“Nice, straight rows,” the voice drawled as Tania rounded the side of the cabin, the front balcony now in view. “I admire a woman who can keep things tidy and neat.”
“Why?” Tania sneered, not missing a beat at the inward shock she’d experienced seeing him there so near to her place of refuge. Annoyed, she took in the casualness of Sam’s demeanor, the booted feet propped upon the deck rail. His hands were clasped across his abdomen, his elbows rested lazily upon the arms of the maple wood rocker, and his hat tipped dangerously forward over his eyes. “So men like you can laze about? Don't you have a book to write, or something?”
He simply chuckled as she climbed the four wide stairs and sat upon the top step with her back to him. Looking down on her handiwork in the fields below, she could smell the aroma of fresh-tilled dirt, and felt an immediate sense of pride and fulfillment.
Sam removed his feet from the rail and sauntered across the porch, the clop of his boots echoing in her head. Dropping onto the step next to her, he replied, “I’ve waited three days for your answer. I can’t wait any longer.”
Tania did away with her hat, then bent to begin unlacing her work boots. Jabbing him with a quick, frosty look, she said, “You know where the road is that leads out of here.”
“Ah, so that’s the way of it,” he surmised, resting his elbows upon his knees. “You want to stay married, then.”
She tossed a dusty boot behind her, then turned to study the look of mocking amusement in his eyes. “No. I don’t want to stay married.”
Somehow, the few words had the power to twist his gut. But he wasn’t giving up. “Then if you want your precious annulment, come to Dallas with me.”
Tania threw up her hands. “Can’t you see I’m a busy woman! For Christ's sake, some people have real jobs.”
Sam saw the now familiar passionate fire in her smoldering cat eyes. Whether the stimulus was anger or desire, the look was potent. Hooking a hand about her neck, he drew her swiftly toward him, their mouths meeting in an explosive kiss.
Panting, Tania broke free. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners? You’re always pushing yourself on me!”
His mouth broke out in a wide grin as he held her face a mere inch from his. “But you’re my wife.”
“Okay!” she shoved him from her, suddenly in need of a cold shower. “I’ll go to Dallas with you. But you’ve got to promise me you won’t back out on the agreement—your promise for the discreet annulment—or I swear I won’t go.”
Sam rose and extended a hand to her. “I promise,” he said with a tiny measure of triumph. “Now, what’s for dinner?”
As she was pulled to her feet, one boot still in place on her foot, she planted her fists on her dusty hips. “You would have to return to your own home to find out the answer to that chauvinistic question.”
Sam glanced down at her crooked stance. God, he loved her feet! he thought as she subconsciously wiggled her toes in the bare sock. In one swift motion, he bent and swept her up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” Tania gasped, throwing her arms around his neck in pure self-defense, for it was a long way down to the bottom of the steps. “Let me go.”
Sam’s only response was to awkwardly pull the screen door open and enter the cabin. Scanning the one-room area, he took in the small kitchenette to the right, the fireplace on the far wall surrounded by a worn sofa and chairs, a single door leading to an obvious bathroom, and the one thing he was searching for: the bed, set right there in one corner of the living room.
Crossing the floor, he pitched her supine onto the rumpled blankets and began unlacing her remaining boot.
Tania cowered to the opposite side of the wrought-iron king-sized bed, and pumped her feet in the air, clipping Sam’s jaw a number of times before he could gain control and still them with a steel-tight vise about her ankles.
“Stop it right now,” she hissed, glancing frantically about for some form of a weapon. “Let go of me!”
Sam did just that, but dropped to stretch out on the bed beside her as he tossed her boot aside. “Calm down, Tatiana,” he soothed, reaching to loosen her braid. “I won’t hurt you.”
She flung his hand aside, but too late. Her hair tumbled free, pale golden-spun silk falling about her as she raised herself up on her elbows, her knees drawn up in protection. “Please, just let me get a shower. I’m filthy, dusty, and it's all over my clean bed.”
He pressed a feather-light kiss upon her trembling lips. “Go. I’ll root through your cabinets and scrounge up some dinner while you—” he sniffed, wrinkling his nose in mock disgust “—wash off the manure.”
Momentarily startled that he should so easily give in to her, Tania leaped from the bed and shot into the bathroom, locking the door firmly behind her. She took her time, savoring the steamy heat, lathering her long hair, soaping her body with scents of lilac and rose. Maybe if she took long enough, he’d tire of waiting for her, and return to his hacienda. Maybe he’d just disappear for good, she thought with a gleam of hope. Maybe fall into some deep abandoned well on his way back home.
Turning off the shower and reaching for a towel, she caught the cozy sounds of Sam puttering in the kitchen, and inhaled the delicious aroma of bacon. Famished and bone-weary, she wrapped herself in the thick towel and quietly pulled open the door. She peeked through the crack and caught a glimpse of him as he set about slicing tomatoes and tearing lettuce from a head. He truly was a stunningly virile man, all dark and exuding an air of pure male prowess. Like the wild black stallion she’d been attempting to tame, he was reckless, carefree, proud and stubborn.
Tiptoeing out into the main room, Tania made her way to a cedar chest below the bed. Sam was busy at work, oblivious to her as she tipped up the lid and withdrew a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and bra and panties. Rising with her back to him, she tucked them under her arm in preparation to return to the bathroom to don them.
When she spun on her bare heel, her breath was knocked from her as she came up against Sam’s chest. His arms clamped around her like a ring of steel. “Going somewhere?” he asked, his eyes alight with green mischief.
She squirmed in his arms, but to no avail. Her strength nowhere near matched his. “Why do you always insist on holding me captive like this? Let me go,” she demanded.
Sam was mesmerized by the locks of damp pale hair, the wet spiky lashes surrounding azure, angry eyes, the softness of her slight form in his arms. And a towel the only barrier between them...
“Because you are my wife, and I want you.”
The meaning of his words had the power of sending sharp, stabbing particles of aching heat to her loins. What was happening to her? Bobby Bellows had had his hands all over her, had spoken awkward words of love to her, had kissed her a number of times, but never had she felt even an inkling of what she felt when Sam Phoenix was merely in the same room with her. He was a dangerous combination of stalwartness and gentleness that served to confuse her as her mind screamed for escape and her traitorous body begged for his hands upon her flesh.
“To have an annulment, we cannot…continue to consummate this marriage,” she said pointedly with a trace of panicked helplessness, for she already could feel her knees going deliciously weak as he found a fold and slipped his hand into the towel. With practiced speed, he raced his huge hot paw up her spine.
“So your thoughts were going in the same sweet direction mine were,” he accused gently, pulling her firmly to him as he claimed her mouth with his own.
Mortified, she heard her moan of surrender, and felt much like that starved child placing that first bite of stolen nourishment into her mouth. She had to have it, or else die. Of their own will, her hands released the wad of clothing and shot up into his hair, holding his mouth firmly to hers. As she did so, the towel fell from her, and Sam, in sync as usual, withdrew enough to allow it to fall the rest of the way to the wooden slats of the floor.
His hands were all over her, moving over her back in delicious wa
ves, cupping her bare bottom as he pressed her against his hardness. Tania gasped as he tore his mouth from hers and ran a swift trail of hot kisses down her neck until he found his destination. With one hand, he lifted her breast to his mouth and drew in the already hard nipple, swirling his tongue about it. When she cried out with the sheer ecstasy of it, he bent and lifted her into his arms, then set her tenderly upon the bed.
Swiftly he divulged himself of his clothing, eyeing the hooded, passion-filled glaze in her lovely eyes, watching as her ample breasts rose and fell with her panting, the flatness of her stomach flaring into narrow hips. With one knee drawn up slightly higher than the other, he thought of a goddess, tempting her lover-god with the hidden jewel of her innocence.
Tania’s gaze swept his nakedness, mesmerized by the bulge of muscles, the trim waist…the enormous size of manhood standing erect and seeming to pulsate with desire. Her hand itched to touch it, to caress it as he had done her, to explore the uncharted territory. But, as if she were in a drugged state of awareness, she lay in calm yet expectant waiting, her every nerve afire with anticipation.
Sam climbed onto the bed and pressed one knee between her clamped legs. Watching her eyes go wide with shock, he spread them, bending to kiss her pale, lean inner thighs. Then, with brute force, he gripped her legs and flipped her onto her stomach.
“Sam!” She clawed at the bed in an effort to escape, but he held her in place by slipping his arm around her waist. Yanking upward, he pulled her into an all-fours position. “Sam, what are you…oooh!” she felt the flick of his manhood as it slid up the inner flesh of her thigh, until the head was caressing the soft outer folds of her womanhood. The hot, heavy ache that surged through her was sweet, painful torture.
“Tatiana,” he whispered in her ear, inhaled the soapy-clean scent of her. “Relax and let me love you,” he coaxed, dipping his tongue into her ear.
She shivered and grasped the blankets below her. When he moved away, then she felt his tongue flicker across her slit, it nearly brought her off the bed, and she cried out her pleasure. Stunned, her eyes grew heavy as he slid a finger inside her wetness from behind, all the while wreaking sweet havoc on the core of her with his tongue. She felt herself rise upon a delicious pinnacle, could almost see the waves of passion crashing toward her, lifting her, then he abruptly withdrew his finger and ceased the tongue dance.
“What…Sam?” There was an instant letdown, frustration as he shifted away from her once again.
“Shh,” he said huskily. “Relax and enjoy.”
She felt him plant his hands on the cheeks of her rear, then spread them. And the flame that combusted inside her when his tongue probed her asshole, nearly brought her to the gates of heaven. “Sam…” she panted, shame and a naughty decadence assailing her all at once. “Sam. Oh my God, it feels so…so wicked.”
He chuckled softly, but didn’t dally long in humor. He buried three fingers inside her wetness while his tongue continued to fuck her ass. Tania knew a wild animalistic abandon like never before. The beastly instincts roared inside her veins, and she moaned her pleasure aloud, growling, groaning. Just as she was about to reach orgasm, he buried his shaft inside her from behind, and stroked the honeyed dampness of her womanhood with his fully erect sex.
“You’re ready now,” he panted, finding her button of desire with one finger, and expertly beginning a torturous rhythm on it. “I want to feel your pleasure explode around me.”
There was no stopping it. The orgasm pounded into her with a vengeance. She screamed her release as her muscles involuntarily pumped Sam’s discharge of pleasure from him. Together, they cried their celebration of bliss.
They collapsed in a heap of tangled limbs, and he tucked her tenderly within the circle of his arms.
And they both knew it was a turning point in their haphazard relationship, but one of them wasn't admitting it.
***
The homey clatter of dishes, and the refrigerator opening and closing, coaxed her from the erotic dream she’d been having. Opening her eyes, Tania could see the white stars outside her window shimmering against the dark navy velvet background of the night sky. The gauzy white curtains billowed in the cool breeze that wafted through the window, paned and propped open by a small piece of firewood. And the scent of bacon, of delicious food hung in the air.
Turning, she felt the tenderness between her thighs—and shamefully remembered that it hadn’t been a carnal dream she’d been having, but rather a recollection of what had already transpired between herself and her husband.
Husband! He was her husband, and she’d allowed him to lead her, once again, into the consummation of the marriage! With a groan, she wrapped herself in the sheet and swung her feet onto the floor, searching through the dimness of the cabin for him.
And there he was, arrogant as a peacock strutting his stuff, showing off his fabulous, colorful array of feathers. She watched him for a long minute as he prepared a tray in the kitchen area, clad only in his jeans. Just as she was about to rise from the bed, he glanced up and bestowed a smug grin upon her, ever the triumphant peacock.
“Well, hello, princess,” he said with a faint sneer as he crossed the cabin and came to set the prepared tray across her lap. “Dinner is served.”
Tania glanced down to see a toasted, thickly stacked BLT, two pickle spears, a heap of corn chips and a tall frosty glass of milk. In response, her traitorous belly growled, but her mind screamed with terror. Sure, she’d been intimate with him, she reluctantly admitted as the spot between her legs became increasingly more tender with each minute movement, but serving her dinner on a tray in a remote cabin was far too cozy for the likes of her.
She had to leave…no, he had to leave! Someone had to get the hell out of here before she sent bacon and chips flying across the rough wooden floor.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, her eyes rising to pin him accusingly.
Sam was nearly tempted to shove the tray aside himself and just have her for dinner, what with her cat eyes all full of sleep and her bosom straining against the linen sheets like an ethereal goddess wrapped in a toga. Lips pressed tightly, he mumbled, “Damned if I know. But, I do know what I want to do.”
Handing the tray back to him, she said curtly, “You have to go now.”
Sam took the tray, but only on reflex. As he stood there dumbfounded, taking in the powerful image of his lovely wife, he slowly began to get the picture all too clearly. She was booting him out to save face. “You’re overreacting,” he said pointedly, setting the tray briskly upon the nearby bedside table.
Tania searched for the wad of clothing she’d obtained earlier from the chest and, gripping the sheet tightly to her breast, bent to retrieve it. Panicked, she sailed into the bathroom and locked the door with a resounding click.
“Get out, Sam,” she called to him through the door as she hastily donned her jeans and shirt.
“I’m not going anywhere until we discuss what passed between us only an hour ago. I won’t go on as if it didn’t happen. And,” he called back with emphasis, “I will not pretend that there wasn’t a special connection there, an irreversible change.”
Tania’s eyes closed in reaction to his words and to the pain that speared her heart. She didn’t know how to care for someone, hadn’t the foggiest idea how to maintain ‘special connections.’ Being obtrusive in any relationship, whether it was merely saying hello to a ranch hand out on the range or forming a lasting relationship, was not her way. Getting too close meant exposing the raw pain and fear inside her, and that was best kept locked deep inside a forgotten corner of her mind. The only things she was good at were ranching and surviving. Period.
“It was sex, Sam.” She yanked the door open and faced him with flaming eyes edged with fear. “Nothing more.”
Nothing more than sex? he thought, bemused. Sam’s gaze swept her from the snug T-shirt down to the worn blue jeans and bare feet. She was lovely, breathtakingly sexy, but there was no
swelling heart inside her, he suddenly realized. She was a wounded tigress unable to forget her days of famine and poverty, never having learned how to feed and cultivate her own heart, nor deal with someone else’s. As a result, her hungry belly had been the only organ that had taken precedence over all other vital ones.
How was he to remedy lifelong scars that ran so deep, they most likely severed her clean through? And what’s more, should he waste his time trying? He still needed a mother for Alexa, true. But did he want to subject his daughter to a woman who may never have the ability to love and nurture her as she deserved? Dare he take the chance and risk his own daughter’s security in the process?
His lips thinned as he backed away from her. “You’re right. It was just that. Sex.”
His reaffirming words had the power of a plunging knife, sinking, twisting, sinking deeper yet. Swallowing a painful lump, Tania croaked, “Please, just leave.”
Sam saw the pain, the confusion, the anger in her eyes—and longed to go to her, to soothe her, to take her back to the soft, warm bed and make passionate love to her through the night. But instead, his daughter’s well-being foremost in his mind, he turned on his heel and left her standing there stunned at how easy it had been to be rid of him.
With tears spilling down her cheeks like the raindrops now falling upon the windowpanes, Tania went to get the tray of food and sat down at the tiny dining table shoved against the kitchen wall.
Alone, she sat and ate every bite, just as she had done as a child, rooting through the trash cans behind an elegant restaurant. After all, one never knew. It could possibly be the last morsel of food for some time to come.
Chapter Seven
Carnal Games Page 9
