When Somebody Loves You (14 page)

She rose to meet his hot lazy kisses, arched into his lush tongue strokes as he made love to her breast, reshaping her with his clever hands, suckling her with a stunning combination of lips and teeth and tongue.

With the same sensuous fervor, he worshipped the pale flesh of her belly before moving on to the sensitive silk of her inner thighs, where he incited her to a restless, reckless yearning for more of what was yet unknown.

Breathless, she cried his name.

Shameless, she begged him for more until, when she was drugged from his passionate loving yet feeling more alive than she’d ever felt a right to be, he finally poised above her.

Stunned, exalted, she opened to him like a long-shaded window to the first sweet promise of sunshine.

His mouth covered the moan that escaped her parted lips as he entered her . . . slow . . . full . . . throbbing.

And the sensations began again. Deeper this time, richer, as he filled a void she had never known was so empty, completed a story she’d never known had such a glorious end.

With his tenderness and honest passion he penetrated a barrier that was as emotional as it was physical and opened a pathway for trust to break through.

Eight

Michael recovered slowly. January was wrapped tightly in his arms, the heat from her body lulling him, her sweet scent surrounding him. She lay so still, it was a long while before he realized she was awake and staring into the darkness.

He nuzzled the underside of her jaw, discovering a spot he hadn’t yet explored to his satisfaction.

“I take it the lady liked slow,” he whispered.

She groaned and burrowed deeper under the covers.

The hand lazily caressing her breast stilled. “What’s this?” he asked, coming up on one elbow.

She shook her head.

He leaned across her and switched on the bedside light.

“Uh-uh,” he murmured, tugging down the sheet she’d drawn over her face. He watched, fascinated, as a slow, pretty blush crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks. Finally,
finally
, he understood.

So it took a ton of bricks to penetrate his thick skull. He was entitled to a little postecstasy stupidity . . . but not at her expense. She’d left him breathless. Evidently she’d left him senseless, too, or he’d have recognized her insecurity right away.

“Don’t hide from me, January.” He touched her face. He couldn’t stop touching her. “Not ever. I want to see how you look after I love you. I want to see that beautiful flush on your cheeks and know I put it there.”

He pushed the sheet lower, then watched in reverent fascination as he framed a lush white breast in the V between his thumb and index finger. “I want to see your pretty breasts, all rosy and swollen from my mouth. And here,” he whispered, sliding the sheet even lower. Very gently he traced the curve of her waist, the sharp, delicate point of her hip, then the smooth skin of her inner thigh. “I want to see you here.”

As a kid and at his sexual peak he’d never been a marathon man. Yet this woman, with just a look, repeatedly turned him to steel. Enthralled, he watched the slender lines of her throat as she swallowed and met his eyes, eyes he knew had gone all languid and smoky again with newly fired passion. For her sake he banked it.

“Lord, you are beautiful,” he murmured. “Do you have any idea what it does to a man when a woman comes apart for him the way you did for me? The way you moved beneath me, the low, lusty sounds you made?”

She shook her head.

He smiled because he realized she honestly didn’t know. “It makes him think he owns the whole circus, sweetheart.” He leaned down and whispered a kiss over her pink nipple, then suckled it into a tight velvet peak. “It makes him want to leap tall buildings, beat on his chest with his fists, and shout to the world at large that he’s a man. A man with a woman who satisfies him like no other woman ever has.”

That finally won him a smile . . . a smile laced with tentative and surprised pride and so much vulnerability it made his heart ache. With a possessive groan he drew her against his side. “And makes him think he can slay his lady’s dragons,” he added, tucking her head under his chin.

Immediately she stiffened, sensing the direction his conversation was leading.

“No, baby, don’t,” he said, knowing he was rushing her but needing this from her now more than ever. “Talk to me, January.” He pulled back so he could see her face. “Tell me what he did to hurt you, so I can make it better.”

She tried to look away. He wouldn’t let her.

“After what we just shared,” he said, “you’ve got to know how much I care about you. Don’t shut me out any longer.”

“It’s too much, Michael,” she said, shaking her head. “And too soon. I need a little time to get used to . . .” She made a vague gesture to the room in general. “. . . to all of this.”

“Time,” he echoed, unable to conceal the hurt in his voice. “Time to figure out more ways to hide your feelings like you just tried to hide your body?”

When she bit her bottom lip and held her silence, he swore softly. “January, I have tried,” he said, as disappointment and anger knotted in his gut. “Dammit, I’ve tried to give you time. Now I need something from you. What just happened between us was spectacular, and I won’t believe for a minute that you weren’t responding to me emotionally as well as physically. Your reactions were honest and real, and the intensity rocked me to my toenails. But don’t you see that if you still can’t trust me, then we made love for all the wrong reasons?”

He clawed a hand through his hair, struggling to find a way to make her understand his frustration. “As wonderful as it was, I let you down tonight,” he said, his voice gentling. “I swore that when we made love, it would be after you realized you could trust me.”

“I do trust you,” she insisted.

“With your body,” he said, feeling defeated.

Her eyes were pleading and overbright as she touched a hand to his cheek. “Yes.”

He turned his mouth into her palm. “It’s not enough.”

Tears crowded her eyes, and when she spoke it was in a soft, tortured whisper. “It’s as much as I’m capable of. It’s more than I ever thought possible. Please, Michael, can’t you accept it as enough?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” He heard the ache in his voice and didn’t try to conceal it. “You still don’t realize that I love you.”

Her beautiful brown eyes darkened with what he refused to accept was fear.

“Don’t do this,” she begged.

“I’m not doing anything. You’re the one who’s reducing this to conditions.” Frustrated, he lay back and stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

He couldn’t believe what was happening. They’d just shared something that should have ended with a sense of beauty and bonding. He’d told her what he’d never told another woman, and she was acting like he’d committed murder.

She cared for him. Dammit, she loved him, he knew she did! What he didn’t know was why she wouldn’t let herself accept it.

Sighing heavily, he turned his head on the pillow. She was watching him. The look in her eyes finally made him realize that if there was one truth in what she was telling him, it was that she needed more time.

Think, man
, he mentally blasted himself. If he’d learned anything from dealing with Toby, it was that a child who’d been the victim of abuse or neglect repressed the feelings that hurt him the most. It was his only way to deal with the pain and still survive. January wasn’t a child. That didn’t mean her memories weren’t still painful. If what Toby’s psychologist told him ran true to form, then January, too, had been dealing—or not dealing—with her memories for years by shoving them as far away as she could. Tonight she’d given him a glimpse of the past that haunted her. He’d be a fool to think she’d be ready yet to entrust him with traumas she’d spent a lifetime suppressing.

He’d be a bigger fool if he didn’t give her the time she asked for. She was worth the wait. If the way she had come alive in his arms that night was any indication of what lay in store, she was worth
any
wait.

Groaning, he again pulled her against his side. “Okay,” he whispered, pressing his lips to her temple. “I’ll accept your conditions—for now. But someday you are going to realize you can count on me. For anything. For everything. Nothing you’ve done, nothing that’s happened to you, could make me love you less. Nothing.”

The tension was slow to leave her, yet he could feel her relax muscle by muscle until she finally snuggled sleepily against him. He consoled himself with this little show of trust.
One piece at a time, Hayward
, he told himself.
Take it as she gives it, one piece at a time
.

He held her long after she’d drifted into a deep, exhausted sleep, long after his arm had lost circulation, long after the ache of disappointment had ebbed. For the first time in his life he wanted something he couldn’t have. For the first time in his life he was going to bite the bullet and wait for it.

Thanksgiving morning dawned cool and sunny, a gorgeous epilogue to the first measurable snowfall of the season—six solid inches of white over Boulder and the surrounding area.

It was a gloriously beautiful day, and January, wrapped up for so long in the day-to-day demands of her work, had forgotten the magic and the allure of the mountains.

The ride in Michael’s Jeep to the Hayward cabin was like a drive through a Currier and Ives print. It was pristine, beautiful, and breathtakingly quiet . . . except for an occasional deep woof from George when he felt he wasn’t getting his share of their attention.

The only way she could have enjoyed the drive more was if she had felt comfortable with the fact that she’d let Michael talk her into joining his family’s celebration.

There was little he couldn’t talk her into these days. She stole a glance at his classic profile as he maneuvered the Wrangler around the snow-covered mountain curves. Since that night two weeks ago when they’d first made love, she seemed incapable of denying him anything . . . anything but the one thing he wanted: her total trust and commitment.

Though he hadn’t pressed her again, she knew he was quietly waiting. She could see it in his eyes, in the openness with which he shared himself with her, in the passionate desperation with which he sometimes made love to her.

What happened between them physically was so powerful. She hadn’t counted on that. Nor had she been prepared for the strength of the emotions she’d been so determined to keep at a distance. Michael was just as determined to close that distance. Of the two, he was infinitely more successful.

As a lover he was more sensitive than she’d ever imagined a man could be. He gave her pleasure selflessly and in ways she’d never dreamed possible. He was tender and gentle. Demanding and exciting. Innovative and shocking. And insatiable.

He overwhelmed her; he thrilled her. And since that first night, he’d refused to let her hide behind uncertainty or self-doubt. With a masterful, insightful awareness, he’d freed her of her inhibitions. By giving and taking in equal measure, and by laying bare his own vulnerabilities, he’d shown her how to conquer her own.

Feeling a flush of arousal creep up on her, January dragged her thoughts away from a vivid memory of his lovemaking and looked out the Wrangler’s window. As the Christmas-card scenery shuttled by, she wondered at the direction their relationship was taking. Ironically it was the bond of their past that linked them together while ultimately keeping them apart.

Michael was still not aware of that bond; awareness was with her always. Awareness of a secret she’d locked away and of the pain that would be reincarnated if it came out in the open.

It was a time she didn’t want to remember. It was a time she could never forget. Michael would always represent a reminder.

Though it had been difficult for her to let go of her initial anger, she’d long since realized the man she knew now was a far cry from the self-serving opportunist he’d appeared to be back then. And she no longer believed he would use the past against her. In truth she wasn’t sure she had ever believed it. That particular argument had been a convenient and safe shield to hide behind while she was being bombarded with all the emotional bombs involvement with him had precipitated.

The problem now was how to make herself tell him the truth about her past. The remaining barriers—shame and fear and years of denial and secrecy—were as massive as the Rockies. And always, carved like a commandment in her psyche, was the reality of rejection. Would he still want her, could he possibly still love her, after he found out where she’d come from, what she’d done?

“We’re here,” he announced, snapping her back to the world around her.

She murmured a disbelieving “Oh” as he negotiated the final curve and, gunning the motor, coaxed the Jeep through a snowdrift and over the final crest.

The cabin offered a welcome diversion from her suddenly dismal thoughts. She fell in love with it on sight.

Wood smoke curled from a massive stone chimney that took up nearly the entire west end of the huge two-story log structure. The sills of the many multipaned windows were heavily laden with snow, as were the wraparound deck and the wood-shingled roof, from its sloping eaves to its towering peak.

“Oh, Michael. It’s perfect.”

“It ought to be.” He grinned as he killed the engine and set the parking brake. “Every weekend of my childhood we spent hours up here making sure it was built to Dad’s specifications.”

“You built it?”

“Actually Dad did, but Rob and I provided a little muscle and a lot of sass before it was all said and done.”

His pride in both his family and their mountain retreat was evident as, with George bounding ahead of them through the snow, he guided her toward the door.

The splendor didn’t end on the outside. What the Hayward men had accomplished in structural design, the women had complemented with their decorating of the open, airy interior.

Homespun had never looked so good, from the multicolored braided rugs scattered across the polished tongue-and-groove floors to the handmade quilts hanging on the natural wood-paneled walls and draped over heavy handcrafted furniture. Antique copper pieces and intricately woven baskets of every size and color and shape hung from open beams, nestled on the stone hearth of the central fireplace, huddled in every conceivable nook and cranny, and were filled with pungent eucalyptus. Everywhere were framed and matted pictures of the Hayward family at work, at play, at rest.