McKettricks of Texas: Garrett (18 page)

“And you said all you could do was fry eggs,” she said.

Garrett winked. “Oh, I can do
lots
of things besides fry eggs,” he told her.

The kitchen was big, though not as enormous as the one downstairs, and wired for sound. When an old Patsy Cline ballad melted in through the speakers, like some shimmering liquid, nearly visible, Garrett turned the volume up and
the lights down and pulled Julie into his arms, waltzing her around the perimeters of the island in the center of the room.

If he'd kissed her then, she would have been lost. But he didn't.

He simply danced with her.

Until the song ended and she was dizzy, and her breathing was all messed up.

Silently, Julie reminded herself that Garrett was only passing through—even this legendary ranch wasn't big enough to accommodate his ambitions. He wanted to play on the world stage, and when he left, she couldn't—and wouldn't—go with him.

Still, she'd been alone for so long.

And Garrett had roused things in her that no other man had even stirred.

Her body—every cell of it—was suddenly asserting itself, making demands, crying out for things her mind would have called foolish. And among those things was the simple solace of being held by a man.

Just held.

In a last-ditch effort to resist, to override flood-tide passion with common sense, Julie did the opposite of what her entire physicality craved: She pulled out of Garrett's arms, turned from him, and stood leaning against the counter opposite the door, her head down, gasping for breath.

And her body wept.

Garrett moved to stand behind her, rested his hands on her shoulders, barely touching her, but touching her just the same. Touching her in a way that caused her very essence to gather within her and then surge, like some sparkling force
summoned by a wizard, into the rein-roughened palms of his hands.

The sensation was so deliciously compelling, so utterly unnerving, that Julie sagged, suddenly boneless, and might have collapsed if Garrett hadn't held her upright, turned her in his arms, held her against his chest.

She was trembling.

“Shhh,” he murmured. It was what she needed—
holding
—and somehow he knew that.

Garrett curved a finger under Julie's chin and lifted, so she was looking into his eyes.

Without a word, he kissed her.

There was undeniable wanting in that kiss, but it was exquisitely controlled. It made promises, that sweet pressure of his mouth on hers, but demanded nothing in return.

I'm losing my mind,
Julie thought, feeling swept away.

Garrett stretched—she realized he was switching off the oven—and then swung her easily up into his arms.

“If you say ‘stop,'” he told her, “if you even
think
‘stop,' I will.”

She nodded to let him know she understood, and rested her face in the curve where his neck and shoulder met, loving the smell of his skin, the warmth and substance and strength of him.

He carried her into a darkened room, and she knew by the fresh-air, Garrett-scent of the place that this was where he slept.

She felt dazed, needy, incredibly safe.

Garrett stood her beside the shadow of a bed. “Where's Calvin?” he asked.

Julie swallowed, scrounged around in the depths of herself until she found her voice. “With Paige,” she answered. “For the weekend.”

He began peeling away her clothes, and the touch of his hands seemed reverent, rather than forceful. “Good,” he said, and the word vibrated down the length of her neck, because he spoke it into the hollow beneath her right ear. “That's good.”

She didn't have to be strong, Julie thought, bedazzled.

For once, for a little while, she didn't have to be strong.

Garrett was strong enough for both of them.

Garment by garment, Garrett bared Julie, then himself. He took a condom from the nightstand.

“Just hold me,” she whispered, as they sank together into rumpled sheets, fragrant with detergent and sunshine and Garrett.

He stretched out beside her on the bed, drew her close, so that their bodies fit together.

But he did not kiss or caress her.

Not then.

Honoring his tacit promise, Garrett simply
held
Julie in the strong, warm circle of his arms. He propped his chin on top of her head, and she took comfort in the steady meter of his breathing. He said nothing. Asked for nothing.

Gave everything.

Julie lay there, in Garrett's easy embrace, and felt no shame, no sorrow and no need of anything more than what she had, in that precise moment.

After a long time, she spoke his name, whispered it, like a plea.

And he understood, and eased on top of her, bracing himself on his elbows and forearms.

“Are you sure, Julie?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip, nodded.

From Julie's perspective, there was no need for foreplay.
Her surrender to Garrett was a gift, and not a fulfillment of any desire she possessed. She eased her thighs apart, lifted her hips just slightly, delighting in the groan the motion elicited from him.

“I'm sure,” she told him.

He eased inside her.

Julie cried out, not in pain, but in celebration—the friction, the fit, was perfect. It sent her spinning away from herself, in a glittering spiral of light and heat, and the sounds she made were expressions of awe and delight.

He was so big.

So strong.

So hard.

Julie gave herself up to the most primitive aspects of her own femininity, let herself be lost in Garrett.

He entwined his fingers with hers, pressed her hands into the pillow on either side of her head and pumped hard with his hips.

Julie kept pace, meeting him stroke for stroke, thrust for thrust.

The climb was a sacred quest, every new level intensified the pleasure.

Their bodies flirted, then danced, then slammed into each other, fierce in their need for union, for the deepest kind of contact, for satisfaction.

When the climax came, it was simultaneous. Garrett tensed on top of Julie, with a guttural shout, a warrior's cry of conquest and triumph. Julie, in turn, flung herself upward to meet him, to take him deep inside her, to clench around him and wring from him everything he had to give to her, and then still more.

That first, apocalyptic release was followed by a series
of progressively smaller ones, soul-wrenching and utterly involuntary.

When it was over, a long, long time had passed, and Garrett and Julie lay still, exhausted.

Julie was glad of the darkness, because suddenly her eyes were awash in tears—not of sorrow and certainly not of regret, but of wonderment and awe. When had she last felt those things, soared like that?

Never, that was when.

The thought jolted Julie; she sneaked up a hand to dry her cheek. And she began to rationalize.

She'd responded in the soul-shattering way she had because it had been so long since she'd had sex, that was all.

It wasn't Garrett, she insisted to herself. Any reasonably skilled man could have satisfied her just as thoroughly as he had.

Probably.

Garrett lay sprawled beside her, where he'd fallen, one leg draped across her thighs. When he moved to switch on the lamp, his upper arm brushed against the side of her face, and he felt the moisture on her skin.

He looked solemn as he gazed down at her. “Are you—? Did I—?”

She smiled, touched his beard-bristled cheek, ran the pad of her thumb over that sensuous mouth of his. And she shook her head. “I'm all right, Garrett,” she said.

He leaned over her, kissed her right cheekbone, and then her left. “Stay there,” he told her.

He got off the bed, and Julie heard a rustling sound. Though she couldn't bring herself to look at him, she knew he was pulling on his jeans.

As soon as he'd left the room, Julie got up and scrambled for the master bathroom.

When Garrett returned, though, she was back in bed, wearing her shirt and her jeans, the covers pulled up to her chin in a way that was, once she had time to think about it, pretty ridiculous.

Garrett, carrying a plate piled with Esperanza's stuffed mushrooms, chuckled when he saw her. Then he maneuvered until he was sitting beside Julie, his back to the pillows fluffed between him and the headboard, and offered her a morsel.

She hesitated, feeling self-conscious, and then her stomach rumbled.

Garrett laughed, touching the mushroom to her mouth.

Julie took it. Chewed for a long time, finally swallowed.

“I turned the oven back on,” Garrett said. “How long do you think it will take for the spaghetti to finish cooking?”

Now it was Julie who laughed, though more with relief than because anything was funny. She didn't know what she'd expected from Garrett—regret? Dismissal, or even contempt?

It hadn't been a perfectly ordinary question about dinner, that was for sure.

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” she said, feeling incredibly awkward, fully clothed and hiding everything but her head under the covers.

Garrett smiled, tossed a mushroom into his mouth and offered Julie another one. When she shook her head, he set the plate aside on the bedside table.

Then he slid an arm under Julie's back and eased her against his side.

His chest was bare, lightly dusted with hair the color of brown sugar.

Julie wanted to place her palm in the center of his taut belly, spread her fingers wide, but she refrained. Contented herself with resting her head on his shoulder.

“So why were you crying?” he asked, very quietly and after a long time.

Julie sighed. “Because it was so good,” she admitted.

He chuckled, a low and entirely masculine sound that struck some tender places hidden away in Julie's heart. Whatever else he might be—an expert at spin, Blue River, Texas's, favorite son—Garrett was a cowboy, too.

The real deal, born and bred on the Silver Spur Ranch.

Raised to be all man and yet capable of a degree of tenderness, at least while making love, that made Julie marvel just to recall it.

She was glad when the timer dinged out in the kitchen, because she was just about to cry again. Instead, she leaped out of bed as eagerly as if supper came around once a month instead of every day.

Garrett stayed behind in his room long enough to pull a T-shirt on over his head. It was plain, with a hole in one side seam, but clean.

They ate sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Garrett's fireplace, Harry snoozing nearby and opening one eye every now and then, probably hoping for a scrap.

“Damn,” Garrett said, with an appreciative grin. “You can cook.”

Julie's cheeks ached with heat as she stared down at her plate. “Thanks.”

A companionable silence ensued. Garrett picked up his
wineglass, which he'd set on the coffee table earlier, and took a sip, but Julie was off the sauce, at least for the evening.

Why was it so easy to fall into this man's bed, and so hard to talk to him afterward?

“Hey,” he said, when he'd taken both their plates to the kitchen and returned to sit on the rug again, facing her. “Are you ever going to look at me?”

Julie blinked, made herself meet Garrett's eyes. She was acting silly, she knew that, but she couldn't seem to figure out how to stop.

“You're a woman,” Garrett said, holding her gaze, the firelight flickering over the strong angles of his face, the powerful set of his shoulders, “and I'm a man. What just happened between us—happened. And that's okay, Julie. It's a lot
better
than okay, in fact.”

“I don't usually—” She paused, miserably embarrassed. Where was the old, confident, sensual Julie? “I mean, you must think—”

Garrett cupped his hand under her chin, and her skin tingled where the tips of his fingers touched. “I
think,
” he told her firmly, though his voice was gruff, “that you are one hell of a woman, and
I'm
one lucky son of a gun to be spending an evening with you.”

An evening. He was lucky to spend
an evening
with her.

Well, what had she expected?

A lifetime commitment, an avowal of undying love?

After one roll in the hay?

“It
was
good,” she admitted, wondering when she'd be able to shake off the strange shyness possessing her now.

“Ya think?” Garrett teased, raising one eyebrow slightly.

Julie laughed, and just like that, the tension was broken, the shyness gone. Still, a part of her wanted to ask,
Now what?

More sex?

More wine?

More chicken spaghetti?

Was this a fling, or an affair, or just a one-night stand?

And what was the difference between a fling and an affair?

Julie sighed and pressed her fingers to her temples. And she blurted it right out.

“Now what?”

Garrett scooted forward, so their knees touched. Then their foreheads.

“Now,” he ventured, “we take a shower together and make love again?”

“You can't possibly be serious,” Julie said.

Garrett tugged her T-shirt up until her breasts were uncovered. She'd forgotten to put her bra back on.

“Hot damn,” he said, admiring her for a long, delicious moment before he ducked his head and took her nipple into his mouth. He suckled until she moaned, then turned and thoroughly attended to her other breast before meeting her eyes again. “Still think I'm not serious?” he asked, lifting the T-shirt off over her head and arms and tossing it away. “If you need more convincing, I'll be happy to oblige.”

She felt beautiful, powerful, even slightly dangerous, like some nomadic princess about to enjoy a captive lover, sitting there on Garrett's floor, with their knees and shins touching, and her naked breasts bathed in the dancing light of his fire.