Rafe.»
Eve blinked as she tried to imagine anyone faster than Reno. She couldn’t.
«All through explaining?» Reno asked politely.
«What?»
«This.»
Reno bent just enough to cover Eve’s mouth with his own. When he felt her tighten beneath him as though to fight again, he settled more heavily on her, reminding her of the lesson she had already learned: When it came to a contest of strength, she didn’t have a chance against Reno Moran.
Tentatively Eve relaxed, wondering if Reno would release her if she didn’t fight him.
Immediately the overwhelming pressure of his body lifted until it was little more than a warm, disturbingly sensual contact from her shoulders to her feet.
«Now kiss me back,» Reno whispered.
«Then you’ll let me go?»
«Then we’ll negotiate some more.»
«And if I don’t kiss you?»
«Then I’ll take what is already mine, and to hell with what you want.»
«You wouldn’t,» she whispered weakly.
«Care to bet?»
Eve looked into the cool green eyes so close to her own and realized that she never should have allowed Reno Moran to sit down at her poker table.
She was very good at reading most people, but not this man. Right now she couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or telling her the simple truth.
Don Lyon’s sage advice rang in Eve’s mind: When you can’t tell if a man is running a bluff, and you can’t afford the ante if you lose, then fold your cards and wait for a better deal.
3
With trembling lips, Eve lifted her head to give Reno the kiss he had demanded. After a quick pressure of her mouth against his, she retreated, her heart beating wildly.
«You call that a kiss?» Reno asked.
She nodded, because she was too nervous to speak.
«I should have guessed you’d cheat with your body the same way you cheat with cards,» he said, disgusted.
«I kissed you!»
«The way a frightened virgin kisses her first boy. Well, you’re no virgin, and I’m no wide-eyed country boy.»
«But I–I am,» she stammered.
Reno said something beneath his breath, then added in a cutting voice, «Save the wide-eyed act for a pup that’s still wet behind the ears. Men my age know everything worth knowing about women’s tricks, and everything we know, we learned the hard way.»
«Then you didn’t learn enough. I’m not what you think I am.»
«Neither am I,» he retorted dryly. «I haven’t been taken in by that look of wide-eyed innocence since I was innocent myself. That was a long time ago.»
Eve opened her mouth to further argue her innocence, but a single look at Reno’s face convinced her that he had already made up his mind on the subject. There was nothing of comfort in his ice green eyes or in the flat line of his mouth beneath his mustache. He believed she was a saloon girl and a cheat, pure and simple.
Even worse, she couldn’t wholly blame him. Shehadcheated him. Although she hadn’t started out to use Reno in her deadly game with Slater and Raleigh, in the end she had risked Reno’s life without so much as warning him of what was at stake.
To add insult to injury, she had run off with the very pot she had cheated to give to Reno. The fact that he had survived at all was due to his own unusual skill with a gun. She hadn’t even known who he was, so she could hardly say that she was certain he would be able to fight free of the trap he had walked into.
A kiss seemed a simple enough apology to a man whose death she had nearly caused.
Lifting up again, Eve put her lips over Reno’s. This time she didn’t retreat instantly. Instead, she increased the pressure of the kiss gradually, learning the smooth resilience of his lips in a silence that was bounded by the frantic beating of her heart.
When Reno made no move to deepen or to end the kiss, Eve hesitated, wondering what she should do next. Though Reno didn’t believe it, she had told the truth about her innocence. The few times she hadn’t been fast enough to dodge a kiss from a cowboy, there had been nothing gentle or pleasant about the embrace. They had grabbed, she had fought free, and that had been the end of it. If there had been any sensual enjoyment in the experience, it hadn’t been hers.
But Reno wasn’t grabbing, and Eve had agreed to this kiss. She just didn’t know how to go about it. The realization perplexed her almost as much as the discovery that kissing Reno affected her in an entirely unexpected way.
She liked it.
«Reno?»
«Keep going. I’ll get an honest kiss out of you yet.»
Tentatively Eve’s hands crept around Reno’s neck, for she was becoming tired of holding herself in a half- upright position. At first she was reluctant to trust her weight to his strength, but the temptation was too great to resist for long. Gradually the pressure of her arms around his neck increased as she allowed him to support more and more of her weight.
«Better,» Reno said in a deep voice.
His lips were very close to Eve’s. The warmth of his breath sent a glittering wash of sensation over her. For an instant her own breath hesitated, then came back quickened. She arched her body to close the remaining distance between her mouth and Reno’s.
The first touch of his lips was already familiar, as was the frisson of pleasure that went over Eve when their mouths met. The silken brush of his mustache over the edge of her upper lip was also a pleasure she had known before. Yet each time she felt it, the intensity of the sensation grew greater, shortening her breath even more.
«I wouldn’t have guessed,» Eve whispered.
She was so close that each word was a separate brush over Reno’s mouth. It was the same when he spoke to her, each word a caress.
«What wouldn’t you have guessed?» he asked.
«That your mustache would feel like a silk brush.»
Eve wondered at the ripple that went through Reno, but had no time to think about it, for his arms were sliding around her. She stiffened, expecting to be grabbed and held down once more.
But Reno made no further move to force her. He simply held her so that she didn’t have to make any effort at all to stay close to him. Slowly she relaxed, letting his arms support her.
«I’m still waiting for my kiss,» Reno said.
«I think I’ve kissed you more than once.»
«And I think you haven’t kissed me at all.»
«What was I just doing?»
«Teasing,» he said bluntly. «Nice enough, but not what I had in mind, and you know it as well as I do.»
«No, I don’t. I’m not a mind reader,» she retorted, irritated that he hadn’t been half so unsettled by the slow, gliding kiss as she had.
«I know what you are. You’re a saloon girl with fast hands who promised me the one thing she can’t deliver — an honest kiss.»
