Caine read the unspoken message shining in her eyes. The temptation to pick her up and carry her away with him was almost overwhelming. But he forced himself to be rational. "It'll be dawn soon." He touched her soft, flushed cheek. "Aren't you tired?"
She flashed an impish grin. "Saxon, I've never been less tired in my entire life."
"I probably should give you more time," he muttered, more to himself than to her. "You—"
"I don't need any more time. I don't want any more time. I love you, Caine." She put her arms around him and snuggled against him. "Please, take me with you."
How could he resist when he wanted her so much? he asked himself. There was no power on earth that could make him turn her away now. He kissed her deeply, tenderly. And then whispered huskily, "Get your things, Juliet. We're going home."
❧
Caine lived in a sprawling brick ranch-style house in one of Charlottesville's newer, exclusive neighborhoods. As Juliet gazed around the large living room it struck her for the first time that Caine Saxon was a rich man. She recognized the high quality of the furniture, rugs, and accessories. Clearly no expense had been spared in the decor of his home.
The kitchen was a modern dream, large and bright and airy, with every appliance imaginable, all looking so new and untouched that she knew they were seldom used. Caine had described his own cooking as "pathetic."
Her eyes widened when he showed her the specially designed Jacuzzi room with its twelve-foot black marble tub. There were smaller bathrooms adjoining three bedrooms, which were attractively but impersonally decorated. It was clear that they were guest rooms and not often occupied. Caine's own bedroom was big enough to accommodate easily a king-size bed, which was covered with a green, black, and red geometric print spread, and the other pieces of heavy Spanish-style furniture. A comfortable chair and ottoman covered in the same material as the bedspread were tucked into a corner of the room.
Juliet held onto her canvas overnight bag and stared at the bed. She was still wearing her blue nightgown under the beige raincoat she'd tossed on as they were leaving her house. It had seemed like a waste of time to get dressed when she would be getting undressed so soon. Or so she'd thought at the time. Now she wondered if she hadn't been rather brazenly eager. Perhaps too eager?
She cast a covert glance at Caine, wondering what he was thinking. There had been so many women in his life. Was her main appeal for him the fact that she was a virgin? Apparently not too many of those crossed his path! Should she take advantage of the novelty factor and play the nervous innocent? It wouldn't take too much acting, she decided, for to her great self-disgust she was assailed by a genuine case of primitive virginal jitters.
"Scared?" Caine asked quietly. He took her bag from her, then divested her of her raincoat. He tossed both on the chair in the corner.
"Of—of course not!" she retorted with a bravado she was far from feeling. "After all, it's not like this is the first night I've ever slept with you. That night at the inn was."
He laughed. "That's true. You're becoming an old hand at getting into bed with me, aren't you?" His hand snaked out to fasten around her wrist, and he pulled her to him. "Those big blue eyes of yours are as round as saucers. What are you thinking, little Juliet?"
She managed a tremulous smile. "Actually, I was wondering what you were thinking."
"I'm thinking how beautiful you are, how desirable," he said huskily, taking her into his arms. "I'm thinking how special you are to me."
His fingers traced the line of her collarbone from her throat to her shoulders, then he carefully slipped her nightgown to her waist. Sliding his palms along her silken skin, he proceeded to push the nightgown over her hips, letting it drop into a pale blue pool at her feet.
Juliet stood before him in her pale blue panties, her heart thundering against her ribs. Caine's eyes were riveted to her uptilted breasts, which were firm and rounded and milky white. The rosy tips grew taut under his scrutiny. "And I'm thinking," he continued thickly, "that I can't play the noble protector any longer. Sweetheart, I have to have you!"
His mouth closed over hers with driving possession, and she drew a convulsive, shuddering breath as his hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs stroking her nipples into aching, hard arousal.
Juliet gave in to the intense yearning pulsing within her. All traces of apprehension and anxiety were erased in a ferocious tide of passion. She lovingly offered herself to him, opening completely to his mouth and lips and hands.
Mutely acknowledging her surrender, Caine swung her up into his arms and held her high against his chest. She pressed her face into his shirt and inhaled the clean scent of him. It went straight to her head, and she clung to him, her pulses pounding at a frantic rate. He laid her down gently in the middle of the big bed, then quickly stripped off his clothes.
How beautiful he was, she thought dizzily as she gazed at his hard, bare body. How strong and powerful and wondrously male. Caine felt her eyes upon him and misinterpreted her wide-eyed stare.
"I'm not going to hurt you, love," he said softly. "We'll take it slow and long and easy. I'll make it good for you, Juliet, I promise."
But Juliet felt no fear. His masculine size and strength beckoned and appealed to the passionate woman within her, who had been dormant and unawakened for so long. She was roused now, and filled with a loving urgency that precluded anything but the need to please her man. She wanted to give and give to him, but she wanted to take too. She wanted to take the wonderful completion he offered to her.
"I need you so badly, Juliet," he said hoarsely. His hand slipped between her thighs and his fingers probed the damp silk of her panties. "And you need me, too, love. You want me. I can feel how very much you want me, my passionate little Juliet."
He removed the scrap of lace and silk with one deft movement, and his fingers found the sensitive hollow of her inner thighs and began to trace erotic little patterns there. A fire ignited within her, sending flames of arousal to every nerve.
One long finger circled an achingly taut nipple, gently skimming over the sensitive skin surrounding the hot pink bud. Again and again he circled the throbbing peak, yet refrained from touching it directly. And he did the same to the small pulsing throb that lay deep between her thighs. Circling, teasing, yet holding back until she was twisting mindlessly with wild need.
"Please," she cried as her head tossed back and forth on the pillow. She was enveloped in a whirling hot mist, feeling, needing, wanting . . . and only Caine could relieve the erotic tension building inside her. "Please, Caine."
"Yes, love," he soothed. "I'll take care of you. I'll give you everything you need." His mouth took her nipple, and when he began to suck she could feel the sensation deep within her womb. And then his hand slipped between her legs and his touch became concentrated and intense, holding her with a nerve-shattering rhythm of sensuous pressure.
"Are you ready for me, precious? Do you want me inside you as much as I want to be there?" He kissed her hungrily, torridly. "Deep, deep inside ..."
"Oh. yes, Caine," she said in a throaty, sexy voice that she hardly recognized as her own.
He moved away from her for a moment, and she reached blindly for him, whimpering his name. If he left her she would surely die from the surging, melting electricity that had possessed her. She wanted . . . she needed . . .
"It's all right," he said. "I'm here." He gave a hoarse, self-mocking laugh. "For a moment there I almost forgot all about protecting you. And I promised that I would never hurt you ..."
"I don't need protecting from you, Caine," she whispered, pressing herself tightly against him. "And I know you'll never hurt me."
"My darling!" Her loving trust, her open sweetness, were as powerful a lure as her voluptuous and passionate responses. "Juliet, sweetheart, I can't wait any longer!" He kissed her again, and his tongue entered her as he drove into her with a powerful thrust that caused her to cry out.
He lay still within her, giving her time to
acclimate her body to his. She clutched at his shoulders, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow and uneven as she trembled beneath him.
"Sweetheart, are you all right?" he murmured hoarsely. He buried his mouth in the tender hollow of her neck. "Open your eyes and look at me. love."
Deep blue eyes met dark amber ones. "Caine." She whispered his name in a kind of dazed wonder. He was a part of her—their bodies were joined as one. Her hands tightened possessively on him and a burst of exultant joy surged through her. He was hers. He belonged to her in a way that no one else ever had or would. She tightened around him with pure feminine possession. She felt strong and proud and glad to be a woman, holding the man she loved deeply within her.
Caine gazed into her eyes and a slow smile spread across his face. "You're not the least bit tense or scared. I don't think I'm going to have to worry about you, after all."
"Why were you worried?" She nipped playfully at his lips with her teeth, then teased him with her tongue. She felt wonderful, her body full, the aching emptiness relieved. "Did you think I'd swoon with an attack of the vapors or something?"
He chuckled. "Nothing quite so Victorian. But you're so small and dainty and—in case you haven't noticed—I happen to be built like an bull."
"I'm just the right size for you," she told him succinctly. "A perfect fit." She arched beneath him and clutched him tighter.
He drew in his breath sharply and began to move slowly within her. "So small and soft," he breathed, his strokes long and slow and deep. "So hot and tight and sweet. You're mine, Juliet. You were made for me, just me."
"Yes!" She clung to him as the golden flames licked through her veins, burning her, consuming her in a conflagration of scalding passion. "Caine, I love you!" she cried. "I love you!"
The white-hot intensity seemed to sweep her out of herself, to plunge her into a whirlpool of aching ecstasy and beyond, to a timeless dimension. She and Caine were suddenly rocked by a swell of glowing sweet waves that quenched the fire and set them down into a sensual sea of languid warmth. . . .
Chapter 9
"It's true," Juliet said drowsily as she lay wrapped in Caine's arms. "What you said. It was absolutely true." She was tucked into the curve of his big, hard body and she wriggled against him, feeling as high and light as a helium-filled balloon drifting up into the sky.
"What did I say that's true? That I wouldn't hurt you?" His arms tightened around her and his voice lowered and deepened with concern. "I didn't hurt you, did I, love?"
She stretched luxuriously against him. "Mmm, you know you didn't."
"You cried out when I first entered you," he reminded her. His mouth curved into a tender smile, and he cupped her chin with one hand and forced her to meet his gaze. "But you managed to adjust to me quite well," he drawled teasingly.
"Quite well." She sighed at the memory. "It was wonderful, Caine. You were wonderful."
"You were wonderful, Juliet," he said softly, and took her mouth in a lingering kiss. "But you still haven't told me what you meant when you said 'it's true.' "
"Remember when you told me that you could make my head spin in bed?" she murmured when he lifted his lips from hers.
He smiled. "I remember."
"Well, it's true." She grinned. "You can. And you did."
"There was another part to that statement that I didn't bother to add. You take my breath away, darling. In or out of bed. I think you always will."
"You think?" she teased, smiling up at him with loving eyes.
Caine gazed down at her and was filled with a surge of masculine pride and possession. She was his, only his. He was the first and only man to see her and touch her like this, the first and only man to be her lover.
He was more than a little surprised to feel this primitive and profound sense of possession. He was not by nature a possessive man. But he had never been any woman's first lover before. Except Juliet's.
"I know you will always take my breath away," he said with sudden conviction. He stared into the violet-blue depths of her eyes, remembering the way she'd gazed up at him as he'd first entered her, as he'd begun to move inside her.
And as he continued to gaze at her hundreds more images of her danced before his mind's eye. Juliet laughing and frowning, Juliet teasing him, arguing with him, making love with him. He saw her sleeping in his arms as she'd done last night, he saw her fussing over her sisters with loving concern. He saw her living in his house, sharing his life, bearing his children. . . .
I love her. There was simply no way around it, Caine acknowledged with a wry smile. He'd been skirting the issue by making analogies with Napoleon and Waterloo. Now he was ready to admit it.
"Juliet?" he whispered.
Her eyes were closing heavily. "Hram?" she mumbled sleepily.
"Going to sack out on me, huh?" he teased.
She forced her eyes open and gave him an owllike stare. "I'm awake," she insisted.
"But just barely." He smiled to himself. His masculine ego demanded that the woman he loved be awake and alert when he made his declaration of love. "Go to sleep, honey," he said softly, cuddling her close and savoring the sweet, musky scent of her.
There was plenty of time to tell her how he felt, he thought. Perhaps he would combine it with a proposal. It wasn't too soon. He'd been waiting for her all his life. He drifted off to sleep as he planned the romantic setting in which he would tell Juliet of his love and ask her to be his wife.
❧
In the first groggy seconds between sleep and wakefulness Juliet wondered hazily where she was. Comprehension dawned the moment she opened her eyes and found herself wrapped around Caine. Her face was buried in the curve of his shoulder, one arm was flung across his chest, and her legs were entwined intimately with his powerful, hair-roughened thighs.
He was still sleeping soundly, and she studied him lovingly. She blushed as recollections of their passionate union swept over her. How masterfully he had taken her! And she had given herself to him with a possessive urgency she'd never dreamed she was capable of. Together they had soared into a realm of intense ecstasy, and she thrilled at the memory of their tempestuous passion.
She loved Caine Saxon. Their union had transcended mere physical pleasure, becoming a merging of spirit and soul. She was awed by this compelling loss of autonomy, but not at all threatened. She had never before felt like the whole, complete woman that she knew she now was.
She stretched a little, feeling wonderfully sore in certain places. Her movements roused Caine and he stirred. "Good morning, love." She savored the words as she spoke them. It was wonderful to wake in her lover's arms. She leaned up and tenderly touched her lips to his.
"Hello, sweetheart," he said huskily, and rolled her over on her back as his mouth took over the kiss and deepened it intimately.
She was immediately, deliciously aroused, and moved beneath him with the erotic, sensual rhythm she had learned so well last night. She felt his throbbing masculine response and her body sang with joy. He wanted her. He was her lover and she could make him want her as much as she wanted him.
The sudden sharp ring of the telephone was a jarring intrusion into their private world. Juliet stiffened. "Ignore it, honey," Caine mumbled, brushing her lips with his.
But the ringing didn't stop, and Juliet couldn't ignore it. "What if it's Liwy or Randi?" she said. Her sisters would assume she was here with Caine when they didn't find her in her own bedroom. She sat up and picked up the dark green telephone receiver.
It hadn't occurred to Juliet that perhaps someone might be calling for Caine. An incredibly stupid mistake, considering it was his phone in his house, she berated herself when she heard the unmistakably feminine voice on the other end of the line.
"May I speak to Caine, please?" the voice asked with cool aplomb.
"It's for you." She thrust the phone at him, rolled onto her stomach, and tried not to listen to Caine's conversation. She didn't want to hear him talk to another woman. But though she cou
ldn't hear what the woman was saying, there was no way she could block out Caine's end of the conversation.
"Oh. hi. Yeah. No, I can't. Sorry. No, I don't think so. No. Maybe you'd better. Yeah. Bye."
Juliet heard him replace the receiver in its cradle. "She asked to see you, didn't she?" Her voice was slightly muffled by the pillow.
"You heard me refuse, Juliet,"' Caine replied quietly.
She'd been hoping that he would say the female voice belonged to a salesperson hawking magazines or aluminum siding or something. To have to face that another woman was issuing an invitation to her lover—as they lay in bed!—was an extremely difficult adjustment, even if he had turned the woman down.
Juliet swallowed. For the first time she fully understood why Miranda had instantly believed that Grant had gone off to Richmond with another woman. Grant had been a rich, sought-after bachelor, just like Caine. Women called the Saxon brothers. Women wanted them. . . .
"I didn't ask her to call and I said no to her," Caine said as he stroked her nape with firm, kneading fingers.
"I know. Three times! I heard you." Juliet sat up and tried to smile. "It's just that it's so hard ..." Her voice trailed off. She would not turn into a suspicious, jealous shrew, she told herself firmly. If she couldn't trust Caine, their relationship would never last.
"Trust me, Juliet," he said softly, as though reading her thoughts. "You're the only woman in my life." He cupped her cheek with his palm and she turned her lips into his hand, kissing his fingers lightly. "I don't want anyone but you."
For now. The unwelcome thought flitted through her head, and Juliet quickly sought to banish it. She wouldn't let her apprehensions and insecurities poison her time alone with Caine. She managed a brave little smile that went straight to Caine's heart.
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