Mariah smoothed her clothes hastily, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and asked, “Do I look all right?”
Cash looked up. “It doesn’t matter. Carla isn’t so shallow that she’s going to care what you look like.” Mariah heard the edge in Cash’s voice and knew he was still angry about finding her with Nevada. But before she could say anything, the front door opened and a petite, very well built woman hurried in.
“Sorry I’m late. I-oh, hello. What gorgeous eyes. You must be Luke’s sister. I’m Diana Blackthorn. Excuse me. Carolina is about to do her imitation of a cat with its tail in a wringer. Thanks, Cash. You have a magic touch with her. Even Ten would have had a hard time keeping the lid on her this long.”
Diana whisked the small bundle from Cash’s arms and vanished up the staircase, speaking to Carolina in soothing tones at every step.
Mariah blinked, not sure that she had really seen the honey-haired woman at all. “That was an archaeologist?”
“Um,” Cash said tactfully.
“Ten’s wife?”
“Um.”
“Whew. No wonder he smiles a lot.”
“Ask Diana and she’ll tell you that she’d trade it all for four more inches of height.”
“She can have four of mine if I can have four of hers,” Mariah said instantly.
Cash came out of the rocking chair in a fluid motion and pulled Mariah close. His hands slid from her hips to her waist and on up her body, stopping at the top of her rib cage. Watching her, he eased his hands underneath her breasts, taking their warm weight into his palms, teasing her responsive nipples with his thumbs, smiling lazily.
“You’re too damn sexy just the way you are,” Cash said, his voice gritty, intimate, as hot as the pulse suddenly speeding in Mariah’s throat. “I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you were this morning in that pool wearing nothing but steam. You watched me take you. The sweet sounds you made then almost pushed me over the edge. Just thinking about it now makes me want to-”
“Hi, Nevada. Is that another box of shards? Good. Put them in Diana’s car. Here, Logan, chew on this instead of Nosy’s tail. Even if the cat doesn’t mind it, I do.”
The voice from the front porch froze Cash. He closed his eyes, swore softly, and released Mariah. He turned toward the front door, blocking Mariah’s flushed face with his body.
“Where’s my favorite nephew?” Cash called out.
“Your only nephew,” Carla said, smiling as she walked into the living room. “He’s a one hundred percent terror again. How’s my favorite brother?”
“Your only brother, right?” Cash bent down and scooped up Logan in one arm. “Lord, boy. What have you been eating – lead? You must have gained ten pounds.”
As a toddler, Logan wasn’t exactly a fountain of conversation. Action was more his line. Laughing, he grabbed Cash’s nose and tried to pull it off.
“That’s not the way to do it,” Cash said, grabbing Logan’s nose gently. Very carefully Cash pulled and made a sucking, popping noise. Moments later he triumphantly held up his hand. The end of his thumb was pushed up between his index and second finger to imitate Logan’s snub nose. “See? Got it! Want me to put it back on?”
With an expression of affection and amusement, Carla watched her brother and her son. Then she realized that someone was standing behind Cash. She looked around his broad shoulders and saw a woman about her own age and height hastily tucking in her blouse.
“Hello?”
Mariah bit her lip and gave up trying to straighten her clothes. “Hi, I’m-”
“Mariah!” Carla said, smiling with delight. She stepped around Cash and gave Mariah a hug. “I’m so glad you came home at last. When the lawyer told Luke his mother was dead, there was no mention of you at all. We had no way to contact you. Luke wanted so much to share Logan with you. And most of all he wanted to know that you were happy.”
Mariah looked into Carla’s transparent, blue-green eyes and saw only welcome. With a stifled sound, Mariah hugged Carla in return, feeling a relief so great it made her dizzy.
“Thank you,” Mariah said huskily. “I was so afraid you would resent having me around.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would anyone resent you?” Carla stared Into Mariah’s huge, golden-brown eyes. “You mean it. You really were worried, weren’t you?”
Mariah tried to smile, but it turned upside down. “Families don’t like outsiders coming to live with them.”
Cash spoke without looking up from screwing Logan’s nose back into place. “As you might guess from that statement, Mariah’s mother didn’t pick a winner for her second husband. In fact, he sounds like a real, um, prince. Kept her in boarding schools all year round.”
“Why didn’t he just send you back to the Rocking M?” Carla asked Mariah.
“Mother refused. She said the Rocking M was malevolent. It hated women. She could feel it devouring her. Just talking about it upset her so much I stopped asking.” Mariah looked past Carla to the window that framed MacKenzie Ridge’s rugged lines. “I never felt that way about the ranch. I love this land. But as long as Mother was alive, I couldn’t come back. She simply couldn’t have coped with it.”
“You’re back now,” Carla said quietly, “and you’re staying as long as you want.”
Mariah tried to speak, couldn’t, and hugged her sister-in-law instead.
Cash watched the two women and told himself that no matter why Mariah had originally come to the Rocking M, she was genuinely grateful to be accepted into Luke’s family. And, Cash admitted, he couldn’t really blame Mariah for wanting a place she could call home. He felt the same way. The Rocking M, more than his apartment in Boulder, was his home. Only on the Rocking M were there people who gave a damn whether he came back from his field trips or died on some godforsaken granite slope.
Almost broodingly Cash watched Mariah and his sister fix dinner. With mo fuss at all they went about the business of cooking a huge meal and getting to know one another. As he looked at them moving around the kitchen, Cash realized that the two women were similar in many ways. They were within a year of each other in age, within an inch in height, graceful, supremely at home with the myriad tools used to prepare food, willing to do more than half of any job they shared; and their laughter was so beautiful it made him ache.
Linda never wanted to share anything or do any work. I thought it was just because she was young, but I can see that wasn’t it. She was the same age then as Mariah is now. Linda was just spoiled. Mariah may have come here looking for room and board – and a crack at Mad Jack’s mine – but at least she’s not afraid to work for it.
Best of all, Mariah doesn’t whine.
No. Not best of all. What was best about Mariah, Cash conceded, was her incandescent sensuality. After Linda, he had never found it difficult to control himself where women were concerned. Mariah was different. He wanted her more, not less, each time. It was just as well that he was going to Boulder. He needed distance from Mariah’s fire, distance and the coolness of mind to remember that a woman didn’t have to be spoiled in order to manipulate a man. She simply had to be clever enough to allow him to deceive himself.
Cash was still reminding himself of how it had been with Linda when he let himself into the old house in the hour before dawn. He knew he should be on the road, driving away, putting miles between himself and Mariah. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave without saying goodbye to her.
The front door of the old house closed softly behind Cash. An instant later he heard a whispering, rushing sound and felt Mariah’s soft warmth wrapping around him, holding him with a woman’s surprising strength. His arms came around her in a hard hug that lifted her feet off the floor.
Her tears were hot against his neck.
“Mariah?”
She shuddered and held on to Cash until she could trust her voice. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard you loading the Jeep. I thought you weren’t even going to say goodbye to me. Please don’t be a
ngry with me over Nevada. I like him but it’s nothing to what I feel about you. I-”
But Cash’s mouth was over hers, sealing off her words. The taste of him swept through her, making her tremble. His arms shifted subtly, both molding and supporting her body, stroking her over his hard length, telling her without a word how perfectly they fit together, hard against soft, key against lock, male and female, hunger and fulfillment.
It took an immense amount of willpower for Cash to end the kiss short of taking Mariah down to the floor and burying himself in her, ending the torment that raked him with claws of fire.
“Don’t leave me,” Mariah whispered when Cash lowered her feet back to the floor. “Not yet. Hold me for just a little longer. Please? I – oh, Cash, it’s so cold without you.”
She felt the tremor that went through Cash, heard his faint groan, and then the world tilted as he picked her up once more. Moments later he put her on the bed, grabbed the covers and pulled them up beneath her chin. She struggled against the confining sheet and comforter, trying to get her arms free, but it was impossible.
“Warm enough?” he asked. “I don’t want you getting sick.” His voice was too deep, too thick, telling of the heavy running of his blood. “You didn’t get much sleep last night, I couldn’t keep my hands off you in the pool, it was a long ride back and then you cooked a meal for twelve.”
“Carla did most of the work and-”
“Bull. I was watching, honey.”
“-and I loved your hands on me in the pool,” Mariah said quickly, talking over Cash’s voice. “I love your mouth. I love your body. I love-”
His mouth came down over hers again, ending the husky flow of words that were like tiny tongues of fire licking over him.
“I shouldn’t have taken you this morning,” Cash said when he managed to tear himself away from Mariah’s sweet, responsive mouth. “Damn it, honey, you’re not used to having a man yet, and you make me so hard and hungry.”
“The pool must have magic healing properties,” Mariah whispered, looking up at Cash with wide golden eyes. In the vague golden illumination cast by the nightlight, Cash was little more than a dense man-shadow, a deep voice and powerful hands holding her imprisoned within the soft cocoon of bed covers. “And when I couldn’t sleep tonight I took a long soak in the tub. I’m not sore, not even from the ride back. If you don’t believe it, touch me. You’ll see that I’m telling the truth. I know you want me, Cash. I felt it when you hugged me. Touch me. Then you’ll know I want you, too.”
“Mariah,” he whispered.
Cash kissed her again and again, tiny, fierce kisses that told of his restraint and need. When she made soft sounds of response and encouragement, he deepened the kiss. As their tongues caressed, hunger ripped through him, loosening his hold on the bedclothes for a few moments.
It was all Mariah needed. She kicked aside the soft, enfolding covers even as she reached for Cash. He groaned when he saw her elegant, naked legs and the cotton nightshirt that barely came below her hips. Then she took his hand in hers and began smoothing it down her body.
He could have pulled away and they both knew it. He was far stronger than she was, more experienced, more able to control the hot currents of hunger that coursed through his body. But Mariah’s abandoned sensuality disarmed him completely. When her breasts tightened and peaked visibly beneath cloth, he remembered how it felt to hold her in his mouth, shaping and caressing her while cries of pleasure shivered from her lips.
Even before Mariah guided Cash’s hand to the sultry well of her desire, he suspected he was lost. When he touched the liquid heat that waited for him, he knew he was. He tried not to trace the soft, alluring folds and failed. He skimmed them again, probing delicately, wishing that his profession hadn’t left his fingertips so scarred and callused. She deserved to be caressed by something as silky and unmarked as her own body.
“Baby?” Cash whispered. “Are you sure?”
The answer he received was a broken sound of pleasure and a sensual melting that took his doubts and his breath away. When he started to lift his hand, Mariah’s fingers tightened over his wrist, trying to hold him.
“Cash,” Mariah said urgently, “don’t leave yet. Please stay with me for a little more. I-”
“Hush, honey,” Cash said, kissing away Mariah’s words. “I’m not going far.” He laughed shakily. “I couldn’t walk out of here right now if I had to. Don’t you know what you do to me?”
“No,” she whispered. “I only know what you do to me. I’ve never felt anything close to it. I didn’t even know it was possible to feel so much. It’s like I’ve been living at night all my life and then the sun finally came up.”
The words were more arousing than any caress Cash had ever received. His hands shook with the force of the hunger pouring through him.
Mariah watched while Cash stripped away his clothes with careless, powerful motions that were very different from the tender caresses he had given to her just moments before. The nebulous glow of the tiny nightlight turned Cash’s skin to gold and the hair on his body to a dark, shimmering bronze. Each movement he made was echoed by the black velvet glide of shadows over his muscular body.
Cash watched Mariah as he kicked aside the last of his clothes and stood naked before her. Mariah’s eyes were heavy lidded, the color of gold, shining, and they worshiped all of him, even the full, hard evidence of his desire. Still looking at him, she reached for the bottom button on her nightshirt with fingers that trembled.
Cash rested one knee on the mattress, making it give way beneath his weight. One long finger traced from the instep of Mariah’s foot, up the calf, behind the knee, then slowly up the inside of her thighs. When her leg flexed in response, he smiled slowly.
“That’s it, little one. Show me you want me,” Cash whispered. “Make room for me between those beautiful legs.”
Mariah’s long legs shifted and separated. He followed each movement with dark, consuming eyes and light caresses. Slowly he knelt between her legs, watching her, seeing the same sensual tension in her that had taken his body and drawn it tight on wires of fire.
For a moment Cash didn’t move, couldn’t move, frozen by the beauty of Mariah’s body and the trust implicit in her vulnerable position. Slowly, irresistibly, his hands pushed aside her unbuttoned nightshirt, smoothing it down over her shoulders and arms, stopping at her wrists, for he had become distracted by the rose-tipped, creamy invitation of her breasts.
Mariah made a murmurous sound of pleasure that became a soft cry as his mouth found one nipple and pulled it into a tight, shimmering focus of pleasure. When she arched up in sensual reflex, the nightshirt slid down beneath her back to her hips, stopping there, holding her hands captive. She didn’t notice, for Cash’s hands were smoothing up her legs, making her tremble in anticipation of the pleasure to come. When he touched her very lightly, she shivered and cried out.
“It occurred to me,” Cash said, his voice deep and slow, “that something as soft as you shouldn’t have to put up with hands as callused as mine.”
Mariah would have told Cash how much she loved his hands, but couldn’t. The feel of his tongue probing silkily into her navel took her breath away. Glittering sensations streaked through her body at the unexpected caress.
“You should be touched by something as hot and soft as you are,” Cash said. He sampled the taut skin of Mariah’s belly with his tongue, smiling to feel the response tightening her. His tongue flicked teasingly as he slid down her body. “Since it’s too late for you to go out and find some soft gentleman to be your lover, we’ll just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got, won’t we?”
Mariah didn’t understand what Cash was talking about. As far as she was concerned he was perfect as a lover. She was trying to tell him just that when she felt the first sultry touch of his tongue. The intimacy of the kiss shocked her. She tried to move, only to find her legs held in her lover’s gentle, immovable hands and her wrists captive to th
e tangled folds of her nightdress.
“Cash – you shouldn’t – I-”
“Hush,” he murmured. “I’ve always wondered what a woman tastes like. I just never cared enough to find out. But I do now. I want you, honey. And that’s what you are. Honey.”
Cash’s voice was like his mouth, hungry, hot, consuming. The words Mariah had been trying to speak splintered into a pleasure as elemental as the man who was loving her in hushed, wild silence. For long moments she fought to speak, to think, to breathe, but in the end could only give herself to Cash, twisting slowly, drawn upon a rack of exquisite fire.
By the time Cash finally lifted his head, Mariah was shaking and crying his name, balanced on the jagged breakpoint of release. He sensed that the lightest touch would send her over the edge. Knowing he should release her from her sensual prison, Cash still held back, loving the sound of her voice crying for him, loving the flushed, petal-softness of her need, loving the raggedness of her breathing matching his own.
At last he bent down to her once more, seeking the satin knot of sensation he had called from her, touching it with the tip of his tongue.
With a husky cry that was his name, Mariah was overcome by an ecstasy that convulsed her with savage delicacy. Cash held her and smiled despite the shudders of unfulfilled need that were tearing him apart. Caressing her softly, he waited for her first, wild ecstasy to pass. Then he gently flexed her legs, drawing them up her body until she was completely open to him. With equal care he fitted his body to hers, pressing very, very slowly into her.
When he looked up, he saw Mariah watching him become a part of her. He felt the shivering, shimmering ripples of pleasure that were consuming her all over again, ecstasy renewed and redoubled by his slow filling of her body. The knowledge that she welcomed the deep physical interlocking as much as he did raced through Cash, calling to him at a profound level, luring him so deeply into Mariah that he couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, for there was no difference, no separation, no boundary, nothing but their shared body shuddering in endless, golden pulses of release.
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