Wild in the Moonlight

to-”

“Seduce you?”

“I don’t need to be seduced, Lachlan. I’m a grown woman. But I just didn’t understand what the deal was.”

“Neither did I, chere.” He pushed back a strand of hair that had sneaked free from all those clips holding it back. “I knew I wanted you. I knew you were willing to make love with me. But I kept having the bad, bad feeling that you were going to regret it.”

That startled her. “Why did you think I’d regret sleeping with you? I never said-”

“I know you ‘never said’ anything specific. But you only said you were willing to make love when you pegged me as the kind of man who wouldn’t give a damn about you, wouldn’t stick around.” When she tried squirming and doing her flutter-the-hands thing, he gently cuffed her wrist. “The fact is, I do care. I do give a damn. And nothing I understand about you, sensed about you, made me believe you were being truthful. If you want a short fling, trust me, Vi, I’d be happy to give you one. But I can’t buy it. That you’re going to be okay to just hit the sheets and then go our different ways the next morning. Or the next week.”

She took a hard breath. Then pushed off his lap and stood. So did he. As if the porch had suddenly become unbearably claustrophobic, she suddenly vaulted down the porch steps and started walking. So did he. Restless or not, it was still tepid hot, still too humid to breathe. She didn’t run any farther than the deep shade of the maple, and then she turned on him.

“You want to know the deal, Lachlan? It’s that I have skinny tubes. That’s the deal. The whole deal. The chance of my ever having kids is mighty unlikely.”

Aw, hell. The minute she blurted that out, Cameron wanted to slug himself. God knew how he’d missed it, because immediately he realized she’d given him a ton of clues. Her reproducing plants so wildly. Her endless herd of cats. Her not going back to a profession with children. The way she mothered the two girls who worked for her. He even remembered-now, too damn late-the funny look on her face when she’d first said she didn’t need birth control. “That’s about as unfair as it gets, chere,” he said softly.

“More than unfair. I never wanted fancy things. Forget the riches and jewels and all that. I just wanted a house and kids and a man to love.” Her head shot up, her eyes jewel bright. “And you’re wondering what that has to do with our making love.”

“No. I wasn’t wondering anything. I was just feeling bad for you.”

“Yeah, well. The thing is…maybe there was a time I wouldn’t have been comfortable with casual sex. But that was then. And this is now. I’ve been alone since the divorce. That’s three years.”

“Hey,” he said gently. Hell’s bells, those tears were welling up. And yeah, of course he knew she cried at the drop of a hat. Only, damn it, this time she had reason to cry, a terrible huge reason to cry, and that was way different from seeing her cry at a Kodak commercial. He scooped her close, stroking her back, feeling her shudder back a real sob, afraid that she was going to do it seriously to him this time-cry until they were both drenched.

“I don’t want a husband,” she said fiercely.

“You don’t have to have a husband.”

“I’ve been trying to scare men away for three years. And doing a great job of it.”

“You’re great at being ditsy,” he reassured her, and stroked, stroked, stroked. “But maybe you don’t have to work at it quite so hard. It’s not like every man wants kids-”

“I know that. But I also had a husband who took off the minute he found out I was… flawed. Yes, he wanted kids. And so did I. But we could have made other choices-like adopting or fostering. That’s when I realized it wasn’t as simple as just being about kids. It was about his seeing me differently, seeing me as less of a woman. My feeling like less of a woman.”

He stopped stroking. “Wait a minute. What kind of horse hockey is this?”

“It’s not horse hockey, Lachlan. You asked me what the deal is, and I’m telling you. In the beginning I just didn’t see a reason to get into all this. It wasn’t your problem, wasn’t your business. But you asked so I’m telling you. I want to get into casual sex. With you. I want to know for sure that you’re leaving. That you’re going back to your own life. That I don’t have to worry about how you think about me as a woman, deep down. How you-”

Damned if he was going to let her finish another idiotic sentence. Enough was enough.

Ten

Violet felt completely bewildered when Cameron suddenly grabbed her. She’d been trying to seriously talk to him. She was all riled up and upset that the whole crappy story about her skinny tubes had come out. She’d never wanted Cam to know. It was fine the way it was. Good the way it was. He thought of her as a whole, sexy woman-she knew he did. She didn’t want him to see her differently, and she’d been afraid all along that he would if he knew the whole blasted picture.

Yet suddenly his arms swept around her, tighter than a noose, and his mouth swooped down on hers, slapped hers, crushed hers…then almost immediately lightened. Slower than honey, a taking kind of kiss became a wooing kind of kiss. A coaxing, wooing kind of kiss suddenly became an ardent, I want you need you have to have you kind of kiss. His tongue found hers. His hands sieved into her hair. She felt his long, hard body throb against hers, and suddenly she was trembling from the inside out.

He was going to take her. She knew it in the flash of an instinct, a burst of heat and fear and excitement streaking through her pulse. Right here, right now, right under the deep, dark shade of the maple. No one was around, and the sun was setting fast now, but heaven knew strangers and neighbors both drove by and drove in at all hours.

It was as if he didn’t care. Didn’t notice.

And then neither did she.

She’d never felt like this. As a young girl, she’d dreamed incessantly all that tedious stuff about the prince who’d find her, who’d make her the center of his world, who’d slay dragons for her. But obviously she’d grown up. There were no fairy tales, and she’d wanted a flesh-and-blood guy and not a fake prince anyway. But Cameron…oh, Cameron.

He pushed at clothes, buttons, zippers. Heeled off his shoes, lifted her out of hers. No one had ever swept her away like this. Made her feel as if he couldn’t breathe without her breath, couldn’t survive without touching her, couldn’t live. Without having her.

His eyes were open on hers, intense, unrelenting. Yet his mouth kept coming, even as he swooped her down to the ground on their makeshift nest of clothes. A car went by, maybe saw them, maybe didn’t.

Pagan kiss followed pagan kiss, each more fierce and wild than the last. A button dug into her spine. Grass tickled. Her hair tangled-her darn long hair was always tangling-yet only one thing mattered to her. Cam. And what they seemed to be creating together.

When he suddenly lifted his head, she tried to say something, but the way he looked at her dammed all the words in her throat and her heart was suddenly hammering, hammering. “I love you,” he said roughly. “Love, Vi. Do you hear me?”

Again she tried to answer, but he moved so fast. One instant he was taking her mouth, the next he’d twisted around, all naked and bronzed and bare, and started over completely at the other end. He kissed her right foot, from arch to toe, then worked his way up. Kisses wreathed from ankle to knee to the inside of her thigh to the core of her, and when she was gasping for breath, he flipped her over. He kissed her fanny; bit softly, tenderly, then laved a silken path up her spine to the nape of her neck. Then flipped her again.

His tongue dove into her mouth, mated with hers, even as he reached down. He wrapped her legs around his waist, intimately tight, and then dove in, drove in, taking her high and tight and intimately. Desire suddenly developed sharp teeth. Need clawed at her, ached through her. The need for completion, but even more, the need to love. Him. To be loved. By him.

“Come with me,” he rasped. The sun dropped so fast, as if understanding they needed privacy, yet the darkness so stealthily brought voyeurs. Crickets. Frogs. Lightning bugs. Cats. And then the moon.

Their moon.