Cattleman's Choice (10 page)

He carried her into the dark bedroom and laid her down on the soft coverlet. His hand traveled down from her shoulder, tracing her breasts, her waist, her stomach, the long line of her legs.

“I won't make you pregnant,” he promised tautly, “and I won't hurt you. Okay?”

She trembled a little as she realized what he was saying, how explosive the passion between them had become. She felt his hands easing her dress down to her waist, over her hips. There was nothing under it but her briefs, and very gently he removed those, too, so that she was nude.

“You're trembling,” he whispered as one big, warm hand rested on her belly. “You've never been nude with a man, either, have you?”

“No,” she managed weakly.

“Your body feels like cream, Mandelyn,” he said softly. He ran his hands over her, letting her feel their rough tenderness as he learned the soft contours of her body. “Slender, and beautiful, and soft to touch. Honey and spice and cotton candy…”

He bent and his mouth touched her stomach. She cried out, shocked by the intimacy of his lips there and by her own violent reaction to it.

“Hush, baby,” he whispered in the darkness. “Hush now, there's nothing to be afraid of. I know what I'm doing.”

“Yes, I know,” she laughed shakily, “that's why I'm frightened. You…you said you wouldn't…”

“I want you,” he whispered. “I've wanted you for so long, Mandy. I look at you and ache. Couldn't you pity me enough to give me one night?”

She wanted that night, too, but pity wasn't what was motivating her. She saw his head bend, his face a pale blur in the darkness and a piercing sweetness washed over her. Carson. He was Carson, and as familiar as her own face in the mirror, and no part of him was repulsive to her. She wanted him, too.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh yes.”

He seemed to freeze for a moment, and then he crushed her to him. “Let me turn on the light,” he whispered hoarsely. “Let me watch you when it happens.”

His hand went out before she could respond. He turned on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with light. She shrunk from him slightly in embarrassment. But he wasn't looking at her. His eyes were on the large color photograph in the ornate silver frame on the bedside table. His face paled. He reached out a hand and picked it up and stared down at the boyish face through the glass and his hand shook.

“Who?” he asked, his voice sounding dazed.

Her eyes barely focused. “It's Ben. Ben Hammack. He…was my fiancé.”

Chapter Six

“Y
our fiancé?” He spoke as if he wasn't sure he'd heard her in the first place, and his eyes were riveted to the photograph.

The lovely, sultry sweetness between them had been dissipated by the stark light, and she fumbled with the coverlet, drawing it quickly over her body.

“You were engaged?” he persisted. “When?”

“Before I came out here,” she faltered.

He stood up, replacing the photograph. His hand ran roughly through his disheveled hair, and she stared up at him helplessly. His shirt was still open and his mouth was faintly swollen from the pressure of the kisses they'd given each other. His eyes still bore traces of frustrated passion when they burned down into hers.

“Why didn't you tell me about him before?” he demanded. “When I asked if you'd ever wanted a man before….”

She shivered at the accusation in his tone.

“It was when I was eighteen, Carson,” she said, tugging the coverlet closer.

“Stop that,” he growled. “I know every inch of you now, so stop behaving like a little prude. Was that a lie, too, are you really a virgin?”

“I haven't lied to you!”

“By omission!” he returned. “You never said anything about a fiancé! So where is he now? Did he throw you over? Are you still hung up on him, is that it?”

“Will you calm down?”

“Calm down, hell!” he ground out, glaring at her as he fumbled to light a cigarette. “I hurt all over. How could you let me make love to you with the image of another man sitting right here beside the bed…!”

She dropped her eyes, clutching the coverlet, embarrassed. “I was out of my head,” she said miserably.

“So was I. I've never in my life wanted a woman so much. And if I hadn't turned on that damned light, we wouldn't be talking now. I'd be loving you.”

The way he said it caused shimmers of sensation all over her bare body. “Yes, I know,” she whispered.

“You'd have hated me for it,” he added curtly.

“Would I?” she murmured.

His face hardened and he turned away from her to smoke the cigarette. “Where is he, this ex-fiancé?”

She sighed and stared down at her hands, unconsciously letting the coverlet slide a little. “He's dead.”

That seemed to startle him. He turned around and came back to her, sitting down on the bed beside her. “Dead?”

She drew in a slow breath. “He was killed in a plane crash, on his way to a banker's convention in Washington, D.C. It was a small plane and it crashed into a hillside. You see, they…picked him up in pieces….”

He caught her hand reluctantly, and held it firmly in his. “I'm sorry. That would have made it worse.”

She nodded. Her hand clung to his. “He was twenty-three, and I loved him with all my heart.” Her eyes went past him to the photograph, and Ben looked very young to her now, with his blond hair tousled and his green eyes wicked and mischievous. “He came from a very old Charleston family. We had the same background and our families were friendly. He was brilliant, cultured and he could have gone to the moon. I could hardly believe it when he asked me to marry him. I wasn't his usual kind of girl at all. I was shy and quiet and he was so outgoing….” She shrugged and the coverlet, unnoticed, slipped again. Carson's eyes dropped as she spoke, his face going rigid as he stared at the soft, exposed curves. “After he died, I very nearly went crazy. Uncle had inherited the real estate office here and the ranch, and he'd planned to resell it. But when he saw what was happening to me, he moved us out here instead. I think it probably saved my sanity. I couldn't stop thinking about the way Ben died. It was killing me.”

He forced his eyes back up to hers. “That's why you didn't date,” he said suddenly.

“Of course.” She stared at the photograph. “I loved him so much. I was afraid to try again, to risk losing anybody else. I went out with one or two clients over the years, in a strictly platonic way. But most men won't be satisfied with just companionship, and when I realized that, I just gave up on it completely.”

“Now it makes sense,” he murmured.

She looked up. “What does?”

“The way you've been with me,” he said quietly. “As if you were starving to death for a little love.”

Her mouth trembled. “I'm not!”

“Aren't you?” He reached out, and slowly peeled the coverlet back, letting it drop to her waist. And he looked down at her creamy, hard-tipped breasts with an expression that pleased her almost beyond bearing. “You see?” he said. “You like it when I look at you.”

She did. Her hands trembled as she jerked the coverlet back in place, her face red, her eyes wild. “I don't!”

“Deny it until hell freezes over, but you would have given in before I turned on the light,” he said hotly. “You wanted me, damn you!”

Her eyes closed and her hands trembled, clutching the fabric. She couldn't answer him, because he was right and they both knew it.

He got up abruptly and turned away. “God, this is rich,” he said, a note of despair in his voice. He paced, smoking like a furnace. “I thought it was because you were a virgin, that being made love to was new and you were learning things about me that you liked. And all the time, I was substituting for a ghost.”

That shocked her. “No,” she began, because she couldn't let him believe that. It just wasn't true.

“A dead man. A shrine.” He seemed to get angrier as he went along. His eyes burned when he whirled suddenly to glare down at her. “Why did you let me bring you in here?” he burst out.

She shivered a little at his tone. “I don't know.”

He lifted the cigarette to his lips jerkily and his eyes went involuntarily to the photograph. “You were still mourning him when we met, weren't you?” he asked. “That's why you got so mad at me when I made a pass.”

“I couldn't bear the thought of another relationship,” she hedged, staring down at the coverlet.

“Hell! You mean, you couldn't bear the thought of some ruffian wanting you. I didn't measure up, did I? I wasn't fit to wear his shoes!”

“Carson, no!” she said fiercely. “No, it isn't like that!”

“I'm rough and hard and I've got no manners,” he ground out. “I don't come from a socially prominent family and I didn't go to Harvard. So I'm not even in the running. I never was. You've built him into a little tin god and you keep his picture by your bed to remind you that you've climbed into the grave with him, isn't that it!”

She got up, dragging the cover with her, and went to stand in front of him, her eyes wide, her heart aching. He was hurting, and she'd done that to him. All because of a past she couldn't let go of.

“Carson,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his hard arm.

The muscles contracted. “Don't do it, honey,” he cautioned in a dangerously soft voice. “I'm feeling pretty raw right now.”

“Well, so am I,” she burst out. “I didn't want you to start pushing your way into my life, to back me into a corner! I didn't start kissing
you…!
”

“As if you ever would have,” he said quietly. His eyes were bleak, his face pale and hard. “I guess I've been dreaming. You're as far out of my league as I am out of yours. It's just as well that you aren't civilizing me for yourself, isn't it?”

Her smooth shoulders lifted and fell. “I guess so.” She stared down at his boots.

“We'd better forget the dancing lessons,” he said coldly. “And before you start getting the wrong idea about what happened tonight, I told you once that I've been without a woman for a while. You went to my head, that's all.”

That hurt. She had to fight down a flood of tears. Her eyes lifted proudly to his. “Same here,” she said curtly.

“Yes, I know that,” he said with a mocking smile. He nodded toward the photograph. “Why don't you take that to bed with you, and see if it makes you burn the way I did.”

She lifted her hand, but he caught her wrist and held it easily, letting her feel his strength.

It brought her to her senses like a cold shower of rain. “You can let go,” she said defeatedly. “I won't try to hit you.”

He dropped her wrist as if it had scorched him. “Hadn't you better put your clothes on? You might catch cold—if ice can.”

Her eyes flashed at him. “I wasn't cold with you,” she said fiercely.

The hasty words seemed to kindle something in him. His eyes narrowed and glittered. He reached out and caught the back of her head and before she could turn her mouth, his lips crushed down on it. He twisted her mouth under his, hurting her for an instant, before he lifted it again and glared into her eyes.

“Firecracker,” he said heavily, “if you weren't worshipping a damned ghost, I'd throw you down on that bed and make you beg for my body. But as things stand, I'd say we both had a lucky escape.”

He let her go and strode out of the room. Seconds later, the door slammed, and she heard his car start and roar away. The house was so still that she could hear the clock in the living room, like a bomb. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She hardly slept at all that night. Her eyes had been well and truly opened by Carson's cutting remarks. She hadn't realized just how much she'd been living in the past until he'd accused her of making a shrine for Ben. Of trying to climb into the grave with him.

With a cup of coffee in her hand the next morning, she sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the photograph. Ben looked impossibly young. And as she gazed at his picture, she remembered how things had been all those years ago. It hadn't been a great love affair. He'd been a handsome, eligible bachelor with a magnetic personality, and she'd been young and shy and flattered by his attention. But over the years, she had built his image into something unrealistic. It had taken Carson's feverish lovemaking to teach her that.

She flushed remembering how it had been between them the night before. He'd been so tender, so achingly tender and patient. And if he hadn't seen that photograph…

She got to her feet, frowning, and paced the floor. Her eyes went involuntarily to the bed and her mind traced, torturously, every wild second she'd spent on it the night before. Carson, kissing her with such sweet hunger, Carson touching her in ways no one else ever had. Carson, looking at her with eyes that ate her. Loving her.