brilliant intuition to know, positively, that Cord didn’t do emotional spills. He didn’t live the kind of life where he ever expected to find himself knee-deep in muck, at least this kind of unethical, ugly muck. It wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t his doing, but responsibility still showed in every forehead crease, every pinch around his eyes, every stiff- shouldered movement.
She knew about that.
She knew about feeling alone, about being alone, about trying to build a shell around herself so thick that hurt couldn’t get through.
She knew about wading through mud, trying to find a way that would make sense, willing to do anything, to be anything, to turn herself into someone else, if that’s what it took to survive.
Cord frowned and stopped prowling around the room when he noticed her silently walking toward him.
As if suddenly uneasy, his hand seemed to unconsciously jerk on a switch. Lights dimmed, although he didn’t seem aware of it. When she kept approaching him, he looked at her with a questioning expression.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
And then she kissed him.
Chapter 6
The minute Sophie roped her arms around him, she knew this was right.
Possibly, it was the scariest, stupidest, craziest thing she’d done in years-especially for a woman who hated risk.
But it was still right.
Cord was breaking. She suspected he saw himself as a tough, strong loner, because he was. But this crisis with his brother had started seeping through the cracks, threatening foundations. She’d had her own foundations threatened. She’d gotten lost in her own darned cracks.
That’s why she had to do it. Kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.
When their lips first met, she felt the taste and smoothness and yielding of his mouth. Then, as if she’d shocked him beyond belief, his hands suddenly clenched her shoulders. He yanked his head back with an “Um, Sophie…”
She got the message from his gentle tone. She could get out of this. He’d make a gentle joke, and she could joke back, and they’d both be able to forget she’d acted like a crazy fool.
Instead, she went back up on tiptoe and absconded with another kiss. This time she framed his head in her hands and pulled him down to her height-or close enough.
Years ago, when she was still half a baby, she remembered belting out the blues from her front porch in her mom’s high heels and a brush for a pretend microphone. That was before her world had broken. Before she’d broken.
All this time, that Sophie had been buried so deep that she’d never believed there was an inch of that wild girl left.
But it seemed there was…when she kissed Cord.
She still thought-knew-he wasn’t being totally straight with her. She had no illusions or thoughts about a future or a capital-
But…somehow they seemed to be sharing something vulnerable and raw because of Jon. Things were coming out of his woodwork. Out of hers.
It wasn’t a choice. It was what had been forced on them by life, by fate. But reaching out to him was still as necessary to her as breathing. She felt as if a primal life force were burgeoning up from some dark, dusty corner, seeking light, needing warmth. Cord had no reason to know that she never did this, that it was just too hard.
Yet with him…it was easy.
So, so, so easy.
He took over.
She should have known he would. Heaven knew, Cord wasn’t a passive kind of guy. He may have been startled by that first kiss, particularly coming from her…but he turned on faster than whiplash.
Suddenly he wasn’t just accepting her embrace, but doing the kissing, taking a whole lot of initiative. Long, sure hands stroked from her neck, down her spine, down to the swell of her fanny. He lifted her up, spun her, lips sealed, tongues finding each other like whispers in the night.
Her back thunked against a wall…not a hard thunk, but enough to make her exquisitely aware that Cord was losing control at rocket speeds. His keys definitely turned on her ignition. Her body instinctively arched against his. The heat of him enticed her heat; her breasts swelled for the rowdy desire now pulsing off him in waves.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” he whispered thickly against her throat, “but I know where it’s going if you don’t say stop damned quick.”
“I don’t want to stop. I want you.”
Sophie knew she hadn’t said that. Another woman in the room did. A stranger, a completely immoral, amoral stranger.
The same stranger pushed at his sweater, took his mouth as avidly, as hungrily, as he took hers. Beneath the wool was hair-roughened skin, the ripple of muscle and sinew, nothing soft. He was going to kill her, she figured. He was too big, at least for a woman her size, a woman who hadn’t exactly done this…much less in recent history.
Almost in recordable history. And here she was, still yanking off the sweater, demanding bare flesh, needing to touch him. Everywhere. Anywhere. When he started chaining kisses down her throat, she nipped at his shoulder. Just little bites.
He tasted damn good.
“Jesus, where did all this come from?” he muttered. “I thought you were shy.”
“I was.” For years and years and years, she was. With other men, she was.
She reached around, felt his adorable, irresistible tight butt. Sheesh, how could he have those huge broad shoulders and no butt? She squeezed…which may have been a mistake, because one minute she was pressed up against the wall, and the next she was on the floor, her sweater being shoved over her head, his hands on his zipper before she could suggest…
Well…
“Condoms.”
“As if I’d risk you,” he said. “They’re in my back pocket.”
For a whole second she turned back into the
“No, Sophie. And if they did, I wouldn’t jump into a ‘yes.’ I’m saying yes to you. Just you.”
He answered her with whisper, with touch. At the same time, he was peeling off the rest of her clothes, one garment at a time. Once the sweater was gone, he stroked his soft tongue down her throat, to the swell of her breasts, to the rim of a pink-and-black bra.
“Not what I expected,” he murmured. “But then nothing I’m finding is what I expected about you, Sophie Campbell.”
The black lace bra disappeared, replaced by his mouth, testing and tasting and exploring the territory revealed. Her nipples tightened until they hurt. The room…wasn’t dark enough. Not for this. Not for the exotic road of his tongue, down to her navel, down, as his hands chased her slacks off, as if the silky heat of his tongue could cover where she was being uncovered.
She started shivering then, but not from cold. The look in his eyes was intent, intense, cherishing. She had an old fantasy about a lover who stole into her room in the night, who weaved a spell, seduced her, forced her to do brazen, abandoned things. It was her favorite fantasy.
This was better.
