Never the Twain (10 page)

Her determined stride slowed.

"Genny, I can explain. Honest. I didn't mean to make you feel like a thing." Rock put all
the persuasiveness he owned into his voice. "There's something really great between us, Genny. You
can't deny that, can you?"

"No." He could barely hear her soft reply. "No I can't deny that." She lifted her head and
looked back at him, across fifteen feet of pasture and a barbed wire fence.

"Come back, Genny, and let's talk about it, okay?"

"Just talk? Do you really believe we can 'just talk'?"

"I promise to try."
At first anyhow, darlin', then we'll do whatever comes.
The urgency of
his need for her had retreated, but not the strength of it. Deep inside the core of him, he thirsted for
Genny Forsythe. For her lips, for her sweet body against his. For her, surrounding him, enveloping
him, possessing him.

He reached up to help her across the stile, but she refused his hand. "There's a bench in a
ways, where we can sit and talk." He smiled at her, in what he hoped was reassurance. Smiled and
did his best to radiate trustworthiness and friendship. Be damned if he'd show how relieved he was
that she came back. When she'd scrambled over that stile, he'd wanted to grab her and never let her
go. For a minute there, he'd been afraid that he'd been feeling more than pure horniness. He'd felt
bereft, lonely. Deserted.

Naw. He'd just been feeling disappointment and sexual frustration.

He took her hand and led her into the woods. Doggone, but it was hard to be a big bad
wolf when the lamb followed so willingly. Kinda made a fella feel guilty.

She didn't trust him much farther than she could throw him. That hungry smile had left his
lips, but it still lurked in his eyes. Genny followed, outwardly docile, along the narrow path that
wound through the woods. The day she could be within ten feel of Rock McConnell and "just talk"
to him would be the day they buried her. Aside from the way he fulfilled her youthful fantasies, he
awoke yearnings she hadn't felt before. But even accepting the inevitability of intimacy with him, she
was still going to make him strive a little bit, before she surrendered.

Rock McConnell was way too sure of himself.

She looked around as she followed him into the woods. It was lovely here. The black
locust leaves rustled slightly in the errant breeze, whispering of sun and shadow. Their shade was
dense, except where a gap let the bright July sun glare through. Rough, furrowed black bark was
marked with faint streaks of green, algae living in the moist shade where it couldn't survive under the
merciless sun. Under her feet the grass still held a hint of green, although even here it was starting to
wither and turn golden brown, as all unirrigated grass did in this dry country.

"Through here," Rock said, guiding her along the winding path. He led them through a
screen of lilacs, into a clearing in which stood a real, old-fashioned gazebo. Complete with lattice
walls and weathervane on the roof, it aroused memories of home. Sometimes New Hampshire
seemed awfully far away.

She swallowed, then reminded herself that she was experiencing excitement and adventure.
Strictly by choice.

Rock brushed twigs and leaf fragments from the wooden bench inside the gazebo. Genny
sat where he indicated and found herself crowded as he sprawled beside her.

"You wanted to do a little visitin'," he said in his get-her-goat drawl. "So let's visit."
Leaning back, he smiled expectantly.

"Oh, for pity's sake, Rock," she snapped. "You know darned well what I meant. I just
didn't want a repeat of the other times we've been together. We say a few words to each other and
Wham!
We're either fighting like a couple of five-year-olds or we're..." She looked sideways
at him, not quite sure how to describe what had taken place between them. It hadn't been
love-making. It sure hadn't been a little friendly smooching.

"Yeah, I know. We're makin' out like a couple of randy kids." He chuckled. "Fun, ain't it?"
His callused fingers toyed with tendrils of hair at her nape.

She shivered.

"I stayed with Fred's folks one winter, when the weather got real nasty," he said into the
slightly uncomfortable silence. "Stayed here about five weeks, 'cause the snow kept driftin' all the
roads shut. Only time I ever lived in town, while I was a kid." He was silent for a long moment. "I
hated it."

"In town? What are you talking about? We're a good mile outside Jordan Valley."

"Yeah, well, it's too close for me. I think that's why I always stayed at the ranch after Pa
married Selma, no matter how bad it got." His voice was low, as if he were speaking to himself,
rather than to her. And strained, as if the memories were painful. "I could have pulled a mobile
home into the place up Jordan Creek here," he gestured to the east, "but it's still too damned close
in."

"I guess it's all a matter of perception," she said, listening in vain for a whisper of any
sound but the rustling leaves overhead. There were probably more than a hundred people partying
within a half-mile, yet she and Rock seemed as alone as they had been down in Succor Creek.

More alone, for there were no cattle bawling at them.

"I guess you don't know what it's like, being alone most of the time," he said, letting his
hand drift from her nape to her cheek.

Genny leaned into his gentle stroking. His hand wore a faint odor of hay and leather.
Oh, yes I do,
she thought.
I know what it's like being a misfit, alone in a big family.
She
had never felt so much at home, back on the farm, as she had since coming to Oregon. The words
remained in her throat, lacking breath to push them farther. It was caught in her chest, victim of
Rock's magic touch along her jaw. She arched her head back, wanting his fingers to reach every inch
of her neck, hoping they'd find the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat where she craved his
touch.

"So tempting," he whispered. "So damn tempting." As if burned, his hand jerked away
from her.

Genny forced her eyes open and her mind awake. "So you've lived all your life clear out on
Rye Creek, so far from civilization?" No wonder he lacked social graces. He'd probably never even
learned to share toys, as a child.

"Mostly. Oh, I've been here and there. I was at the University of Idaho for a couple of
years after I finished up at the Community College in Ontario."

Swallowing her surprise, Genny said, "That must have been difficult for you, disliking
crowds as you do."

"It wasn't so bad. I had a little trailer house, outside of town, so I could get away at
night."

To think he was college educated. She would never have guessed it, just listening to him
talk. Of course, a lot of the people around here had similar drawls. To her ears, Dan Walters
sounded like an unlettered backwoodsman, rather than the respected scientist he was.

"What did you major..." His lips touched lightly, just under her ear, and all coherent
thought escaped Genny. She leaned into the arm that was suddenly, inexplicably around her waist.
"Ahhh. That feels so good."

"You feel so good, darlin'." He nibbled her earlobe.

Genny stopped resisting desire. She was kidding no one when she protested too much. She
wanted his love-making as much as he did, although she couldn't help acknowledging the danger he
represented. They weren't friends; they weren't even very well acquainted. But the chemistry
between them was so potent that nothing else seemed to matter.

His teeth were taking little nips of her throat now, going lower with each nip, drawing ever
closer to the waiting pulse. And his hands. Oh, God! His hands.

One was rubbing up and down her back, stroking her spine, pressing her ever closer to
him. The other was resting on her midriff, warm through her cotton shirt, just under her
breasts.

She inhaled, a broken, shallow inhalation that barely replenished her lungs, and tipped her
head back still farther. She invited his mouth to continue its southward journey.

"Touch me, darlin'," he murmured against her skin. "Put your hands on me, on my
skin."

She did, jerking his form-fitting western shirt free of his Levi's and tearing its snaps open.
His chest was as she'd imagined, with a scattering of dark hair along the midline, but bronzed and
bare otherwise. She slid her hands over the sleek slabs of muscle, letting her fingers linger on flat
nipples that burgeoned under her touch.

His inhalation was a hiss in her ear.

Genny bared her claws, something she'd always longed to do, lightly scraping her nails
across his chest and up to his shoulders. Holding him, she mimicked his actions, biting his earlobe
gently before nibbling her way along the tendons of his neck. He shuddered under her touch. Her
last reservation evaporated. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

"Enough," he rasped. "Don't push me." Grabbing her hand, he forced it against the Levi's
straining across his abdomen.

This time it was her breath hissing through her teeth. He was fully engorged, enormous. A
tiny frisson of fear went through her as she imagined him penetrating her, stretching her, filling her.
Fear, and delicious anticipation.
Oh, God, I've got it bad, don't I?

"Unless you want this all one-sided, darlin', you'll slow down." He flicked one shirt button
open. "Let me love you now." Another button. "Let me bring you up with me," he invited, slipping
his fingers inside her exposed bra.

Rough and warm, they scraped across the tender skin of her breast, never quite reaching its
swelling peak, then withdrew to undo another button. His other hand cupped and lifted and his
mouth came down, covering the lacy fabric of her bra, wetting it and the skin beneath, tugging and
suckling.

She felt coolness on her spine as her shirt was pulled from her jeans, felt Rock's words
against her breast. "Move back darlin', so I can get this off." She complied, enjoying the touch of his
hands as he slipped her shirt free of her arms.

No sooner was she bared to his view than his hands were on her again, loosening the front
closure of her bra, stroking across her aching, swollen breasts. His mouth followed, dropping kisses
where his palms left her sensitized to him, aching for him.

"No, Rock, no," she gasped, as he touched the snap of her jeans. "We can't. There's no
door...."

"Yes, we can," he assured her, even while he slipped the jeans from her hips, revealing the
scrap of lace and elastic barely covering her bush. A scrap she had owned for years, but had never
before had the inclination or opportunity to wear. "They're all so busy eatin' that they'll never miss
us."

"Eating? How do you know?" She struggled free of his hands, wanting to remove her
boots so she could kick off her jeans.

"I heard the music stop and the dinner bell sound. Didn't you?" He knelt and removed first
his boots, then hers. Her socks followed, just before he lowered his head and kissed her toes, one by
one.

Genny all but melted, right there on the bench, as he worked his way back to her
mouth.

When he swiped his tongue across the back of her knee, she twitched, then shivered as his
hot breath evaporated the wetness and left cold behind. His teeth raked along her inner thigh as he
spread her legs, giving himself better access to her core. When he buried his face in her bush, she
inhaled a scream. The next instant his tongue found her, and she had no voice at all, because the
orgasm rolled over her like ball lightning.

Rock held her until her breathing slowed, his arms gently enclosing her, his head resting on
her thighs. When he moved, it was to rear up and take her mouth again in a long, slow, deep kiss.
She smelled herself on him and felt a rebirth of desire.

His voice was hoarse when he said, "I want to take this slow, Genny, but I don't think I
can. I want you so much--too much."

She pushed the open shirt back on his shoulders, fighting his hands on her body to get
hers on his. "Let me," she said. "Your shirt...."

He shucked it in a single motion, then popped the buttons of his Levi's open just as
efficiently. Their hands tangled as they sought to lower his pants, release his eager cock from narrow
maroon briefs. He kicked the Levi's aside as they fell around his feet. Picking them up, he removed a
foil packet from the watch pocket.

Genny slid her hands up along his strong thighs, across his hipbones, and along the
margins of his belly. What a beautiful man he was! All sinew and strength, lean and lithe. She
watched him fit the condom around himself, wishing she had the courage to push his hands aside
and do it herself. "Mmmm." Without thinking, she licked her lips, remembering and anticipating the
salty-sweaty taste of his skin.

"That does it, darlin," he said, pulling her up along his body, letting her feel his readiness
against her chest, then her belly. Cupping her buttocks, he lifted her until she was neatly fitted
against him, almost but not quite aligned with his thrusting cock.

She wriggled, trying to take him within herself. "Now. Rock," she whispered, wanting him.
"Please. Now." But he was teasing her, touching her with a probing finger, rubbing a knuckle lightly
across sensitive tissue.

He dipped into her. Genny did her best to keep him inside, but he pulled back. She locked
her legs around him, pulling him closer. His hands left her buttocks and slid along the undersides of
her thighs, raising gooseflesh, making her ache even more for him. One hand slipped upwards to
knead her breast, while the other held her tightly against him. She heard herself moan with
frustration.

"What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me!" he demanded in her ear. His hands were back
on her buttocks, squeezing and releasing. His mouth was busy tasting her, his tongue rough against
her skin.

He was driving her to the brink of madness. She felt the pleasure, the release, hovering at
the edges of her consciousness. "You, Rock. I want you. Inside me!
Now!
"