Virgin Seduction

her.

The taste of her. He remembered it now. Oh yeah, it all came rushing back to him. And he knew in that moment that he'd never stopped thirsting for the taste of her.

He made a sound…whispered something, maybe her name. His head dropped lower, closing that taunting distance between himself and the thing he craved…

A loud banging noise made him jerk upright with adrenaline squirting through his system like ice cold fire. The door-dammit. Someone was knocking on the back porch door.

A moment later, before the shock of that had begun to subside, there came a lighter tapping at the kitchen door. It opened, and a short, bandy-legged man with a completely bald head and cheeks as red as Santa Claus stuck his head in. His neighbor, of course. Deb MacGruder.

'Hey, how you folks doin'? Heard you come flyin' in.'

It was impossible to stay irritated at ol' Deb, who had to be one of the nicest people ever put on this earth, and Cade didn't even try. Hoping he didn't look or sound as jangled as he felt, he invited the man in, introduced him to Leila and relieved him of the plastic grocery bags he'd brought with him.

'Edna sent you over some fresh eggs and a jug a' milk-figured you could use some.' Cade noticed then that ol' Deb was sort of fidgeting and looking sideways at Leila and blushing like a tongue-tied teenager, and when he glanced over at her, he understood why. She had her dimples turned on, full wattage, and was looking about as lovely and charming as it was possible for a woman to look. Deb rubbed a hand over his sunburned scalp and coughed. 'I, uh…put up some of the mares in the corral, just in case the two of you were wantin' to do some ridin' while you're here.' He sounded as if he thought the possibility remote, under the circumstances.

But Cade heard a gasp from somewhere behind him, and Leila's voice, breathless and excited. 'Oh, yes, thank you!'

And he realized that he ought to be feeling grateful. He'd been given a reprieve. All was not lost, after all.

Sure, he thought, what he had to do was keep his wife out riding all day until they were both so worn out and saddle sore they wouldn't be thinking about doing anything tonight except sleeping.

And tomorrow, well…that was another day. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

* * *

'Hey, what do you think you're doing? Come back here!'

Leila's answer to that was a peal of laughter. Crouching low over her mount's neck, she urged the mare to full gallop. Sure-footed like all of her breed, the roan mare's hooves seemed to fly over the hard ground. Dark shapes of the trees Cade had called junipers flashed by on either side of her, and their spicy scent rose into the muggy air.

At the top of the gentle rise Leila had a brief and exhilarating glimpse of forever, and then her heart lurched into her throat as the mare plunged over the top of the hill and skidded down…down into a sandy valley. With a squeal of sheer exuberance she urged the mare on across the sand and up the slope on the other side. And there she finally halted, with the wind whipping her hair and the view before her stretching all the way to the base of billowing black clouds. Laughing and out of breath, she waited for Cade to catch up.

'What the hell were you doing?' she heard him bellow as his horse's chestnut head with a white blaze appeared atop the rise. A moment later she saw Cade's face, and it was dark and stormy as the thunderclouds that filled the sky above their heads. 'What're you trying to do, get yourself killed?'

Somehow, though, Leila knew the light in his eyes was not anger, and she tossed back her hair and smiled as she called back, 'Killed? No, no-I am living!'

'Huh!' Muttering soothing things to his mount and patting her sweat-soaked neck, he brought her beside Leila's. 'Living?'

'Oh, yes-do you not know? I am living a dream. My dream.' She threw her arms wide and lifted her face to the sky. 'I have dreamed of this-riding like the wind…land that goes on forever.'

'Yeah, well, the land may go on forever, but my piece of it doesn't. You see that down there?' He jerked his head toward the limitless horizon, and he was throwing his leg over the saddle in a dismount that Leila was sure only a man with long legs and the body of a cowboy could accomplish gracefully. 'That's where my property ends. If you'd decided to keep on going to the next hill over there, you and the mare would've run right smack into a barbed wire fence.'

Leila was quite sure nothing of the sort would have happened, and that either she would have seen the fence in time to stop, or the mare would have. And then, most likely, they would have jumped over it.

But a wife must not argue with her husband. 'Please, do not be angry with me, Cade. If you only knew-'

'I'm not angry with you,' he muttered as he ducked under the chestnut mare's neck and came into the space between the two horses. 'Here-your stirrups are too short. Put your leg up.'

'Oh, but I like them this way. I am learning to ride Western style-Rueben has been teaching me-but I am not very good at it. He said I should get used to it a little at a time.'

Cade gave his head a shake. 'Looks like you were doing okay to me.' He tipped back the brim of his hat and squinted up at her. 'Where did you learn to ride like that?'

She felt a warm little rush of pride, felt it spread right into her cheeks. 'My brother has horses-I told you that, remember? At the polo match. Arabians, like yours. I used to ride a lot when I was younger, before-' She did not say, Before I became a woman, and no longer had the freedom of a child. 'Before I got too busy with other things.'

'Huh.' He made a thoughtful sound and grudgingly added, 'Well. Doesn't look like you've forgotten how.' He looked at her for a long, silent moment, one hand on her saddlehorn, his arm resting on her horse's neck. He jerked his head and said, 'Come on-get down for a bit. We'll give the horses a breather.'

'A…breather?'

'A rest. Then I think we'd better be heading back. I don't like the looks of that sky.'

Leila nodded and began to dismount. Then she stopped. She could not possibly manage the kind of graceful one-step dismount that Cade had used. Her stirrups were too short and her legs were, too. To dismount as she usually did, she would have to hold on to the saddle and lay her stomach across it while she freed her foot from the stirrup, then slide to the ground. But if she did that now, with Cade standing where he was, her backside would be only inches from his face. She was wearing jodhpurs, the only riding clothes she owned, and although they were not tight they did fit closely. If she was bending over, as she must, they could hardly help but outline her figure very clearly. The thought made her cheeks burn and her heartbeat quicken, but…not at all unpleasantly.

'Here-I'll give you a hand.' He held out his arms to her, ready to help her dismount. His face had no expression at all. Even his eyes told her nothing; they were hidden in the shadow of his hat brim.

With pounding heart she considered her two choices. And then, with a sense of giving up a tiger in favor of a lion, she put her hands on his shoulders. She felt his hands, strong on her waist. Her throat closed and her breathing stopped.

Cade thought, what am I doing? He knew he should be more cautious around her, but something inside him was clearly enjoying this flirtation with disaster. He was like a child playing with matches, one old enough to understand the danger and arrogantly sure of his ability to avoid it.

Ah, but what a waist she had…slender and supple in his hands. Not so delicate and tiny he imagined his hands could span it, but firm and strong, with muscles that tightened under his palms as he lifted her down from the saddle.

He sensed a stiffening in her, too, that was more than the physical tensing of muscles, and to his profound regret, he thought he knew what it was. Not fear, exactly-he could see that she desperately wanted to feel at ease with him. It was as if she dared not allow herself to be. What she reminded him of-and his heart ached to realize it-was something he'd seen in Betsy's adopted strays, the guarded hopefulness of a once-friendly dog only lately grown used to unkindness.

Guarded. Yes. He understood, now, that where once she had been open to him, innocently eager and certain of her welcome as a well-loved child, now she was fortified against him. Against his rejection of her, at least. Pride had taken the place of innocence-she would not allow him to hurt her again.

The thought made him feel dismal and defeated, the more so because of the intensity with which he wanted her, right then, at that very moment. He remembered that night on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, his