Pink Topaz

by Jennifer Greene

  Her heart stilled as memories shifted and sifted through her mind. Clear memories of Cole, gulping coffee with his Vowed Coward mug as he leaned over her. Cole, swearing that he was going to kill her if she wasn’t all right. Cole, harshly denying that he cared a hoot while he spooned soup into her mouth. Cole, telling her a dozen times that he was leaving, telling her in a hundred ways that she shouldn’t trust anybody—and never, never him.

  Cole...who apparently hadn’t left her side in the past twenty-four hours.

  She wasn’t doing anything. Just looking at him. Yet his eyelids suddenly shot up, and as if he’d never been asleep, focused instantly on her face.

  “You’re awake?” His voice was groggy and raspy and male.

  “Yes.”

  “Really awake this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you feel all right?”

  “I feel wonderful like you can’t believe. I feel whole. I feel like me.”

  Conceivably Cole had reason to doubt her word. He flipped on his side to conduct his own inspection, his eyes squinting in the bright morning sun. The worried furrow between his brows quickly eased. It couldn’t have taken him two seconds to notice the healthy color in her face, the fresh smile, the clear shine in her eyes. He noticed, but he suddenly didn’t move.

  Neither did Regan. Her smile stilled on the purge of a breath. Cole looked at her as if he wouldn’t, couldn’t, look away. The few inches between them seemed to charge with silence. His gaze burned on her face and caused her to go quiet, deep on the inside. His eyes dropped to the tangle of her sheets and her barely covered breasts, then lanced to her face again.

  He managed to force his vocal cords to function, but his voice come out thick and raw. “You’re feeling good. I’m glad. Now prove to me bow good you’re feeling by getting your tail out of this bed, princess.”

  It was never Regan’s intent to do anything else. Until then. Long before this, guilt had plagued her for the amount of trouble she’d caused him. She’d walk on nails before causing him any more, yet their eyes met in a connection that could have short-circuited lightning.

  She suddenly couldn’t swallow. On the back of her tongue she tasted risk, as dangerous and volatile as she’d ever faced before. He didn’t want her out of bed. He wanted her in it. The claw in his voice was hunger. The unguarded warning in his eyes was as naked as need. She’d known there was attraction; she’d known he wanted her. She’d sensed that he needed someone. Not her. It had never once occurred to Regan that he’d stayed...because he needed her.

  “Up and out,” he repeated.

  She heard the edge of humor. Slugger, given volcanoes and earthquakes, never totally lost his sense of humor. It was always his first line of defense. She said slowly, “I don’t think so.”

  “I do. Dammit, you were hard enough to handle when you were drugged. Now just get out of bed and get some clothes on, and everything’s going to be fine.” The sheet slipped away when she rose up on her knees. His eyes darkened to charcoal. “This is not a game, princess. I’m warning you. Don’t push me. I haven’t had any sleep and I’m already mad as hell at you—”

  She heard the exasperated protests, the aggrieved complaints. They rang true. Regan noticed, though, that he didn’t bolt out of bed to escape her poisoned touch. He didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. And a kiss shut him up, just as a kiss had quieted down Shakespeare’s loudly protesting Kate.

  His lips were dry and sleep warmed, his scrape of beard ticklish under her soft palm. It wasn’t their first kiss, but it was the first time Regan had felt wholly like herself, the first time she could express what she felt for him that would mean anything. Slugger had been...everything to her. A bolt of reality and confidence, sustaining common sense, kindness, empathy. He’d stood by her. Eyes closed, she tried to tell him. Her lips moved gently, intuitively, over his, offering warmth, offering...herself.

  And at the first tender, tentative brush of her mouth, a shudder bucked through his whole body.

  Regan never had the chance to deliver a second kiss. He hauled her beneath him in a tangle of sheets and crushed her lips with rough possession. She had the heady sensation of falling and falling, as if she’d plunged to the bottom of a deep, dark well and was shooting to the surface again.

  He allowed her a gulp of air. Then took her down again, this time with an earthy, hungry, openmouthed kiss that involved tongues and teeth. Her breasts were exposed, yet he scraped at the sheet protecting her body from the waist down. Regan figured it was lucky the sheet didn’t rip.

  When he had her bare, bold hands chased down her spine and cupped her hips and tugged her closer. They were already as close as a man and woman could get. The beat of his heart was louder than thunder. The ridge of his arousal wedged intimately hard against her thighs. He hadn’t released her mouth from that second kiss. He kissed her as if he never would.

  Regan wrapped her arms around him and held on. She’d waited forever for the right man, and this wasn’t at all how she thought it would be. Always, she’d envisioned falling for a gentle, sensitive man who shared her values. She’d assumed her first lover’s patience and understanding. She’d wanted to be wooed. She’d wanted a Rhett Butler to sweep her up the stairs and drown her in the romance of the moment. And she sure as heck hadn’t waited a tenacious, long twenty-seven years to settle for less.

  Cole wasn’t Rhett.

  He was just a man. Who’d never have any patience. Who’d never woo her with hearts and flowers. He was just a man, who’d been alone too long, for reasons she didn’t know and didn’t have to. Regan loved him.

  Nothing in life had changed. It was the wrong time and place—her whole life made it the wrong time and place—but it was now that slugger’s guard was down. Now that he needed her. And after all he’d done for her, all he’d been to her, that was all that had to make sense.

  As swiftly as his hands traveled over her flesh, hers learned his body with matching boldness, matching intimacy. He was made hard. His jeans were worn thin and smooth, the denim too worn to conceal his long, lean legs and flat behind. His T-shirt obligingly rode up so she could follow the taper of his spine to the slope of his shoulders. He liked her touch. He went crazy for her touch.

  Regan had never been wild before, never imagined that she could be. Now she discovered that it didn’t take lessons. Cole was her unwitting teacher. When he nipped her shoulder, she nipped back. When his mouth closed over her taut, swollen nipple, she yanked at his shirt to expose bare skin. When she felt his tongue lap her soft inner thigh, she bolted toward him and rubbed against the hardness behind his zipper.

  And from nowhere Cole suddenly grabbed her wrists and flattened next to her, side by side, length to length. “Princess.” He was breathing hard. So was she. Sweat was beading on his brow, and he was holding her wrists like a jailer’s manacles. “I thought you’d be scared by now.”

  “Of you?”

  “Of me.”

  “How could I ever be scared of you? You’d never hurt me.”

  Logic usually appealed to him. Not just then. He raised his eyes to the ceiling as if searching for strength, but then, inevitably, his gaze dropped to hers again. Regan had never seen such fire in a man’s eyes, never imagined it, never conceived that a man could talk through a mouth full of dry gravel. “Petunia, do your damnedest to get smart about me. You don’t want this.”

  “I do.”

  “You’ll regret it.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ve been shook and scared and alone and I happen to be the closest body around. That’s all that’s going on here. There’s nothing wrong with needing somebody, as long as you don’t confuse that emotion with something else. If I was a nice guy, I’d do the honorable thing and keep my hands off you. Only I’m not a nice guy. I’ll split on you so fast it’ll make your head spin. Is that the kind of jerkwater lover you want?”

  “Slugger?”

  “What?”

  “Shut up and kiss
me.”

  Possibly he tired of lecturing her about what a selfish, untrustworthy cad he was. Possibly he’d forgotten how aggravated he was with her. Possibly she’d made him smile—and that smile was his downfall. She saw his eyes turn liquid as he cupped her head. His lips hovered over hers, breath-sharing close, and then slowly, intimately sank onto her mouth.

  Yes. This kiss was right, and that sense of rightness seeped through her bloodstream. For the first time in a month, Regan had no doubts that her mind was bell clear and her instincts true. Cole was a terribly vulnerable man.

  She yielded to the ring of kisses he cherished on her mouth, her temple, her throat. Her fingers sieved through his hair, wanting to take him down and in...down, to the immense well of tenderness she felt for him...and into her heart, where she could warm his troubled soul.

  She sensed that the chemical volatility between them had a natural source—they were alike. Cole had shadows chasing him. So did she. He wore a mask for the world. Regan understood about masks and illusions. And because she had recently suffered emotional wounds that were beyond her ability to handle, she recognized that somewhere, sometime, so had Cole.

  She couldn’t tell him that she’d fallen in love with him. He didn’t want to hear it. Any consequences for this moment were her own to pay. She knew that, too. What she wanted to give him was free and from her heart—a taste of the magic she knew and believed in. Love was a gift, not a price. To reach out, to trust, to touch didn’t have to hurt. Sometimes, the strongest human being on earth had to know there was someone on the other side of an abyss-black night. All she wanted was this one moment, to be that someone for him.

  So she thought.

  So she felt.

  So she believed.

  Cole, though, seemed to have a different idea about who was the most vulnerable in their twosome. He ripped off his shirt, but not his jeans. When Regan reached for the snap of his jeans, she found her hands displaced to the warm, supple skin of his chest. At that precise instant, she simply wanted to touch him. Anywhere, everywhere. She had no idea that he planned to set her on fire.

  Tossing the pillow onto the floor, he forced her head to sink against the mattress with beguiling, shivery, ever-deepening kisses. With a hedonist’s instinct for pleasure, he stroked and kneaded her small plump breasts until the flesh swelled and ached and hurt. A jeaned knee inserted itself between her thighs, rubbing gently, insistently, erotically until her spine arched toward him in a quivering bow.

  He kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. He kissed the tips of her breasts, and washed the inside of her navel with his tongue, and then attacked the satin-white flesh of her inner thighs. Softly. Wetly.

  He made her want him like fever and fire, freeing emotions from deep inside her that she’d never known existed. She’d felt desire before with Cole, felt the sizzle and the yearning of anticipation, but then her emotions had been hazy and blurry. Nothing was blurry now. Her senses were knife-sharp and almost as painful. Every sight, sound, taste and texture was linked to Cole.

  He knew exactly where to touch. And did. Her skin dampened, mortifying her. The most intimate part of her became wet. He praised her in whispers for being so hot for him, for being wild and beautiful and loving, when it was obvious to Regan that Cole had everything confused. This was supposed to be for him, not her. And then he cupped her, swiftly inserting one finger, then two.

  It wasn’t his fingers she wanted, which she explained to him. Or tried. The only word she seemed able to say was his name, fiercely, desperately.

  “I know, princess. I know how good it hurts. Close your eyes for me, sweetheart. Just let it happen.”

  “No—”

  “Shh.”

  “I want you—”

  “Shh.” He lavished her mouth, her throat with a hundred more kisses, each more potent than the last. She understood emotional honesty. She had never understood that physical intimacy took a different kind of honesty altogether. Passion was supposed to be a soft thing, a romantic thing, a wanting that grew naturally in the right relationship.

  Slugger, damn him, blew that pale concept of physical love all to hell. He was as ruthless as he’d always warned her.

  Ruthless and difficult and an unbearably generous lover, demanding her pleasure, scolding away her inhibitions. He rode her with the heel of his hand and the stroke of his fingers, finding the cadence and rhythm unique to her as if he knew her body and had always known her body.

  She peaked in a brazen explosion of shudders and a cry of sheer wonder that came from her soul. When it was over, there were wobbly tears in her eyes and she felt weak, shamelessly silvery buttery weak.

  Cole didn’t move for a long time, only withdrawing his hand to sweep a browsing caress the length of her body. He pushed the damp hair from her brow, and then slowly leaned up and just looked at her—at her mouth swollen from his kisses, her skin rouged from his passion. There was satisfaction in his eyes, a fierce male arrogant satisfaction in knowing he’d pleased her, but there was also something else. His hooded gaze was ablaze with emotion, the hot blaze of frustrated desire, yet a flame of something darker. Regan thought...fear.

  And then the man who’d just permanently stolen a niche of her soul, the same complex and difficult man who’d taken her on the most breathless roller-coaster ride she’d ever been on, climbed out of bed. Calmly opened the glass doors to the patio.

  And dove, still wearing his jeans, into the pool.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Regan would have driven alone to the doctor if Cole hadn’t insisted on taking her. He made the drive to Gray Mountain in a miraculously fast hour and ten minutes...only to wait a solid two hours for her to emerge from the medical clinic.

  He couldn’t sit still in the waiting room. Outside was better. Mid-afternoon, a gusty wind had blown in from the south. Dust misted the air. The day had turned salt and pepper, sudden harsh sun, then a cool cloud cover. He was parked in the tow-away zone at the clinic entrance when she finally pushed through the doors just before four o’clock. She clipped toward the Jeep with a cocky feminine stride, her purse slung over her shoulder. Even though she was a dozen yards away, Cole felt himself bracing...worried what the doctor had told her, but more, wondering what kind of earth-shattering confusion she was going to cause him this time.

  He knew there’d be something.

  Conceivably what she wore was a dress. It looked to him like a man’s long shirt, belted with a strip of braid, its color the same bright green as her eyes. The restless wind flapped the hem around her thighs and molded the fabric to her small, high breasts. Sunbeams caught in the silvery-gold threads of her hair. Her only makeup was a little gloss. She looked young. She looked fragile and lovely and ethereal. She looked far too innocent to drive a man half-crazy.

  This morning, her lips hadn’t had a delicate coat of gloss, just a kiss-stung shine that he’d put there. She’d brought him a towel when he was still in the pool, still dressed and soaked, still trying to work off a killing-hard arousal in water that was never going to be cold enough. He didn’t want to look at her mouth; he didn’t want to see the white dip of her breasts in the loose wrap of her robe; and he sure as hell didn’t want to talk to her.

  Acid-charged emotions had been spiraling in his stomach. Regan had been ill—and he knew it. She’d been coming out of a drugged sleep, in no way responsible for anything she did—and he’d known that, too. Any man who’d touch a woman in those circumstances was on a par with a worm. Maybe lower.

  God knew he felt lower, because he’d still wanted to make love with her. Still wished he had. The idea of any other man seeing her against those coral sheets made him physically ill. She’d been beautiful and exciting and wild and vulnerable—wild for him, vulnerable for him. Cole was glad about what had happened. Not guilty. Glad.

  And she’d crouched at the edge of the pool, clutching that ridiculously big towel. He’d wiped the water out of his eyes, thinking Hell, hell, hell. Could we not talk
about this now? Could you just give me a few minutes to get a grip, princess?

  But she took a big breath and out it came. “I’m so mad I could spit, slugger.”

  “Honey, I know and I don’t blame you—”

  “I want you to leave for Chicago. Immediately.”

  Cole couldn’t leave ‘immediately’ because he’d spent a night at her bedside swearing to both God and the devil that he was going to get her to a doctor today. But in the figurative sense, he could certainly tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll be out of your hair in no time—”

  “I’ve never deliberately hurt anyone, and I’ll be darned if someone’s going to do it to me. You think I’m a marshmallow? You think I’m just going to take this sitting down?”

  “Look, princess. If it would make you feel any better, haul off and hit me.”

  Regan’s vivid green eyes widened in surprise. “Hit you? Why would I want to hit you? You’re the only one on earth that I completely trust, Cole. And the sooner you get those vitamins to Chicago, the sooner you can get them analyzed in a lab.”

  Cole took a confused breath. Obviously he was equally concerned about those vitamins or he wouldn’t have made all the complicated arrangements with Sam the night before. Only just then, he’d thought this whole conversation was about his being a heel.

  “You do realize that I was drugged, don’t you? When I woke up this morning, I just couldn’t believe how totally and completely different I felt.” She dropped the towel. He narrowly saved it from falling in the pool. “And suddenly my mind’s working overtime, remembering things that happened. Things that I thought were all in my imagination before. They were never just in my head….”

  She was clearly working herself up into a fine feminine tirade, but Cole had to mentally hustle to follow her thought train. “Sweetheart, I know, I told you that.”

  “There is no answer but the vitamins. They were the only thing that I took absolutely every day, and I want to know what was in them. I need to know what was in them. How else can I possibly figure out who would have done this to me and why?” She slapped her knees in utter frustration. “Do you know what basanite is, Cole?”