Alaskan Nights (13 page)

He grabbed her arm as she reached for his empty mug. “Come here.” He turned in his seat and pulled her between his knees. Holding both her wrists in his warm, rough hands, he said, “I’m not happy. Not at all. He hurt you, and that makes me a little crazy.”

“I’m not your concern.”

He squeezed her wrists to shut her up. “Bella, sweetheart. He had no right to treat you so badly.”

“You don’t think I know that?” She tried twisting away from him, but he held her firm. “I’m no one’s doormat! I never have been. I left as soon as I realized what he was doing.”

“Did you love him?”

She opened her mouth to tell him of course she did, but nothing came out. She’d been infatuated with a handsome, wealthy, older man who’d treated her like a princess. For about six months. And she’d wanted to free Cam so he could go off and explore the world. Something she’d kept him from doing because he’d taken over her care after her mother...

“Bella?”

“I don’t know. I think I was too young to know what love was. He married me because he thought I was good breeding stock.” Her lip curled in disgust. She’d been so foolish.

“That was a long time ago, sweetie. You’re older now.” His hands slid down to her wrists, and he laced his fingers with hers. “Isn’t it time to let yourself love?”

“There’s no point,” she whispered.

“How can you say that? Everyone needs someone at some point in their lives. I’ve been a confirmed bachelor for a long time, but I’ve changed.”

His eyes. God, his eyes. She’d let herself love. No. Against all better judgment, she’d fallen in love. With the wrong man. He’d just said he wanted children. “No. I don’t need anyone.” She wanted to curse when the tears stung the back of her eyes. Her voice was too soft, too tight.

“You’re a terrible liar, Bella.”

She shook her head in denial.

“You’re a nurturer. Look how well you take care of me. There’s so much love inside you. I can feel it. I want it. I need it.”

Her heart pounded in her throat, nearly choking her. “I can’t.”

“You can if you let yourself.”

“Children...”

“Men and women don’t fall in love because they want kids. They fall in love because they want and need each other.”

“You want children, you just said that.” She tried pulling away again, which made him pull her closer. Her knees against the edge of his chair, his thighs touching her legs. His chest only inches away from her. His lips... If she just bent down a tiny bit...

“Kiss me,” he whispered.

Oh, God
. She gazed into his eyes. The hiss of the propane lantern, the crackle of the fire in the stove. The warmth of his fingers. She looked at his lips. Full in a purely sexy, masculine way, slightly parted, soft. She licked her lips, remembering what they’d felt like against hers. Soft, yet firm and demanding. She couldn’t breathe; her lungs had shut down. Her heart felt as if it would jump right out of her chest onto his lap.

“Kiss me, Bella. I need you.”

She heard a tiny whimper and realized it came from her. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t. If he kissed her again, she’d be lost. She was already so close. She didn’t want to love him. Didn’t want to love anyone. She wanted everything to be back to the way it was, before Cam died. When life was simpler.

She leaned down and touched her lips to his. He sucked in his breath, as if she’d surprised him. Her tummy fluttered. Her skin seemed to tighten over her entire body. She breathed in the scent of him. All man. Clean and fresh, like the outdoors.

Again, she brushed her lips against his. He moaned. She moaned. He released her hands and wrapped his fingers around her waist. She pressed her mouth against his and dipped her tongue between his lips to taste him. Heaven. He tasted like Heaven.

He pulled her against him. Her hands went to his shoulders, then around his neck. He leaned back in the chair, taking her with him as he took over the kiss. One hand cupped the back of her head to steady her as he slanted his mouth over hers and delved his tongue deeply. Fireworks and warmth. Tenderness and control.

She melted. Every bit of her strength left her and she flowed over him. She heard a moan, knew it was hers, didn’t care. All she cared about was this man and how he made her feel. So alive. So cherished. So needed.

The chair collapsed.

Two of the old, rickety wooden legs buckled, throwing Brandon back against the wall. His head hit the windowsill. Isabella’s teeth cut his bottom lip on impact. He wanted to laugh. He did laugh. As he lay there on the cold wood floor, his head pounding, his lip swelling, Bella lying on top of him with a stunned look in her eyes, he laughed.

And then she laughed, too. What a sweet sound. That annoying little fist around his heart squeezed ever tighter. He wanted her. Right here on the floor. Right now. He wanted to capture her laughter and keep it always. He wouldn’t do that to her though. She deserved much better than a quick tumble on the floor. And it was too soon. For her. He, on the other hand, felt like he might very well spontaneously combust any second.

Still smiling, Bella scooted off of him and stood up, then she looked down at him and burst out laughing all over again as she held out her hand for him. “Come on, get up.”

He took her hand, and she helped him to his feet. He felt the knot on the back of his head. Damn good thing he had a hard head. “You all right?” he asked her.

“I’m fine. Sit down. On the couch.” Then she laughed again. “Let me see your head. Your lip’s bleeding.” She grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at his lip once he was seated.

“I’ve always heard about kisses that made the world fall out from beneath you,” Brandon said, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve never experienced one until tonight.”

“Very funny. I knew those chairs were dangerous.” She felt the lump on the back of his head and he winced. “I think you just have a death wish.”

He chuckled. “No. Definitely not.”

She checked his lip again. “That’s going to hurt.”

“Kiss it, make it better?” he asked sweetly.

She leaned down and ran her tongue gently over his slightly swollen lip. She tasted the salty flavor of his blood and for some totally inexplicable reason, her breath caught. He groaned and reached for her. She stepped away. “I think we should take this as a sign,” she said as she went to the kitchen and put some water on a clean paper towel.

“A sign?”

“It’s too dangerous for us to kiss any more.” She dabbed at his lip. Much too dangerous for her well-being, that was for damn sure. She wanted to be with him more than ever. If his kisses could make her feel so alive, so wonderful, what would it be like—

“I want to kiss you.”

She shook her head. “It’s only because it’s just the two of us here.” She tried to make her tone light, hoped she wasn’t failing miserably.

“You’re saying that it wouldn’t matter what woman was here with me?”

She threw the paper towel in the wastebasket and shrugged. “You’ve got it in your head you want to settle down. I’m assuming this is a new revelation to you. I happened to be the only one around at the time.”

Brandon surprised her by coming to his feet in a rush and grabbing her shoulders. “You’re crazy, you know that?” He gave her a gentle shake. “Your opinion of men is based on a lousy experience that was, what? Ten years ago?”

She squirmed away from his hands. “Am I wrong? Come on! If you want to sleep with someone, fine, I’m all yours. Could be fun. But don’t start offering me wine and roses and happily ever afters.” Her face heated with a blush. Had she really said that?
Could be fun?
She felt so stupid.

“Go to bed.” His voice had turned icy cold, little more than a menacing growl. When she glanced up at him, his eyes were hard. She took a step back, bumping into the table. “Get your cute little fanny up to that bed before I show you just how fun it could be.”

Isabella scrambled past him and up the short ladder to the loft. She kicked off her hiking boots and they fell with a hard thud on the floor next to Brandon. She almost wished they’d hit him. Boy! She’d surely smacked that bear in the nose. He looked mad enough to kill.

Well, she thought as she watched him opened the door and walk out into the cool night air, if I keep him mad at me, he won’t try to kiss me. That would be best. Wouldn’t it? Yes, of course it would. He wanted a family with children. And now he knew she couldn’t give him children, so there would be no point in carrying anything further.

She didn’t have the strength to have a fling with him. To love him and leave him. Parting with him would be hard enough to deal with. If she learned that he was even close to as good of a lover as he was kisser, she didn’t think she’d be able to leave him.

Then what? A few years down the road he turns on her and looks at her with the same eyes Bart had. Cold, filled with regret and disgust.
No, no, no
. She couldn’t stand that from Brandon. Bart had wanted to pass on his family name. He was the only male child in the family. Heredity meant so much to men. Brandon said he was an only child. His mother was his only living relative. He’d want to have children.

Lying back on the mattress, Isabella pressed her hand to her abdomen, swamped by the humiliation and shame of being only half a woman. She wanted children. Desperately. She’d wanted children ten years ago when she put up with sex with Bart. But there was no hope of that. Oh, it wasn’t completely impossible for her to conceive. There was about a ten-thousand-to-one chance. But what man in his right mind would take those odds?

Brandon was the only man who’d ever made her feel so alive. Kissing him was like waking up after a long, long sleep.

The front door opened, and she peeked over the edge of the loft to watch Brandon. He had an armload of clothes that he began hanging over the barrel stove.

“Where did those come from?”

“The plane. Go to sleep.”

“The plane? You went down there? In the dark? Without telling me? What if something would have happ—”

“Would it matter if something happened?” His tone was nasty, angry. He cursed himself for showing her his vulnerable side. “At least you’d be rid of me and my manly ways.” Damn, but she made him crazy. Kissing him senseless and then telling him it wouldn’t have mattered whom he was with. Yeah, right. She was the only woman he’d ever even contemplated taking home to Mom. And she thought she was some kind of conquest. Someone who was simply available.

“You’re impossible,” he heard her mumble.

I’m not the only one
. At least now he’d have a couple changes of clothing. Jeans, underwear, warmer shirts. He’d swum down to the plane before supper. It was sitting upside-down on the bottom of the lake, about ten feet down. What a mess.

“Like I’d want to be eating fish out of a lake with a dead body floating around in it.” She mumbled the statement as she rustled around in her thick nylon sleeping bag. Probably taking off her clothes to put on the nightshirt that had felt so soft against him last night. Warm from her skin. He could have held her forever.

And she thought he just wanted to screw because she was female and he was male. Okay, so he did. But it was so much more. He wasn’t a saint—he’d been with his fair share of women. Most of the affairs had been brief—very brief. He’d never wanted any attachments. Could honestly say he’d never wanted to just snuggle up with a woman and hold her and make the world stop.

If she only knew how close he’d come to taking her offer. It had sounded too much like a challenge to him.
It might be fun
. Oh, it’d be a hell of a lot more than fun. It’d be hot and wet and hard and—he had to stop thinking about it or he might climb up there and prove it to her. And then he’d hold her in his arms until the sun came up. And then he’d wake her and do it all over again in the daylight, watching her face flush as she...

He groaned and dropped down on the couch. “Would you stop squirming around up there and go to sleep?” he growled.

“Oh, shut up. If you hadn’t chased me up here, I could have changed down there where I could move.”

Her body was in shadow. He couldn’t see anything except the moving sleeping bag. All of a sudden she popped out, her upper body hanging over the edge of the platform as she reached into the pantry. She grabbed something and then disappeared back into the cocoon of her nylon shell. He heard paper ripping. And then a small moan of pleasure as she bit into a candy bar.

She was going to drive him to insanity.

“How the hell are you so skinny when all you do is eat?”

“I’m twenty pounds underweight. I’m trying to gain it back. You really shouldn’t ask women such questions. You’ll never find your perfect little wife if you insult everyone you come across.”

He smiled. Then chuckled. “You’re a brat.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Why are you twenty pounds underweight? How’d you lose it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Bella?” he asked, trying to make out her shape under the thick blanket of quilted nylon.

“Goodnight, Brandon.”

~*~*~