Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (8 page)

He groaned.
"You really like to hurt me, don't you, Princess?"

"You're the one who came charging in here without knocking," she groused from
somewhere in the vicinity of the doorway.

He rolled onto one hip and located her in the teetering beam of the flashlight.
She sat on the floor near the doorway, the door that had given too easily beneath his hand and banged against the inside wall now swinging halfway shut behind her. She was rubbing her shoulder, the slick fabric of a newly purchased camisole like a second skin across her abdomen.

…
which revealed the irregular rise of her navel.

She had a ring in her belly button.
He could see it outlined by the pale, thin fabric. A navel ring. He should be appalled, squeamish at the very least.

But he wasn't.

No. That hidden treasure teased him, made him want to touch the ridge it formed in the pliant fabric--to trace a fingertip along its semicircle and across Tess' pierced belly button. It made him want to taste the cool circlet with his tongue.

To taste
her
.

The muscles low in his groin gave a little yank.
Tess Abbot would laugh her audacious ass off if she knew how much she tempted him.

He tipped onto his backside and drew a leg up in front of himself in case his misbehaving body revealed too much against the smiley face pajama bottoms.

"You okay?" he managed, thankfully without sounding like a man in lust.

"You ran
over me. What do you think?"

Her cryptic tone took some of the edge off his desire.
He leaned back against the brace of his arms and sighed. "I heard you scream. I came up here to see what was wrong."

"I didn't scream," she said.
"I never scream."

"Okay.
Fine. I heard a noise and came to investigate," he retorted. "What were you doing on the floor in the dark?"

"That ridiculous nightlight of yours burned out and I couldn
't find the switch for the overhead so I opened the door so I'd at least have the hall light. Why'd you turn out the hall light?"

The words tumbled from her, not at all the usual Tess Abbot clipped phrasing
, and her fingers worried the thin strap of the camisole. There was more than a fear of darkness going on here.

"
I didn't turn it off," he said in answer to her question and raising one of his own. "How'd you end up on the floor in the first place?"

She looked away. "Lightning lit the hall
--the stairs…"

Given their relationship had deteriorated
these past six weeks into sniping at one another, a smart-aleck comeback formed on the tip of his tongue. But, he bit it back, the hint of vulnerability to her words--her body reminding him he never kicked an opponent when he or she was down. "So you hit the deck. Lots of people are freaked by lightning and for good reason. It can kill."

She
glanced ever so briefly at him. "Just turn on the light and leave me alone."

"Can't do that, Princess."

Her fingers stilled on the narrow strap of the camisole and she glowered at him. "What's the matter St. John, fingers out of joint because I made you carry a few things through The Bargain Mart for me?"

"My fingers work just fine," he muttered.
Among other things
, he silently added, reminded of how acid-tongued the woman could be…and acutely aware of how the camisole clung to the rise and fall of her breasts, its clingy fabric molding to the dark, pebbled tips of her breasts.

"The power is out," he finished on a tight breath.

Apprehension flickered across her eyes as she glanced around the mostly dark room. "In that case, you can leave but the flashlight stays."

"If you're thinking of leaving the flashlight on all night," he said, "forget it.
The batteries won't last."

"Ooh," she simpered, any sign of
vulnerability shuttered away. "Should the frail, little woman beg the big strong man to stay and protect her?"

"Heaven forbid that you have to depend on any man," he said.

She blinked, her gaze not quite coming back up to his.

"I have a kerosene lantern downstairs," he muttered.
"I'll get it for you."

She hugged her knees up against her chest, that utterly feminine chest he'd already mapped with his eyes.
"Fine."

"Stay put," he ordered, levering himself onto his feet, trying to figure out what it was about the way she hugged herself that didn't quite match
add up to the stubborn Tess he'd come to know. "I wouldn't want to trip over you again."

"Just go get the lantern, St. John."

He sighed and took a step toward the door just as a volley of thunder punched the air. Tess skidded backwards on her butt into the door with such force the door slammed shut. He stopped in front of her.

"You're going to have to move in order for me to leave."

"Okay," she said, but didn't move.

Near panic gnawed at Tess' gut as she stared
into the blackness that defined the window. Another lightning flash turned the pines behind the house into a black picket fence, their pointed tops irregular--menacing. She'd lived this nightmare before. The lightning that had burned the stairs outside the bedroom into rolling whitecaps and brought her to her knees had taken her back to that night long ago.

"Don't like storms, huh, Princess?"
If only Roman's voice had maintained the bite of his earlier words, there'd have been nothing to resist. But his voice had softened.

Heaven forbid that you have to depend on any man
.

And wasn't he exactly the kind of man a woman could lean on.
Reliable. But she wasn't the kind of woman who wanted to lean on any man. Still…

"Stay," she whispered, her voice raspy…thin.
"Just until the storm passes."

His fingers twitched at his sides.
"It can't hurt you here in the house, Princess."

T
hunder rumbled through the house--through Tess. She shivered.

"Princess?"

Why did he have to keep calling her Princess? Why did he have to make this so hard for her?

Why couldn't she just blow him off like she did every other man?

A man to depend on--to lean on
.

Tess shook her head, looked up at Roman, and muttered, "I'm going to have to tell you how I came to fear the dark and storms
and everything that goes with them in order to get you to stay, aren't I?"

"Only if you want to."

She'd never told anyone the whole story. She didn't know if she could even now. If only she could see his expression--see if he taunted her, but his back was to the beam of the flashlight. Still, he'd left the choice to tell or not to her. She cleared her throat.

"I was at summer camp.
Thirteen going on thirty. One of those posh places built on the bank of a private lake. Girls on one side. Boys on the other."

She paused,
waiting for some snide reference to her privileged background--half hoping he would say something so she could stop before she made a total fool of herself. But he said nothing and she continued.

"I had a crush on one of the boys," she rushed out.
"He snuck out one night, stole a boat, and sailed across the lake. I was waiting for him. We were out in the middle of the lake when the wind kicked up and the sails tangled."

The memory came back to Tess with an intensity she wasn't prepared for.
She closed her eyes and was instantly back on that tiny boat in the middle of a black lake.

"The waves were wicked
bad," she said. "We scrambled to straighten out the sails but…"

The silence stretched, then…

"Tess?"

A world of concern sounded in the voice that spoke her name. But she'd learned the hard way how superficial a man's concern could be. Yet, when she opened her eyes, there he was, hunkered down in front of her,
a reassuring energy reaching out to her--his energy.

"It wasn't just wind, was it?" he said in a low
voice.

S
he answered him in spite of her fear of revealing her weakness, her voice quavering. "It was a storm. The thunder so loud I couldn't hear what he was shouting."

"Something else happened, didn't it?" he said, drawing her further into that night.

Silently, she cursed Roman for probing--for making her want to tell the whole story.

"Yeah," she shot back at him, trying to hide behind her clipped city demeanor.
"The boom hit me across the back and knocked me into the water. My little boyfriend panicked and sailed off."

Horror she expected to
hear in Roman's voice, not anger. "How did you--"

"I swam," she cut in, afraid anything he said at this moment would un
do her. "The storm woke my bunkmate. She knew where I'd gone. Knew the trouble I'd be in if I was caught. She found me…"
found me in a fetal position on the shore.
"She found me cold and exhausted and got me into a hot shower then bed."

"Hope the jerk got what he deserved," Roman growled.

The haunting fear melted at his words. That he cared enough to be angry for her touched her deeper than anything any other man had ever said to or done for her. He made it tempting to accept his comfort, so very tempting.

"I didn't report the incident."

His head backlit by the flashlight, she couldn't see what was in his eyes, but she could see the hinge of his jaw pop. If she had any doubts what he was thinking, they were confirmed by his words.

"That means the little jerk didn
't tell anyone you were out in the middle of the lake in a storm possibly drowning. That's criminal."

H
er chest ached with a longing she didn't want to explore. She lifted a small smile at Roman.

"If I'd reported our being out on the lake that night, I'd have been the one expelled. I was a bit of a rabble rouser."

"You?" he said, mock shock tempering his anger. "A rabble rouser? I don't believe it."

"He's running for Congress
," she said. "Maybe I'll volunteer to help his opponent."

Roman dropped down beside Tess, his back to the door, his shoulder touching hers.
"That would make him sweat."

The kind of man a woman could lean on
.

She wanted to lean on h
im. To give in to her desires for all the ways she wanted him.

And why not?

She was up on her knees, her lips brushing his before he'd even registered her movement.

"Thank you," she
said, her breath a whisper against his lips.

"For what?" he asked, his arm automatically encircling her waist.

"For listening. For caring."

The thin camisole strap slipped off h
er bare shoulder. He shouldn't have put his arm around her. He'd realized his mistake when she leaned in for another kiss and placed her hand on his stomach just above the drawstring of the smiley face pajama bottoms. He covered it with his to keep her from venturing lower and discovering how his body reacted to her when all he'd meant to do was comfort her.

She shifted against him,
one pebble hard nipple imprinting his ribs. The muscles across his abdomen bunched painfully. She edged a leg over his and that part of him most definitively male, that part hard-wired in antiquity to respond to the slightest call to procreate jerked.

"You could come downstairs with me while I get that lantern," he said, fighting the urge to slide his hand down that long leg hooked over his, to explore the sensitive back of Tess Abbot's knee and close his fingers around her slim ankle.

"I could," she said, but didn't move.

"Princess--"
His voice was more husky than he meant it to be.

She
rose onto her knees, straddling his thigh, facing him with her hands on his chest. He twitched where she touched him, on his chest, and there between his legs. He caught her by the wrists, half expecting her to start swinging once she figured out what part of him bobbed against her leg.

But she didn't swing.
She didn't shrink away.

She didn't laugh.

She simply slipped one hand from his grip, reached down between them, and laid her hand lightly upon that part of him that nudged her knee--that part governed by the most basic of instincts.

He jumped against her palm and murmured hoarsely, "This isn't a good idea."

"No, it isn't," she whispered against the corner of his mouth a millisecond before slanting her lips across his.

Weeks of restraint evaporated in the conflagration of that kiss
, of tongue meeting tongue. His hands flew over her, scouting terrain he'd up until now dared only look upon, gauging the angle of her hips and breadth of her back. His fingers tripped across her ribs and climbed the ladder of her spine.