For the Love of God (12 page)

“Do you mind me using you for a pillow?” Seth looked up at her with deceptively innocent eyes, aware of asking permission after the fact.

“No.” But she did find it disturbingly intimate. Her senses were operating on an uneven keel with his head nestled against her thighs. The faded material of her jeans had been worn thin, providing a scant barrier for her sensitive skin.

“Good.” Seth closed his eyes and settled more comfortably in place, folding his hands across his chest in a gesture of contentment.

With his eyes shut, Abbie took the liberty of studying the irregular angles and planes of his strong face. There was power in the lift of his cheekbones and steady determination in the clean line of his jaw. His stubby lashes were dark and full, a shade darker than the brown of his eyebrows. There was a slight, crooked break in the line of his nose, and his mouth was well defined, neither too thin nor too full, and definitely masculine.

The dark, rumpled gold of his hair invited the smoothing touch of her fingers. Abbie curled them into the blanket to resist the urge to slide them through his hair. The body heat from his wide shoulders warmed the side of her hip and thigh and spread through the rest of her body. All sorts of dangerous thoughts were running
through her mind when she let her glance stray to the even rise and fall of his chest. Starting a conversation seemed the wise thing to do.

“Where does your family live, Seth?” she asked.

A little frown creased his forehead. “Pillows aren’t supposed to talk,” he grunted.

Abbie laughed softly at that. “Well, this pillow does,” she retorted. “Where does your family live?”

He sighed in mock resignation. “My parents live in Denver.”

“Is that where the Tal-bar Corporation has its offices, too?”

“Yes.”

“How did the company get started?” she asked.

Seth opened one eye. “My, but you are full of questions.”

“How else do you learn anything?” Abbie reasoned with a small shrug.

“My grandfather and great-uncle started out as well drillers, then got into the oil and gas business, and backed into cattle ranching.”

“‘Backed’ into cattle ranching? How do you do that?” Abbie smiled at the phrase, finding it curious.

“My grandfather thought he was acquiring the mineral rights for federal land and found out he had actually obtained grazing rights instead. So he and my great-uncle turned a mistake into a business,” Seth explained. “The company also has some mining interest.”

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she wondered.

“A whole houseful.” He sat up unexpectedly, and turned toward Abbie, bracing a hand on the opposite side of her legs. “I have five sisters and three brothers. My parents believed in a large family. Do you like large families?”

“Yes.” Her answer was hesitant because she wasn’t sure what he meant by the question.

Seth took it a step farther. “How many children do you want when you get married?”

“That’s something … I’d have to discuss with my husband.” She had trouble breathing when he leaned closer. Her heart started fluttering against her ribs.

“What would you say …” He tipped his head to kiss the side of her throat. There was a wild, little leap of her pulse. “… if your husband wanted …” He turned his head to mouth the sensitive cord on the other side of her neck. “… a lot of children?”

So many other things were happening in reaction to his nuzzling kisses that Abbie almost forgot the question. “I think … I’d like the idea.” Tension knotted her throat until she couldn’t swallow. A moan trembled somewhere inside her, waiting to be released.

“And if he wanted to adopt some children …” His mouth grazed along her cheek, feathering her skin with the warmth of his breath. “… in addition to your own?”

“Why not?” she murmured, turning her head to end the tantalizing nearness of his mouth.

It moved onto her lips with a sureness of purpose, claiming them as if it had long been his right to do so. There was no resistance to its commanding pressure. Her lips parted willingly to deepen the kiss as his hand curved itself to her spine. A heady tide of feeling seemed to swamp her, and she reeled at the whirling mist of glorious sensation. She felt drunk with his kiss and wondered if it was the wine.

Then there was no room for thinking, only feeling. Abbie was weightless, floating in a mindless bliss. She wasn’t conscious of sinking backward onto the blanket, only that her hands no longer had to support her upright position and were now free to glide around his muscled shoulders and curl into the virile thickness of his hair.

Tiny little moans of pleasure came from her throat when he nibbled sensually at her earlobe and made an intimate study of her neck and throat. The hard contours of his body pressed their male shape onto her flesh while the stroking caress of his hands wandered over her.

Desire seemed a natural extension of all the raw emotion his embrace was disclosing to her. It was the purest form of passion she’d ever know, and the beauty of it swelled her heart until she ached for him. The need inside her strained to be released.

His hand glided smoothly across her ribs, nearing the heated fullness of her breasts. The sensation of skin against skin suddenly shocked her into an awareness of how far out of control
she’d gone. Her blouse had fallen loose, the old material stretching to release the lower buttons.

With a stifled moan of panic at what he must be thinking of her, Abbie wiggled from under him and scrambled to her feet. Her breath came thickly as she quickly turned her back to avoid his stunned and frowning look.

“Abbie?” His voice was low and husky.

“I’m sorry.” She quickly began stuffing her blouse inside the waistband of her jeans, a task made difficult by her shaking hands. She heard him stand up. “I don’t know what got into me,” she insisted. “It must have been those two glasses of wine.”

His hands closed on her shoulders, the contact momentarily paralyzing. Her blouse was half in and half out, and Abbie couldn’t seem to move to finish the job.

“That’s not a very flattering thing to say,” Seth declared and forced her to turn around. She looked everywhere but into his face, yet the sight of his manly chest, so broad and muscled, hardly hidden at all with his shirt clinging to the heated dampness of his skin, was almost equally unnerving. Abbie kept her hands rigidly tightened into fists so they wouldn’t be tempted to touch him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she murmured tightly.

“You indicated it was the wine that made you respond to me,” he said in a voice that was warm and indulgent. “I was hoping it might have been my kisses.”

“It was. I mean … I just got carried away because … of the wine,” Abbie insisted.

Seth crooked a finger under her chin and lifted it to study her face at an angle. “It wasn’t because of the wine. You were enjoying being kissed and caressed.”

“I was, but…” She was close to tears, so anxious for him to think well of her. She had never felt so vulnerable in her life. “… I don’t want you to think I’m immoral.”

“Why should I think that?” Seth questioned with a smiling frown of confusion.

“Because—” Abbie couldn’t finish it.

“Because I was touching you? Because I wanted to touch your breasts?” He was even more specific, and his bluntness was more than she could handle. “Or because you wanted me to?”

“Seth.” She shut her eyes so he couldn’t read how right he was in her look.

“I’m relieved you didn’t call me Reverend,” he mocked, and gave her a little shake to force her eyes open. “Abbie, I’m a man, not a saint. You are a beautiful woman with a beautiful body. Do you think I don’t feel desire when I’m near you?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Well, I do.” The corners of his mouth deepened with a smile. “Desire isn’t necessarily sinful. Promiscuity, infidelity, adultery—those are sinful. Desire is a warm and wonderful thing between two people who care for one another. You don’t need to be ashamed of it.”

“I wasn’t, not really. I just didn’t—” She broke
off in midsentence when Seth suddenly began unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it loose from his Levi’s. “What are you doing?”

“I’m unbuttoning my shirt. What does it look like I’m doing?” he countered. “You seemed embarrassed because your blouse came unfastened. I thought it might make you feel better if mine was loose, too.”

“Seth, that’s ridiculous.” Abbie couldn’t believe he was serious.

His low, throaty laugh vibrated over her. His hands were at her waist to pull her into his arms. That curling sensation started all over again in her stomach as his mouth came down to probe apart the softness of hers. Warmth flooded through her limbs as his molding hands roamed her back and hips to fit her intimately to his hard, male length.

Seth deepened the disruptively sensual embrace with consummate skill, dazzling Abbie with the ecstasy he evoked. Her hands were flattened against his bared chest, absorbing the heat of his body to add to the fire burning inside. She was trembling when he finally lifted his head to trail a butterfly kiss on her closed eyes.

Reluctantly, she started to shift away from him, thinking that he was signaling an end to the embrace, but his arms tightened to keep her fused to the muscled columns of his legs. “Stay here,” he murmured, “where you belong.”

His hand cupped the back of her head, his fingers tangling with the tendrils of rust-gold
hair that had escaped from her ponytail, and firmly directed her head to rest on his shoulder. Of their own volition it seemed, her arms slid around his middle under his loosely hanging shirt. Abbie rested her cheek contentedly against his collarbone, breathing in the heady, male smell of him.

There was a very definite sensation of belonging in his arms. The hard line of his jaw was rubbing against her hair in a sensual caress. With a slight turn of her head, Abbie let her mouth lightly taste the warm flavor of his skin, tanned and tautly stretched across sinew and bone.

Her lips touched the coolness of a gold chain, reminding Abbie of her previous curiosity about it. She shifted slightly in his arms to lift a hand to follow the path of the long chain to where it ended in the center of the springy, silken gold chest hairs. They curled softly against the back of her hand as she held a plain, gold cross between her fingers.

“I wondered what you were wearing around your neck,” she admitted softly. The edges were worn, a few scratches dulling the finish. “It looks very old.”

“It belonged to my grandfather. He was a very religious man in many ways. And a very passionate man, too.” His head tipped slightly downward for a glimpse of her face. “The two can go together.”

The sheer naturalness of being held by him had been so overwhelming that it wasn’t until
his comment that Abbie realized his hand was curved to the underside of her breast, his thumb absently stroking its rising swell. Both her blouse and her cotton brassiere lay between his hand and her flesh, but his touch suddenly seemed to burn through both of them. Abbie stiffened in a delayed attack of modesty.

Guessing the reason, Seth let his hand slide down to the curve of her waist. “I knew what my right hand was doing, so I’m not about to cut it off,” he mocked with gentle amusement. “I have the feeling, Abbie, that you are as steeped in Victorian traditions as this town.”

Thinking he was ridiculing her for being prudish, Abbie started to pull away, but the bronzed band of his arm stopped her while he cupped his hand to the side of her face and forced her to look at him. There was smoldering pleasure in the darkness of his gaze.

“And I’m glad you are that way,” Seth added to assure her that he approved of her keen sense of decorum. “Just remember there will come a time when there is no need to hold back your desires.”

“Yes.” It seemed very close, too. Abbie hoped, desperately, that she wasn’t wrong.

There was a hard, brief kiss before Seth released her from the close contact with his body. “As enjoyable as it would be to idle away the rest of the afternoon kissing you, I think we’d better get our picnic things packed away in the car so we can visit your grandmother.”

“Grandmother Klein?” She felt stupid saying
that. She was the only grandmother Abbie had—living that is.

“You usually visit her on the weekend, don’t you?” he said. “At the moment, it seems the prudent way to spend the afternoon rather than yielding to the temptation of this blanket and you.”

“I think you deliberately try to shock me,” Abbie declared, still not quite used to his frankness.

He reached down to scoop up the blanket and begin folding it into a square. His side-glance ran to her, glittering with amusement.

“I have to do something to shatter that sexless image you have of a minister,” Seth countered.

“You’re succeeding,” she admitted, without mentioning that it was something of a revelation.

“It’s about time,” he replied with a mocking slant to his mouth.

It didn’t take long to stow the picnic items in the car. After Abbie had given him a general set of directions to her grandmother’s farm, they started out. Less than thirty minutes later, Seth turned the sports car onto the lane leading to the white, clapboard house.

White leghorn chickens squawked and ran from the car with flapping wings when it rolled to a dusty halt in the farmyard. An old gray tomcat sauntered out to inspect the visitors to his territory and meowed an aloof welcome when he recognized Abbie, then eyed Seth with haughty inquiry.

“That’s Godfrey.” Abbie identified the cat. “He thinks he owns the farm.”

“I had the same impression,” Seth replied.

“Where’s your mistress, Godfrey?” Abbie glanced at the house but there was no sign of life behind the gray-meshed screen door. The cat swished his tail and jumped lithely onto the rear fender of the car to begin cleaning himself, disdaining any notion that he would lower himself to act as guide. “She’s probably in the garden,” Abbie guessed. “It’s around in back.”

As Abbie started in that direction, Seth fell into step beside her, his hand fitting itself familiarly to the small of her back. There was something lightly possessive about his touch that made her feel she belonged to him, a sensation she definitely liked.