Lover in the Rough (23 page)

She turned him gently. When she saw the long scrapes and bruises on his back, she sucked in her breath, afraid to touch him. She remembered the moment when he had knocked her off her feet and then put his body between her and the rockfall. As lightly as a breath, her fingertips settled on a bruise.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

“Nothing hurts when you touch me.”

With hands that trembled, she washed away dirt and dried blood. He turned beneath her touch with a suppleness that mocked even the idea of pain.

“I’m all right,” he murmured, tipping her face up for a kiss. “Don’t look so pale.”

“You put yourself in danger . . . protected me . . .”

“Of course,” he said, his voice velvet and rough. “You’re my woman. I’ll always protect you.”

She knelt before him, washing his strong legs from ankle to thigh, enjoying the dark warmth of his flesh beneath the soap and silver water. As her hands moved higher, she felt the tremor that went through him. She washed him as gently as he had washed her, feeling no self-consciousness with the intimacy, only pleasure. He was her man, hers to touch and enjoy without false modesty or inhibitions, like water and sunlight and life itself.

He bent and lifted her into his arms, kissed her with a searching need that made her want to soften and run over him like honey. He felt the change in her, felt the heat and sweetness of her flowing over him. Murmuring the strange and beautiful phrase she had heard before, he held her against his hard body until they both trembled.

Silently he carried her away from the rocks and water, to a place in the sun where he had spread the joined sleeping bags to make an iridescent black blanket. Gently he put her down, releasing her completely, touching her only with the intensity of his look.

“If I take you now I’ll never let you go,” Chance said, his voice almost harsh. “No matter what happens, no matter what we’ve said or not said, done or not done, you’ll be mine in a way more elemental and enduring than any marriage vows could make you. Do you want that?”

“Will you belong to me in the same way?” asked Reba, her eyes as intense as his, searching his face for the words he would not say because he believed he knew nothing about love.

“I have no choice,” he whispered.

“Neither have I,” she said, holding out her arms to him. “And I don’t want one. I want you, Chance. Only you.”

“You’ll have me,” he promised, sinking down beside her. “Only me.”

He drew her into his arms, held her along the muscular length of his body, savoring the softness of her. His lips met hers as though for the first time, caressing her, as warm and undemanding as sunlight falling on her skin. The tip of his tongue licked the corners of her smile, teasing her until she laughed, opening her lips for him. The rough velvet of his tongue slid over hers, coaxing her to slide over him in return. The taste and feel of him went through her like lightning. She melted against him with a tiny moan.

“Yes,” he whispered, biting gently along her earlobe, her neck, her shoulder, her breasts. “Come to me.”

She shivered beneath his touch, feeling her body change to meet his loving demands. Her breasts swelled, silently asking that his mouth close over them. His tongue shaped each hard nipple with excruciating thoroughness, then he sucked gently on her until she twisted slowly, moaning. His mouth roughened, giving her a lover’s caress that would have hurt just moments before but now made fire burst beneath her skin. Heat pooled inside her, then spread outward in expanding rings of sensation. Her hands clenched and unclenched on his arms, her breath came raggedly, shaking her.

“Chance,” she said urgently, her legs moving restlessly, seeking his hardness, “please . . .”

He laughed and slid farther down her body, teasing her navel with his tongue. Strong hands rubbed over her calves and thighs, parting them as his teeth gently ravaged the soft skin beneath her navel. He rubbed his cheek against the honey roughness of her hair and shuddered in answer to her sinuous response. His moustache brushed the softness of her inner thighs, making her tremble. When his tongue probed, seeking her most sensitive flesh, she gasped.

“Chance—”

“Shhh, my woman,” he murmured against her warmth, holding her hips in the gentle, irrevocable vise of his hands. “You’re so soft, so beautiful. Let me know all of you.”

Whatever Reba had been going to say was lost in the exquisite sensations coursing through her. The heat and overwhelming sensuality of his caress, the pleasure he so plainly took in her body, completely undid her. She gave herself to him, reserving nothing, consumed to her core by the liquid fire that he brought with each movement, each rough velvet touch. When his teeth closed with savage delicacy on her flesh she arched like a bow, clinging to him and shuddering, calling his name in broken sounds and sighs, wholly lost.

While she was still shaken by the aftershocks of a pleasure more overpowering than any she had ever known, he flowed up her body in a muscular surge. He took her swiftly, holding both of them motionless, savoring the extent of his possession. Then he moved once, hard, setting fire to her again. She cried out and sank her nails into his shoulders without knowing it, gripped by a pleasure so intense it was almost indistinguishable from pain. He laughed and moved slowly, powerfully, watching her come apart with each movement, her eyes a cinnamon blaze in a face transformed by an ecstasy as fierce and potent as the man inside her.

He called her name once, a cry wrung from the depths of his need. She shuddered and flowed over him, nails raking down to his hips, asking him to ride the liquid waves of her ecstasy. With a hoarse sound he let go of control, sinking into her endlessly, giving himself to her as wholly as she had given herself to him.

R
eba took three steps on the narrow beam, did a back walkover, two forward walkovers and a cartwheel off the beam onto the resilient pad that covered the floor of the room. Breathing deeply, her skin misted with perspiration, she reached for a towel.

“Finished?” asked a deep voice from the doorway.

She turned suddenly, gracefully, startled as always by Chance’s silence of movement. “Where did you come from?”

“The Objet d’Art. I left the press release about Jeremy’s collection on the coffee table. Gina wants your okay before closing time. She was frothing about not being able to mention the wedding,” he added in a neutral voice.

“I told her we’d announce it at the del Coronado when we show Jeremy’s collection,” said Reba. “Until then, I don’t want to cope with all the curiosity and nasty cracks. I just want to enjoy you in peace.”

Chance looked at Reba for a long moment, then nodded. “I see. I was beginning to wonder if you’d changed your mind about marrying me.”

She ran lightly over and threw her arms around him. “You don’t get away that easily,” she said, smiling and very serious as she looked into his unique, silver-green eyes.

“It’s not me I’m worried about.” His hard, slightly rough hands caged her face. “It’s you,
chaton
. Things that you see very clearly when you look at death tend to fade with safety. The further away we get from that cave-in, the longer you stay in the city, the more I’m afraid you’ll decide not to marry me.”

Closing her eyes, Reba put her cheek on the warm, hard flesh that beckoned through the open neck of Chance’s forest-green shirt. It had been less than two days since they had come back from the China Queen, but it seemed as though she had loved Chance forever. She had no doubts. Tomorrow they would be married.

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” whispered Reba against his skin. “You promised me the only gift I want. You. You won’t get out of that if I have to lock you inside the Objet d’Art’s walk-in safe.”

Chance’s laugh was little more than a vibration against her cheek. Long fingers lifted out the bone chopsticks that held her hair in a tight coil on top of her head. He rubbed her scalp while honey hair whispered and slid over his skin. The tip of his tongue found the pulse beating in her throat. He felt it quicken as his hand moved down her body, savoring the heat and firmness of her flesh beneath the fuchsia leotard she wore.

“I’m yours,” he said almost roughly, “marriage or no marriage. I meant what I said before I made love to you by that spring. You belong to me with or without the vows. But I’d rather be married to you. I want my ring on your finger and my name after yours—Reba Farrall Walker. I want men to know that you’re mine.”

“And I want women to know that you’re mine.” She smiled crookedly. “I have your ring all picked out.”

“Are you possessive?” he asked softly, his eyes very green as they memorized the shape of her mouth, the tip of her tongue glistening pinkly as she touched her lower lip.

Reba looked into Chance’s eyes and felt the wildness stir in her, powerful currents of emotion and need only he had ever tapped. “I never was possessive before. When my husband started seducing his students I was more disgusted than angry. But if you so much as touched another woman, Chance Walker, I think I’d do something rather violent.”

He smiled like a hungry tiger and kissed her until she melted against him, her softness and strength fitting perfectly along the hard length of his body. “Don’t worry, my woman. Once a prospector has touched diamonds and gold dust, he’ll never settle for less.”

He kissed her again, gently this time. Reluctantly he loosened his arms. “If I don’t stop soon, I’m going to find myself suggesting that I help you take a shower.” His look and hands wandered over her, touching the hard buttons of her nipples, the provocative curve of hip, the shadowed warmth between her thighs. “The next thing you know,” he said, his voice husky, “I’d be nibbling on you, tasting you from your delicious little ears to your ticklish toes.”

Reba’s breath shortened as she arched into his touch.

Chance closed his eyes and moved his hands back to her shoulders. “But if I did that, I’d never leave and we wouldn’t be able to get married tomorrow. Why does your bloody government insist on so much paperwork?”

“It’s your bloody government, too,” pointed out Reba reasonably, her eyes brilliant with desire.

He sighed and stepped back. “Right. I keep telling myself that every time I want to just grab you and say to hell with all the rules.” His fingertips smoothed the line of one dark honey eyebrow. He brushed his lips over hers. “Be here when I get back.”

“Always.”

Reba watched the door closing behind Chance and had to use all her discipline not to call his name. The fact that he’d be in her arms this evening didn’t ease the ache she had now. It was more than simple desire; now that she knew what life could be with Chance sharing it, life without him was like an inferior gem—faded, bland, flat, and dull.

She showered quickly, ate a midafternoon snack in place of the lunch she had forgotten, and settled in the living room to read Gina’s press release. As usual, Gina had said what needed to be said with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of clarity. Reba set aside the papers, reached for a phone and called the Objet d’Art.

“Gina? The press release is excellent. Send it out right away. Any calls for me, or hasn’t anyone noticed I’m playing hooky?”

“Todd Sinclair dropped by. I finally told him what your two choices were from the collection. I hope you don’t mind. It was the easiest way to get rid of him, short of Tim’s method.”

“A blackjack?” hazarded Reba.

“That’s my Tim,” said Gina dryly. “Not that I blame him. I could cheerfully take a blackjack to Todd myself.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t in the office.”

“Not as glad as Todd was. He was definitely relieved that you—and Chance—were nowhere around. I do believe that your man put the fear of God in Todd Sinclair.”

“Hallelujah. Maybe I’ve combed that toad out of my hair for the last time.”

“The other calls didn’t amount to much. Everyone is unhappy about having to wait until the del Coronado to see Jeremy’s collection, but Tim is holding firm. No special previews, just as you wanted.”

“Good. If we let in one, we’ll have to let in all. I’d rather enjoy my honeymoon in peace.”

“Somehow, peace and Chance Walker seem a contradiction in terms.”

Reba’s smile wasn’t transmitted over the phone, but the throaty softness of her voice was. “Not really,” she murmured, remembering how peaceful it was to fall asleep in Chance’s strong arms. “He can be a very soothing man.”

There was a sudden commotion on Gina’s end of the line, an unknown woman’s voice and then Tim’s voice.

“Hold on, Reba,” said Gina.

The sound of the phone changed, telling Reba that she had been put on hold whether she liked it or not. She waited with relative patience, assuming that a customer had needed Gina.

“Reba?”

It was Tim’s voice. “Still here,” she sighed. “What came unstuck this time?”

“Nothing. Chance’s sister is here, looking for him.”

“What? Glory is there?”

“So that really is her name?” asked Tim, trying to smother a laugh. He spoke in a muffled aside that Reba could overhear. “Sorry, Mrs. Day. Your name struck me as, er, unusual. And we’ve had a lot of news types sniffing around here lately, what with Jeremy Sinclair’s collection and all.”