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“Just…just…” An emotion built and burst inside him, so he waited. “Just because,” he finished darkly, remembering his father’s funeral. “I’m his son. That’s all.”
Her eyes seemed to see inside him, into that shadowy secret place.
She smiled. “You can tell me.”
He glared. “Can I? If you were me, would you trust you…after…”
They’d hardly said hi, and already they were at it.
Yet he preferred arguing and probably so did she—to remembering that night and what had happened in his apartment and what hadn’t.
She was pale and yet breathing hard, every bit as agitated as he was. Those fingers with the little silver moons were tugging at her silken sash. “How can we be discussing this…like it still matters? When nothing about us matters…anymore.”
He watched that rhythmic tugging of those little half moons at her sash as if hypnotized. “My thoughts exactly, darlin’.”
So why was there a painful lump in his throat? Why that painful thickening lower down that stretched his jeans and made him too conscious of her easy power? Why were the memories of his childhood all mixed up with the crazy sexual frustration of that last night? Why this insane desire to yank that infernal sash loose, slide his hands inside that silk robe and pull her against his body when he knew why wanting her was so impossible?
Why couldn’t she be normal? Why did she have to be the sexiest woman alive and not sexy at all?
Those moving fingertips with the little moons that twinkled slid along red silk. He felt his collar tighten like it was really choking him. “Stop playing with that damned sash!”
“Sorry.”
“Do I come in or go?” he growled when her slim hands were still at last. “It’s been a long day.”
“Oh, do come in, Rancher Black,” she teased, pushing the door wider.
“Quit calling me that!”
When she didn’t move out of his way, he was forced to sidle so close to her he almost brushed against her. Which was what she must have wanted because when he was almost past her, she reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“North, I…” Even before the panic flared in her eyes, she chopped off the end of her sentence.
Instantly his muscles contracted beneath the liquid heat of her slim hand. His black head jerked, startling her, and for a long moment they both stared at those fingertips with the tiny silver moons. She’d scarcely touched him, but the effect on his senses was electrifying.
He remembered that last night when her hands had been all over him. She’d been eager, as eager as he. And then suddenly, she’d gotten scared.
“North…” Her little girl voice died in her throat as she splayed her fingers, causing the tiny little moons to twinkle.
He felt her, remembered her in every pore. They’d lain in his bed that night, his body pressed firmly against hers, her lips against his throat, her breast against his chest, the rest of their bodies touching all the way down. She’d felt so right. She always did.
He’d held her for a long time, stroking her hair, trying to gentle her as he might a frightened colt. But she’d gotten frightened again and gone back to the wild on him anyway.
“Don’t start in on me again, darlin’…unless you intend to finish what you start…this time.”
Her hand tightened and then fell away slowly, and still he couldn’t move past her any more than she seemed able to escape him.
“I want to forget you,” he said, but his gaze was on her pink lips.
“That does seem like the sensible solution to our problem.”
“Your problem,” he said in a flat tone.
“And yet—”
“There is not going to be a yet—damn you.”
She blushed. Her eyes remained downcast. “What if I can’t be as sensible or as rational as you? What if I—”
“Not if you crawled—”
She went white at that code word.
“You broke up with me, remember?” he said in a softer tone.
“And you’ll never be able to forgive—” Her husky voice had dropped, too—to something that sounded close to shame or regret.
“That’s right.”
Leave her alone. Cool off. Talk football outside with Sam.
But she looked so small and vulnerable. Suddenly he couldn’t stop staring at her lips and wondering how long since anybody had kissed their wet, pink fullness. Wondering who else knew how they tasted. These thoughts got him so riled, North pushed his way inside, grabbed her, backed her against the red flowers on the foyer wallpaper and pressed his body firmly against hers.
She swallowed. Her eyes shone nervously; her cheeks blazed a brighter hue, but for once, she didn’t try to run.
Suddenly his breathing was fast and irregular. “Why? Why do you always goad me? Why do you always have to push?”
“I—I don’t know. I-it’s just the way I am with you. I don’t like it that I do it, either. North—”
“Shut up,” he said silkily.
Then he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, ran it along her throat. Her skin was smooth and soft. Womanly soft. And hot. So hot. She was burning up just like he was.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
He stroked her hair. “Not just yet. You touched me. You led me on.”
“You’re too easy.”
He grinned. “If only you were as easy.”
She shut her eyes as if to shut him out.
“Your desires are every bit as deep and dark as mine,” he murmured. “Have you found someone else to satisfy them?” Just asking her drove him crazy.
Her lashes fluttered. Her smoky eyes darkened. “No…”
“How long…since you’ve been held? Kissed?”
“Not since…that night.” She turned deep red.
“Me, either.”
Why the hell had he admitted that? Unwanted desire for her wound him tighter. When she tried to run, he seized her arm again. “Not yet, darlin’. You’re not going anywhere. Not just yet. Not till I’ve had a final taste.”
Melody was tall, but he dwarfed her. Easily he scooped her closer. When he snugged her hips against his, she quivered, and even the slight response on her part that warred with the wild panic in her eyes made him explosively needy. Always, always she drove him past the limits of his careful control.
“Why do you always bully me?” she whispered.
“Sometimes I think because you want me to.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What do you want, Melody? What’s so wrong—”
An electric silence hummed between them. She was nervy, yet secretly thrilled and eager, too.
“You scare me,” she said breathily.
“You scare you. You ought to know by now I would never hurt you. Or force you—”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“I just want to touch you.” He wanted to slide his fingers inside her again, to know she was wet as she’d been that night, despite all her puritanical and hung-up assertions to the contrary.
She shut her eyes, half opened her mouth and sank back against the wall. “If only—”
God, it had been so long. Six months since that wonderful, awful night. He had told himself, never, ever again—not with her. Then the minute he set eyes on her, the minute she touched him, she had him again. More than anything he craved to kiss her, to run his hands through her long, soft hair, to do all the things she’d forbidden him to do.
What would she do this time if he tried? What would she say? What would he do if she ever let him? He’d wanted her so damn much. He’d waited so long.
Maybe he would have held himself in check if Melody hadn’t reached up and brushed her fingertips against the crisp black hair above his white collar. Maybe. But even though her touch was light and tentative, he felt her feverish response behind it, and that alone set him off.
He seized her shoulders to pull her toward him, wondering if this time she’d—
His head came down. Her lips pursed eagerly as she lifted them. In the fraction of a second before their mouths touched, he thought she whispered, “I’m sorry, North. So, sorry.”
But before he could deepen their kiss, he heard the brisk patter of Dee Dee’s footsteps. Quickly he straightened, and Melody twisted her crimson face away, so her mother couldn’t read her.
“Is that you, North!” Dee Dee shrieked from the other end of the hall as she rushed down the hall that was papered to look like a voluptuous garden gone wild in spring.
He froze.
Melody jumped free and began smoothing her hair.
“North…Melody…”
Dee Dee, who was golden and gorgeous and looked years younger than she was, smiled as they hastily backed away from each other and began to fidget—Melody with her sash after she’d finished on her hair and he with his tight collar.
“It’s so good to see you, dear.” Dee Dee smiled knowingly as she came forward and stretched on tiptoes as if to peck his dark cheek. All he felt when her glossy lips hovered close was the stir of her warm breath against his skin. “I’m the chairman of the charity ball, so I was on the phone and couldn’t get the door.”
“You said Melody was in Austin.”
“Did I?” Dee Dee smiled up at him artlessly. “You know Melody. She’s as fickle as Texas weather, and I suppose we’re about due for a norther.”
“After this hellish summer, something a little cool…and frosty might be a welcome change,” he agreed thickly, his eyes on Melody.
“Sam’s out back,” Dee Dee said. When an alarm buzzed in her kitchen, she started. “Why don’t you join him, dear? And while you’re outside, make sure he doesn’t burn up my rib eyes. Meanwhile, I’ll go get you a beer out of the fridge.” Then she flew to the kitchen to check on whatever she had in the oven.
“It’s only one evening together,” North muttered in a hoarse whisper to Melody. “Surely we can be civil and behave ourselves in front of your parents for a few hours—for their sake. For ours, too.”
“Only one night?” Melody looked a little strained as she smiled up at him. “Oh, no, North. I quit my job. I’m home to stay. Or at least I’ll be at Nana’s. You and I could see each other anytime—that is, if we wanted to.”
“Which we don’t.”
“Speak for yourself. The last thing I intend to do where you’re concerned—is behave myself.”
Nana was her grandmother.
“I thought south Texas bored you.”
“I was wrong…about a lot of things.”
He remembered her apology right before their kiss. “What things? What do you mean?”
“I’ll be around. That’s all.”
“You said you loved Austin because it was wild. That south Texas and I bored—”
Her parting shots had cut him to the quick. At one point she’d said he was so ultraconservative that she felt stifled and dead anytime she was anywhere near him.
“Well—” She paused. “I’m here for a while. Not because of you, but because I’m going back to school. To get a masters and a teaching certificate.”
“Teaching? You said you didn’t want to settle for any sort of traditional roles like wife or teacher that women used to be forced into by macho men.”
“I was a child. Naturally I wanted to be glamorous and special.” She paused. “I guess I figured out I like kids. I figured out some other stuff…that I like, too.”
Like men? Like sex? Like me?
As if she read his mind, Melody notched her chin upward a bit defiantly, and he found himself drinking in the beauty of her long slender neck and wondering if she really might be referring to sex.
“With this degree and certificate,” Melody continued, “I can work anywhere in the world. I’ll be independent.”
So that was it! She hadn’t come back because of him. This was about her infernal determination to be independent of him. To stay single.
Not that he cared.
“So you still want to travel?” he whispered, making his voice both insolent and admiring. “To see the world?”
