Tears of the Renegade (12 page)

“My God, you're lovely,” he murmured, still smiling, his eyes dropping to her bare, creamy breasts. “And so willing to give me anything I want, aren't you? No wonder you let me talk so much last night; did you think I'd spill my guts to you, tell you everything I'd planned?”

A fine trembling invaded her limbs. “No,” she whispered. “You needed to talk; I was available.”

She was so close to him that she could see his pupils dilate, the inner blackness expanding until only a thin circle of blue remained. “Are you available?” he drawled, deliberately covering her breast with his hand. “Are you as available for me as you are for Preston?”

She felt as if he'd kicked her, and she tried to jerk away, but he locked his other arm around her and held her to him. His fingers kneaded her soft flesh with a slow precision that frightened her, and tears stung her eyes. “I'm not available for Preston! Except as a…a friend. I'm not a sexual release valve for anyone!” She could feel her cheeks burning with mortification, and she tried to pull away again, an attempt that was useless against his effortless strength.

“Sure you're not,” he crooned. “That's why you're on this bed with me. You offered yourself to me, darling, for a little fun and games. But dear Aunt Imogene, bless her nosy soul, couldn't stay off the phone, and she blew it for you. Now what are you going to do?”

“It's not like that!” she cried desperately, pleading with him to understand. “Imogene wanted me to sleep with you so I could try to find out what you're planning to do, but I refused—”

He laughed, a low, harsh sound of disbelief. “It really looks like you refused,” he taunted, stroking her breast. He adjusted her squirming body to his in a way that branded her with his
male heat. “For once, she had an idea that I like. We shouldn't let a little phone call interrupt us—”

“No!” She wedged her arms between them and braced her hands on his chest, pushing against him in a useless effort to create more of a space between them. It took a tremendous effort to prevent herself from bursting into tears, but she refused to give in to that weakness and blinked her eyes fiercely.

“Why not? You'd enjoy being—”

“Used?” she broke in bitterly.

“Now, darling, I wasn't going to be crude. I was going to say that you'd enjoy being with a man again, because I don't count Preston as a man. What do you say? I promise that when I…
use
…you, I won't leave you unsatisfied.”

“Stop it!” she almost shouted, horrified at what had happened, at how swiftly something that had been so
right
had deteriorated into something so ugly. “I've never had sex with Preston. Let go of me!”

He laughed and recaptured her as she almost wriggled free, his hand going to her buttocks and cupping them, pressing her into him. “Settle down,” he advised, still laughing, though how he could laugh when she felt as if someone had torn her heart out was more than she could understand. “I'm not going to attack you. Though, my God, woman, if you don't stop squirming against me like that, I may change my mind!”

She stilled. After a long moment she said rawly, “Please, let me get up.”

With a mocking lift of his eyebrows, he opened his arms and released her. She sat up away from him, fumbling with her dress, trying to straighten the fabric over her breasts. He got up from the bed and sauntered into the bathroom, returning with his shirt. He pulled it on and buttoned it, then unzipped his pants to tuck the shirttail in, standing noncha
lantly before her. Susan sat in frozen horror, too miserable to do anything but stare numbly at him.

“Don't look so unhappy, darling,” he advised in a mockery of tenderness. “I probably wouldn't have told you anything, anyway.” He strolled over to where she sat on the bed and leaned down over her, his weight braced on his arms. Briefly, firmly, he kissed her, a little rough in his anger. When he straightened, a tiny fire was burning in his eyes. “Pity she couldn't have waited another half hour before she called,” he said, touching her cheek with his finger. “See you around.” With that nonchalant goodbye he was gone, and she sat in paralyzed agony, listening to his sure steps going down the stairs. Then there was the sound of the door, and a moment later the throaty roar of a powerful, well-tuned engine.

After a long time she managed to slide stiffly off the bed, but that was all she could force her body to do. She leaned against the wall, her eyes closed, while she tried to come to terms with what had happened. She almost hated Imogene for coming between her and Cord, even though it had been unintentional. No, if Imogene had known that Cord had been there, she wouldn't have done anything to rock the boat! She simply couldn't believe that Susan would balk at prostituting herself for the good of the Blackstones, namely Imogene herself and Preston. To her mind, if Susan had anything to do with Cord, it was based on ulterior motives.

It was particularly painful because, for a little while, he had seemed to be lowering his formidable barriers just a bit. Their kisses had been building a frail bridge of understanding between them, until Imogene's heavy touch had shattered it. For a few hours Susan had been on the verge of an ecstasy so deep and powerful, so wide in scope, that she had difficulty in believing the richness that had hovered just beyond her fingertips.

Black despair engulfed her, a depression so deep that only
Vance's death compared to it. After Vance's burial, when she had been forced to admit to herself that there was no miracle that would restore him to her, for a time it had seemed that there was nothing worthwhile left in her life. If it had been possible, she would have died quietly in her sleep during that time, so bitter and helpless had she felt at the irrevocable chasm of death. Time had healed her, time and the gentle steel of her own nature, but she hadn't regained the utter delight in being alive, capable of experiencing pleasure again, until Cord had walked into her life and touched her with his hard fingers, bringing fires that had been banked for five years back into full blaze.

It was an hour before spirit began to return to her numbed brain. She had learned at Vance's death that even the most precious life could be extinguished, and she had also learned that death was final. But she was very much alive, and so was Cord. She couldn't let him just walk away from her like that! If you truly loved someone, then you had to be willing to fight for them, and she was willing to fight the entire world if need be. Thankfully, it wasn't necessary that she take on the world, but the one stubborn, dangerous man she had to face was bad enough. If it hadn't been so necessary to her life that she make him listen, she would never have been able to summon the courage. She could face down almost anyone, but Cord could intimidate the devil himself.

Without giving herself time to think, because if she paused, she'd stop altogether, she told Emily that she'd be gone for the rest of the day, then grabbed her purse and ran to the car. She broke the speed limit getting to the cabin, not daring to rehearse what she would say to him, but knowing that she had to make him listen.

She thundered across the old bridge over Jubilee Creek, and the car fishtailed when she slung it around the long,
sweeping curve of the incline going up to the gentle rise where the cabin sat. A bright red Blazer with enormous tires was parked at the front steps, and she pulled up behind it, scattering rocks and dust. Before the wheels had stopped rolling, she had the door open and was out of the car, bounding up the steps in a very unladylike manner. She had pounded on the door twice with her fist when a piercing whistle reached her ears, and she spun around. Cord was standing down at the creek, about a hundred yards away. He lifted his arm, beckoning her to come to him, and she was in too much of a hurry to use the steps; she jumped off the end of the porch and headed down the slope at a fast walk.

He went back to work, his powerful arms swinging a sling-blade with easy rhythm, sending showers of rioting greenery flying into the air as he sliced through a section of heavy over-growth. Her pace slowed as she approached, and when she reached him she stood to one side, well out of the way of the slicing blade. He stopped after a moment, leaning on the handle and giving her an unreadable glance, a little smile pulling at his lips. “The honeysuckle is out of hand,” he drawled, wiping his forearm across his sweaty face. “If we ever decide to conquer the world, all we have to do is ship out some cuttings of honeysuckle and kudzu, then wait a year. Everyone else would be so worn out from fighting the vines that we could just waltz in.”

She smiled at the whimsy, but to Southern farmers, it wasn't that much of an exaggeration. Now that she was standing before him, she couldn't think of anything to say; for the moment, it was enough to simply be there, staring at him, drinking in the sight of his magnificent masculinity. He was glistening with sweat, his dark hair wet and stuck to his skull, and he'd twisted a white handkerchief into a band that he'd tied around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes. His
shirt had been discarded and was lying on the ground; his jeans were dirty. None of that mattered. He could have been wearing a tuxedo, and he wouldn't have looked any better to her.

When she didn't say anything, he tilted his head in question, a devilish gleam entering his eyes. “Did you come here for a reason?”

She swallowed, trying to conquer her voice. “Yes. I came to make you listen to me.”

“I'm listening, honey, but you're not saying much.”

She searched for the perfect words to use, the ones that would make him believe her, but with a sinking heart she knew that there weren't any. He was still watching her in amusement, lettering her squirm, and suddenly it was unbearable. She blurted out, “When Imogene asked me to spy on you, I refused, and she's not used to anyone telling her no. Someone must have told her what happened last night, and she assumed that I'd changed my mind. I haven't.”

He laughed aloud and shook his head in amazement. “So what were you doing on that bed with me? My ego isn't so big that I'll fall for the line that you just have the hots for me. I know your reputation, lady, and it's the straight and narrow all the way, as far as anyone knows. I have my doubts about Preston—”

“Shut up!” she cried, knotting her hands into fists. “I've told you and told you—”

“I know,” he interrupted wearily. “You haven't slept with Preston.”

“It's the truth!”

“He's in love with you.”

Startled by his perception, she admitted, “Yes. But I didn't know until a few days ago. That doesn't change anything. I'm very fond of Preston, but I'm not in love with him; there's never been anything sexual between us.”

“Okay, say there's nothing between you,” he attacked
sharply, changing positions. “That means there's been no one in your life, romantically speaking, since Vance died, which makes it just that much more unlikely for you to suddenly take up with me. There has to be a reason.”

Susan turned pale. “There is. When I met you, I realized that I'm not dead. I've mourned Vance for five years, but he's never coming back, and I'm very much alive. You make me
feel
things again. I'm not like you; I've never been brave or adventurous, or taken a gamble on anything, but when I'm with you I feel just a little braver, a little more free. I want to be with you for
me,
not for Imogene or Preston or any amount of money.”

His eyes had darkened as he listened to her, and now he stared at her for a long, taut moment, taking in the tension of her slim figure, the almost desperate earnestness in her eyes, eyes of such a dark blue that they looked like the deep Pacific. Finally he untied the handkerchief from his forehead and began using the square of cloth to wipe the rivulets of sweat from his face and arms, then rubbing it across his chest. He was silent for so long that Susan could bear it no longer, and she grabbed his arm. “It's very simple,” she said desperately. “All you have to do is not tell me
anything!
Since you're forewarned, how can I possibly find out anything? How can I possibly be using you?”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Susan,” he finally said, his voice so gentle that she shivered at the sound of it, “you said it yourself: We're nothing alike. I've lived a hard life, and it hasn't always been on the right side of the law. You look as if you've been carried around all of your life on a satin pillow. If you think you want pretty words and pretty flowers and hand-holding in the moonlight, you'd better find some other man. I'm not satisfied with hand-holding.”

She shivered again, and her lashes drooped to veil her eyes in a sultry, passion-laden manner. “I know,” she whispered.

“Do you?” He moved closer to her, so close that the heady scent of his hot, sweaty body enveloped her, tantalizing her senses. “Do you really know what you're asking for?” His hands closed on her waist, his fingers biting into her soft flesh. “I'm not much on genteel gropings in the dark, on schedule every Saturday night. I'm a lot rawer than that, and a lot hungrier. I want to take your clothes off and taste you all over,” he rasped, hauling her close to him so that their bodies touched. A fire alarm of pleasure began clanging inside her, and she let herself flow up against him like a tide rushing to shore. “I want to take your nipples in my mouth and suck them until they're hard and aching for more. I want to feel your legs wrapped around my back, and I want to go so deeply into you that I can't tell where I stop and you begin. That's what I want right now, and what I've wanted every time I've seen you. And if that's not what you want, too, you'd better run, because you're about to get it.”

Susan sighed in delirium. Her body was alive, aching, throbbing, wanting to do those things he'd described, and more. She wanted to give her heart to him, and with it, the soft, burning ardor of her body. She couldn't give him the words; she sensed that he didn't want love, that he'd feel burdened if she admitted that she loved him, so she would bite the words back and instead content herself with the offering of her body.