Rainsinger (12 page)

He swore. What the hell was wrong with him?

For three days, all he had thought about was sex. Winona Snow made him want it like no woman he’d ever met, like no woman he’d ever seen—like no one he’d ever imagined. Her long-legged, swaying gait, her siren curves, her strong, healthy body made him crazy. She had only to walk into a room and he was ready.

More than that, she made him think of sex in ways that he never had. Like making love all day and all night. Like wanting to do it in the full sun, where he could see all of her while they moved. Like tearing her clothes with his teeth and making her yell.

For three solid days and two long, long nights, all he’d thought about was a thousand different ways to be naked with Winona.

In frustration, he picked up a rock and threw it at a cottonwood. The rock hit the trunk with a solid
thunk.
Something about the sound or the movement satisfied him on some dark plane, and he scooped up a varied handful of quartz and granite.

Just now, when he’d kissed her and felt her unarmored curves against him, the reality had been better than his fantasies. He’d felt something stir in himself, something rich and hot and deep, and felt its reflection in Winona. The melding of them made things stir. Things that should have been left silent.

The trouble was, he liked her. He enjoyed her company. She was smart and strong and full of a zesty good humor that balanced neatly his brooding, persnickety nature. None of his scowls or blustering or political posturing seemed to put her off. She fought back if she didn’t agree, but mostly she just smiled the darkness away.

And to his amazement, he let himself be pacified.

With a growl of frustration, he hurled a chunk of white quartz at the tree with all his might. She was dangerous to him in a way no one ever had been—not even Jessie. She upset the order of his world, the order of his thoughts. He got so confused thinking about whether he should resist or give in to his chemical need for her that it didn’t even make sense anymore. He had to leave her alone, for his sanity as well as hers.

But even now, his most urgent wish was to follow Miss Winona into her room, tear off that sunrise robe and touch her all over, bury himself between her solid thighs.

He rubbed a hand over his face. Luke and Jessie would be stopping by tonight with Giselle. Maybe Luke would have a sage word or two. He was the one who’d always been good with women.

* * *

Winona had decided on a simple meal for their supper, since no one was quite sure when Daniel’s friends would arrive. In the late afternoon, she chopped fresh vegetables for a salad to go with a light corn soup she’d made. The low, seductive music Daniel had on the CD player in the living room made her more restless than every though she would have died rather than admit that.

They’d barely spoken all day. When he came into a room, she left it. And that was often. Her only comfort was that Daniel Lynch was as restless as she was. Darkly, she hoped he suffered.

Because he’d certainly made her suffer. All day long, as she pruned the trees, or listened to Joleen tell her the plots of three movies she watched on the VCR, or shucked corn, she’d been plagued with sharp, visceral images of his mouth on hers. She’d lift a branch, and there would be a ghostly image of Daniel’s mouth, his breath coming from him on a low, hungry sound. Or Daniel’s handprints on her bottom, squeezing. Or Daniel’s unbound hair in her palms.

All these years, she’d managed to keep these feelings at bay. One sizzling kiss from Daniel, and her discipline was shot.

Fiercely she tore lettuce into pieces and threw them in a bowl. The awakened creature in her moved all day, seeing in the most innocent things an expression of sexuality. The tiny knobs of embryonic peaches aroused her. The papery pink flowers of the prickly pears seemed unbearably ripe. Even now, the plump tomatoes on the counter, glistening with water, made her think of lush, sensual pursuits. She grabbed one and viciously started chopping it.

“I’m going to shoot some hoops. Want to play a little one-on-one?”

Daniel’s voice, cutting through her reverie, startled her. She jumped, nearly cutting off her finger. Annoyed, she turned, sucking blood from the small cut. “You scared me half to death,” she said.

“Sorry.” He looked at her finger, back to her face. “Are you okay?”

“Do you want to play?”

She sucked her finger, frowning. Did she? It might improve her mood. “In a minute. Let me finish this salad and I’ll throw on some other clothes.”

Daniel bounced the ball. “All right. I’ll be waiting.”

With a flourish, Winona scattered chunks of tomato over the salad, sprinkled a handful of sunflower seeds into the mix and tossed it lightly. Carefully she wiped up her mess, then put the knife in the sink and went to her room.

She wore a simple peasant blouse, white and gauzy, with a plain skirt. As she pulled the blouse over her head, her hair crackled and sparked with static electricity, strands of it flying forward to stick to her eyes and cheeks as if magnetized. Irritably she brushed them away, rubbing her face where the strands had stuck, feeling the pull of dry skin between her shoulder blades.

Would it never rain?

Her favorite basketball tank top was dirty. Winona scrambled into her shorts, tossing her skirt on the bed, and dug through her drawers for a T-shirt or something to put on. There wasn’t much: an ancient, threadbare T-shirt fit only for the ragbag, which she kept because of its slogan—Plants Do It Organically, a blue button-up shirt that had always been too tight through the shoulders; and a loose cotton tank top that somehow always made Winona look like Jezebel, for reasons she could never quite figure out. It was a little short, but that wasn’t the problem.

If she had been going to the slabs in her old hometown, she would never have worn it, but this afternoon she had nothing else. The threadbare T-shirt was bound to be worse. Slipping a sports bra over her regular bra, Winona stubbornly donned the Jezebel shirt. A slice of tummy showed below the hem, and there was no doubt—even in the controlling, squashing sports bra—that she was female. When she swept her hair into a ponytail, she caught sight of herself in the mirror, and sighed. The shirt did the same thing it always did—somehow she looked like a loose woman in it. Tugging the cotton hem, she tried to cover the slice of tummy it exposed, and yanked on the top to make sure her cleavage didn’t show. There wasn’t really anything else to be done.

Joleen and Percival were in the backyard, playing tug-of-war with a piece of cloth. Joleen wore her new sundress and the green tam, and she grinned at Winona when she came out. “I love this dog!”

The outfit must not be too outrageous, Winona thought. Joleen would have said something. “Me, too.”

The sound of the basketball thumping against concrete reached her. She walked to the crude court. Daniel shot baskets methodically, one, two, three, then turned.

Winona strode onto the court. “Are you ready?”

He paused, holding the ball in his hands. His dark gaze traveled over her body, lazing over her breasts, the slice of tummy, her legs. A shiver moved through her, as if it were his hands, not his eyes, that caressed her. To her embarrassment, she felt the tips of her breasts tighten.

Thank heaven for armored bras.

“Ready,” he said, his voice faintly rough, and passed the ball to her.

D
aniel had played some hard games of basketball in his life. He’d limped off more courts than he could count, gasping for breath, sweating as though he’d jumped in a river, with bruised ribs and skinned joints and even a broken finger once. He’d played in civilized games on high-school courts across the region, and in the streets with hoodlums of every description.

No one had ever made him fight as hard as Winona. She played hard and mean, with a powerful shot and fierce blocks. A lot of women played with an eye toward protecting their upper bodies, but Winona seemed to feel no such need. She was tall enough that he had to work hard to get around her blocks, and aggressive enough that he had to be careful not to lose the ball, and serious enough that he ached all over in five minutes. Her shoulders were like cast iron.

And damned if he wasn’t aroused by all of it. He’d hoped the reverse might be true—that good old physical exercise might relieve some of the tension that lay between them like a wounded lion, ready to roar and lash out at the slightest provocation.

Winona slammed into him, and he felt the giving flesh of a breast against his arm, smelled the heat of woman and her faint talcum powder. Her bare arm slid along his, and her hand brushed his thigh. She stole the ball with a chortle and ran toward her end of the court, and Daniel yelped, running after her. With a small part of his mind, he admired the lean play of muscle in her legs as she jumped and shot, even as he rushed in to wrest the ball from her fingertips.

With a war cry, he shot from midcourt, just as she slammed into him from behind. “Foul!” he cried, turning, but she was gone, the ball in hand, her ponytail bouncing.

She laughed—and he darted out in front of her, up close, jumping to block her shot. Her arms were raised and their torsos touched, slid. The underside of her left arm brushed his shoulder. As she jumped to shoot again, he grabbed her and lifted her off her feet, moving her back three paces. “Foul!” she yelled.

“Turnabout is fair play.”

She won. Again. Daniel groaned expressively and bent over, his hands on his knees, to catch his breath. The exhilaration of exercise moved in his blood and he smiled with the pleasure of it. It hadn’t eased his arousal—he couldn’t think of any other time he’d played a game while so obsessed with sex—but he felt better anyway.

Winona leaned on the post. “Whew,” she said with a sigh. “Good game.”

He straightened. That damned white tank, dampened by the humidity of her body, clung to every curve like a second skin, and he wanted to put his tongue against the slice of belly below the hem. Her face was flushed, her hair tousled, and she had an ecstatically satisfied expression on her face.

As though she’d had sex.

She was such a physical person. How would that carry over? Daniel wondered.

As if she felt his perusal, she looked over at him, a soft smile turning up her lips, the pale eyes extraordinarily blue against the flush on her cheekbones.

“I’m hot,” she said. “I wonder if it’s ever going to rain.”

“I’m hot, too,” he said with a faint smile.

With a roll of her eyes, she gave him a wry smile. “Don’t start.”

“Start what?” he asked with false innocence. He moved toward her. “I’m just agreeing with you.”

A blush added heat to the color in her face. “Sorry. My mistake.”

He punched her playfully on the arm. “Give a guy a break, huh? I have to assert my manhood somehow after you trounced me.”

She laughed, her lips parting to show good teeth, her throat moving with the sound. “Poor guy.”

He moved a step closer, not quite sure what he intended to do. She looked up, expectantly and without fear, and he wondered if there was a way to make this okay between them, just for a little while. He put a single finger on her neck, tracing a line of dust there. “You’re making me crazy, Winona.”

She lifted her brows, but didn’t move away. “You’re making yourself crazy.”

Since there was no protest, he let his finger go lower, along the edge of her collarbone. “No, it’s definitely you.” When would she stop him? Very, very slowly, he drew a circle just below her throat. She didn’t move, but he saw her eyelids lower ever so slightly, and the smallest flare moved her nostrils.

He smiled and took one more step. His thigh and hers touched. Through her shirt, he saw the faintest outline of an aroused nipple, carefully camouflaged by the layers of clothing, but not quite enough. The sight sent a jolt of electric need through him.

Slowly he traced the edge of her shirt, following the swells of flesh up, then down into the secret valley, then up again. Up higher to her shoulder, over her collarbone and down, his eyes on her face. Her pupils grew with each small brush of that single, exploratory finger, until the irises were nearly obscured. The flush on her cheekbones deepened. Her lips parted slightly.

“You can’t tell me,” he said, spreading his open palm flat on the flesh above her neckline, “that you don’t want me, Winona.”

She swallowed. “I don’t think I ever tried to tell you that.”

“Does that mean you do?” He moved his hand slightly, enjoying the furious leap in his nether regions that each encounter with those soft swells gave him. He didn’t think he’d been so hard since adolescence. There was trust in her posture—her hands behind her back, bracing her against the pole, her face upturned. It would be so easy to slide his hand down and clasp the full weight of her breast in his palm. His eyes strayed, and he knew he might do just that if—“Yes,” she said in a husky tone. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow anything to happen. Not everyone follows every sexual impulse they get, you know.”

“Oh, no?” He let his hand go still, all but his little finger. He let it stray, let it ease under the edge of fabric at her neckline at the same time as he bent his head, putting his lips not quite upon hers. “I think this is different. I think you might be glad.”

Up close her eyes were a dazzling color, as clear as a stream. Her breath moved on his lips, warm and smelling of her. He let his hips touch the outside of hers. “I know I would.” He slid his hand up to circle her throat, lightly, using his thumb to tip up her chin. “I’d love it.”

So deeply engrossed was he that he didn’t hear the truck until a horn bleated loudly into the still air.

As if he’d been doused with cold water, Daniel jerked away, standing up straight, yanking his hand and body from her. With one tiny part of his mind, he saw her shock and the rejection that telling gesture had wrought. For a second he paused, regretful, but she was already moving past him on her strong, long legs.

Helplessly he said, “Winona, wait.”