“If I can make you want me, in spite of what happened before, will you agree to marry me?” he asked softly.
“But, I don’t...!” she protested.
He covered the frantic words with his mouth, gently this time, using every shred of skill he possessed to coax her set lips into a shy response.
He laid her down on the coverlet and stretched out beside her, his lips teasing hers in a gentle, exquisite kind of exploration. His fingers traced her cheeks, pushing back the wispy strands of long black hair that had escaped from her bun while the seconds lengthened into minutes.
“I like your hair long and loose,” he breathed against her yielding mouth, one lean hand disposing of pins and combs before he arranged her loosened mane of hair around her flushed face.
She looked up at him nervously, her body already taut from the threat of his, her memory all too vivid of the last time.
“There’s a barrier,” he whispered deeply, holding her eyes while he traced a long forefinger around the swollen contours of her mouth. “It’s called a maidenhead. It protects a woman’s chastity. The first time, it has to be disposed of, and that’s why I hurt you. It won’t ever be like that again. Now that I know how innocent you really are, I’ll make a meal of you, Miss Hathoway. When I’ve finished, fear is the last thing you’ll feel when you look at me.”
She colored. “I’m a nurse,” she reminded him, trying to sound worldly. “I do know something about my own anatomy.”
He brushed her open mouth with his. “I was in too much of a hurry to wait for you. I lost my head. I won’t lose it with you again until I’ve satisfied you.”
“Please,” she moaned, “you mustn’t talk to me like this!”
“You’re my woman,” he said, lifting his head to hold her eyes. “We’re lovers, Allison. We’re going to be married. You’ll have to face the implications of that, sooner or later.”
“I won’t marry you!”
“Like hell you won’t marry me,” he said with quiet determination. He searched her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said as he bent. “But this is the only way, now.”
She didn’t understand what he meant at first. He covered her mouth with his and his hands smoothed down her body while he built the kiss from a slow caress to a blazing, raging statement of intent. She shivered as the heat exploded in her body when his mouth suddenly went down hard over her breast and began to suckle it through the fabric of her dress. She arched and gasped, at the same time that one lean hand found the fastening of her jeans and slipped expertly inside against warm flesh.
“Gene, you can’t!” she whimpered.
But he touched her intimately then, and his mouth became as insistent and rhythmic as the hand invading her privacy with such slow, sweet mastery. She began to shiver. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t fight this sweet tide of pleasure, she couldn’t! She heard her breath shuddering out in little gasps, felt her body lifting, yielding itself to whatever he wanted. His face nuzzled under the fabric of her blouse and nudged her bra aside so that he could find the hard, aching tip of her swelling breast, hot and moist against the silky bare flesh.
“Gene,” she whispered, her voice breaking on his name as he quickened the rhythm and increased the insistence of his mouth on her body. “Gene! Oh, Gene, please—!”
Her voice broke and he gave her what she begged for, feeling her release with pride and indulgent pleasure. He lifted his head and watched her convulse, her face a study in rigid ecstasy, her body completely his. She wept afterward, and he comforted her, kissing away the tears, lightly caressing her trembling body until she was completely still in his arms.
“That’s what it feels like, Allison,” he said softly, holding her shocked eyes. “That’s what it was like for me, that night in the cabin. I wanted you to know, because next time, I’ll give you this same pleasure with my body. Only it will be an agony of a climax, I promise you. This will be nothing by comparison.”
She blushed as she met his eyes. “Why?”
He kissed her nose. “I told you. I want you to marry me.”
“You don’t have to go that far to spare my reputation, or salve your own guilt. I told you, I don’t blame you... Gene!” she gasped sharply.
His body had levered over hers in midsentence and he’d coaxed his way between her long legs, so that she felt him in blatant intimacy, became shockingly aware of the power and need of his body.
He moved deliberately, balancing himself above her on his forearms, smiling down at her with the slow, deliberate shifting of his lean hips.
“Say, yes, I’ll marry you, Gene,” he instructed very slowly, “or I’ll peel you out of those jeans right now and make you scream like a banshee under me. If you think your reputation’s in shreds already, wait until that unholy crew in the bunkhouse hears the noises I drag out of you now.”
She shivered, because she was vulnerable and he knew it. Worse, the window was open, she glanced at it and saw the curtains moving.
“Better say it quick, cupcake, before I get too involved to roll away,” he said huskily and pressed his lips down hard over hers. “It’s getting worse.”
Yes, it was, and her face registered her knowledge of it. She swallowed, sensations in her lower belly making her hot and weak all at once. Her legs trembled under his. “You can’t do that...to me,” she protested. “Marie and Winnie—”
“Are downstairs,” he said, “and the door is closed. Neither of them is likely to walk in without an invitation since they know I’m up here with you,” he said in a deep, husky tone. “Open your legs, Allison,” he
