Something Different/Pepper's Way (24 page)

THOR’S LAUGH BEGAN AS A RUMBLE DEEP
inside his chest, growing slowly into the delighted sound of pure enjoyment. She’d flung the gauntlet at his feet, the little witch! She’d neatly picked up his earlier hint of no long-term involvement, flatly laid down her own rules, and then gently dared him to match wits with her. Challenged him … and he’d never had a more intriguing challenge.

Still chuckling, he put his empty glass down on the mantel and moved slowly toward her with the unthinking grace of a cat. “You realize, of course,” he told her conversationally, “that I can’t possibly ignore your challenge.”

“The thought did occur,” she murmured, watching his approach and still smiling. Not quite as calm as she appeared, Pepper was tautly aware that this would be the moment of truth. In the next few minutes one of two things would happen. Either she would know that she’d been wrong about her feelings for this almost stranger—in which case she would fold her tent and steal quietly away—or she would discover that the feelings would indeed be there. And there would be no turning back.

“I’ve always loved challenges. I would have wanted to
open Pandora’s box,” he said, halting less than an arm’s length away and looking down at her with lazily smiling eyes.

“Never know what might jump out at you,” she warned softly, tilting her head back to look up at him.

Thor reached out slowly, one large hand nearly encircling her neck, his thumb brushing along her jawline. “I think,” he murmured as his head bent toward hers, “I’ll take my chances.”

Pepper didn’t know what she had expected. A pleasant tingle, perhaps. A firecracker or two. She’d even wondered if Marsha had been right with her “Bells, my dear—ringing their little clangers off.” But, being realistic, she had expected nothing so drastic. Just a sign, a preview of marvelous things to come.

What she got was the main attraction, and she very nearly forgot who had challenged whom.

For a still, timeless moment his lips rested on hers with the weight of a feather and the force of a sigh. Warm, undemanding, faintly questioning—and she was astonished at her response. The shivering tingle began somewhere near her middle, sweeping outward in ripples of curiously hot-cold sensation. She was only dimly aware of her hands leaving the pockets of her jeans and sliding up around his neck, helpless to prevent her lips from parting and inviting his exploration.

And the hot-cold sensation blazed suddenly white-hot, sizzling through her veins and scorching nerve endings as he abruptly accepted her invitation. His lips slanted across hers with driving hunger, demanding, compelling, sapping the strength from her legs.

Pepper was conscious of an aching emptiness within her, a throbbing hollowness she had never felt before. It seemed to fill her being, hot and hurting with an unfamiliar pain. She felt driven to be closer to him, hungry to touch him and have him touch her.

The sensations frightened her in their intensity; they swept aside logic and rationality to leave only raw emotion. But what frightened her even more was that the raw emotion was stronger than fear, stronger than her ability to fight it. She couldn’t break away from him even with her instincts for self-preservation clamoring a desperate warning.

Those instincts told her that she’d met her match this time, that the stakes were higher than she had known. Her challenge had left her vulnerable to an intensity of feeling she’d not been prepared for, and she wondered dimly what price would be demanded of her this time for the reckless chance she had taken.

Then the fire in her veins blazed over fear, and she was conscious only of her need for this man. She had no strength left, no power over her own body. She was weightless and adrift on a churning sea, and there was no life preserver to save her from drowning….

Thor’s lips left hers as she was going down for the second time, and he drew a deep breath as if he, too, had nearly drowned.

Pepper stared dazedly into storm-clouded gray eyes and, incurably honest, said exactly what she was thinking. “Pandora’s box. I think we’re both in trouble.”

“I think you’re right,” Thor said a bit raggedly. “Good Lord, for such a little thing, you pack one hell of a punch, lady.”

“You know what they say about dynamite.” She wondered idly how she could possibly be having a perfectly rational conversation while looking eye-to-eye with a man who’d just demonstrated the Fourth of July in the middle of October…. Eye-to-eye? That wasn’t right!

Leaning a bit sideways, Pepper looked down and realized only then why she felt so weightless: she was being held a good foot off the floor for Pete’s sake. Returning her gaze to Thor’s
still-bemused face, she requested politely, “Could you put me down, please?”

“No,” he said simply.

Pepper stared at him. “Why not?”

Thor kissed her very lightly. Then he kissed her lightly again, wearing the pleased expression of a man who has discovered a wonderful new hobby. “Because, like Brutus,” he murmured, “I ignore the command to ‘break.’”

She bit her lip to hold back an ill-timed giggle. “I did say please.”

“I can’t seem to hear that either. Although, if it were stuck in the right sentence—”

“Forget it, chum.” She unlocked one hand from his hair and waved a threatening finger beneath his nose. “Remember the Alamo!”

He lifted an eyebrow. “No quarter?”

“No quarter. No mercy. One of us is going to break. And, as the man said, it ain’t gonna be me.”

“Want to bet?”

“We already did.”

“True.”

“Are you going to put me down?”

“No.”

“You’re vulnerable, you know. There are pressure points in your neck. And, of course, I could always resort to the old both-hands-clapped-to-the-ears trick. It shatters the eardrums, I’m told.”

Thor looked at her consideringly. “You’ve learned to take care of yourself.”

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate.

“I get the feeling you’ve had an interesting life.”

“Perhaps. But, interesting or not, I have no intention of discussing my past while dangling in the air.”

“Will you discuss it if I put you down?”

“Maybe.”

“Uh-uh.” Thor shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything at all about women it’s that ‘maybe’ means a variety of things, none of which is ‘yes.’”

“You’ve learned that, huh?”

“I’ve also learned that in these days of women’s lib and whatever, a man needs every edge he can find or steal. And since I happen to be considerably larger than you, I plan to use that advantage every chance I get.”

“Are you going to turn me over your knee?” she asked interestedly.

“Don’t give me ideas.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Pepper drawled. “Never give the opposing side a gun; it leads to uncomfortable things. Like defeat.”

“You don’t like to lose?”

“Not if I can help it.” She stared at him and frowned. “We seem to have digressed somewhat from the point.”

“What was the point?” He kissed her again.

Pepper fought for breath and cleared her throat determinedly. “The point. Ah. This macho attempt to use your muscles—that’s the point. It’s unfair.”

“All’s fair in …’ Well, you know the rest.”

“‘Love and war,’ if I remember correctly. And it’s going to be the latter with a vengeance if you don’t put me down.”

Thor looked virtuous. “It was your challenge, therefore I choose the weapons. It’s a rule.”

“Look, I’m not used to this altitude, and I’m getting dizzy. Why don’t we sit down and discuss the rules?”

Thor appeared to think about her request, then nodded, making a complicated maneuver that ended with him sitting on the couch and Pepper sitting in his lap.

“This wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” she noted dryly.

“It’s what I had in mind. You were saying something about rules?” He seemed to find her ponytail fascinating, winding the silky hair around his hand and apparently watching light play on the silvery strands.

Or maybe, she thought wryly, he was adding insurance to the arm resting across her lap. Since he obviously didn’t intend to let her escape, Pepper, characteristically, got on with the matter at hand.

But it was damnably hard to ignore the hard thighs beneath her….

“The rules. Well, you said it was up to you to choose the weapons, but any contest of physical superiority ends right here.”

“Oh?”

“Definitely. It’s too unequal. Brute strength wins out in the end, and we both know it,” she said seriously.

He looked at her for a long moment. “That’s a lesson usually learned in a hard school; my curiosity about your past is growing by leaps and bounds.”

Pepper felt a peculiar little mental shock and wondered silently at his perception. But she wasn’t ready to talk about hard schools or pasts, and skated over the subject lightly. “When one is pint-size, it’s a lesson easily and quickly learned. So—no physical domination, okay?”

In an odd little gesture his free hand lifted to lie along the side of her neck, the thumb moving gently beneath her ear. His expression was totally and completely serious. “I’d never hurt you, Pepper. That’s one thing you can always be very sure of.”

Swallowing hard—for some reason there seemed to be a lump in her throat—Pepper decided to accept that for agreement. “Fine.” She decided to lighten the atmosphere. “And
since that washes out your strongest weapon—no wordplay intended—what do you choose instead?”

Thor’s lazy smile indicated an approval of her light question, but his reply made her realize suddenly that her own strategy was marching inexorably over quicksand.

“Honesty.”

“I see.” She wondered where her own unwary steps had led her, and how he defined honesty. “No punches pulled. No quarter asked… or granted.”

“You said it first.” He was still smiling, but watchful now, gray eyes probing. “No quarter. No holds barred. And since honesty is the weapon”—his smile grew—“I’ll be the first to employ it. Tell me something, Pepper. Were you looking for a place to park your RV for a few weeks? Or were you looking for a home for Fifi?”

“Dammit.” Pepper was torn between a desire to laugh and an urge to hit him with something. “That’s not a fair question!”

He shook his head reprovingly. “You can’t cry foul whenever something doesn’t suit you. Come on now, ’fess up! Your gauntlet was well hidden, but you were bent on challenge yesterday, weren’t you?”

Pepper felt a smile tugging at her lips. This was honesty with a vengeance! “Well, since you obviously aren’t taking to your heels, I’ll admit that I could have found somewhere else to park the van.”

“Not good enough.”

“You want your pound of flesh, don’t you?”

“Something like that.”

“Beast.”

“To the core. Well?”

“All right!” She glared at him; her expression was part
mockery and part amused exasperation. “I was … interested. Satisfied?”

He was openly grinning now. “It’ll do. Damn, you must have been
born
with a poker face; you certainly didn’t give anything away yesterday. I figured you didn’t have a subtle bone in your body.”

“You call this subtle?” Pepper looked at him with a lifted brow. “If my fellow women found out about this, I’d be drummed out of the sisterhood.”

“What sisterhood?” Thor looked puzzled.

Pepper decided that if he wanted honesty, he was going to get it. It was a tactic that, according to theory, was guaranteed to give most men nightmares, but she was intuitively certain that it was the right one with this particular man. Not total honesty, of course. There would always be guarded areas of any individual’s privacy in which intrusion would neither be forgotten nor forgiven. She sighed. Oh, well, he knew that as well as she. Honesty in
intent,
though—well, that was different.

“News for you, pal,” she told him with a gentle smile. “Women have always done the chasing; we just never let you guys know it. Subtle, you see. Which is why the sisterhood would disown me if this got out.”

Thor stared at her for a long moment. “What have I gotten myself into?” he murmured.

“Trouble.” She bit back a giggle. “With a capital
T
and a capital all the other letters too. You’ve opened a Pandora’s box, remember.”

“What about you?” The intent, probing expression in his gray eyes belied his easy smile. “Aren’t you putting yourself in a vulnerable position by admitting interest so early in the—uh— game?”

“You mean, ‘what price honesty’?” Too serious, she
thought, and gave him a light answer. “Well, I’ve always paid my own fare. And, besides, it seems to me that a lot of the problems in human relationships arise out of trying to hide what’s painfully obvious.” She smiled a little. “I’d be an idiot to deny interest after the way I reacted to your—uh—physical response to my challenge. Wouldn’t I?”

Something flickered in Thor’s eyes, an expression that might have been admiration or approval—or bewilderment. When he spoke, his voice was a curious combination of all three emotions.

“I asked for honesty, but I didn’t really expect it, Pepper. The closer I look at the puzzle, the bigger and more complicated it gets.” Almost whimsically he added, “Are you real? Or will I wake up and find you were a dream?”

Pepper didn’t delude herself into thinking that the question meant what it seemed to mean: that her honesty made her more imagined than real, something he’d needed but never expected to find. She wasn’t that complacent about herself or that certain of him. So she simply answered the first question and tried to ignore the second.

“I’m real. And you’d better remember that honesty’s a double-edged sword; it cuts both ways. You have to be honest too.”

“And so?”

“And so … the chase is on. Do you feel hunted?”

He appeared to consider the question seriously. “Oddly enough, no. I suppose because I feel certain that you’d chase, but not trap. And
I’d
be a fool if I weren’t flattered by your… interest.”

Pepper was honestly surprised. “Why?”

Thor was clearly amused. “My ego, I guess. I’ve never been chased by an angel before.”

Instead of taking the remark as the compliment it was obviously intended to be, Pepper was shaken by it. “Thor… don’t put me on a pedestal. I’d lose my balance. I’d fall off.”