Standoff at Mustang Ridge (11 page)

It was.

But that didn’t stop him from pulling her body against his. He’d been right about that no bra part. Equally right about how she’d feel in his arms with her braless breasts pressed against his chest.

Sophie made a sound. Part moan, part shiver. She sort of melted against him, every part of her seemingly touching every part of him. Well, except one part that was suddenly whining for attention. So Royce did something about that. He dropped his left hand to her bottom, lifting her so that her sex was aligned with his.

Her moan got louder.

Her grip on his back tightened.

And the kiss got deeper and hotter.

Her taste was so familiar, like something he’d had but still wanted. The little voice got quieter, maybe because of the roar in his head now. Also because his body was already moving onto other things.

Like touching her.

Royce slid his hand beneath the loose pajama top and eased his fingers over her right nipple. It was already tight and puckered, ready for him to do a little exploring.

And tasting.

Yeah, he apparently intended to make that particular mistake, too. He shoved up the pajama top and looked at her for a moment. Just to see if she was going to stop this.

She wasn’t.

There was only the welcoming heat in her sizzling blue eyes. Not an ounce of hesitation. And it was Sophie who caught onto the back of his neck and pushed his mouth toward her breast.

The buzz became a full roar.

Sophie’s moan became intense.

Everything did. The need, the pressure from the contact of their bodies. The taste of her in his mouth. Especially that. He hadn’t remembered kissing her breasts before, but maybe he had, because that seemed like familiar territory, too. Of course, with the way they were grinding against each other, maybe he must want it to feel familiar.

While he tongue-kissed her breasts, Sophie didn’t stay put. She pulled him closer and closer, until Royce figured there was only one place left to go. He dropped lower, kissing her stomach. Touching her. And going lower until he kissed her through the flimsy cotton panties.

She mumbled something he didn’t catch, and almost frantically, Sophie grabbed on to his shoulders and pulled him back up to face her. She kissed him again. Also frantic, and she slid her hand between them and over the front of his zipper.

Royce saw stars and damn near lost his breath.

Because Sophie didn’t just touch him, she started to lower his zipper.

That little voice in his head returned with a big, loud vengeance. He could
not
have sex with her. Not like this when she was so vulnerable. It would be taking advantage of her, and he wouldn’t forgive himself for that.

That thought vanished for a second when she managed to get his zipper down and put her hand in his boxers.

Oh, man.

He was already rock hard, and that only made it worse. Her touch was like lightning and speared through him until every nerve in his body was zinging.

It took every ounce of his willpower to push her hand away, and he had a fleeting thought that maybe it’d been this way that night in the motel. Maybe she’d touched him. Just like this. And maybe he’d touched her, too.

And maybe he hadn’t resisted her.

Considering how they made each other feel, he was beginning to see just how probable that could be.

Royce knew if he didn’t do something fast, then this would go well beyond the touching and kissing stage. They’d land in bed. Or on the floor or kitchen table. The sex would be hot, incredible and mindless.

But not without consequences.

And that’s what he forced himself to remember.

Still, this had to go somewhere because Sophie was trying to get her hands back into his pants. If that happened, there wasn’t enough resolve in the state to make him stop.

Royce turned the tables on her, and he took her wrists, gathering them in his left grip so he could put his right hand in her panties. She was hot, wet and ready, too, and that hardened him to the point of being painful.

“Don’t think,” she mumbled.

Bad advice.
Real
bad. It was that wet heat talking, and it wasn’t making any more sense than his own heat and need.

Sophie made a sound so perfect, so feminine that it made his erection beg. Royce ignored it, again, and stroked her with his fingers. It was a special kind of torture for him, but Sophie’s reaction was worth any price. Her eyelids fluttered down, half closed. Her mouth slightly opened.

She said his name. “Royce,” she purred.

And she opened herself to him. She tore away from the grip he had on her wrists and latched on to the counter behind her, pushing her hips forward so that his fingers could go deeper, harder and faster.

It didn’t take much so Royce didn’t have to keep up the sweet torture for long. She came in a flash, her body pulsing around his fingers. That didn’t help his erection, either, but Royce forced himself not to put his sex any closer to hers. He just put his arms around her and held her while her breath gutted and her body trembled.

Her eyes opened slowly, and he could still see the heat there. Well, for a few second, anyway.

And then the shock came, draining the color from her cheeks.

Her breath stalled, and the heat was quickly replaced with the stark realization of what they’d just done.

“No harm, no foul,” he managed to say. It was stupid. Yeah, there’d been no harm all right, but plenty of foul. He’d had no right to touch Sophie that way.

“Oh, mercy,” she mumbled, and she kept repeating it.

Fixing her clothes, she moved away from him and hurried to the sink to splash some water on her face. Her cheeks were flushed, and the glance she spared him was short and filled with regret.

“It would have been worse if we’d had sex,” Royce assured her. His erection didn’t buy that, but that brainless part of him had no say in this.

She glanced at the front of his jeans. Winced a little. “I’m sorry. I guess it won’t do any good to tell you again I don’t do this sort of thing.” She waved off any response he might have had to that. “But twice we’ve been together now, and twice we’ve ended up, well, here.” Sophie tipped her head to his zipper area.

He had to do something to break this tension—she looked ready to burst into tears. “You think this qualifies as our first date?”

She stared at him. Blinked. And then gave a dry laugh. “You don’t want to date me.” Any trace of the laugh faded just as quickly as it had come.

He shrugged.
Dating
probably wasn’t the right word, but every inch of him wanted to haul her off to bed.

She went to the fridge, far enough away from him that it should have helped. It didn’t. Because he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.

Sophie, on the other hand, was looking at everything but him. She reached to open the fridge, but her hand froze for a moment before it dropped to her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” Royce hurried to her, and when he saw the stark look on her face, that took care of any remnants of what was going on behind his zipper.

She shook her head and slapped her hand onto the fridge. “I’m just dizzy. And a little queasy.” As soon as she said that, her eyes widened, and her mouth didn’t drop open, but it was close.

“Maybe you need to eat something?” he suggested.

But judging from her reaction, that was the last thing she wanted. Another head shake. “What’s today’s date?”

Hell.

Royce didn’t want to jump to conclusions. There were plenty of reasons for a person to get dizzy and feel queasy. But it was the look of near shock on her face that had him wondering if these symptoms were caused by something else.

“It’s the fourth,” he managed to say. And he waited, afraid to ask what he knew was on both their minds. It had been five weeks since the party at the Outlaw.

“You said we didn’t have sex,” he reminded her.

She leaned against the fridge and looked up at him. “I said I didn’t remember having sex with you. But—” Sophie groaned and turned away from him.

Royce wasn’t feeling dizzy or queasy, but he was feeling things he didn’t want to feel—like some major concern. “But what?”

The same emotions were in Sophie’s eyes when she finally looked at him again. “When I woke up in the motel room, I was naked. We both were.”

He thought about that a moment. “You were partly dressed when I saw you.” Definitely. He would have remembered a stark-naked Sophie.

“I put on my underwear and was putting on the rest of my clothes when you woke up.”

Oh, man. He did not like the direction this was going in. “Uh, did you feel any different?”
Stupid question
. Royce tried again. “Were there any signs on your body that we’d had sex?”

She didn’t answer. For a long time. “Yes.” Sophie squeezed her eyes shut, and she groaned even louder than Royce. “I didn’t remember that, not until just now, but I was a little tender. And please don’t make me explain that.”

He wouldn’t. In fact, he didn’t want to be having this discussion at all, but it was necessary. “Any signs that you might be, uh, pregnant? Other than the stuff you’re feeling right now, that is.”

She dropped the back of her head against the fridge and scrubbed her hands over her face. “A missed period. Things have been so crazy that I didn’t notice I was late.”

Royce couldn’t dispute that, but a feeling that he thought might be panic started to crawl through him. Still, he tried not to show Sophie just how bad that panic was.

She pulled in her breath, looked at him again. “I never slept with Travis. Never. And whether you believe me or not, I don’t have one-night stands. In fact, I haven’t been with a man in over a year.”

Sophie winced as if she hadn’t intended to reveal that, and she pushed herself from the fridge and would have stormed off, but Royce got hold of her arm.

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” he asked.

“Because I lied about being pregnant.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “And now it might not be a lie at all.”

She shook off his grip and practically ran out of the kitchen. Royce went after her and caught up with her just as she ducked into the guest room. She would have shut the door in his face if he hadn’t caught onto it. He didn’t go to her and pull her into his arms, though that’s what he wanted to do. Despite everything he was feeling—and he was feeling a boatload of stuff—he wanted to reassure her that everything would be okay.

All right, maybe not okay, but he really wanted to stop those damn tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Think back to that night,” he said, hoping to get her to focus. Even though it probably wasn’t a good idea to focus on what was making her cry. Still, they needed to know the truth. “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up at the motel?”

She sank down onto the edge of the bed and smeared away the tears with her hand. “Kissing you in your truck.”

“Okay.” Royce tried to pick through his own memories. Yeah, that was there. French kissing, and he had his hand up her shirt and in her bra.

“I unzipped your jeans,” Sophie mumbled.

That particular memory came back at him hard and fast. Especially hard. And he had to fight off the effects of remembering how Sophie had slid her hands into his jeans. And over his erection.

“Think back,” he repeated, not easily. “We were in the truck when that happened, but where was it parked? Because all I remember is, well, nothing about the location.”

“Yes.” And there was enough heat in her voice to let him know that she remembered some of that nonlocation stuff, too.

“We were in the side parking lot of the Lone Star Motel,” Sophie explained. “I’d already gotten a room before the party because I knew I’d be drinking, and I didn’t want to have to drive back out to the ranch.” She paused. “Plus, Travis was there at the ranch, staying the night in the guest room next to mine. I didn’t want to see him.”

“And I’d left my truck in the motel parking lot because there weren’t any spaces at the Outlaw Bar.”

So they were filling in bits and pieces, but the biggest piece of all was still blank.

Or was it?

Sophie stood slowly. “I need to get dressed so I can go into town and buy a pregnancy test.” But she paused. “No. Scratch that. I need to go somewhere other than Mustang Ridge to buy it.”

Yeah. Because she’d be seen, and something like that probably wouldn’t stay a secret.
“Half the town thinks you’re pregnant anyway,” he pointed out.

“And the other half has heard that I said it was a lie.” She blinked back more tears. “I just don’t want to feed the gossips.”

Well, it would do that, and besides it might be safer if they headed away from Mustang Ridge. He really needed to be working on the investigation, but Royce figured his focus would seriously be lacking in that area. Best to get this pregnancy question settled once and for all, and then he could, well, figure out the next step.

A baby.

Man, he hadn’t seen this one coming, and he couldn’t even wrap his mind around it.

“Just wait for the test result before you get upset,” Sophie mumbled. And he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or herself.

She picked up her clothes from the dresser and motioned for him to turn around. “I know. At this point, modesty seems too little, too late.”

Yeah, it did, but with the heat and confusion rifling through his body, it wasn’t a good idea to see Sophie strip down.

Royce turned away, but he could still hear her dress. Could feel her, too. And maybe it was that combination of sensations that triggered something in his head. He whirled back around.

Not the best idea he’d ever had.

Sophie was standing there in just her bra and panties while she reached for her jeans. She froze. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing was wrong, but he realized that response was coming from the brainless part of him reacting to Sophie’s nearly naked body. Her bra and panties weren’t skimpy. In fact, they appeared to be cotton with no peekaboo lace, but he had memories of what was beneath that underwear.

“You have a tattoo,” he said, though he didn’t know how he managed to speak. His mouth was suddenly bone-dry.