Cody Walker's Woman (17 page)

Keira carefully digested what Cody had told her. While it still hurt to think of how much he had once loved Mandy, she honestly believed he hadn’t planned to seduce her that fateful New Year’s Day. Cody just wasn’t that kind of man. It happened; he regretted it; he accepted his responsibility. But he couldn’t change it—he just had to live with it. He could even put himself in the other man’s shoes and say he didn’t blame Callahan for hating his guts.

But Cody wasn’t quite finished. “Callahan still loved her. And she...she never loved anyone but him. So I told him,” he added in a low voice.

Keira turned a perplexed face toward him. “Told him what?”

Cody smiled crookedly. “The other truth Callahan deserved to know.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I told him Mandy cried...after I made love to her.”

“Oh, Cody.” Her tender heart, the one she hid from the world, ached for him, for the wound to his pride...and his heart. But she was also fiercely proud of him. What other man would have done it? What other man would have pocketed his masculine ego, suppressed his own love for a woman, to atone for something he hadn’t planned but still blamed himself for? She couldn’t think of any man...except for him. It was another reason to love him. Another in an ever-growing list of reasons.

She wanted to cry for him, but tears were one of the things she’d denied herself for years. And besides, tears weren’t what he needed right now. He needed to know she understood. She put her hand on his, curling her fingers and squeezing to let him know she empathized with what he had gone through. His hand turned so that it was clasping hers, and she stared at it for a moment. Her hand looked so small wrapped in his hand.

But there was still something she didn’t get. “You’ve told me this whole story,” she said, with a puzzled expression on her face, “but you still haven’t explained what ‘amateur’ means.”

Cody’s smile turned rueful. “Six years ago we were so caught up in the hostility between us we both acted like amateurs. Not once, but twice. We knew better, and we knew it could have gotten either or both of us killed, along with Mandy. But it didn’t stop us. It’s just a subtle reminder, that’s all.”

His smile faded away. “Callahan doesn’t hate me anymore—he’s forgiven me. So has Mandy. And I’ve forgiven myself.”

Keira wasn’t sure this last part was true. Cody would always carry that scar on his conscience—it was the way he was made.

“And I no longer love Mandy,” Cody went on. “At least...not that way. She’ll always be a good friend—you can’t wipe out thirty-seven years of friendship—but that’s all. So I don’t hate Callahan, either.” He hesitated, drew a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “I just envy him.”

A tiny sound of pain escaped Keira, and she drew her hand away as she averted her face, wanting to hide from Cody how much it hurt to think....

“No,” he said, capturing her chin and forcing her to look at him. “I don’t envy him
Mandy.
Not anymore.” His blue eyes darkened. “I just envy what he has with her. It’s what I’ve always wanted, but never thought I’d find after I lost her.”

He released Keira’s chin, and his fingers slid up, over the curve of her cheek, brushing the curls away from her face before sliding back and tracing the shell of her ear. Keira shuddered at the unexpectedly sensual touch and caught her breath. She wanted to close her eyes, to let herself just
feel,
but something in his eyes held her spellbound.

“And then...” he whispered, his voice dark and deep, his fingers trailing down her neck to the hollow of her throat where a pulse beat wildly. “And then I met you. And I realized that’s what I want to have...with you.”

Keira couldn’t take it in at first, but it was all there in his face. Love and longing, possessiveness and...hope. She caught her breath again, and this time her eyes closed against the tumult of emotions that swamped her.
He loves me,
she told herself, and the moment was sweeter than she’d ever imagined it could be.

She leaned toward him, but he didn’t kiss her as she’d expected. He didn’t even draw her into his arms. Her eyes flew open, and she saw he was waiting—waiting for a word from her that she felt the same way.

Cody had bared his soul to her. Could she be any less honest with him? “When I first met Mandy,” she confessed in a low voice, “all I could think about was how much I wished I could have what she had. That I could love someone the way she did. Then later, when I saw Callahan with her, saw the way he loved her with nothing held back, I thought to myself, ‘Cody would love like that.’ And even though I wouldn’t admit it to myself then, I wanted to be loved that way...by you.”

She knew her heart was in her eyes, but somehow it didn’t matter. If she could trust him with her life—and she did—she could trust him with her heart. “Love me,” she whispered. “Please...”

Then she was in his arms, and it was like the first time he’d kissed her. Desire flashed to life, and Keira exulted in the knowledge that he wanted her this much, but that he’d been strong enough to hold himself back...until now.

He stood, pulling her to her feet with him, just looking down at her for a long moment, his hand caressing her cheek. Then he bent and swept her into his arms. At her faint protest he smiled at her, his eyes blazing, and carried her into her bedroom. Keira’s hands crept up around his neck, and for the first time in her life, she accepted that it was okay to feel small and helpless—but only in Cody’s arms. He laid her on the bed and followed her down, his body hard and urgent.

Chapter 13

C
ody’s hands were caressing her everywhere. Strong hands, but curiously gentle at the same time, and Keira knew he was remembering the bruises that had long since faded, determined there would never be another. Not from him.

She didn’t care about that. She just loved what it said about him.

Since he couldn’t be, she became the aggressor, tugging his shirt from his jeans, popping the buttons free with an impatience she didn’t recognize in herself, but didn’t question. She wanted his bare skin beneath her hands, wanted to glide her fingertips over his taut muscles, wanted to make him tremble as he fought for control...and lost it.

His belt was next, then the zipper of his jeans. She couldn’t suppress a gasp as she freed him: hard, throbbing and impossibly large. She stroked him, hesitantly at first, but with a stronger, firmer grip as she gained courage, loving the way he swelled even larger and the way her touch made his breath rasp in his throat.

His hand caught hers and pulled it away. “Don’t,” he said in a strangled voice, and Keira knew he was dangerously close to the edge.

“I want to,” she whispered, her breath deserting her as she thought about making him come this way, about making him lose that iron control.

“Not this time,” he managed, making it a promise for the future. Their future. Then he was undressing her, and it was the seduction she’d imagined, only more. While his hands caressed, he whispered in her ear everything he wanted to do to her. His words as much as his hands aroused her to the point where she ached to have him inside her, to assuage the need he’d created.

Her hands tugged at his hips, telling him what she wanted without the words she was suddenly too shy to say. But he wouldn’t be hurried. His fingers parted the petals of her womanhood, and she gasped, arching toward him.

She knew he could feel the dampness there, so she didn’t understand why he still held back. Instead, one long finger slid inside her, then out again, drawing the dampness up and over the unbearably sensitive nub he found. He rubbed up and down, again and again, occasionally dipping back inside and out again.

Keira couldn’t bear it. Her nipples were so tight they ached, and the pressure building in her loins, in her whole body, was so unexpected she moaned. He soothed her with soft whispers. “Shh. It’s okay. Let it go.” His lips captured one nipple, and his tongue rasped against it, circling around and around, sending shards of electricity throughout her body.

His fingers were still weaving their magic, and she moaned again. This time his lips captured hers, swallowing that moan and the ones that followed. Her breathing grew shallow and hurried, and still his fingers kept stroking her unbearably. She wanted...she wanted....

Then everything her body had been building toward suddenly exploded, and she arched against the seductive hand that had done this to her, clinging to Cody’s arms and crying out his name as the throbbing sensation went on forever.

She floated down to earth, her one thought that she couldn’t bear any more, that her body couldn’t take it. But she was wrong. Blood pounded in her ears, and her breathing was ragged as Cody removed his hand and fitted himself in place. He whispered her name, and her passion-drugged eyes opened—she hadn’t realized they were closed until that moment. He gazed down at her with that same expression of love and longing, joined by a fierce, possessive desire held firmly in check.

“Tell me,” he demanded in a voice made harsh by passion.

How could she hold back the words that trembled on her lips...and in her heart? She reached up to cradle his face in her hands. “I love you, Cody,” she whispered.

He drew a long, shuddering breath. As if he’d waited only for her avowal before continuing, he surged into her. Then froze. His shocked eyes met hers for a second before they squeezed shut in contrition.

The slight pain of his entry was already receding, replaced by the incredible sensation of having him embedded deep inside her, stretching her, hot and hard and throbbing. Keira didn’t want him to stop. She’d die if he stopped. Her hands grasped his hips and pulled him closer. “Please,” she begged. “Please...”

His blue eyes stared down at her, pain in their depths, and she could read his thoughts. So she said the only thing she could think of in that instant. “You’ll only hurt me if you stop,” she breathed. One hand slid down and touched him intimately. “Please...please, don’t stop...”

His mouth descended, his kiss telling her everything she needed to know about how much he wanted her...needed her. Instinctively she contracted her inner muscles around him, again and again, and he made a rumbling sound deep in his throat. Then he began driving into her, shallow strokes and deep, setting a pace she struggled to keep up with.

Without warning she caught fire again, and then she was racing ahead of him toward something just outside her reach. It grew bigger and bigger as Cody’s tempo increased, and her body was out of her control. She’d wanted to make
him
lose control, but instead... Her hips thrust up at him to take him deeper as he held tightly and pounded into her. Then everything shattered, and she arched against him one last time as she cried his name, feeling him empty himself inside her.

Keira couldn’t catch her breath. Her body was trembling, and she couldn’t prevent it. Her inner muscles throbbed around his manhood, milking him in a way that seemed both foreign and natural to her.

And Cody lay in her arms, completely spent.

Time stretched out endlessly as she held him, and she smiled secretly to herself. She loved him, and now he was hers. He hadn’t said the words, but they weren’t important—they were just words. He’d shown her his love with his body, taking her to the mountaintop with him, but first letting her soar.

Keira’s secret smile slowly grew until she could no longer keep it from her face. Her breathing finally slowed, and she began to doze off. Her high school boyfriends had been wrong about her, she thought as sleep claimed her. She wasn’t frigid—in Cody’s arms.

* * *

Cody came to only minutes after passing out. Keira was already asleep, but her breathing was shallow, so he knew she hadn’t been asleep long. She whimpered slightly when he withdrew from her body, as if she missed him the minute he was gone. But she didn’t waken.

He slid quietly from the bed and made his way to her bathroom. He stepped into the shower for a minute, quickly washing himself. Then he dried off with her towel. He ran the water in the washbasin until it was hot, held a washcloth under the stream, then wrung it out and brought it back to the bed with him.

He gently placed the warm, damp cloth between Keira’s legs, and she caught her breath in her sleep. She made a little sound deep in her throat when he tenderly washed her, but it wasn’t a sound of pain, and he was relieved. He obviously hadn’t hurt her as he’d feared when he’d taken her virginity.

No,
he corrected himself.
You didn’t take it. She gave it to you.

When he was done, he took the washcloth back to the bathroom. There was a smear of pink on the cloth, and Cody stared at it for a long minute before he held it under the running water and washed the blood away along with everything else.

She couldn’t know what a priceless gift she’d given him. Not her virginity, but by calling his name both times when she climbed the peak. For a man whose heart and ego had been savaged when the only woman he’d loved called him by another man’s name in bed, it was healing to know that Keira was only thinking of him at that moment. She wanted
him.
Only him.

Cody padded softly back to the bedroom and slid in bed next to Keira. He watched her sleeping for a minute—her face so unlike the usual one she showed the world when she was awake. And there was a tiny smile on her lips. Whatever she was dreaming, it made her smile. And that made him feel damned good.

He suddenly needed to hold her even if it meant waking her. He propped himself up against the pillows, then drew her unresisting body into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he pulled the covers around them. Her curls tickled his chin, and he breathed in the unique scent that was Keira—plain soap and water and warm woman. He wanted to hold her this way forever, especially now that he knew she loved him. Especially now that she was his.

He admitted to himself he had wanted her ever since that first night. Hadn’t been able to erase the memory, even though he’d told himself time and again he had no business remembering anything about that episode other than the basic fact that it had happened. It hadn’t done any good. His body had a mind of its own. It had remembered...and wanted.