Calder Pride (9 page)

“Wait.” She stopped beside a chair upholstered in unshaved cowhide, her expression a study of concentration when she pushed her hand into a side pocket
of her jeans. “I’ve got my money and credit cards.”

“I’ll make sure they have a room available.” He left her by the chair and crossed to the registration counter.

The mustached clerk nodded a hello. “What can I do for you?”

“The lady would like a room, if you have one.” He glanced back as she swayed on unsteady legs and sank down to perch on the chair arm.

“Celebrated a little too much, did she?” the clerk observed.

“A little.”

“At least she’s got sense enough not to be driving.” He pulled out a registration slip. “What’s her name?”

“Maggie…”

“Smith?” the clerk suggested with a faint smile.

Logan glanced back, but she was still frowning over her money.

“That’s good enough.”

“And the method of payment?”

“If she doesn’t take care of it in the morning, you can bill it to my room.”

“Very good, sir.”

Scant moments later, Logan walked back to her, room key in hand. “You’re all set.”

She looked up, with that same furrow of concentration still creasing her forehead. “Don’t they need my credit card imprint?”

“Not tonight,” he told her. “You can pay for the room in the morning.”

“Oh.” She seemed momentarily puzzled, the furrow deepening. Then her expression cleared with a dawning thought. “I guess you told them who I am.”

It was his turn to frown. “I beg your pardon?”

But she didn’t appear to hear his question as she
pushed off the chair arm to stand erect. Swaying suddenly, she reached to grab hold of something and fastened a hand on his arm. Immediately he placed a steadying hand on her waist.

A small, self-conscious laugh bubbled from her. “I stood up too quickly that time, didn’t I?”

“It looks that way.”

“Where’s my room?” Her gaze traveled over the lobby, the first traces of fatigue showing on her face.

“It’s this way.” Keeping a supportive hand under her elbow, he walked her over to the broad staircase and pressed the room key into her palm, then pointed up the steps and repeated the clerk’s directions, “Second floor, turn left at the head of the stairs, third door on the left.” She gave a great show of listening intently, then nodded her head once in understanding. “Can you make it all right?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He remained at the bottom of the staircase, watching as she started up the steps, keeping one hand on the banister’s wood railing and using it to pull herself along. A third of the way up, she paused and turned back to him with a puzzled frown.

“Hey, Dakota, where did you say it was again?” The note of annoyance in her voice was self-directed.

It brought a glint of amusement to his eyes. Obviously, she didn’t like this addled, helpless feeling that had resulted from too much alcohol in the system. He stared at her for another long minute, conscious that she stirred something more than amusement in him, something that quickened his senses and his desires. It was more than her undeniable beauty that drew him. Beauty, in his experience, had too often been a shallow thing. But in this woman, there was more than mere beauty; there was a pride and strength of character, an assertion of indepen
dence in the way she had rejected his sympathy. Someone weaker would have welcomed it, perhaps even wallowed in it. But not this woman. He had the feeling that weakness was something she despised in anyone, including herself.

All of this went through his mind in that flashing instant between her question and his briefly delayed response. “I’ll take you to your room,” he said, and knew that he welcomed the excuse to remain in her company a little longer, despite the fact that he also knew she was privately grieving for another man.

He joined her on the stairs and spread his hand across her back to guide her up the steps. In a different way, he was just as conscious of her nearness as he had been on the dance floor.

“I can find it on my own.” She gave him a perplexed little frown.

“This way will be quicker.”

She looked at the key in her hand and nodded. “True.”

Together they started up. She caught her toe on the next step and stumbled against him. He reacted instantly to catch her against him and keep her upright. She dipped her head briefly against him, then tipped it back, a rueful laugh slipping out.

“My legs suddenly feel so rubbery,” she admitted, a faintly bemused light flickering in her green eyes.

From other women, such a remark would have been a plea to be carried, but not her. Instead, she gathered herself and started up the stairs again on clearly unsteady legs. He stayed with her for two more steps, then scooped her into his arms.

After a startled gasp, she looped her arms around his neck and murmured, “I probably should object, but I’m too tired and this is too comfortable.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t pay any attention to you anyway.”

As he took the next step, she rested her head on his shoulder.

“I’ve never been carried before, not since I was a little girl, when my daddy would carry me upstairs and tuck me into bed.”

The idea of tucking her into bed was a tantalizing thought, conjuring up images that were far from the innocent ones she recalled. It was a woman’s body in his arms, not a child’s.

“It makes me feel safe,” she murmured. “Safe and protected.”

Something strong and fiercely tender surged through him. Logan subtly shifted his grip, gathering her closer. At the same time, he was disturbed by his reaction, and oddly irritated as well. He was a man, pushed by the same lusts as other men. Alcohol had lowered her defenses, but only by the law’s definition was she drunk. With her guard down, it wouldn’t be that difficult to work his way into her bed, and he knew it. If she had been like other women he had met in bars, none of this would be bothering him. But she wasn’t. She was a different breed entirely.

She snuggled closer and nuzzled his neck. “You smell good, do you know that?”

“Probably the aftershave I used,” he replied as heat curled through him, triggered by the warmth of her lips against his skin. He saw, with a bedeviling mix of relief and regret, that he was nearly to the top of the stairs.

“I like it,” she murmured. “It reminds me of the tall grass plains in summer—with a storm coming.”

As far as he was concerned, the storm had already arrived. The charged tension of it licked through his nerve ends and sharpened all his senses, making him aware of the curve of her hips and the firmness of her breasts. It was an easy step to remember the taste of
her kiss and the way her body molded itself so naturally to his. Much too easy.

By the time he reached the door to her room, her nuzzling had turned into a provocative nibbling, and his breathing had roughened.

He let her feet sink to the floor, her body sliding over his and making him harder than he already was. Her hands remained around his neck, her face upturned and her lips softly parted in a woman’s age-old signal of invitation.

But he didn’t trust himself to accept, didn’t trust that he would stop with a kiss. “I need the room key.”

“I need to be kissed again.”

Everything tightened to control the needs that churned inside him. He moved his hands up the sides of her rib cage, intending to unlink the fingers clasped around his neck, but they stopped when his thumbs encountered the underswell of her breasts. He went still for an instant, his teeth gritted against the groan rising in his throat.

But the tempting softness of her lips pulled at him. Dipping his head, he drove his mouth against them. His intention was twofold—to satisfy the rawness of his hungers and to frighten her with the brutality of them. She stiffened under the roughness of his assault, then came back at him with equal fierceness.

A breath away from losing the last vestige of control, he ripped his mouth from hers and pushed her at arm’s length. Slower to recover, she stared at him with wide, wondering eyes.

“That’s the way it can be, isn’t it?” She breathed in amazement.

His fingers itched to grab her—whether to shake some sense into her or drag her back to him, he didn’t know. The uncertainty stopped him.

“Give me the damned key.” Seizing her wrist, he
took the key from her unresisting fingers, conscious of the trembling in his hands.

He shoved the key in the lock, gave it a savage turn, heard the
snick
of the bolt’s release and pushed the door inward, then stepped back. Without a word, she walked past him into the darkened room, leaving the door open and the key in the lock. A light from the street filtered through the edges of the closed drapes, giving him glimpses of her silhouette. He stood in the hallway, watching as she walked to the bed and curled her hand around an iron post.

In his mind, he saw her lying beside him in that bed, the light from the windows playing dimly over her naked body, the blackness of her hair fanned over the pillow in an ebony tangle. He imagined her writhing against the building pressure caused by the caressing stroke of his hands.

To dispel the image and the inherent intimacy of a darkened bedroom, he stepped forward and flipped the wall switch by the door. Light pooled beneath the fringed Victorian lamp on the nightstand. Its diffuse glow spilled through the shade and spread onto the bed in mute invitation.

Cursing under his breath, he pivoted from the sight and jerked the key from the lock. “You left the key in the door.”

When he took a step to drop the key on the bedside table, she turned and came toward him, her blouse unbuttoned fully two-thirds of the way down. The muscles in his chest and throat constricted, closing off his breathing as he stared at the lacy white fabric stretched tautly over her breasts.

Woodenly he lifted his hand to give her the key. But she ignored it and reached past him, giving the door a decisive push. It swung shut with a dull thud and a click of the latch. She turned back to him and slid her hands up the front of his shirt to his shoul
ders, her blouse gaping open a little more.

“I want you to stay.” She tilted her head back, black hair swinging to hang down her back.

His hands came up, but they stopped short of touching her and, instead, held the air inches from her body. He dragged his gaze from her breasts up to her face. It lingered fractionally on her lips, still slightly swollen from his previous rough kiss, then traveled up to her eyes. He saw the desire in them—and the faint shadowing of grief that lurked at the edges. It didn’t take a great deal of intelligence to figure out that she was using him as a stand-in, a substitute for the man who had died.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he told her, his voice rumbling the warning.

“Why? Because I suggested it?” Her gaze traveled over his face, exploring the angular line of his jaw, his high, hard cheekbones, and the slant of his forehead. His hat sat low on it. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who doesn’t like it when a girl makes the first move?”

Reaching up, she swept his hat off and gave it a toss, then ran her fingers through his coarse black hair, combing away the flatness from the hat and studying the wayward strands that curled onto his forehead.

“Because you aren’t thinking clearly,” he said with a terseness. “You’ve had too much to drink tonight.”

Cat paused to consider that. “Maybe I have,” she admitted. “Lord knows, I’ve never been this brazen before. Maybe the alcohol has washed away my good sense. But I don’t recall appointing you to be my conscience.”

“Stop kidding yourself.” A thread of anger ran through his voice. “It isn’t me you want.”

A knifing pain twisted through her at his words.
Cat fought it off with a defiant toss of her head. “Isn’t it?” she challenged him.

Since entering the hotel room, she had avoided his gaze. His height, his build, the darkness of his hair—they reminded her of Repp. But she couldn’t maintain the pretense when she looked into his gray eyes. Yet that didn’t stop the little thrill from tingling through her at the dark light smoldering in them.

“Tonight, you made me feel things I didn’t think I would feel again. Want things I didn’t think I’d ever want. For the first time in months, I feel alive. If that’s wrong…” She paused, her voice catching on a tiny sob. Anger was her only defense against the pain. “Why do you men have to be so damned noble? I hate this stupid code of honor that demands certain women be treated differently. Who asked you to do that? It sure as hell wasn’t a woman.”

In all the anger, he saw the emptiness that ached to be filled. It was something he understood, something he felt himself. His hands settled on her, and he lowered his head to brush his mouth across her lips, tasting her tremulous sigh.

“You’d better know that I don’t have any protection with me,” he warned in a thick murmur.

“I don’t care,” she whispered back. “All my life I’ve been protected. Someone else has always decided what’s best for me. But not anymore. Not tonight. Tonight I just want you to love me.”

It was a request all too easy to fulfill; he’d been loving her in his mind nearly all night. Discarding reason and caution, he gathered her to him as his mouth came back to devour her lips, swallowing her groan that echoed his own hunger.

She was filled with the taste of him. It turned her greedy and demanding, determined to satisfy this raw ache that seemed only to intensify. She strained even closer, trying to absorb him into her. His arms
tightened around her like twin bands of steel binding her to him.

A moment later a hand tugged at the back of her blouse, pulling the material free from her jeans, then slipped under it to spread across her back. She breathed in sharply as little shudders traveled through her. His hand followed the curve of her spine, then glided to the front and cupped a lace-covered breast. Her flesh seemed to swell under his hand.

Wanting more, she arched closer and felt the uncomfortable bunching of her blouse. Desperate to rid herself of it and give him free access, Cat pulled at the blouse. A button slipped loose from its stitched hole and the other popped off. As she shed the blouse, his deft fingers dealt with the front closing of her lacy brassiere. Even before she shrugged it off, his hand was on her breast, his thumb rubbing over her nipple.