The Rawhide Man

by Diana Palmer

  “You, with limitations?” she scoffed, dragging the coverlet over herself. “How shocking.”

  He glanced back and then turned around, lifting the cigarette to his mouth as he studied her flushed face. He looked so masculine and sensuous that she wanted to climb out of the bed and throw herself at him. The way he’d looked at her body had been unspeakably beautiful, and she knew that despite the fact that he’d been drinking, she’d treasure the memory of this night forever. A kiss and then this…It was like having her secret longings all fulfilled at once.

  “You aren’t really cool at all, are you?” he asked quietly. “It’s a kind of armor you wear, a form of protection.”

  She flushed wildly. “Stop taking me apart.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not doing that. You’re much too complex. But, downstairs—” he watched her flush with the memory of it “—you were with me every step of the way. I hadn’t expected you to kiss me, even when I told you to. I was…teasing.”

  Oh, God, she thought miserably. She closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. Please, please don’t let me give myself away, she pleaded silently.

  “Would you mind finding some other method of torture in the future?” she asked unsteadily. “As you said yourself, I’m too green to know the difference.”

  “Did it hurt?” he asked, as if it mattered.

  She laughed bitterly. “I wouldn’t let you hurt me. Not in a million years.”

  He made a rough sound in his throat and crushed out his cigarette, even though he’d only finished half of it. “Damn it, what I had in mind for us was a simple merger, a marriage based on business concerns, not emotion. I haven’t changed my mind. I wanted the shares, not complications.”

  Her eyes fell to the coverlet, which her fingers were worrying. “Then stop creating them,” she said.

  “Stop helping me,” he shot back, glaring at her. “I’m human. I respond to temptation just like any other damned man.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Try again.” His eyes darkened as he studied her, and she looked away because she couldn’t outstare him.

  “I won’t forget,” she said on a sigh.

  “See that you don’t.” He paced the room angrily.

  She studied the coverlet as if it fascinated her. “Jude, why haven’t you ever had a Christmas tree before?”

  He glanced at her briefly. “Because I never realized how much it meant to Katy until now.” He laughed shortly. “All this time she pretended that she didn’t care. And I was too damned busy.” He lifted his chin and studied her thoughtfully. “She shines like a new penny these days. You’ve got her heart in your pocket. Just don’t set your cap at mine, lady.”

  “That frozen thing?” she asked with a calm she didn’t feel. “Why should I want it? Anyway, you don’t want me,” she added quietly.

  His eyes pinned her to the bed. “I wanted you downstairs,” he said, shocking her.

  Her face went bloodred, and he watched it with lifted eyebrows.

  “My, my, what an interesting reaction,” he said. “Very virginal.”

  “Not exactly by choice,” she said coldly. “There was little opportunity for me to attract men as long as Crystal lived at home.”

  “Tinsel usually overshadows gold,” he said thoughtfully, looking at her. “Your stepsister is beautiful, all right. Did she steal all your boyfriends?”

  “Every last one.”

  “Then they couldn’t have cared very much,” he said. “It’s probably better that you kept your chastity.”

  “It will be a great comfort to me in my old age,” she agreed.

  His eyes searched hers. “You won’t change a lot with age, I don’t think,” he mused. “You have beautiful bone structure.”

  She returned the long, searching glance and slowly, poignantly, an idea began to form in her mind. He wasn’t quite as unapproachable as he usually was. If she could find a way to capture his attention before Crystal showed up, if she could…

  Her lips parted nervously. “Jude…are you…very tired?” she asked hesitantly.

  His darkening eyes wandered slowly over her. “Are you offering me your body?”

  She swallowed down a quick denial and caught her nervous fingers in the coverlet. “Do…do you want it?”

  His chest rose and fell roughly. “Oh, yes,” he said with self-contempt. “I want you.”

  She stood up, feeling wildly reckless and inhibited at the same time. She forced herself to face him. Her fingers went to the gown and slowly, deliberately, eased it down her waist, over her smooth hips and onto the floor.

  Jude stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman in his life. His face flushed slightly, and his eyes exploded with a desire that darkened them almost to black.

  “Grace and elegance,” he breathed. “I imagined you’d be proud even when you offered yourself. You are so lovely, Bess,” he added with deep emotion. “So lovely. Don’t tempt me, honey. I’m hungry and it’s been a long time.”

  He started to turn away, but she touched his arm, daring everything.

  “Would…would it be so hard?” she whispered, her voice shaking with embarrassment.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Quite the contrary. But if you got pregnant…”

  Her face brightened, changed, and her eyes softened. “Oh, I’d like that,” she breathed. “I’d like being pregnant with your baby.”

  He actually trembled. “Bess…”

  “Don’t you want a son, Jude?” she asked, looking up with her whole heart in her eyes.

  He reached for her, crushing her bareness to every hard line of his body, burying his face in her soft hair.

  “Yes,” he ground out achingly. “I want a son. I want you. But…”

  “But what?”

  His fingers tightened at her back. “Bess, you know that I served in Vietnam, that I saw combat?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed heavily. “My unit ran into an ambush, and I caught a lot of shrapnel. My right hip and thigh look like a road map of the moon. The scars have faded some over the years, but I’ve had women ask me to put out the light….”

  He laughed when he said it, but Bess ached for his pride. How it must have hurt!

  “I won’t ask you to put out the light,” she said into his ear. “I wouldn’t care if you were missing an arm or a leg…you’d still be Jude!”

  He caught his breath at the admission and she felt a shudder work its way through him. “You may regret this in the morning,” he ground out.

  “I’ll worry about it in the morning. Jude, please…?”

  “Good God, you don’t have to beg. Can’t you feel how much I want it?” He bent and took her mouth roughly, possessively, and she gave herself up to the wild arousal.

  She felt him lift her onto the bed and she lay watching him as he undressed with jerky, urgent movements. She knew he wasn’t quite sober, but at last some of the barriers were down and she was going to take full advantage of it. Her eyes didn’t waver when he turned back to her; she let them linger on the white scars across his hip and thigh. He was pale there, probably because he never went swimming or wore shorts, and she could see why. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t as horrible as he seemed to think it was. The rest of him was all hard muscle when he moved. He was broad chested, narrow hipped, as graceful as a cat.

  “No comment?” he asked as he slid onto the bed beside her.

  “Did you expect me to faint?” she asked with a tiny smile. “I almost did, but it wasn’t because of the scars.”

  His eyebrows arched and he made a tiny, amused sound. “Haven’t you ever seen a man undressed before?”

  She shook her head.

  His fingers touched her mouth, her cheek. “I’ll try to be careful,” he said, bending to kiss her softly. “But I’m pretty rusty, Mrs. Langston. It’s been a long, long time since I had a woman in my bed.”

  Amazingly uninhibited with him, she reached up with loving arms to hold him while
he teased her mouth. She felt as if she were seeing for the first time the man beneath the hard veneer.

  “I didn’t think you felt…like this,” she whispered, tautening when he touched her unexpectedly.

  He lifted his head, frowning. “Why not?”

  She flushed, lowering her eyes to his hairy chest. “You’re always sniping at me.”

  “Don’t get any ideas about it,” he said coolly, hesitating. “I don’t love you, Bess. I want you, but that’s it.”

  She felt a cold sickness well up inside her and almost jerked away from him. But there was something different in his manner, in his eyes. She knew she wasn’t going to change him overnight. She’d just have to be patient. And at least he wanted her. A child might soften him, just a little, if he could watch her grow big with it and be there in its early years—things he’d missed when Katy was born.

  “I’m not asking for miracles,” she said softly. “I…I’ll try to please you if you’ll tell me what to do.”

  His eyes closed for an instant and his lips compressed. “Damn, Bess!”

  “What is it?” she asked, reaching up to smooth her fingers over his broad chest as she had done in the dining room.

  Surprisingly, he turned over on his back. “Don’t stop now,” he said quietly.

  Her hands, shy at first, smoothed over his shoulders and chest, rediscovering the different textures of skin and hair and muscle and bone. He watched her, lying back on the pillows like some Middle Eastern potentate, faintly smiling.

  When her hands stopped at the powerful muscles of his stomach, just below his waist, he actually grinned at her embarrassment.

  “Coward,” he taunted.

  She smiled back. “I’m new at this.”

  “You’ll learn.” He sat up, bringing her body against his, watching her breasts vanish in the thick hair over his chest. “Now, it’s my turn,” he breathed, bending to kiss a shocked gasp from her parted lips. “My turn,” he growled again, easing her down onto the mattress.

  She felt her body blaze up with sensation. His strolling fingers learned every silken inch of her, his lips soon following the same path. The room was utterly quiet except for the reckless sounds they made together.

  Once, her eyes opened and looked straight up into his as his powerful body eased down totally against her.

  “Afraid?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she agreed unsteadily.

  His body moved and she gasped.

  “It won’t ever hurt again after this,” he whispered gently, controlling the motion of his powerful body with an effort that showed in every strained line of his hard face. “Is it bad?”

  It was, but she shook her head, and a minute later the lie became truth. She arched helplessly and there was a sudden tenderness in his eyes as his motions grew deep and urgent and his hands taught her the strange new rhythm.

  She lost track of time and place in the grip of something so exquisitely torturous that she felt as if she were dying of a particularly vicious fever. Her body burned with it, and there was no relief. She was slowly, agonizingly being stretched in a tension that would surely kill her.

  “No,” she whispered urgently, her fingernails clutching wildly, her teeth against his shoulder. “No, I can’t!”

  He was laughing triumphantly…laughing! His hands controlled her wild body, forcing it to comply with the demands he was imposing. And then it was all sweet explosion and consuming flames, snapping the tension, and she fell and fell and fell…It seemed like hours before she could breathe again, before her eyes stopped melting in hot tears that fell onto his damp chest. She was trembling, and so was he in the aftermath of something so volcanic that she blushed just remembering it.

  His hand brought her eyes up to his and he caught his breath as he watched her. “Not what you expected, honey?” he asked softly.

  “I…thought it would…hurt,” she whispered.

  His eyes wandered slowly down the length of her body. “Didn’t it? You cried out.”

  She blushed wildly and hid her eyes, and he laughed again, softly. He bore her down onto the mattress with a glittering wildness in his eyes that she’d never seen in them. His nostrils flared as he breathed.

  “Last time was for you,” he said under his breath as his fingers moved in slow exploration. “This time,” he whispered, bending to her mouth, “is for me….”

  The night was at once the longest and shortest she’d ever spent, and as dawn slowly erased the blackness outside the window, she ached pleasantly from head to toe. She was astounded at Jude’s inexhaustible ardor. She flushed at just the memory of it and wondered at his stamina—and her own.

  But the tender, hungry lover of the night was sadly lacking in the bitter-faced man who dragged himself out of bed and dressed in the dim light. She didn’t remember when he’d turned the lights out.

  He dragged on his shirt and flicked the light on, standing quietly in his jeans and staring at her with eyes she couldn’t read.

  Self-consciously, she tugged the sheet over her breasts and flushed at the intensity of his gaze.

  “And now you know, don’t you?” he asked with a mocking laugh. “You know that I want you to the point of obsession. But don’t think you’re going to put a ring through my nose because of it, honey. You won’t own me. Not even if you give me a child out of last night. I hope you meant what you said about wanting that baby, Bess, because I’m through keeping my distance from you. I’ll have Aggie move your things into my room in the morning and you can sleep with me from now on.”

  She stared at him with slow comprehension. “But…you said you…wanted a child, too,” she reminded him.

  “My God, I wanted you, you stupid woman,” he ground out, glaring down at her. “I’d have agreed with anything to get…” He sighed and turned away, running a restless hand through his hair. “It had been months, and I was hungry for something female in my arms. All that whiskey and all the lonely nights caught up with me.” His eyes glittered at her. “And you stripped off that damned gown and came at me like Venus rising. I’m human, damn you!”

  She turned her head away on the pillow, her eyes closed as the tears ran freely down her cheeks. For just a few hours she’d thought he was as involved as she was, as full of wonder about what they’d shared. But it had all been a sham, like their marriage.

  “Regretting it won’t help now,” he said coldly. “Just remember, lady, it was all your idea.”

  But she didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Her heart was breaking in half.

  He stood by the bed for a minute, and she felt that he wanted to say something. But the moment passed and he left her, slamming the door behind him.

  Chapter Six

  Getting up and pretending that everything was fine was the hardest thing Bess had ever done. She put on the soft beige jersey dress that she’d come from Georgia in, and rolled her hair into a French twist at her nape. She hardly bothered with makeup because no one would see her except Jude and she didn’t care how she looked anymore. She’d wanted him so much, loved him so much. She’d thought he cared a little…and it had all been sex.

  She laughed at her own naiveté. And tonight she’d sleep in his arms and it would all happen again. But her response wouldn’t be as uninhibited, she promised herself. He wouldn’t wring that madness from her twice, not when she knew he was hating her for “tempting” him. She picked up her brush and almost flung it into the mirror in pure fury. If only she hadn’t been so stupid, so trusting. She straightened. For Katy’s sake, she was going to have to put on her brightest face and pretend everything was just fine.

  She went to Katy’s room and knocked on the door. She peeked her head inside and smiled at the head under the covers.

  “Hey,” she called softly. “Santa Claus has come by now, I imagine. Want to go downstairs and see?”

  Katy was instantly awake and all eyes. “Oh, let’s!” she agreed, bounding out of bed to grab her quilted pink robe and slippers.

 
Bess put an arm around her as they went to the staircase, dreading the confrontation that would undoubtedly come with Jude.

  The presents she’d put under the tree last night after she’d sent Katy upstairs were where she’d left them, but some more had been added. She frowned at the size of one of them, a big rectangular thing wrapped in brown paper with a frilly bow stuck to one corner. Perhaps Aggie had put it there.

  “Shouldn’t we get Daddy?” Katy asked at the foot of the stairs.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Bess said halfheartedly. “Why don’t you go upstairs and knock on his door, darling?”

  “No need,” Jude said from the hall. “I woke early.”

  He had a coffee cup in one hand and he was wearing jeans and nothing else. His broad, hair-covered chest was bare and so were his feet, and he looked…odd.

  Bess couldn’t meet his eyes. She went into the living room behind Katy, aware of Jude near her. It must be some sort of radar, she thought hysterically. She always knew where he was.

  “I knew you’d come to watch me open my presents,” Katy said, laughing, dragging her father to the tree. “Here, this one is yours. I hope you like it!”

  Jude sprawled on the carpet and opened the package, murmuring appropriately at the special cigarette case Katy had bought him with her own money. Bess knew it was something he’d never use, but Katy had insisted.

  “Oh, Dad, thank you!” Katy was cooing, as she opened a present that contained an automatic camera with film and flashcubes. “You remembered!”

  “It was hard to forget,” he murmured drily, and Bess almost laughed as she recalled Katy’s repeated hints every morning at breakfast.

  “Aren’t you going to open yours?” Jude asked Bess, glancing in her direction without actually looking at her.

  “Yes, here it is, Bess!” Katy said, handing her a small present.

  “That wasn’t the one I meant, but go ahead and open it,” he said.

  Bess tore the ribbons and paper and found a bottle of her favorite cologne. She leaned forward and kissed Katy. “Thank you, darling,” she said softly. “It’s my very favorite.”