Wild Hawk (26 page)

She went with him down the escalator this time, silently, and followed him past the baggage carousels and back out into the night.

“Sorry, but I think we’d better walk. The less of a trail we leave now, the better.”

Her mouth quirked at one corner. “You’re far too good at this, you know.”

He looked down at her, and that grin flashed again.

“Nice to know I haven’t lost the knack.”

“Just where exactly
are
we going?”

His grin widened, but there was something different about it, a warmth that hadn’t been there when he’d turned it on that unsuspecting ticket agent. That realization engendered an answering warmth in her, a warmth she couldn’t suppress no matter how foolish her mind told her she was being.

“With any luck,” he said, his voice vibrant with an undertone that made her think of that moment he’d whispered to her to hold on to whatever thought had made her sigh, “paradise.”

Chapter Eighteen

HE’D HALF EXPECTED her to run. For all her cool poise and quick wit, it was clear to Jason that Kendall was nervous. That was good, he’d wanted her nervous. He’d wanted her edgy, tense, and more than a little itchy.

He’d wanted her as damn hot and ready as he was, he thought, his mouth quirking into a wry grimace.

And she was. He knew she was. Knew she hadn’t misinterpreted his teasing but fervent comment at the airport. He’d kept quiet since then, letting her think, hoping she was thinking exactly what he’d been thinking ever since he’d made up his mind the waiting was over.

Kendall had given him a quick, wary glance when he turned and started up the entrance of the large chain hotel that was next to the airport. She hadn’t spoken, even when he’d checked them in, asking for only one room. But she’d watched him; he’d felt her eyes on him at every turn, until they had stopped in the small gift shop for some necessities. He’d made a couple of purchases of his own, then walked over to where she was studying a display.

“I suppose you could find a more expensive toothbrush,” she was muttering, “but I’m not sure where.”

“The airport,” Jason suggested.

She gave a little start, as if she hadn’t realized he was there. Or as if she was so wound up, his being even this close made her jumpy.

“I . . . suppose you’re right,” she said, the slight quaver in her voice making him feel like nodding smugly.

It was going well, he observed with a level of calm he had to work a little too hard for. He’d done this before, played this game, drawn a woman into his net for his own purposes, but never had it been so easy. Well, not easy, there was nothing easy about suppressing the driving, aching need he’d unexpectedly developed, but that was something else. That was . . . timing. He’d just been too long without. It had nothing to do with Kendall herself.

Right,
he thought sarcastically
. Then why do you have to keep reminding yourself that it’s not for real, that it’s part of the plan?

But the plan was working, whether he was able to concentrate on it or not. She’d responded better to his lure than he could ever have hoped. A little charm, a little self-effacement, top it off with a sad story of his youth . . . it was too easy. He knew as well as he’d ever known anything that she wouldn’t resist him tonight. So why wasn’t he pleased? He’d done this before, when necessary,
with other women.

With women who had had their own reasons for going along. Women who knew how the game was played, who knew what they were—and weren’t—getting. Kendall wasn’t one of those. He knew that, now. He was even half convinced she was exactly what she’d appeared to be, impossible as that seemed to him. Was that why using her like this had him so unsettled?

Getting soft, West?
he muttered inwardly.

Not a chance,
he answered himself silently, giving the words a crude spin in his mind in his effort at control. He was hard as that fireboat hose again, he thought as he gauged the tightness of his body, growing rapidly at just the thought of finally having Kendall. It seemed impossible that until three days ago, he hadn’t even known she existed. He’d never laid eyes on her, and now he was going out of his mind with the need to touch her, to kiss her, to have her. To take her until she screamed with it, until she was quivering, helpless in his arms.

And it hit him again then, as it had before, the unaccustomed, vivid idea of his own desires reversed, of it being him crying out, his quivering under an onslaught of sensation unleased by the gray-eyed woman who had invaded his very being. It had never happened to him before, this need to be taken as well as to take, and it rattled him way down deep. He wanted to run, he wanted time to learn how to deal with this, to learn how to manage it. He just wasn’t sure there was enough time in the world. And he had no time at all, now.

He sucked in a breath, realizing Kendall was staring at him.

“Buy the damned toothbrush,” he ground out.

They were in the elevator before he trusted himself to speak again. And as it turned out, that was a little soon. His voice was a harsh, desperate thing as he said her name. He reached out and hit the red switch on the control panel. The closed-in car came to a halt.

Kendall pressed herself back as he whirled on her. His arms came up, a hand on either side of her head as he leaned against the wall, trapping her. He stared down at her, aware that he was breathing far too quickly, that he was already far too aroused to be subtle.

“If you don’t want this, Kendall, tell me now.”

His voice sounded as desperate as it had before, but as she looked up at him with those wide gray eyes, he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except easing this ache, assuaging this raging need. Nothing else mattered, not Aaron, not Alice, not the information he needed from Kendall. Not even the plan he’d spent his life formulating. Somewhere along the way to seducing Kendall Chase he’d been seduced himself. He’d lost control, and he didn’t know how to get it back. He didn’t want to get it back. Somehow it had all become real, as real as anything had ever been in his life.

“I’m frightened of it,” Kendall said, her voice strained but soft with honesty.

Jason tried to rein himself in; he didn’t want her frightened. And he no longer tried to kid himself that it was because it would make it harder to get what he wanted out of her. But he couldn’t, couldn’t slow down, not when she was so close, so soft, so sweet. He leaned in, closer to her.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, his voice even lower, hoarser now. “I’ll take care of you.”

Kendall made a tiny, negating motion with her head. “It’s you I’m frightened of,” she said, “and what you do to me.”

He groaned. “Don’t you think I am, too? Don’t you think how fast you do this to me scares the hell out of me?”

He pressed closer, until she couldn’t help but know how aroused he was. And he knew in the instant his erection brushed against her that every last word of it was the truth.

“I didn’t want this, Kendall. I’ve never wanted to feel this way. But there doesn’t seem to be a damn thing I can do about it. I can’t stop it, and I can’t change it. It just . . . is.”

And the fact that every word of that was true as well jolted him to the core, shook his every perception of himself and his purpose in life. He made a last effort to regain command of this. If he’d ever had it in the first place.

“I know you don’t trust me, you don’t even know me—”

“You decided to trust me,” she interrupted, sounding a little breathless. “And you don’t know me.”

“Don’t I?” he said, his voice down to a mere rasp of sound. “Don’t I know you, Kendall Chase? Everything that matters?”

And God help him, he meant that, too.

She stared up at him, lips parted for breaths that were corning quickly enough that the rapid rise and fall of her breasts beneath the pale blue silk of her blouse tightened the vise of need another notch. He couldn’t take much more of this. He shifted his hips, rubbing himself against her as she had once done to him, making it clear that they were at the point of no return.

“Now, Kendall,” he repeated. Although he didn’t know what he’d do if she said no. But he had to do this. It had to be her choice. He didn’t want her to ever be able to say it wasn’t. He didn’t want her to be able to blame him. And most of all he didn’t know why it even mattered to him. He just knew it did. “If you don’t want this, tell me now.”

“I’m frightened of wanting anything this much,” Kendall whispered. “But I do.”

He shuddered, half in sheer relief, half in violent arousal. When he reached to flip the switch on the elevator panel once more, his hand was shaking.

“YOU REALLY . . . expected this,” Kendall said, staring down at the small foil packets that had slid out of the bag Jason had tossed on the bed. It seemed so . . . cold somehow. So planned.

Jason’s hands came down on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Hoped,” he corrected. “Or I wouldn’t have given you the option to say no in the elevator.”

“I . . .”

Words failed her for a moment; he’d unbuttoned his shirt, and she couldn’t help thinking of that morning at the motel, when he’d come to the door looking so sleepily sexy.

He had only bought the condoms tonight, she thought. It wasn’t like he’d been carrying them around, just in case she . . . weakened.

“Would you rather I didn’t plan at all, Kendall?” he said at last, when she didn’t go on. “What did you want? To be able to say you didn’t know what you were doing, that it just happened, so you don’t have to take the responsibility for a choice?”

God, had she wanted that? Had she wanted him to simply take over, to be swept up in the passion he created in her, so she could later say it hadn’t been her fault, she just hadn’t been able to resist? Where was all her fine nerve and backbone and self-sufficiency now?

“Is that what you wanted?” he repeated. “To take a chance on ending up like my mother, alone, with a child to raise? Or to have to decide about an abortion?”

She bit her lower lip, staring up at him with eyes she was sure reflected her inner confusion. “Are you saying you . . . that you are like Aaron? You’d walk way?”

She saw something flicker in his eyes, something dark and pained in the piercing blue. “I’m saying,” he began, then stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “I’m saying that you can’t trust anyone to always be there for you. You should know that as well as anyone. Everyone left you, just like they did me.”

And that, she thought with a shivering little sigh, was the difference between them. His faith had died, probably along with his mother, while she had clung stubbornly to hers, clung to that belief that there were people in this life you could trust. As she had trusted Aaron. As Aaron had trusted her.

Aaron. God, she wished he were here, he’d make sense out of this for her, with his acerbic bluntness, he’d—

She nearly laughed at herself. At the idea of asking Aaron whether she should go to bed with his son. Not because she loved him, or even trusted him, but simply because he seared her senses into ash. She could just imagine Aaron’s answer.

She didn’t have to imagine it, she thought suddenly. He’d already given it to her.

You ever find the one who sets you on fire, girl, you don’t ever let go. Don’t be the fool I was. Don’t give up without a hell of a fight.

Sets you on fire.

Well, that certainly was exactly what Jason did to her. And no one else ever had, in all her thirty-three years. And she found she wasn’t willing to take the chance that anyone else ever would.

She took a step forward, shortening the distance between them, until she could feel the heat radiating from him. Steeling her nerve, she lifted one hand and slipped it between the edges of his open shirt, pressing her palm against his chest. She felt the leap of his heart beneath her fingers. Or perhaps it was the sudden acceleration of her own pulse; she couldn’t tell.

He closed his eyes, and she felt as well as heard him take a deep breath. And suddenly something else hit her about Jason’s purchase tonight; he hadn’t assumed she would handle it, nor had he assumed no precautions were necessary on his part. He’d simply taken care of it.

He moved then, his hands coming up to cup her face, to tilt her head back.

“No more chances, Kendall. It’s too late to run.”

“I don’t want to run.”

“Remember you said that.”

Before she could wonder what he’d meant by that, his mouth was on hers, igniting that fire once more, so quickly she wondered if it had ever really gone out or simply been banked, waiting for his touch to roar to life again.

There was no subtlety in this kiss, no gentle coaxing, nothing but pure, raw need unleased. And it unleashed an answering need in her, a need she had never felt, never thought to feel. A need she hadn’t, until Jason, thought she was capable of feeling.

Her hands slid up over his chest, freezing when she heard him make a low sound when her fingertips brushed over his nipples. Tentatively she flexed her fingers, rubbing, feeling the flat nubs tighten. Never breaking the kiss, he slid one hand down her back and pulled her hard against him. Inadvertently her fingers curled, dragging her nails slightly over his nipples, and this time the sound he made was louder, harsher.

She barely stifled a sound of loss when he released her, but it turned into a sigh when he yanked his shirt free of his jeans and shrugged it off his shoulders. His fingers went to the button on his jeans, releasing it, but then he stopped, watching her. Her fingers curled tighter as she looked at the expanse of his chest, lightly sprinkled with dark hair that she wanted to touch again, to savor the slightly rough texture it gave his skin.

His belly was as flat as she remembered, ridged with muscle, marked on one side by a faint, curving scar that went down his right side, curved in toward his navel, then down below the low-slung waistband of his jeans; it looked like the scar on his hand, and she wondered if he’d gotten it in the same fight. Wondered just how well he’d learned to fight back afterward, on those mean streets.

Her eyes naturally followed the direction of the scar, but when she reached the band of faded black denim, her gaze shifted to the path of silky hair that arrowed down from his navel and disappeared into the slight vee of his unfastened jeans.

She saw the muscles of his stomach contract; then he took her by the shoulders again and pulled her close. He bent his head once more, this time to press a trail of soft kisses from her forehead to her cheek, then around to her ear, making her shiver. As he had before, he traced the curve of her ear with his tongue, so delicately she was only sure he’d done it by the fiery tingle that raced along her nerves. Her hands came up between them again, to flatten against his belly, to savor and trace the ridged muscles there. They rippled beneath her touch, and the quickness of his response to her touch made her quiver inside.