallway and the dining room. Just enough for Dillon to see where he was going.
Probably Olivia sneaking a midnight snack, cutting herself a slice of that cake she’d prepared for dessert. There was plenty left, since neither he nor Grace had had much of an appetite that evening. Christ, she hadn’t even looked at him. She’d kept her eyes on her plate as she’d played with her food.
Dillon slipped quietly past the doorway. Olivia would never even know that she was not the only one awake.
And then he heard it, a gentle splash. Dillon stopped abruptly, certain that it was not Olivia who was bathing in the kitchen in the middle of the night. It was Grace, up to her ears in bubbles and naked as the day she was born.
He had to look. Hell, he had dreamed about it too much not to take a peek when the opportunity presented itself. He slunk quietly to the dining room, and to the kitchen door, staying in the shadows and moving across the floor on silent bare feet.
A single lamp sat on the floor beside the tub, casting a dreamlike circle of light all around Grace.
Her back was to him, and all he could see was a silky pile of black hair on top of her head and wet, soapy shoulders. He could hear her, the gentle splash of her hand as it dipped below the water. Damned if he couldn’t hear the soap sliding across her skin.
Grace set the soap aside, there on the floor by the lamp, and began to rinse the lather from her body with handfuls of water. She raised a cupped hand to her shoulder and Dillon watched the water roll over her skin, rinsing away the soapy film and sheeting over her back.
How many nights had she done this? Slipped down the stairs and bathed in the kitchen while he tormented himself in his bedroom?
Grace took the neatly folded towel from the floor and stood slowly, revealing a perfect body. The water beaded and ran in rivulets down her body, dripping into the soapy water and onto the floor as she very gingerly stepped from the tub.
There was no other word for her body than perfect. It was pale and smooth and curved in all the right places. Her breasts were firm, and the nipples he had caressed that afternoon were dark against her alabaster skin. She pressed the towel to her face, and when she lowered it and began to dry her arms she stopped, her eyes on the doorway.
For a moment she didn’t move, and Dillon wondered if she would scream or cower or cry. But she just watched him as he studied her, and when she lifted her hand to him, palm upward in an unmistakable invitation, he went to her.
Their eyes were locked as he took her in his arms, slowly, gingerly, as if she might break. There was passion and surrender in her bluebonnet eyes, and Dillon promised himself then and there that she would not regret that surrender.
He took her mouth with his, with tender passion that made him forget his doubts and his pledge to stay away from h
er. Her slick chest, still wet from her bath, pressed against his, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Dillon’s head was spinning, and he was drunk on the taste of Grace, the feel of her beneath his hands.
The towel hit the floor, landing silently at their feet. Grace wrapped her arms around his neck and grasped the back of his head, twining her fingers through his hair and pulling him closer. She parted her lips for him, thrusting her tongue inside his mouth, and her hips rocked forward as she pressed against his thighs.
Dillon lowered her to the floor, heedless of the water that had dripped from her body and pooled at their feet. He was about to burst. He’d waited so long for her, and to come across her just as she’d been in his dreams, only more beautiful, warmer, and real, was more than he could stand.
But he didn’t want her to regret lifting her hand and asking him to come to her. He wanted to claim her as his own in a way that would make her lift that hand to him again and again. Every night.
He trailed his lips down her throat, and when he took her nipple in his mouth Grace made a little noise deep in the back of her throat, a quick catch of her breath as she arched her back and lifted her breast to him. Her legs were spread beneath him, and he rested between her thighs with nothing more than a couple of near bursting buttons between him and the woman of his dreams.
He moved his mouth back to hers, and she kissed him hungrily. When he rested his fingers between her legs, touching her lightly, she arched against him and sucked his tongue deep into her mouth. She was ready for him, as ready as he was for her.
“Dillon.” She whispered his name breathlessly and locked her hands behind his neck. “Dillon, wait.”
He stilled. Wait? Was she kidding? Or was she just trying to kill him?
“Not…” she whispered, taking his face between her hands and gazing into his eyes, “…not on the floor of Olivia’s kitchen.” She gave him a small smile, and then bit her lower lip almost shyly.
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