Strapless (26 page)

“No, I'm sure,” she said. “I miss Cliff, too. Every time he calls me, I cry afterward. Isn't that stupid? Last night I realized how silly it was to be here, missing Cliff while he's missing me in good old Porkopolis.”

At the city's nickname, Darcie smiled. “You have a point.”

“I've dated him, you know, since we were freshmen in high school. He just might be the love of my life—and what I thought was true, that finding him practically next door was just too neat and corny and convenient to be real love, is actually false. Maybe Cliff's the man for me exactly
because
he's from the same background I have. We like the same things. We have the same memories. Let's face it. What do I really have in common with Malcolm, or any other guy I met here?”

“Tattoos? You weren't skimming the cream, Annie.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe I wasn't for a reason.”

“What's that?”

“I didn't
want
to find the man of my dreams here. I wanted Cliff all along.”

“Maybe you did.” When Darcie held out her arms, Annie went into her embrace with a watery smile of her own. And a hiccup from too much yeast, hops and malt. “No more tattoos?” Darcie said, then touched Annie's brick-red hair. “No more garish color?”

“You won't have to feel responsible for me.”

“Kid, I'll always be responsible for you. You're my baby sister.”

With a grateful sigh, Annie settled deeper into Darcie's arms and held on until her misery faded and her beer settled and her decision to leave New York seemed absolutely right.

 

After Darcie had shepherded Annie to bed, she found her own room empty. Where was Dylan? Curious, she wandered back into the living room and discovered him in the entryway fiddling with the lock.

“You need a new dead bolt. A window grate, too,” he said. “Since I'm staying another day or two, I can put them in tomorrow.”

“Dylan, that's not necessary.” She stood behind him, admiring the long line of his spine under his plain white T-shirt—a shirt they'd washed together only last night in
the downstairs laundry. His briefs, her underpants and bras…that everyday intimate connection, that shared background they now had—leaving out geography, of course—would be broken soon, too. She tried not to feel depressed. “Annie's leaving,” she said.

“Now? It's almost dawn. Doesn't she ever sleep?”

“No, I mean
leaving.
Like Cutter. He's going back to Atlanta so there's no reason for you to change my locks.”

“He's not going today, is he?”

“No, but…”

“Then you need new locks. Because if I'm still here and that guy climbs through your bedroom window again, I'll be staying a lot longer. In—what's your big prison?”

“Sing-Sing.”

Dylan straightened from his examination of her door. He turned around, slowly, his gaze intent and full of purpose. Darcie felt her heartbeat rise.

“You wouldn't want to visit me in jail. Would you?”

She remembered the erotic game they'd played about his sentence. “No. But why do violence? Cutter's harmless.”

Dylan looked unconvinced. “Tell me Longridge doesn't mean anything to you.”

“He's my friend.”

“He didn't look like just a pal when his eyes ran down your body in the bedroom and he saw you were naked.”

“Well, he is a functional male. Red-blooded, I assume.” Not that she considered herself to be some femme fatale men couldn't resist…

“While I'm here,” Dylan said, “I don't want him around.”

Darcie planted both hands on her hips. “Are you being disgustingly macho? Or are you just tired and cranky?”

“I'm cranky and possessive.” He smiled faintly. “I don't like to share.”

“What about Deidre? If I have to share, so do you.”

Dylan moved closer. He cocked his head to one side and studied her.

“Is that the green-eyed monster lurking again behind that this-is-just-for-kicks expression?”

“You're free to do as you please.”

“So you say.” Dylan's smile broadened. With satisfaction, Darcie thought.

“And that display in my bedroom was uncalled for. A complete overreaction.”

“
I'm
jealous,” he freely admitted. Then moved even closer. Darcie watched him, her gaze fixed on his darkening eyes. “And still hot. I have to hand it to Longridge. His timing couldn't have been more—no,
less
—perfect.”

“Poor Dylan.” Darcie wound her arms around his neck.

“You frustrated, too?”

“Desperate.”

Dylan's head lowered and she felt the strong muscles in his shoulders flex. He wrapped her tight in his arms and touched his mouth to hers. With the first contact, Darcie felt her evening resolve itself. Gran would be all right. Cutter was leaving and so was Annie, but Darcie would find some way to pay the entire rent herself. When Dylan's tongue met hers, she felt sadness, anger, worry disappear. Dylan was still here. He still wanted her. They hadn't finished what they'd started.

“Let's go to bed,” she whispered against his mouth.

“Let's stay right here.”

He nudged her back against the wall in the dark entry hall, as far from Annie's room as they could get, but Darcie didn't resist. She realized why Dylan wanted to be here instead of in her soft, warm bed. It was here she'd said goodbye to Cutter, and in a continuing expression of male territorial rights, Dylan needed to take her in the same exact spot.

“You know this is juvenile, unworthy of the Rafferty Stud.”

He trailed kisses along her throat, her collarbone, then the swell of her breasts—as much as they could swell when she wasn't wearing a bra.

“I don't care.”

His hands swept up under her shirt (Dylan's shirt) and
found her nipples. He pushed the shirt higher until he could close his mouth over her breasts, first one, then the other in a ritual display of possession that thrilled rather than repulsed Darcie.

When Dylan dropped to his knees in front of her, when he kissed his way down her rib cage to her waist then her hips, when he nuzzled between her thighs, she nearly exploded.

“Not yet. Not yet,” he said, doing such wicked, talented things to her body that she couldn't even speak, she could only gasp.

“Dylan…”

“This is
you,
Darcie.” When he had her on the edge again, he took his mouth away.

Moaning, writhing under his hands, groping for his mouth to touch her elsewhere, to bring her up and up and up, she heard herself beg. “Please, Dylan.”

“You,” he said again and stood. She heard his zipper glide down, heard the rustle of denim when he pushed his jeans to the floor. Underneath them he was naked. He hadn't bothered with his briefs after Cutter climbed through the window. Like a jolt of Spanish fly increasing her desire, she felt him hard between her thighs, bare and smooth and silky-hot. “This is
me.
”

Before she took another shaken breath, with her mouth swollen and tingling, her breasts aching and her thighs shaking, Dylan put both hands on her bottom and lifted her until she felt his erection at the juncture he sought. “Wrap your legs around me.”

In the next instant he slid deep inside her, so deep Darcie knew he touched her womb. Then she knew nothing except the glide and pull, the push and tug of Dylan's body in hers, and out, and in again, their rhythm in perfect harmony, their mouths fastened tight together, her legs around him and his weight holding her to the wall, and all the sounds they made, soft but urgent, in the entry hall of her apartment.

When the climax hit, it hit them both. Hard. Long. Endless.

Finally, Dylan, still shuddering, dropped his head next to hers against the wall. “Oh, Matilda.”

“That was…really good.” Her heart thudded like a tire gone flat to the rim.

“Good?” He was silent for a while. Then he added, “Ass-kicking great.”

Darcie kissed his damp temple. “And you're purged now?”

“Drained, all my strength gone like Samson with his hair shorn close as a sheep. I may not recover for months.”

“I mean, of Cutter Longridge.”

Dylan drew back. “You sure know how to break a mood. But since you have—” He broke off. “Or are you just trying to protect yourself here?”

Darcie untwined her arms from around his neck. She lowered her legs and slid to the floor, slowly down Dylan's body to show him she hadn't forgotten the mood.

“Protect myself?”

He put an arm around her neck and walked Darcie toward her bedroom. Yawning because, after all, it was nearly daylight and the sky was already pearly-gray, he said, “You do it all the time.”

Her pulse leaped. Darcie didn't like the direction of this conversation. She'd had a hard enough night. Not just with Dylan.

“Can't this wait? Whatever axe you need to grind, let's do it later.”

In her bedroom Dylan lifted her in his arms, then tucked her under the covers next to him. “Later will be Eden's tests, and your sister packing, and me putting in those new locks. Somehow we won't get around to it. I have things to say, and I need you to listen.”

She wasn't ready. He could be stubborn—and persuasive. She needed to prepare. If that was self-protection, okay.

If he was about to dump her…after that awesome sex in the hall…

“I'm really tired, Dylan. I have to work this morning.”

“So we'll go to bed early tomorrow night.” He raised
an eyebrow at her. “We'll sleep, too,” he added with a half smile that died away in the next instant.

“I'm not going to like this.” She lifted onto an elbow and looked at him in the dim light. Gorgeous. Dark hair, dark eyes, sun-browned skin. Lots of it.
What's to hate?
Dread overwhelmed her.

Dylan drew a deep breath. “I run a lot of sheep on my station,” he admitted. “Every spring—my spring, your fall—a bunch of lambs gets born. They frolick, gambol, leap and play all that first season.”

“Now you're getting poetic.”

“Then they grow up,” he went on, as if he hadn't heard her. Dylan reached out to touch her cheek. “Those little girl lambs are damn cute. Full of themselves. And pretty soon, one day they're ready.”

“Ready?”

“To breed. That's what it's all about, Darcie. Us, too.”

She tried to rise. “You've been on the farm too long.”

Dylan tugged her back down. “Maybe you should see for yourself,” he said.

“Are you asking me again to visit?”

“No. To stay.”

Her pulse jumped. “You mean, live there? With your mother in the house?”

“She'll love you.”

“Me? A woman who picked you up in the Westin Sydney bar? Dylan, I don't belong in Australia.” She felt sensitive to this subject, especially tonight after her talk with Annie. “Like my sister ‘forgetting' to get a job and going back to Cincinnati, you belong at Rafferty Stud. You
are
Rafferty Stud.”

He groaned. “Not at the moment. I'm exhausted.”

“I'm serious. I belong here,” she said. “You should marry Deidre.”

His mouth tightened. “I don't want to marry Deidre.”

But to Darcie, it made sense. “She lives next door. Like Cliff for Annie. You could join your two stations into one bigger operation. You understand each other, your way of life is the same. You're compatible in bed….”

“I don't believe it. I'm with one woman who's trying to push me at another.”

With every word she felt worse. But also right. “Deidre suits you. I don't.”

“How do you know? You've never even seen her.” Dylan's gaze held hers. “What do you think I was doing in the Westin bar that night myself?”

“Having a beer. Trolling for chicks.”

“Wrong—except for the beer part. Know why I went in there? I'd had a rotten day. I was in the city on business, to buy prime livestock to expand my breeding operation, and it wasn't going well. I was tired, frustrated with the broker I use, disgusted. So I thought ‘Why not? I'll have a few Foster's, fall into bed, try again in the morning. Once I get to town, which isn't often from the Outback, I stay until the business is done.'” He paused. “Then I looked across the room—and saw you.”

His stare intensified. “I was glad I could stay with you those two weeks. I haven't been the same since.”

She didn't know what to say. So she said nothing.

When he drew her into his arms, she didn't—couldn't—resist. So he wasn't dumping her. Wouldn't let her dump him, as if she could do that either. Her heart pounded furiously, whether in excitement or alarm, she couldn't distinguish.

“What I'm trying to tell you is, everything has its season, not to turn this into a sermon.” He half smiled. “But it's true for people just like sheep. Why do you think nature gives a young woman glossy hair—” his tone rough, he ran gentle hands through Darcie's mane “—a ripe mouth—” he grazed her lips with a finger “—beautiful breasts, a slim waist, rounded hips…”

“Dylan.” She would dissolve again if he didn't stop.

“Why do you think a man's shoulders get broad, his muscles hard, his beard coarse, his arms and thighs strong?”

Darcie was blushing.

“To attract a mate,” he said.

“Did I ask for a biology lesson?”
This is you. This is me.

“Listen. I'm thirty-four years old. I don't have time to
hang out in bars looking for women. I get to the city twice, maybe three times a year. Hell, where I live a mail-order bride's probably the best solution for a man.”

“Or Deidre.”

He pulled back. “Don't throw her at me again.”

“But can't you see
my
point? We've washed our underwear together, yes, but I
live
in Manhattan. I
love
Manhattan. It's not the wicked city to me, it's exciting, the center of commerce and civilization. You live in the Outback, one of the most remote areas in the world. What could be more different? What could make us more opposite?”