pounced. Kisses dropped on her throat, between her breasts, on her navel, then on the swell of her abdomen. He was aiming…the wrong way.
She was going to tell him about that, mention that he’d lost his sense of direction entirely, except that he wrapped his arms around her thighs, pulling them up even as his head dipped down. All that urgent rushing, yet suddenly he moved slow. Slower than honey. Slower than shadows on a summer night. His cheek nuzzled the inside of her thighs. She felt his rough beard, felt his breath…lost her own.
Her sisters whispered about this. Women were supposed to love it. Not her. It always made her feel too vulnerable, too…naked. She was all about being wild, always had been, but not like this. Not. Like. This. It was uncomfortable and upsetting and…
“Sheesh, Dais, I’ll never stop if you respond like that. Come for me, love. Come. Give in, let it happen.” He wasn’t talking, wasn’t whispering. It was a croon to her, a promise.
“I don’t…I can’t…”
He chuckled, a soft earthy sound, a vibration low in his throat that he transferred to a kiss on that most intimate part of her. “Okay, then. Fight it. It’ll be fun.”
It wasn’t fun. She felt need tear through her like fire, burning, flames licking at her consciousness, blinding sharp. She tried to hold back. Tried to hide, but desire kept escalating, scaling that mountain of hungry, greedy need…until she tipped over the edge and soared.
He took his own good time about shifting, finally came up to smile wickedly at her in the darkness. “You’ll be sorry you showed me how much you liked that,” he promised. “You’d better believe I’ll remember the next time.”
She couldn’t answer him. He didn’t seem inclined to give her a chance to, anyway. He lifted her legs high and tight around his waist and then dove in, drove in, all at once. She felt a yielding of loneliness inside her, a keening to be like this, with him, forever, like this, but of course that was just her heart talking. How was she supposed to think? He was thick and hard. He was whispering wicked ideas to her. He was holding her, holding her, so she couldn’t escape yet another climb toward release, every muscle in her body straining for the next cliff edge, the next mountain top, and then there it was…another sensation, like flying free, flying through a silver wind, a flashing-soft sky, soaring…straight back into his arms.
“Oh, yeah,” he whispered exultantly, as if this were what he expected all along. As if he always made the world tilt when he made love. As if he always turned a woman into shambles when he made love.
As if he loved her.
Eventually she started breathing again. Eventually she even opened her eyes. She seemed to be wrapped around Teague’s naked body tighter than a present at Christmas, both of them smelling like sweat and sex, neither of them moving.
She wanted to move. She wanted to lift her head and stare at him. It’s not as if she hadn’t been married. It’s not as if she didn’t enjoy sex. But Teague…they’d made love in the blizzard, and she’d been so sure that was just a lost moment in time. Now she wanted to know where he got his Wheaties. Where he learned all that wicked stuff. How come he moved her to heights she’d never climbed before.
But she didn’t look at him, didn’t ask him. For just a moment more, she wanted to be nowhere else but right here, snugged in his arms, no reality intruding in any way.
But, of course, there was no escaping reality. An alarm clock ticked right next to her head. “I have to go. Close up the cafe.”
“Yeah, you do. But first you promised you’d tell me about your ex.”
A low chuckle came out of his throat. “Hey, you think I want to talk about another guy after we just made love? On the other hand, I don’t often have you naked and vulnerable. I figure I have to use this to my advantage while I can.”
“Idiot,” she murmured affectionately. He had to know that he wasn’t being manipulative at all, not when he told her exactly what he was doing. “I told you I’d tell you-”
“Yeah. So spill. Exactly why you’re so poor if your ex is supposedly so rich and successful. Exactly why didn’t you want your family to help you or know how much trouble you were in. Exactly why you got the divorce.”
“Sheesh. Could we work on one question at a time, tiger?”
“No. All at once. Let’s just get this conversation over with.”
She sighed, staring blindly at the moonlight shining in his bare windows. Rime decorated the panes in magical shapes, crystals and diamonds and jewels. The kind of diamonds you couldn’t touch, of course-the kind of diamonds that disappeared if you tried to touch them. She’d tried to touch the wrong kind of diamonds her whole life, but how could she explain that to Teague? “I don’t know where to start, except that…I always had a panic attack at the idea of being ordinary.”
“Since we’re pretty short on time, you don’t have to waste it telling me stuff I know.”
He forced her to grin. “I mean, a
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I thought I found it all in Jean-Luc. I thought he was exotic and romantic and wonderful.”
“And was he?”
“Oh, yeah. I remember the first time he sold a painting for big money-over a hundred thousand. He rented a yacht. With crew. We sailed with some friends, feasted for four days. He bought me a Hermes bag.”
“I don’t know about the bag, but the rest sounds romantic and generous and all.”
“Yup. Only, by the time we got back home, he’d spent every dime. We didn’t have money to pay the rent, much less to buy groceries. The car had already been repossessed. Not for the first time.” She turned her head. “Suddenly you’re real quiet. You getting the picture? Because that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Not good.”
“Not good,” she echoed dryly. “All the trunks that I shipped home were loaded with stuff. Stuff I could sell, but I just wouldn’t get much for it. I mean, it’s not like a Natori bra can be resold. And I’ve still got a few drops of LaMer moisturizer-the kind that goes for a thousand an ounce-but I can’t sell that. What it all amounts to is that I’m wearing good clothes because it’s what I have, not because I’m trying to impress anyone.”
“But you do care that people think you’re successful,” Teague said quietly.
She didn’t answer that. He already knew she had more pride than brains. Besides, he wanted the whole story- and she wanted to get it over with. “I sold plenty through the marriage. I sold yellow diamonds, black pearls from Polynesia. I’ve also washed dishes in a bar to pay the rent, and I’ve cleaned up messes after parties that you just couldn’t imagine. When Jean-Luc had money, he loved sharing it with the whole world. No one ever said he wasn’t generous.”
“He sounds as practical as a tree stump.”
Again she had to smile. His fingers were sieving through her hair, creating that light tickle sensation that made her want to curl up close-when she was already as close as a woman could get. “Yeah-and what kills me was that I never wanted to be the practical one. I wanted to be the wild, impulsive one. Everyone in White Hills knew I was born to be wild.”
“You are wild, babe.”
She closed her eyes, all too aware that she’d completely changed from the woman she once was. The woman she’d once wanted to be. And she still had to finish the story for Teague. “Jean-Luc was honestly a creative man, a talented artist who deserved all the glory he got. But he needs a harem to take care of him. At least three maids, then someone to work and actually bring in food and rent. And then a bodyguard to keep all comers away who’ll ask him for money-because for damn sure he’ll give it away.”
“Sounds like hell to live with.”
She whispered, “He was.” And suddenly she found it was easy to get out of bed. She wanted her clothes on. Wanted that reality she’d wanted to disappear minutes before. Didn’t want to look at Teague anymore at all if she could help it. At least until she had a better handle on control. For some stupid reason, she felt like crying.
“You stayed for so long because you loved him?”
