Wildfire (9 page)

Biting her lip, she stooped to pick up the magazine she had dropped when he grabbed her. "Actually..."

As the word faded away, he propped himself up on his elbows and studied her face, a look of disbelief growing on his. > "You didn't jump into the backseat, did you? And you didn't sneak away at parties." Still staring at her, he slowly shook his head. "Unbelievable."

"Not that it's any of your business," she said, her voice stiff, "but Johnny and I made a conscious decision to wait until we were married to make love. We avoided heavy petting because it would have been too much of a temptation."

"Unbelievable," he repeated. "I didn't know people like you really existed. It's like something out of an old TV sitcom. I can see it now, you and Donna

Reed sitting at the kitchen table, the two of you drinking Bosco while you tell her how Johnny held your hand at the movies." He shook his head again. "Incredible."

Dropping back to the bed, he stared at the ceiling for a long time; then suddenly he was on his feet. "There's nothing else for it," he said with a careless shrug. "We'll have to go back and pick that up. Right now. It's an important part of your education."

The words were offhand, but something was different. Tanner wasn't playing the clown anymore. He was totally serious. He was going to reach back into the past and teach her about teenage petting.

With an effort she forced her head to move in two short, negative shakes. "No, really, Tanner. I—"

"What's the matter, sweetness?" He drew steadily closer. "Chicken? You want Drew, don't you?"

"That's not the point."

"Sure it is. That's why we're here. That's what all this is about."

"Maybe," she conceded, pushing the hair off her cheek in a distracted movement, "but I really don't think this is the way to—"

"You're not supposed to think, remember? You're supposed to feel."

He was moving behind her now, circling her, and she followed his movement with wary eyes.

"Tempting fate, teasing the senses, going right to the edge"—his voice was a lazy stroke across exposed nerve endings—"it's all a part of being hot."

She should probably leave now, she told herself. She should turn and run, and not slow down until there were at least a couple of miles between them. But something held her still. Something in those dark, unsettling eyes ... or something in her.

"This is going to be a tactile sensation beyond silk." He was still moving, and the touch of his breath set up tingles on her ear and the back of her neck. "A necessary experience, just think of this little exercise as a narrow mountain road. Every hairpin turn is going to bring you closer to your dream castle at the top."

The words whispered slowly across her face, and then he was behind her again, not quite touching but close enough for her to feel the heat from his body.

Drawing in a shaky breath, she closed her eyes, fighting desperately to resist the pull of his raspy voice.
Soft and rough. Water over gravel.

"Let your imagination go, Rae. We're sixteen again, standing together in the shadows of your backyard. Your bedroom window is open, and the radio is playing. Hear it? Hear the words? All I need is the air I breathe ... and you."

Sweet saints, she heard it. She heard the phantom beat throbbing through the air, and when his hands settled on her hips, applying a subtle but irresistible pressure, she found herself swaying with the music.

"That's right," he said, moving with her. "It's got you, hasn't it? The rhythm in the air.. . the rhythm inside both our bodies."

His hands slowly slid forward, his fingers spread out across her stomach. She didn't resist. She couldn 't resist, not even when he pressed her hips back against his, their bodies still moving together with the inner beat.

"You want to make love." The husky words were inside her now, filling her up, mingling with the secret music and the warmth of his fingers. "But you can't. Not now. Any minute one of your parents could come out the back door and catch us. Feel your heart beating faster? There's danger here. But not enough to make you stop."

His head was bent, his lips next to her ear, so that she was a hairbreadth away from the rough excitement in his low laugh. "Oh no, you won't stop. Because you can't. You have to have one more touch, one more taste of the wildness."

Her eyelids raised lethargically when she felt him move. He was in front of her now, and she stared up at him with dazed eyes as he held her hip to hip, their bodies still rocking from side to side, keeping time to the erotic beat.

"Maybe one of the neighbors is watching," he whispered, his eyes roaming restlessly over her face. "What will she think when she sees sweet little Rae letting her boyfriend put his hands on her body?"

His hands smoothed their way over her hips to explore the curves of her buttocks, then up her sides to the edge of her breasts, rubbing her through the cotton blouse.

"And what will she think when she sees sweet little Rae touching him back?" Keeping their lower bodies close, he brought her hands up to his chest. "You're desperate to feel bare skin under your fingers, and his shirt, just a thin layer of cotton, feels like armor plate because it's keeping you from what you need so badly."

He moved her hands, pushing them beneath his open shirt, letting them rest on the warm flesh. "That's right," he rasped against her forehead as her fingers, of their own accord, began to explore his muscled chest. "It hurts, doesn't it? Knowing that this is all you can have. Knowing that this one little taste of passion is all you'll get tonight. The thought of being caught is scary, but something is working inside you that's bigger than fear. More overpowering than fear. Something that's arousing you beyond your wildest dreams. And, that's the knowledge that I.. . that your boyfriend wants to be inside you so damned much, it's driving him right out of his mind."

She swallowed a whimper as his fingers moved closer to the tips of her breasts. "You want the rest, you're crazy to feel it all, but you can't have it, not here, not now. .. and that makes the need more intense, more exquisite. The urgency is building in both of us, becoming intolerable. Things are happening to your body, changes are taking place. Feel them? Feel the blood surging to the sensitive places? Feel the warm, slick wetness? Every square inch of your body is alive with need, screaming out for release."

Her head had dropped back, her eyes closed, her head reeling as her breath came in short, shaky gasps.

Throbbing, throbbing, in her ears and her breasts, between her thighs. Rhythmic pulsation that kept time to the music. But there was no music. It was inside her. He had put it inside her. And now there was heat. She felt it through her clothes. It was the heat of his mouth, his breath . .. no, no, the heat of his words. Only words. But the words were touching her in secret places, moving her, gently rearranging her body so that she could feel the heat. . . so that she could feel it mingling with the throbbing need. He was. . . sweet heaven, he,was—

She gave a moaning gasp, and her eyes flew open. Her breasts rose and fell in rapid, erratic movements as she backed awkwardly away from him.

He shifted his shoulders slightly. Had he moved? Had he always stood as he was standing now? He was watching her, just as she was watching him, but unlike her, he wasn't blinking in frantic confusion. He was simply watching. Watching and waiting, his dark eyes narrowed.

She could read nothing in his expression, nothing to tell her what had really happened. Had it only been words? Had she been shaken to the core by nothing more than an incredibly vivid description of an intimate act?

"Of course, it couldn't be an exact reproduction of the original," he said, as though he were picking up a conversation that had been momentarily interrupted, "but I think you get the idea."

His voice sounded normal. Or did it? she wondered, cutting uneasy eyes in his direction. She couldn't tell. She couldn't be sure. Normal was beyond her grasp. Every thought was out of focus, her senses haywire.

Raising his hand, he glanced at his watch. "You look tired. Why don't we call it quits for now and save the next lesson for another night?"

The next lesson? she thought, stifling a laugh of hysteria. She hadn't finished reeling from the current one. She didn't even want to think about what came next.

On the drive home she was still shaking inside, her hands clenched on the steering wheel in a death grip, her foot pressed to the floor in her urgency to outrun her thoughts, to outrun the knowledge that tonight she had crossed over an invisible line. She had unwittingly wandered into foreign territory.

Wild territory.

Tanner's territory.

❧

Long after Rae had left, Tanner paced the small inner boundaries of his cabin, his movements filled with a restless urgency. Occasionally, without pausing, he raked an unsteady hand through his hair, ineffectively trying to shove the thoughts out of his head.

The hounds of hell were loose tonight. They were inside him, running mad, goading him, prodding him, demanding that he take action. A specific action. An action that required the presence of a woman who was probably sleeping soundly on a pile of lacy white pillows.

An instant later his harsh laugh broke through the silence. Sweet Jesus, he was paying now for his stupidity. Just a little blaze, he had told himself. He would get a little blaze going. Just for the hell of it. Just to show he could.

But from the very first it had gone wrong. He knew it. He knew it was going wrong, but he couldn't make himself stop. And so the little blaze had gotten out of control and was now inside him, burning him up.

Burning . .. him .. . up.

A growling groan of pain came from deep in his chest. Swiveling on his heels, he moved toward the door and took the three steps in one leap as he headed for the stable.

He would ride it out. He would take Loco, the wildest, meanest horse in this part of the country, and he would ride, hard and fast, across the open range. '

He wouldn't stop until the demons were back in their cage and the fire in his gut had burned itself out.

❧

Rae glanced at the digital clock beside the bed. Two A.M. The candy-striped nightshirt had been discarded hours ago, but tonight it didn't help. She was no closer to sleep than she had been at midnight.

Unbelievable, unthinkable memories filled the room around her. Memories too vivid to be endured. Every soft night sound, every touch of the sheet, even the breeze stirred by the ceiling fan, all reminded her of Tanner's lesson and her incredible reaction. Even now, hours after the fact, every inch of her body was aflame. He had left his imprint on her, as surely as if he had used a branding iron.

With words.

Exhaling a soft groan, she sat up and covered her face with her hands. Tonight, fully dressed and sober as a judge, with a man she neither understood nor trusted, Rae had almost—

But she didn't want to think about what had almost happened. She didn't want to remember the inward clinching of her body, the dawning of exquisite pulsations at her center, sensations she recognized instantly and had shut off before they could take hold.

Brought on by words}

The most incredibly intimate act in nature. The thorough giving over of self. Willingly, even joyfully, allowing another human being to stand witness to that moment of all-encompassing vulnerability.

With nothing more than words, Tanner had set something loose inside her. But, dear sweet heaven, she didn't want it set loose. Ever. She couldn't handle it. She wanted it to go back to its hiding place and leave her alone.

Riding out a violent shudder, she slipped from the bed and walked to the window. The backyard, bathed in the platinum glow of moonlight, was a place of fantasy and peace.

Rae wanted to walk out there. She wanted to stand in the open air, her arms raised to the silver night. She wanted to feel the light summer breeze on her naked flesh, stroking her mouth, hardening the tips of her breasts, stirring the fine hair between her thighs.

And that impulse, that shocking urge, scared her almost as much as what had taken place in Tanner's cabin.

What was happening to her? Why, at this point in her life, was she discovering these incomprehensible, uncharacteristic cravings within herself? It didn't make sense. '

Drawing in a deep shaky breath, she spent the next ten minutes concentrating with fierce intensity on the flowers and shrubs, on the shadows thrown across the little rock terrace, but it was no use. The pattern of light and dark only reminded her of the night she first met Tanner. Fireworks and shadows. Lone Dees madness. The impact he had made on her with a single look from those dark devil's eyes.

In desperation she tried to conjure up a picture of Drew, the man she wanted to be the father of her children. The man who would never send her running into the night, afraid of her own feelings, doubting her emotional stability. Drew was steady. Solid as a rock. Totally secure.

And she couldn't even remember what color his eyes were.

Slumping down to the window seat, she bent over and hugged her bare legs to her chest. This had to stop. Somehow, she had to force reason into an unreasonable situation.

This feeling, the glorious madness she had felt when Tanner moved his body in time with hers and stroked her with husky words, wasn't all that extraordinary, she told herself. Every woman in town wanted him. Even the ones who condemned him in public saved their private moments for wondering what it would be like to have Tanner West in their beds.

Rae had seen the way women looked at him. Old and young, married and single, they all wanted him. Why should she be the exception? Lusting after Tanner was practically de rigueur.

Letting out a slow breath, she leaned back against the side of the window. This was good, she decided. Now she was getting somewhere.

Although she had always thought of herself as a supremely sensible person, she was still human. And the feelings Tanner brought out in her were probably some sort of echo of humankind's primitive past. Cavemen had short life spans. No time for dating, for exchanging phone numbers and astrological signs. It was a matter of see, want, have.

Tonight, some secret, primal urge in Rae had been ignited by a man who was himself primal, a walking call of the wild.

But it was a passing thing. She had to believe that. She couldn't make her attraction to Tanner more important than it was. Just because she had never experienced it before didn't mean it was anything out of the ordinary. Pure animal passion was something that happened all the time. She would have to accept it as a natural, albeit disconcerting, part of life.

And then she would simply have to learn to ignore it.

It was a sticky situation, but Rae was satisfied that she had found the solution. She had faced the facts, defined the problem, and mapped out a course of action.

So why wasn't she back in bed? Why was she still sitting in the window seat, rubbing her chin across up-drawn knees?

Because something was nagging at her, some difference—

That was it, she realized, sitting up straighter. She was different. In just a few short hours, she had changed. Something had been added to her mental and emotional makeup. Anticipation. Excitement. Acute awareness of possibilities. Passion for life.

For nine years she had been in a rut, plodding along, using routine to fill the empty spaces in her life, existing merely by rote. All the astonishing urges she had felt tonight meant she was coming out of her self-imposed shell. It meant she was finally opening herself up to life.

She gave a soft laugh as it dawned on her that Tanner, in his own infamous way, was doing exactly what he had told her he would do.