by Saxon, Diane
Carl leaned on the fence and pushed his hat to the back of his head. “You two should get a room.”
Lydia straightened Rosie’s clothes and then her own. Her face was a beautiful shade of crimson. Sam wondered if he should rescue her, and then realized he didn’t care to, so he sat back on his heels and laughed as Aaron clung on to his neck and shoulders like a monkey. Putting his hands behind his head, he grabbed the child and somersaulted him over into his lap.
Kate lowered herself gingerly onto the rug, saying nothing, just lifting an arched eyebrow. As her husband lay down next to her and shuffled the baby onto his chest, her eyes shifted to watch her snuggle into her daddy.
“I did that with Sam when he was in Mummy’s bed.” Aaron’s clear little voice carried to the adult ears, and Lydia’s crimson face turned puce as she slapped her hands up to her cheeks.
Sam met Jack’s slow, lazy look and tried not to fidget like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. It had been totally innocent, but if it hadn’t, it was no one’s business but theirs, and he didn’t think he should be judged. His eyes cruised over to Kate as her mouth dropped open and she stared at her sister, who now had her face and hands tucked into her knees and was rocking. It took him a split second to realize she wasn’t still laughing. He felt a slither of anger crawl up his spine at her mortification. Why did she feel so embarrassed that people assumed they were sleeping together? Didn’t she think he was good enough to put his hands on her? He leaned over and wrenched her hands away from her face so she stared deep into his eyes.
Rage danced through his veins. She gave him a puzzled look as though she had no idea why he would be angry.
“You may be everything I want,” he ground out, “but excuse me if I failed to ask what it is that you want.” He stood and brushed his clothes off and glanced at the children who were preoccupied as they performed little cartwheels, their sturdy legs flipped up two inches as their hands hit the floor.
“I’ll make sure I keep my dirty hands off you in the future.”
He needed to walk away before the pain became so intolerable it left him scarred for life. She’d made it clear she couldn’t love him, but he thought it was only a matter of time before he could bring her round. Now, she’d made it clear that she was embarrassed by him.
“Sam? Sam!”
He simply couldn’t look back; his long legs lengthened the distance between them.
Chapter 8
She’d stolen one of the trucks from the stable yard when she realized he’d taken off on his horse, headed for his own house. She followed the dirt track across the ranch and kept her fingers crossed that it would lead her to the right place. Relief coursed through her when she found the horse turned loose in his yard as she got there. She just hoped no one reported her for theft of the truck. She would never have stood a chance if she’d had to search for him across the acres of ranch land, but she would have given it a go.
Now she had to see if she stood a chance anyway.
It made her worry as she slipped quietly into a house that she didn’t really know, except for the route up and down to the bedroom. She wasn’t in the habit of walking into other people’s houses uninvited, and she felt uncomfortable as she sneaked through. She needed to keep as silent as possible just in case he heard her and climbed out the back window.
She didn’t understand why he’d been so annoyed about this. It was only natural for her to feel embarrassed about them being caught out. Wasn’t it? After all, they weren’t even together. They may never be. Was she totally unreasonable? She wasn’t sure that she wanted to apologize this time, but she needed to do something to prove that she wasn’t ashamed of him, simply uncomfortable with the fact that her own children had just announced to the world that they had found Sam in her bed. If the truth be known, Kate was probably delighted and Jack … well, Jack would probably pat his brother on the back.
She had no idea why she had felt so embarrassed. She had missed out on that teenage giggly-schoolgirl reaction when she was younger, but she felt she had just displayed all the attributes of a fifteen-year-old girl. Sam seemed to inspire that reaction in her.
As she walked through his living room into his kitchen, she heard water running. The sound came from upstairs. She crept through his house silent and cautious.
*
He knew he’d been unreasonable, but the clawing sensation of an animal inside of him was driving him crazy. He wanted her. She had no idea how much he wanted her, otherwise she would take off back to England with her kids in tow. It seemed like she might be about to.
It wasn’t just a passing fancy like he had with all the women he’d ever been with. From the moment he first saw her, he’d been aware of a primitive possessiveness that raged through him screaming take, take.
She belonged to him, and if she knew that was the way he thought of her, she would probably kick his ass out of her life anyhow. She’d already had one possessive, abusive husband. She hardly needed another one. Not that he would ever so much as harm a hair on her head, but she was his. His.
It had been stupid of him to take off like that, but if he’d said what he really meant in front of his brother and his brother’s wife, they’d have probably had him thrown off the ranch.
He was tearing himself to pieces as he waited for her to take another step; he knew she would be okay as long as she gave him a chance. He would be tender and caring and wouldn’t allow her to be frightened, but if he didn’t have sex with her sometime soon, he was going to go out of his mind.
He stepped out of the shower, picked up a navy blue towel, and rubbed his hair until it stuck up like a fuzz ball all over the top of his head.
*
As he opened the bathroom door, she got a full frontal view of a supremely well developed, muscled, and toned male.
She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone quite as wonderfully formed. He wasn’t like the beautiful airbrushed men in magazines whose muscle structure had been slicked into deliberate shape to show off their attributes. No, this man was made of steel, borne of a lifetime of hard physical work. Genetics had given him the tall frame and wide shoulders, but nature had carved the hard muscles over years into a body that most men would kill for.
His chest was wide, his waist long, and his hips narrow, with pure defined muscle covering it all. It wasn’t that he had a fashionable six pack, because the ripples of his muscles continued all the way over his flat belly and down the long length of his heavily muscled thighs and tight calves. Even his naked feet looked powerful.
She ran her eyes back up his body, skipped over his obvious immediate response to her presence, and noticed he held a blue towel down by his side. She flicked her hand toward it and gave a small, quick smile he failed to respond to.
“Do you think you could perhaps, ummm, cover yourself a little?”
“It’s my house. I should be able to walk around as I want in my house.” His jaw was clenched, and she started to think it may be better to retreat now. He must know that he was being petulant, but he obviously was beyond any kind of reason at this point.
“Well, perhaps for the sake of modesty as I am here, would you put the towel on, please?” She tried desperately not to look at his full erection as he stood motionless in front of her. He took hold of the towel and flicked it up so that it draped down the left side of his chest, over the top of his shoulder, and down his back, almost reaching his backside.
“Is that better?” he asked defiantly. She licked her lips.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to think I must be,” he snarled. “Lydia I think you should leave.” He pulled the towel off his shoulder and snapped it around his waist as she shuffled from one foot to the other.
He sighed and ran a hand through his wild hair to tame it into some kind of order.
“I’m having a real hard time at the moment. I knew being in love with you wasn’t going to be easy.” She felt her breath hitch as she rea
lized where he was going to go with this. “And the sex thing… I know we can work on it and I was willing to work on that, really.” Her chest started to ache. “But I’m not sure I’m happy to be you’re dirty little secret.” She opened her mouth to deny it, but he held up a hand. “Lydia, you were embarrassed that I’d been discovered in your bed.”
“I…”
“No, wait a minute. Let me get this all out together. You don’t trust me.”
“I do…”
“You don’t … trust … me,” he ground out. “You won’t let me in. I only know the tiny little bits that you either want to tell me or you’re forced to tell me. If everything had gone okay the other night and we’d ended up having mind blowing sex, I probably still wouldn’t know you’d been raped. You wouldn’t think that it was anything to do with me.” He brushed away a few droplets of water dribbling down his chest. “You’re just not letting me in.”
“It’s difficult for me to let anyone in.” Her throat was tight, and she could feel him slipping away from her. She was the one responsible because he gave freely, openly, honestly. She always knew what he thought because it tended to either take the form of an action, or it tumbled out of his mouth. He was an open book, and he’d been honest with her.
It wasn’t in her nature to be so open. So much had happened to her in her short life that she kept most of it inside. Only her brother and sister knew the things she had been through. Her parents knew what they had to know, but if she’d told them everything, it probably would have killed them. Details were not an option.
How was she to tell him all her secrets? Surely he would simply walk away anyhow. Perhaps if she started with the smaller things, it would get easier.
She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
His stare was level. “Everything, Lydia. I want to know everything.”
“I can’t.” Her voice was strained.
He turned and walked to the other side of the room, opened a drawer, and took out underwear. Pulling open a wardrobe door, he yanked out a shirt and fresh pair of jeans. When he turned back, she was still in the same spot, twining her fingers together, feeling like a lost little girl. That’s just what she was though. Lost. Until she opened up and let Sam in, she knew he was never going to be able to help. He made her pulse race, her heart pound, but more than that, he gave her hope.
His eyes hardened as he put his hands on his hips. Her eyes flicked down to the front of his towel, and she noticed he was still sporting a huge erection. It kind of contradicted everything he was saying to her. It was pretty obvious he still had feelings for her, but if she didn’t give here, she believed he was strong enough to walk away like he had earlier, without looking back.
“You’re still here then?” His eyes flat, his voice as hard as steel, he waited. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t know how. And he wasn’t going to help this time. She took a tentative step toward the door, hesitated, and heard him suck in his breath. She turned around and she heard the slow expulsion of that breath.
“I’m not sure I can tell you everything just straight off.” His look of disgust made her heart leap as he swung his shirt round his back with an irritated shrug, slid his arms in, but left the buttons open.
“There’s a lot.” Desperate, she tried again. He made her panic as he picked up his underpants and ignored her.
“Uh huh.”
“Would you please stop doing that?”
“You don’t want me to get dressed?”
“No … I … I don’t want you to be so stupid.”
He spread his arms wide, his underpants still held in one hand. If it wasn’t so painful, it would have been comical. He was stood with a towel slung around his waist, his shirt wide open, and a pair of underpants dangled from his fingertips. The epitome of ruffled male.
“Stupid? I’m being stupid? It’s not me with all the secrets.”
“Sam, it’s not that I’m hiding anything, really.” How could she make him understand? “It’s just some of it is too painful for me to talk about.” With a weary movement, she shoved her hair back from her face.
“I get that, but you don’t tell me anything. Perhaps if you tried. If you made a start.” They stared at each other over the expanse of the room for a long moment before he turned away.
“Wait.”
He heaved out a frustrated breath but stood still.
“I think I need to show you something.”
*
He turned slowly back round.
She was unfastening the buttons down the front of her plain black, fitted shirt. He felt the breath back up in his chest. This wasn’t what he wanted from her. He couldn’t deny that he wanted her in bed, naked and willing, but that was the point—he wanted her willing. Not this. He didn’t want her to feel blackmailed into having sex with him. That was as bad as rape.
He raised his hand to stop her going any further, but as she slipped her shirt off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor, she turned so that he could see her entire left side and all thought stopped, his brain completely emptied of any thought, of any feeling.
He stood silent and still, torn between the knowledge that he should stop her and the raging need for her to continue. He let her make the decision.
She slowly stripped her jeans down her legs and stood for a moment in her underwear. She faced the bathroom door as though she couldn’t bear to look at him. It wouldn’t surprise him if she darted in there and locked the door. He saw her grit her teeth before she continued. She reached behind her back, and her shaky fingers fumbled with the catches of her bra for a moment before it released and she dropped it to the floor to join the rest of her clothes.
Standing naked, apart from her panties, she waited. He couldn’t move a muscle. In fact he wasn’t even sure if he still breathed. He knew she must expect some response by now, but he was frozen in place.
Hooking her trembling fingers into the side of her panties, she quickly slid them down her legs and then straightened to let him take in the full effect.
He still couldn’t breathe. In fact he was sure he’d swallowed his tongue. And possibly his brain too. It certainly wasn’t in his head because the roaring sound in there could only be created by an absolute void.
Taking a step forward, he realized that she was trembling all over. She may not have meant this to be sexual in any way, but she was stood naked in his bedroom, and it obviously terrified her. He recognized the trust she must have in him to have even gotten this far.
Raising a hand in supplication, much as he would to one of his nervous fillies, he reached her side and dropped to his knees.
She flinched as he cautiously stretched his hand out to take hold of her arm. She stood as still as a statue while he raised her arm so that he could get a better view. He reached out and touched a tender finger to the artwork of her tattoo, sliding a thumb reverently over her hipbone to trace the flow of the entwined vine.
When Rosie had told them about her mother’s tattoo, there was no way in hell that any description could have done justice to it. He’d never seen such immaculate artwork in all his life. Curving around the base of her left armpit, the black, rambling rosebush and entwined ivy flowed over the top of her breast to end in the flourish of a small, white rosebud tipped up toward her throat. The breast itself was unendowed, but the artwork streamed underneath to lovingly cup the whole of her breast.
His breath eased in and out of his chest as his eyes traced the ever-widening tattoo down the left side of her body, rosebush and ivy intertwining with the occasional white rose punctuating the art. The plant grew wider as it spread under her navel and across her belly, one rose vine with its white bud stretched out to almost touch her right hip, another flicked up to finish with a flourish underneath her navel.
His hands traced the pattern on her cool flesh. He noted with surprise her goose bumps as he ran his warm fingers over the vines and circled around the rose buds. He placed his han
d on her hips to adjust her body so that he could look at her back. His eyes traced down to where her entire left buttock was covered with rose vine and ivy and a palm-size, full-blown red rose right in the middle of her buttock.
Reaching forward, he placed his lips right in the center of the rose and closed his eyes in prayer as he pressed a kiss to her cool flesh. He heard her soft intake of breath and leaned back to finish his inspection. The rose finished at the base of her buttock, but the ivy twined twice around the top of her thigh before it tailed off in a final, wispy, unfurling leaf.
He leaned back on his heels and let his eyes wander back up again. He couldn’t help it if his eyes strayed off course to look at her beautiful breasts with their rosy little nipples standing to attention. As he watched, she quivered and he raised his eyes to meet her own sultry green ones.
He saw the change in them, the color deepened with awareness. No longer stoically determined but aroused. Unable to help himself, he kneeled back up again, wrapped his arms around her waist, and forced her to step closer as he buried his face in the soft skin of her belly. Holding on, he breathed short, jerky breaths and wondered if his heart was going to survive this.
“Lydia, sweetheart,” his mouth mumbled against her skin. “I’m going to have to touch you, baby.”
She gave him a puzzled look as he glanced back up at her, and it occurred to him how idiotic he must sound asking permission to touch her at this stage when his arms were already wrapped around her, his face had just been buried in her belly, and he could feel her cool thighs pressed hard against his hot, naked chest. He hadn’t meant that kind of touching though. Taking her silence as permission, he got to his feet without losing contact, ran his mouth up the center of her body, tasted her skin, and gloried when her head fell back to allow him access to her neck.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
Her eyes were closed as he scooped her up and laid her on his bed. He wasn’t even sure she was aware as he stripped his shirt off again and dropped the towel to the floor, but when he climbed up beside her, her eyelids fluttered open and he saw the fear residing underneath the desire.
