Jayne Ann Krentz (19 page)

He reached for her. He closed his hands around her shoulders and hauled her up against his chest. “As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if I never hear about that damned list of yours again for as long as I live. Furthermore, I'm not real keen on hearing about your new, updated version of it, either.”

“Uh, Rafe, you're acting a little weird here. Maybe the stress—?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

He covered her mouth with his own, letting the fierce tension that was eating him up inside pour into her. She made a soft, muffled sound, and then her arms closed tightly around him and she was kissing him back with all the passion that had infused her anger a few seconds earlier.

“My God,” he muttered against her throat. “Do you have any idea of the scare you gave me tonight?”

“Scare?” Her own voice was muffled because she was frantically kissing his jaw. “Why were you scared?”

“First, because I thought maybe the reason you weren't answering the door was that you were with some other man.”

“No. Really?” She went very still. Then she pulled back slightly and looked at him with wide, fascinated eyes. “You were actually afraid that I might be in bed with another man? Did you think that I might have a few old flames of my own here in Eclipse Bay?”

“Let's not go there.” He refused to be sidetracked again by that possibility. “My other big fear was that you'd gone for a walk with Winston and fallen on the rocks.”

“Like Kaitlin Sadler?”

“I wasn't thinking of Kaitlin,” he said bluntly. “All I could think about was you.” He wrapped his fingers around the back of her head. “Lord help me, I haven't been able to concentrate on anything else except you since I got that letter from the lawyer.”

“Don't give me that.” Fresh outrage erupted. “If you've been concentrating on me, it's because I'm connected to Dreamscape. You have to deal with me before you can get your hands on my property.
That's
why you suddenly started focusing on me. Admit it.”

He cast about briefly for the words he needed, but he could not find them.

“We both want the same thing for Dreamscape,” he said finally. “We ought to be able to work together.”

“And sleep together?”

“We both want that, too. I really don't see the problem here, Hannah.”

“Probably because you're thinking like a Madison.”

“You know something?” he said through his teeth. “I've had it with you implying that just because I'm a Madison, I can't handle a sexual relationship and a business relationship simultaneously.”

“I've had it with you classifying our relationship as
sexual
.”

“Well, what would you call it?”

She stilled. “I don't know.”

“Fine. Great. That's a lot of help.”

She raised her chin. “I just know that for me there has to be more than sex.”

That stopped him cold. “More?”

“And don't you dare tell me that a business partnership will fill in the empty places,” she added icily.

He was annoyed. “I wasn't going to say that. That sounds like something a Harte would say, not a Madison.”

“If I'm not allowed to insult your family, you can't insult mine.”

“Sure, right. Take all the fun out of the argument. Damn it, Hannah, I've had enough of this. You know that what we've got is more than just a sexual thing. I want you. I think you want me. Can't we just go with that for now?”

She put her hands on his shoulders as if to steady herself. “I don't understand what's happening here. But I do know that adding sex to the mix complicates things.”

“In the most interesting way,” he muttered against her throat.

“Rafe—”

“Give whatever we've got going for us a chance, okay?” He drew his finger down the curve of her neck. “That's all I'm asking.”

“I really don't think that's a good idea, Rafe.”

He cradled her chin in his palms. “Tell me something.”

She searched his face. “What?”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“Not as long as I have something to say.”

“Just wondered.” He kissed her again.

For a few seconds she hesitated and then, with a tiny sigh, she softened.

Maybe she no longer had anything to say, he thought. A man could always hope.

Afraid to risk any more conversation, he kept his mouth on hers as he maneuvered her through the kitchen door. When they went past the light switch, he reached out and flipped it to the off position. Heavy shadows descended. The only light now was a dim, welcoming glow at the top of the stairs. He started toward it with Hannah tucked safely against his side.

His breathing was heavy and ragged by the time he got both of them to the bedroom at the end of the hall. He did not turn on the lamp, but the light from the corridor was sufficient to allow him to see that the room, with its white wicker furniture, white bedspread, and bleached wooden floors, was just as he had imagined it all those years ago: a pristine retreat for an untouchable princess. He felt like the intruder he was.

Not that that was going to stop him, he thought.

Exultation raced through him. Nothing could stop him as long as he knew that Hannah wanted him as badly as he wanted her. The passion between them was mutual. He could work with passion. He was a Madison.

He stopped beside the bed and untied the belt that bound the robe around her waist. She wore a long-sleeved, high-necked, prim white gown underneath it. Womanly armor, he thought. Did she know the challenge it presented?

She mumbled something against his mouth as he slipped the robe off her shoulders. He did not catch the precise words, but he had no trouble at all understanding the meaning. She was as swept up in the moment as he was.

Her arms tightened fiercely around his neck when he started to unfasten the tiny little buttons of the flannel nightgown. She smelled so good. He knew that when he threaded his fingers through the triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs she would be moist. He could hardly wait.

She unbuttoned his shirt and spread her palms across his chest. “I love the feel of you,” she whispered.

He was already hard, but her touch and the sultry desire in her words made him absolutely rigid. Electricity flashed through his senses.

He released her long enough to sit down on the edge of the white bed and remove his running shoes. When he looked up he saw that she was watching him with hungry attention, as if every move he made fascinated her.

He rose and lowered the flannel gown to her waist. It slipped low on her hips but it did not fall all the way to the floor. He caressed the tips of her small breasts. Her nipples were stiff and full. He closed his eyes briefly against the torrent of need that threatened to drown him.

She undid his belt, and then she lowered his zipper. When her fingers closed lightly around him he stopped breathing for a few seconds. The sensations tearing through him were so intense that he was sure he could live without oxygen for a while.

She slid her hands beneath the waistband of his trousers and pushed slowly downward. The pants hit the floor at his feet.

“
Rafe
.”

He stepped out of the trousers and quickly sheathed himself in the condom he took from his back pocket. Then he grabbed her around the waist and fell back across the white bedspread with her. She sprawled atop his chest and thighs, the bottom of her gown tangling in his bare legs.

She rained kisses on his flesh. Her fingers circled his upper arms. He shuddered under the gentle assault. Then he rolled onto her back, leaned over her, and tore the gown off altogether. It vanished into the darkness below the bed.

He curved his hand around her hip and kissed the gentle swell of her belly. She trembled beneath him and reached for him.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

He found the tight, hot place between her legs. And she was wet, just as he had anticipated. He inhaled the secret scent until he could no longer think clearly. Then he separated her thighs and kissed the exquisitely soft skin he found there.

She shivered again. Her nails dug into his shoulder as she tried to pull him up along the length of her. But he was not yet ready to be lured into the climax.

He drew a fingertip along the tight nub hidden in the silky thatch of hair and felt her quiver in response. She was clawing at him now.

He bent his head and touched the tip of his tongue to her full, taut clitoris. She tensed.

“Rafe.” It was a plea and a protest. “Wait. Don't do that.”

“Come for me.”

“I can't. Not like this. It's too—
Rafe
.”

“Come for me.” He kissed her again, intimately, and simultaneously eased two fingers into her, stretching her gently.

Her hands twisted in the sheets. “No, wait. I want—”

“Come for me.”

“I…Oh, no. Oh, yes.
Yes!
”

He felt her climax take her. The sensation was so intoxicating he nearly went with her.

He held himself together until the tremors had begun to subside. Only then did he shift his position to lie on top of her.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

Languidly she raised her lashes and smiled at him, a dreamy smile that was somehow smug and all-knowing and filled with invitation.

He plunged into her body, driving himself to the hilt. She closed around him and took him deeper still, straight down into uncharted depths and unknowable waters.

“Come for me,” she said into his mouth.

He gave himself up to the tides of a mysterious sea.

A long time later he roused reluctantly from the cocoon of warmth that enveloped them, levered himself up on his elbow, and looked down at her.

“I just want to know one thing,” he said.

She raised her lashes halfway and yawned. “What?”

“Are you sleeping with me because you've got some kind of kinky thing about finding out what it's like to do it with the kind of guy your parents would hate?”

“That would be extremely immature.”

“Yeah.”

“Hartes do not act out just for the hell of it, nor do we take risks merely for the sake of novelty. We are not immature. We're the logical, reasonable, rational ones, remember?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her breast. “So why are you sleeping with me?”

She studied him with an enigmatic expression. “You had all the answers earlier.”

“Earlier I was trying to talk you into bed.”

She punched him lightly on the arm. “We are not amused, Madison.”

“I'm serious. I know why I'm sleeping with you. I want to know why you're sleeping with me.”

She searched his face. “Is it that important to you?”

Anger stirred deep inside him, dissolving much of the warm afterglow that had enveloped him. “Hell, yes, it's important. You think I'd be trying to get through a stupid conversation like this if the answer wasn't important?”

“Well, I'll tell you one thing,” she said. “I'm certainly not doing this because I still have a teenage-type crush on you or because you're the guy my parents always warned me about.”

He rolled onto his back, put one hand behind his head, and gazed moodily up at the dark ceiling. “So what's the reason?”

She rose partway off the bed and leaned over him in the shadows. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady.

“I am sleeping with you because, among other things, I am a mature, unattached adult who happens to be physically attracted to you and also because—”

An eagerness that bordered on desperation swept through him. Get a grip, he thought. “And also because—?”

He sensed that she was on the verge of saying something crucial. But in the next heartbeat the intense, important thing disappeared beneath a breezy smile.

“And because my dog likes you, and I trust Winston's judgment implicitly,” she said demurely.

So what the hell had he expected her to say? He wondered. “Sonofabitch.”

“Yes, but we do not refer to him in those terms in his presence.”

“Huh.”

“In my experience, Winston is never wrong in these matters.”

He thought about that for a while. “Winston didn't like the ex-fiancé, I take it?”

“Winston was civil, but he never warmed up to Doug.” Hannah paused. “There was an unfortunate incident one evening toward the end of the relationship that more or less summed up his opinion.”

“What sort of incident?”

She cleared her throat. “Winston mistook Doug's leg for a fire hydrant.”