heartbeat a kick.
Except, it was only and always the scoundrels who put that zing in her pulse.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She could accept that she had terrible judgment in men, that she never fell for the guys who were right for her. But she just didn’t think she could survive having her heart kicked again. She had to get tougher. She had to stay away from the scoundrels.
Only, something seemed different this time.
The excitement, the danger, the recklessness and urgency-it was all there. Times ten. But this wasn’t the kind of man she knew or had ever known.
“Teague,” she whispered in a hesitant voice, when Daisy knew she’d never had a hesitant bone in her entire body. But that seemed to be the precise problem. Her body. The body that was slowly, mercilessly turning into shambles.
He’d already pulled her sweater over her head, sent it soaring somewhere in the dark shadows. His big, callused hands slipped in the waistband of her pants, then, lingered long enough to cup her fanny, then slid her black slacks down her thighs to her ankles. Then-possibly because he couldn’t keep his weight on his bad ankle any longer-he sank down to the couch. Only he didn’t sit down immediately. His mouth trailed down from her breasts to her ribs to her navel, chasing the same path as his hands did on her derriere.
She was wearing underwear. French underwear. Tap pants, ivory with lace. And that’s where his mouth stopped traveling. He lingered there, first kissing the lace, then the ivory satin…not kissing bare skin, never kissing bare skin. But the whisper of satin was hardly a barrier.
An embarrassed groan whispered from her throat, the last sound she made. She couldn’t seem to keep oxygen going in and out of her lungs. She reached for him, found the muscles in his back bunching and clenching for her touch. His mouth came back to hers, and while his lips clung to hers, held hers intimately, she pushed at his shirt, pushed at his jeans, pushed at his zipper.
At some point they seemed all tangled up, her trying to pull him on top of her on the couch-Teague trying to pull her on top of him. Somehow the couch got abandoned. It was just too hard to find it with her eyes closed and nothing on her mind but touching him and being touched. The scratchy carpet at least cushioned her bare back, and still he kissed her, rubbing his pelvis against her bare tummy now, so she could feel how hard and urgently he wanted her.
The fire suddenly sent a fireworks of sparks up the chimney. A log tumbled to the grate. All this time, they’d been warm enough with the fire, as long as they wore all their clothes, yet now they were both peeled down to near bare flesh-give or take socks-and she was still amply warm.
Hell’s bells, she could have swum in the snow and might still need to do that just to cool off. That funny thought surfaced, but it wouldn’t stick. It should have stuck. Sex was fun. It made life worthwhile. It made a woman feel alive, feel important, feel her own power. But it shouldn’t tear a girl’s soul out, should it?
Daisy was no baby about this. She knew life. She couldn’t be fooled by fairy tales, not anymore. But damn. This yearning seeping through her, eeking through her, aching through her, was scary and troubling and… compelling.
Teague’s eyes suddenly opened, found hers, held hers. “You ready?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes. Ten times yes.”
“If we fall off the world, we do it together.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t give a damn about tomorrow. You’re mine tonight.”
“Yes. And you’re mine.”
“Ah, hell, yes.” And then he thrust inside her, his head thrown back, the pulse in his throat throbbing as hard as hers was.
And then it was just as he said. She tipped off the world. With him. Into him.
She woke up to a nightmare. One instant she’d been burrowed in a cocoon of warmth and safety; the next, there was a frantic thud in her tummy and fear slamming in her pulse.
Her eyes shot wide. Yesterday morning she’d been wakened by a cell phone, and from somewhere in the house the same phone was beeping now. Everything else was a jolt of a surprise, though. Sunlight sneaked through cracks in the curtains. Every light and lamp in the Cunningham house seemed to be turned on. New noises emanated from everywhere-the hum of a refrigerator motor, a radio in another room, the clang of hot water pipes. A man was wrapped around her as if he were the birthday boy and she was his present.
Faster than a blink she realized power had been restored and the blizzard really did seem to be over. But the man spooned around her, protecting her from dragons and darkness and all… There was the nightmare.
Guilt hit her brighter than the daylight. Maybe she’d curled up with Teague that first night, but nothing serious had happened. She could forgive herself a lost moment in time. But last night…
Last night she’d made love with him-a near stranger. She didn’t do that. Ever. She was capable of being very foolish, of making impulsive decisions, of choosing the wrong men. But she’d never been a complete and total idiot before.
“That cell phone,” the low-whiskey baritone said to the curve of her neck, “keeps ringing. Apparently the caller’s not going to give up. You want me to get it?”
“No, I will. You’re just going to hurt your ankle if you try to hustle. And it has to the sheriff.” It was. Unfortunately, she couldn’t discover that for sure until she’d charged out from under the covers naked as a jaybird. The cell phone was in the kitchen, plugged in, but obviously the power hadn’t been on long because the connection was scratchy.
“Daisy Campbell, if you hadn’t answered soon, I was going to have a heart attack. I thought something happened to the two of you!”
“No, we’re both fine, George.” She whirled around, searching frantically for something in the torn-up kitchen to cover herself with. The only thing in sight was a scratchy-looking carpenter’s apron. Useful for covering up the front of her. Marginally. Sort of. “I just couldn’t get to the phone any faster, but we’re both all right.”
“Good. Plows have been out on the road for a good three hours now. We should be getting into your neck of the country within the next hour. That’s the best I can do. You’re high on the list, but we had to clear the highways and town before we could head out for the back roads. I take it your patient survived the night?”
Her patient. The one with the head wound and the sprained ankle. The one who’d made love to her mercilessly and tirelessly for most of the night. “Um, he seems to be less injured than I first thought.”
“Well, that’s good. Still, we should be able to get him checked out at the hospital this morning. Now, as far as you getting to your place-”
“The furnace wasn’t working at my parents’ house. That was why I trekked over to the Cunninghams’ to begin with.”
“All right. When I get off the phone with you, I’ll…”
George said something else. She had no idea what. She had no idea when she stopped talking and hung up, either, but suddenly Teague seemed to be standing in the doorway, wearing jeans almost zipped up, looking her over quietly, thoroughly.
His carpenter apron was draped over certain strategic spots and it wasn’t freezing like before; the furnace had obviously been chugging hot water through the radiators for several hours. Yet feeling Teague’s eyes on her made her feel barer than cold.
Everything about him tracked memories from last night. His tousled hair-she remembered riffling her fingers through that thick, wiry hair, dragging him closer to her, demanding more kisses, deeper kisses, more-intimate kisses. She remembered the taste of that narrow mouth and those smooth, seductive lips. She remembered the exact moment she’d put a love bite on his left shoulder. She even remembered his bare feet…yelping when he’d suddenly touched her with those cold toes, and then laughing, laughing just before he’d pressed her into the blankets and taken her down with another kiss.
By night he’d been her lover…but by daylight he was a stranger. A stranger she’d shared more with-more honesty with-than she had with her husband. She didn’t know what to make of that, except that there wasn’t a man on the planet who unnerved her. Ever. Until now.
To add insult to injury, the son of a gun had looked darn good in the shadows, but man, he looked downright
