Uncommon Passion (16 page)

and the hand resting on her hip tightened momentarily.

She made a little sound of pleasure at having discovered a secret hidden in his skin, then licked the spot

before continuing down to the hollow at the bottom of his strong throat. A hint of salt dissipated on her

tongue when she dipped it into the depression between his collarbones.

With her head cocked she studied his face again. His lowered eyelids matched the flush on his

cheekbones, and his mouth was set with intention. Purpose. Still straddling his legs, she put her fingers to

her buttons and took off her blouse, then her bra, then unfastened her skirt and slid it down. He cupped her

breasts, then brushed his thumbs across her nipples.

It was the give and take, she decided, the immediate, visceral response to her action that spurred his

action. Heat flashed between her thighs, on her cheeks. She read her own passion on his face.

“Your turn,” he said.

This time, when she rolled to her back on the bed, she spread her legs willingly. This time, when he put

his open mouth to the top of her sex, she arched to meet him.

This time, she knew what was coming.

“Jesus,” he said after one hot, wet circle of her clitoris.

She knew what he meant, could feel desire simmering between her legs, the slick moisture pooling

there. “I guess I liked doing that,” she said.

A velvety little humming noise, amused, aroused. “Anytime, honey,” he said.

Then neither one of them talked. He worked his mouth between her thighs with a devastating focus, and

the slow, tight circles around her clit drew her deep into herself. Oh yes, she knew what was coming, felt

the sensitive flesh burning under his knowing mouth, felt the fist tightening in her belly until release bowed

her back and made her cry out. His big hand flattened on her tummy, holding her down as the spasms

passed.

She lay limp while he crawled onto the bed, to the nightstand for a condom. He put his hand on her hip.

When she felt the thick length nudging inside, she eased herself down. Eyes closed, lips parted, head tilted

back, she took him all the way inside her, stretching her, awakening nerves into hyperclarity.

“Gonna take you for a good, long ride.”

The blunt words, murmured into her open mouth, should have shocked her, embarrassed her, but

instead they sent a lightning bolt of electric heat cracking through her. Heat flowed from the place where

they were joined, pulsing slowly out to the edges of her body.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“So good,” she gasped back, unable to form a more detailed answer than that.

The simple words seemed to be enough. His hand tightened on her hip and his legs spread, drew up.

His exhales shortened and tightened, huffing hard against her lower lip and chin. Pleasure fisted again as

she strained after the release she now craved. She kissed him, her tongue stroking his each time she took

him deep. Briefly she opened her eyes and caught him studying her, lust and need etched on his face, but

then he closed his eyes. Orgasm pulsed through her, hot, sharp bursts of heat and light radiating from her

core, through her skin.

The driven, intense way he pounded into her in search of his own release triggered another, subtly

different sensation inside her, more primitive and female than even her orgasm. He was taking her, she

thought. Again. Taking what he wanted, needed from her body, and when he grunted and went over,

grinding his release deep inside her, it was absolutely, elementally erotic.

Sweat slid from his ribs to hers, slicked the contact between his face and her cheek. His heart raced

against his rib cage, slowing as his breathing evened out and the tension ebbed from his muscles. She

loosened her death grip on his shoulders. As soon as she did, he lifted himself off her body, pulling out at

the same time. While he was in the bathroom she curled up on her side, her bent arm under her head.

Female. That’s how she felt. Not womanly, but female to his male. All she wanted to do was curl up on

the bed, his body still hard against hers, and nuzzle into his throat. She’d never seen such a thing done, but

the impulse was there.

He appeared in the bedroom doorway, hands on hips, unabashedly naked, and flashed her a hotter,

softer version of his smile. “How do you like me now?”

It was the second time he’d asked. She told him the truth. “I don’t really know you.”

The smile vanished.

“I’d like to, though,” she added. She sat up on the bed and tucked her legs under her. Her hair slid

forward, shielding her body.

He snagged his shorts from the floor and stepped into them. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Hobbies? Interests? Things you do with your free time?”

“Between the off duty and on duty, I’m working sixty hours a week. SWAT workouts the rest of the

week. Sleep, eat, repeat.”

The terse description matched the interior of his apartment. “Tell me about your family.”

He cut her a look as sharp as his smile but without any of the charm. “Just a family. Mother, father,

brother, sister.”

The idea of Ben with a brother made her smile. “Does he still ranch with your dad?”

His face was utterly still, arms once again folded across his chest. “No.”

“Oh. Does he live here in town?”

“Yes.”

This felt like playing Twenty Questions on a long car ride to church camp but without the sense of

playfulness. “Do you see him often?”

“I’m due at his house in a couple of minutes.”

“Oh,” she said again, and scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

Fortunately her clothes lay in a pile at the end of the bed. He didn’t say anything as she dressed, but

when she began to search through the twisted sheet and beige carpet for the U-pins necessary to hold her

hair in place, he joined her. In the end she sat on the bed and used the comb she pulled from her purse to

smooth her hair while he hunkered down to pluck pins from the carpet and lay them in a pile beside her.

Elbows across knees, he watched her coil the length into a bun at the nape of her neck and use the pins to

secure it.

“It’s thick,” he commented.

He’d had his hands in it more than any other man, so he would know. She’d taught herself to braid it

after her mother died because her father had no idea how to brush, let along style, a young girl’s hair, and

working with it reminded her of her mother. “I can’t do anything fun with it,” she said as she inserted the

last pin. “It won’t hold a perm, much less curls from a curling iron.”

“We’ve had plenty of fun with your hair,” he said.

And there was the flashing smile. She smiled back, but didn’t miss how he’d turned the conversation

away from his family, back to sex. It was a mistake to make anything more out of this. “I suppose we

have,” she said as she tucked her comb back in her purse, then got to her feet.

Ben followed her to the door. “Same time next week?” he asked.

She paused in the doorway and looked at him, trying to understand the causes and consequences of

desire. He wasn’t trying to trap her or second-guess her, or even protect her. All he offered was a chance to

experience something intoxicating, radically thrilling. For now, it was enough.

“All right,” she said.

Chapter Ten

The fol owing Friday traffic at the farm stand picked up as people got off work and started their

weekend grocery shopping. When the A&M boys returned from town to help handle the rush, Rachel told

Jess she was going to do the milking, then followed the dirt trail through the wildflowers to the goat yard.

She milked the does, then turned to the nightly chores, mucking out the bedding hay and dumping it in a

wheelbarrow to transfer to the compost pile, transferring the previous day’s waste hay for clean bedding,

adding forkfuls of new hay to the trough. At the plastic storage bin she measured out each goat’s ration of

concentrate based on where the doe was in the cycle, and dumped it into her feed bucket. The sounds of

their communal munching, hooves rustling in the straw, used to make Rachel smile. Lately all she felt was a

growing impatience to move on with her life.

Once again she inhaled deeply, this time getting lungfuls of sultry evening air, goats and manure and the

unique scent of the concentrate. Underneath it all lay the faint scent of Ben; sex layered over sweat layered

over soap, unique and distinct, something she couldn’t get out of her nostrils. Not that she really wanted to.

When she closed her eyes she saw his square jaw, felt his hard body against hers.

It was stupid for her to daydream about Ben Harris while she walked back up to the farm stand, stupid

and naïve, something she tried hard not to be. He wouldn’t tell her anything about who he was outside his

bedroom. Based on his reaction last Sunday morning, there was far more to being a cop than black-

humored stories about taking drunk men to a shelter. He’d been out on a SWAT call Saturday night. He’d

been up for probably thirty hours, and on duty for most of it, by the time she showed up at his apartment.

What happened between them was raw, intense, and to her, exceedingly intimate, and yet he wouldn’t tell

her what his hobbies were.

Jess stopped by the cash register to slip a check under the drawer. “I think I’ve figured out where you’re

going on Sundays,” she said.

Rachel made a noncommittal noise and scanned the shaded stand for a customer who might need help.

It was truly shocking how many suburban women came out to the stand, then had no idea what to do with

the array of produce offered.

“You’re seeing
Officer Harris
,” Jess said.

With Jess the teasing edge to her voice could tip into friendly girl banter or serious snark. She might be

relieved Rachel wasn’t interested in Rob, or there might be something to ridicule about dating a cop Rachel

didn’t know about. “What makes you think that?”

“You shower before you leave, and you shower when you get home. That usually means sex happened

in between. But you don’t wash your hair, which smells like his cologne.”

“He doesn’t wear cologne,” Rachel pointed out as she wove through the customers to a woman staring

at the carrots, no more than two hours out of the ground, laid out in bunches in a flat. “Can I help you find

something?”

“I’m looking for baby carrots,” the woman said uncertainly.

Behind her Rachel heard the irritated sniff that went with Jess’s patented eye roll, and stepped in front

of her fellow apprentice so the customer wouldn’t see the derision. “Baby carrots are made from regular

carrots,” she explained gently. “The processing company shaves off most of the carrot and uses the gratings

in bagged salads. What’s left are those little baby carrots. Our carrots are fresh from the field today,” she

said.

She helped the woman choose a small selection of different vegetables to try, then added a sheet of

paper with basic recipes, and sent her on her way.

“Can you believe how distanced the average American is from her food?” Jess said. “I mean, come on.

She has to know that food grows in dirt.”

Making the customer feel stupid wouldn’t help. “Knowing isn’t the same as understanding. We’re all

distanced from something basic,” she said. For the customer, getting food from a stand, not a sanitized store

with pretty packaging was a disconnect. For her, sex. For Ben . . . emotions. How could a man that

intensely alive be so out of touch with himself?

“He wears something,” Jess said, as if she knew what Rachel was thinking about. “I smelled it when he

walked by me at the auction.”

Rachel tried to remember what was on top of the dresser in Ben’s bedroom and came up with nothing

more than loose change, receipts, and pens. Something uniquely Ben lingered in her mind. Soap. His skin.

Sweat. Maybe detergent from one of those faded western shirts he favored, and opened so easily when she

wanted a good look at his torso. Memory sent a rush of heat through her body.

Wasn’t smell the most potent sense of all?

“I’m kind of surprised,” Jess said. She straightened the remaining rows of beans and peas, moving

opposite from Rachel, who did the same on the other side of the table. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

“I’m kind of surprised, because I don’t seem like his,” Rachel replied.

Maybe sex was his hobby. Maybe he spent what little downtime he had doing exactly what he’d done

with Rachel. “What is my type?” she asked.

“Rob,” Jess said flatly. “You’re perfect for each other. You’re into the same things. You’re so good, and

you’d slip right into the farm’s operation.”

“I’m good?”

“You never yell or argue or even get impatient and bad tempered.” Jess eyed her across the mounded

sweet corn. “I’ve never known anyone like you.”

She didn’t yell because she’d never been permitted to raise her voice in anger or frustration or