If Wishes Were Horses (25 page)
He checked his map and made the turn off the highway onto the rural route,hugging the edge of the road to get past the sawhorse barrier left by a road crew that Linda had warned him about. He absently noted it was very isolated and lovely, as she had promised. The road was little more than a dirt track after the first mile. He didn’t see a farm or home, which suggested protected wetlands. If they could find a dry clearing for parking, this would be a good place.
He started at the sound of a siren and glanced up in his mirror.
“What the —”
There was a state trooper behind him. Great. The officer must have seen him going around the barrier and was investigating. He pulled over and shifted to get his wallet out of his back pocket.
“Sir, keep your hands on the wheel.”
The microphone was startling in the pastoral quiet. He immediately complied, hisbrow furrowed. The command took him by surprise, but he knew better than to argue with a cop before they got acquainted. An image of Sarah cuffed and writhing beneath him flashed through his brain, and he almost groaned at the longing that gripped him in a tight, painful vise.
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The trooper’s voice was a woman’s, though distorted by the microphone. Shepulled past him, turning the car in front of him at an angle.
The door opened and her legs came out, clad in the fawn-colored trousers tuckedinto polished black boots. She rose and her back was to him as she adjusted her gun belt and her hat. She bent back in to retrieve something.
While his thoughts and heart were firmly locked on Sarah, Justin Herne was a very sexual man, and one who noticed women. This female trooper was wearing the tightest pair of trooper jodhpurs he’d ever seen, stretched so taut over her skin it clearly definedthe crack of that terrific ass, and the fact there was no way she was wearing underwear.
“What kind of officer—” and then she turned.
He blinked. She wore the short-sleeved thin summer weight uniform shirt that
went with the pale breeches, and she was all but spilling out of it. Her breasts were pushed together and displayed up high in a black lace shelf bra. He knew this, because the top two buttons of the undersized shirt were open so he could see the quivering top of her breasts, barely tucked into the cups. As she headed toward him, the effect was enhanced by the sway of her hips, exacerbated by the weight of the gun on her hip. Her hand rested lightly on it. It had taken him a full thirty seconds to reach her face. Moist pink lips and fiery blue eyes, her pale white-gold hair pulled up under the hat.
“Holy Mother—”
She stopped at the lowered window of the convertible BMW. “I think I told you to keep your hands on the wheel, Mr. Herne,” she purred, bending over, her hand braced on the door. In that posture, with her hand still on her belt, he was staring into two perfectly displayed breasts within licking distance, if he had any saliva to use. Stupidly, he obeyed, returning his hands to the wheel. “Sarah, what—”
In a quick move he would have seen coming if his mind hadn’t been so boggled with lust and shock, she pulled the handcuffs from the back of her belt and locked his right wrist to the base of the steering wheel.
However, the position required her to lean further over him. He recovered his wits enough to grab her neck with his free hand, knocking her hat off so her blonde ponytail spilled over her shoulder. He caught her mouth with his and plundered, not caring that she might be arresting him, just needing desperately to drink from that mouth he hadn’t had in weeks and needed right now. Even if he died in the next moment, which was possible, since she was armed.
He wanted to fill his hands with those ripe breasts as well but was afraid to let go, afraid she’d pull back and he’d be forced to rip his steering wheel out of its column toget her.
She pulled back gasping, her lips swollen. She ducked out from under his hand andstepped back from the car. Justin shoved open the door and lunged after her. The cuffbrought him up short, making him stand in the open doorway as she stayed a maddening foot out of reach.
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She was getting her breath back, though he wished she wouldn’t, for her erraticbreathing did wonderful things with that shirt. He could tell for certain now she wasn’twearing underwear, for the trousers cut into her pussy, defining the labia for his gaze. Silently he begged to see that area darken with moisture, proving his effect on her.
Good Lord, Herne, get a grip. You’re acting like a randy teenager.
“In this situation,” she said, somehow managing to come across officious and stern, even with a hitch in her voice, “an officer typically tells you your rights. I’m going to tell you what rights you
don’t
have anymore.”
So here it was. An elaborate way to dump him and cruel, but he knew he had it coming. He wished she’d just take out the gun and shoot him, because that would be less painful.
“You see these?” She lifted her left hand, showing him a set of glossy nails, filed to smooth curves and painted a delicate pink that looked so attractive on her he wanted to suck each fingertip. “This is one of the many things I have done during my recuperation. A weekly manicure. One of the countless, inane, trivial things you do to keep yourself from going completely insane when you’re out of death’s door, but not quite up to your daily job. But I discovered something nice about these nails, Justin. Well-manicured nails feel very stimulating when you caress yourself.”
Her fingers slid into the open collar of the shirt and stroked over the top of one rounded curve. He swallowed, but she wasn’t done. Her fingertip straightened, slid down the deep cleft between them, then down over her stomach to the top of her thigh, so close to that well outlined pubic area he wished he had the magic to will her to touch herself.
“I did a lot of that, Justin. I’d lie there in my bed, alone, and I’d caress myself. I imagined my fingers were your tongue, your lips, the slide of your cock in my cunt. I’d be wet just thinking about it, even before I ran these glossy nails over my clit, gave it a light bite with them, the way I’d imagine your teeth would do it.”
“I can do it now, if you’ll just come here,” he said impatiently.
“You left me there,” she said, slicing through his words. “Left me with nurses and doctors, and my own thoughts.”
“I thought you—”
“No.” She held up that hand. “Number one. You don’t have the right to speak until I’m through, so shut up, or I swear, I’ll pistol whip your testicles.”
He winced. “Jesus, Sarah.”
“Number two.” Her fingers closed into a ball with two digits lifted. “You don’t ever
have the right to pull a stunt like you did in the hospital.” Her eyes met his, and what he saw there stilled him, the deep flame of volcanic lava, simmering just on the edge of eruption. “Do you know that after I was shot, I was in the hospital about the same amount of time?”
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Herne shook his head, because she raised a brow expectantly for an answer. “No, I
didn’t know that.”
“Of course you didn’t. It was pretty much like it was this time. You wander in this
nebulous state of life and death, not sure which way you should go. It’s clear which is
which, you don’t get confused about that. Life is harsh fluorescent lights, chemical smells, pain. Every time I surfaced, if I saw my husband, I saw the truth of our life together on his face. He was there, but he already wasn’t there. I knew it. I had to choose life for myself, just for me, knowing he didn’t want me anymore.”
“Oh, Sarah.” He reached out a hand for her, but she shook her head, stepped back.
“I’m not telling you this for your sympathy. This time, every time I surfaced,
you
were there. Not just waiting for me to get up so we could go back to having a relationship where we’d pretend we were devoted to each other. Not just there because you had a week’s worth of lust and attraction for me boiling through your system.”
She took a deep breath, and it shuddered through her. Justin realized in sudden anguish that she was fighting tears. If they spilled from those blue eyes, he had no doubt he’d go to his knees and beg for the right to touch her.
“No, you were
there
, by my side, in my head, in my heart. This time I knew I’d make it
because
you were there, not in spite of that. Do you know how terrifying it was to realize my heart was that dependent on you after less than a week of knowing you? So, Number Three. This is the big one, Herne, so pay attention.” She blinked twice, swallowed, pointed one of those glossy nails at him.
“You don’t have the right to play games with me, to make me choose you. To make me lower my shields when it’s already so blessed obvious how important you are to me. I can’t handle that.” Her voice caught, and she averted her face from him.
“Sarah.” He moved forward, and the cuff caught him again. “Damn it,” he exploded. “Come here and take this off, or I swear I’ll rip the damn steering wheel out.”
She was crying without making a sound, her shoulders shaking.
“For God’s sake
, let me hold you. I
’ve wanted to do nothing else since I left your
side. Do you know every time I heard a car come down the road I practically mowed
down my customers to look out the window? I got a damn crick in my neck.”
“You could have come to me.”
“No, Sarah,” he said. “I’m sorry, so sorry. My intention wasn’t to play games with you, I swear. I wanted you to be sure when you chose, because I was already certain about you. I knew the first time we made love in your house, but even if I hadn’t been certain then, I was the night…that night when we stopped him.”
She turned her head to look at him. He didn’t want to bring it up, knew it hauntedher, but she could handle hearing about it, he knew it. Nothing defeated her. He wondered at what he had done to earn the blessing of her in his life.
“Everything was laid bare, Sarah. You knew it, felt it, just as I did. In that moment, with the Lord and Lady in us, our souls knew that we were meant for each other. I love
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you, Sarah. It was there, just waiting, since that first second I saw you. Our minds haven’t caught up to it, but it’s in my heart and soul and I wanted you to choose. I wouldn’t take half, or stand the wait.”
She stared at him, defiant still, her eyes bright with new tears.
“I’m begging you, Sarah,” he rasped. “Let me hold you. I’ve been hard as a rock for days, and all I’ve wanted is you.”
“All right,” she murmured, and he thought they were the most sacred two words he’d ever heard.
She came toward him. One step, two steps, and she was there. Before she could reach for the key, he had his free arm around her, crushing her to him, holding her with her face against his neck. Her arms came up to twine around his back and waist and she trembled in his embrace.
“I thought I had lost you,” he said into her hair, and he meant the night of the incubus as much as when he had to walk out on her at the hospital.
“Never,” she said, muffled against his skin. She tilted her head. He kissed the salt of her tears away, tasted her with his tongue. She made a sound in the back of her throat and pressed her body against him. He insinuated his thigh between her legs and she opened for him there, whimpering in that maddening way when she rubbed against him.
“You put on some weight since I last saw you,” he said, his hand palming one cheek of her bottom and clamping down hard, savoring the feel of her squirming, her quick smile.
“I’ve been drinking milkshakes everyday,” she informed him. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Anything else gotten rounder and fatter?”
“Your lip, if you keep it up, Herne.”
He grinned. “You going to let me go?”
She leaned past him, biting her lip as his free hand slid around to cup her crotch and found her blessedly wet. Her eyes twinkled, a mixture of lust and joy, and quick as she unsnapped the cuff from the wheel, she clapped it down on that other errant wrist, locking his hands together.
“Sarah, what the—”
She snaked her arms through the locked ring of his and closed her fingers over hisass. “Improvise.”
He slanted her a glance. Arrogance and raging hunger changed to calculation soquickly she barely had time to blink. “Hold on,” he warned her.
He stepped back so her arms slid free and then brought his hands up and over her, so she was bound in the circle of his arms against him. He caught her buttocks in his hands and tightened his grip to alert her before he used his strength to hitch her up onhis body. Sarah obliged with an accommodating hop and wrapped her legs around hiswaist, gasping at the feel of his erection pressed against the base of her soaked pussy.
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