Let It Ride (4 page)

“And now?”

“Since my divorce I’ve stayed put. I bought a little bungalow in Glendale, California, and planted a garden. I don’t think I’ll ever move.”

“What if you get married?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t really date, so marriage doesn’t seem much of an option.”

The night breeze blew across the desert. Despite its warmth, she shivered a little, and he shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She smiled her thanks, but her eyes were still guarded.

He didn’t understand women and their need to label everything they felt, their need to analyze it to death, or at least that was what his mom did.

But he needed Kylie to trust him. Otherwise she’d never agree to be his wife. The moonlight painted shadows across the land.

He packed up the plates and cutlery and poured the last of the wine into Kylie’s glass. She didn’t take a sip, just toyed with the stem, rolling it between her fingers.

Her fingers were long and slender. He easily imagined her caressing him the same way she touched the wineglass. She licked her lips and scooted a little closer to him on the blanket.

“I have two questions,” she said.

“Ask away,” he said.

“Can I touch you?”

“Anywhere,” he said. And meant it. His pulse had doubled as soon as the words left her mouth. And though he didn’t plan for the first time he had sex with his respectable soon-to-be wife to be in the middle of the desert, he couldn’t resist the notion of her hands on him.

Her fingers were cold when she touched his face. She cupped his jaw and rubbed the prickle of his five-o’clock shadow. He’d meant to take the time to shave again before they’d come out this evening, but time was always a premium in his business.

Kylie didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t shaved. She lifted her other hand, completely framing his face. Her fingers moved with minute strokes against his skin, and shivers of awareness slithered down his spine and pooled in his groin.

He lifted his own hands, catching the back of her head and bringing her closer to him. He needed to taste her. Explore the feminine secrets that kept getting more mysterious the more time he spent with her.

He leaned forward, felt the brush of her breath against his skin. Her hands on his face were light and teasing. She watched him with wide eyes as she touched his skin and discovered the differences between them. He waited patiently until she thrust her hands into his hair, linked her fingers at the back of his head and urged him closer.

He needed no urging. He stopped thinking and simply reacted. She was woman to his man. And he’d already decided she should be his mate. There was nothing left to do but claim her.

He lowered his head the last few inches. A savagery ruled him and he tried to tame it, but couldn’t. She was the embodiment of everything he’d been searching for in a woman, and here she was in his arms.

He took her mouth completely. Thrust his tongue past the barrier of her teeth and tasted the heart of her. He pulled her across his lap so that he could have better access to her mouth. He slid one arm under her neck and shoulders and deepened the kiss even more.

With his free hand, he cupped her jaw and held her still for his complete domination. Her hands moved on him, stroking his jaw with a calming touch that talked to the beast inside him. The beast that had decided to claim her. The repeated strokes of her hands brought him back to himself and to her. He lifted his head. Her lips were swollen.

He needed to taste her again, but sanity raised its head, and he knew if kissed her again, he wouldn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt in her luscious body. He tilted his head back, searching for control in the endless starlit sky and finding it only after he’d taken several deep breaths.

“You had another question,” he said. He should set her aside, but not yet. He liked the feel of her soft curves against him, her rounded buttocks against his rock-hard thighs.

“What?” she asked. Knowing she was as dazed as he confirmed that he’d found the right woman to be his bride.

“You said two questions,” he reminded her. He tucked her head under his chin and wrapped both arms around her.

“Why did you ask me out?”

“I’m attracted to you,” he said bluntly.

“Is that all?” she asked.

He didn’t know what she wanted from him. He knew that telling her he planned to marry her probably wasn’t it. “Should there be more?”

“I’m a planner.”

“I don’t follow you, Kylie.”

“I just want to know where this will lead,” she said. She scooted away from him, and his arms felt empty without her. “I’m not really the vacation-fling kind of woman.”

“I know,” he said quietly. That was part of her attraction.

Silence grew between them. Deacon didn’t have words to reassure her. Didn’t know what she was trying to ask with her veiled questions. But he did know that if he pulled her back into his arms, he could reassure her in the most fundamental way a man could.

“You make me forget that,” she said at last.

Her words were like a velvet glove on his groin. Hardening his arousal and strengthening his resolve to make her his. “Angel, sometimes your honesty is lethal.”

“I can’t be any other way,” she said, twisting her hands together.

“Come here and let me hold you,” he said.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I am.”

“Deacon, I don’t want to have sex with you out here.”

“Well, hell. That kiss said otherwise.”

“Which is why I’m backing off now. You make me forget things that are important.”

He nodded and touched her face gently. Because she was so different from every other woman he’d ever dated, he forced himself to only brush his lips across her forehead. Shifting away, he said, “I’d never push you into something you weren’t ready for.”

I’d never push you into something you weren’t ready for.
The words echoed in her head, and she wondered how hard he’d have to push.

Kylie wanted to believe everything that Deacon said. And that was her first warning that her traitorous body had taken control. Her mind, her sensible mind, knew better than to give in to a smooth-talking guy with magic hands.

But there was something in Deacon’s eyes that was different from Jeff’s. A wildness to him that struck a chord in her soul. Tempting her with the knowledge that she could soothe him.

He made her feel desirable, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She hadn’t been lying when she said she didn’t date. Jeff had wounded the heart of her femininity when he’d tried to shape her into his idea of the perfect woman. And the men she’d gone out with immediately after her divorce had proved to be cut from the same cloth.

Deacon wasn’t, though. She knew that with the wine and gourmet dinner he’d meant to seduce her under the stars. But his reaction to her touch had been instinctive, not part of any plan, she was certain.

She’d never been wined and dined before. Smooth jazz still poured from the speakers in his car. The night breeze had cooled a bit, Deacon’s jacket and the man himself kept her warm.

This was a fantasy night, though she knew better than to buy into the whole illusion of it. The last time she’d believed in happily-ever-after, she’d ended up alone in a run-down duplex with more bills than money and shattered self-confidence. She wasn’t going back to that place for anything, not even the incredible promise of pleasure in Deacon’s arms.

Deacon was worlds different from her ex-husband, but he was still a man. She knew that for most men she represented a certain ideal woman. No one had ever bothered to look beyond the surface of her girl-next-door looks and sunny personality.

Deacon was different, though. His words.
His
honesty touched a spark deep inside her, and though she knew a vacation fling wasn’t what she really wanted, a longing for him pulsed through her. She hated to fight herself. She wanted Deacon. Why was she making this so complicated?

She knew Tina was probably having sex with the guy she’d met in the casino earlier this afternoon. Tina had the most incredible vacation flings. But Kylie had never been able to compromise her standards enough to have an affair. She wasn’t a prude. She didn’t have to be married to sleep with a guy. She just wanted some reassurance that there was something more involved than just sex.

Deacon watched her with his brilliant gray eyes. Suddenly she felt as if everything she was thinking was broadcast on her face. Insecurity swamped her. She pulled the lapels of his jacket closer around her. God, she loved the way he smelled. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. It was like being in his arms again. But a hundred times safer.

“I’m not sure what to say,” she said at last. She definitely should have stayed in the room with her book. Her book was uncomplicated. Her book was easy to deal with. She knew her heart was going to ache when the foppish Percy Blakney got down on his knees and kissed the cobblestone where his estranged wife had just stepped.

But there was nothing predictable about Deacon. Even though being here with him tonight had a certain excitement, the potential for heartbreak was too great. She wished she’d never stepped out of her safe little world. From the moment she’d stepped on the plane to come to Vegas, she knew she’d taken unsound steps toward something new.

“Which part scared you?” he asked. He lightly traced his finger down the deep V left by his jacket. She shivered with awareness, realizing she’d been fighting her physical reaction to him because it was something she didn’t know how to control.

“You have to know I want you,” he rasped. Leaning forward, he cupped her face and dropped the lightest of kisses on her nose. Then he took her mouth in a kiss that was more intense than the one they’d shared earlier. While that one had been all about instinct and passion, this one was more profound, because of the way he controlled it. Actually, controlled himself and her. His mouth was thorough, leaving her feeling completely exposed to him. She slid her hands around his neck and held him tightly to her.

She took from the kiss what he offered. An intimate knowledge of himself and the kind of desire she’d never experienced with another man.

Her body had reacted to his words. Her breasts felt full and heavy and her nipples tightened, needing his hands and mouth on them. Her center was dewy. She shifted on the blanket, trying to get closer to him. He fell back, cradling her against him. She moaned deep in her throat. Oh, man, this was getting out of control. She needed him deep inside her. She ached for him.

He rubbed his hands down her back. A circular motion that applied pressure just where she needed it. He shifted them to their sides and then his left hand was cupping her breast. She tensed, waiting for his intimate touch on her aching flesh.

But he didn’t caress her nipple. He only pulled her more fully into his body. She felt his erection nudge at her center and she wondered why he was gentling this embrace. He rocked them both side to side and then levered himself up off her.

“I—”

“Angel, I’d never hurt you,” he said, cupping her jaw and running his thumb over her bottom lip.

“You can’t control that,” she said softly. “I’m the only one who can.”

“Trust me,” he said, his gravelly voice brushing over her senses.

Weak woman that she was, she was tempted to say whatever he needed to hear to keep him touching her. But she didn’t.

Trust and honesty seemed to go hand in hand, but Kylie had found out the hard way that unless she really knew herself, her trust was fragile and effortlessly broken.

He continued running his finger over her bottom lip, and the touch was making her mindless. She pulled her head back and shook her head to clear it. “Trust isn’t that easily won.”

“Why not?” he asked bluntly.

For all his money and courtly manners, Deacon was at heart a very primal man. Though they hadn’t known each other long, she’d come to realize that he used those smooth manners and his dry wit as a shield.

“Because trust is a bond. And it takes more than a few kisses to inspire it in me,” she said. “It takes a long time for me to relax around anyone.”

“It didn’t seem that way a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, Deacon. That wasn’t trust.”

He lifted one eyebrow, inviting her to go on. It was an imperious gesture, and she realized in that moment that Deacon was used to being in charge.

“That was pheromones and hormones.
Chemistry.
All men react to it.”

“I’m not your ex-husband,” he said quietly.

“I never thought you were. There’s something in your eyes…a wildness…something untamed.”

He glanced at her but didn’t say a word. She wondered if she’d offended him.

Was she guilty of the same thing she’d been worried he’d do? Looking only at the surface image of successful casino owner and stopping there? From the little he’d told her of his past, she knew that he must have worked his way up the hard way.

But she was also sure that she was absolutely safe with him. He’d never hurt her or take advantage of her, and that perhaps was his greatest weapon in the battle she was waging against herself. She wanted to trust him. Already she was starting to.

“What man are you?” she asked, speaking more to herself than to him. He was so different from any other guy she’d ever met.

“The only man for you,” he said, lowering his head again. The words filled a deep desire in her heart to be special to a man. His lips filled her soul with warmth and fire. She was tempted to believe him, even though she knew she wasn’t the kind of woman for him.

Four

D
eacon got them both back into the car before he lost complete control of the situation and made love to her in the one place he’d always felt the most comfortable. He switched off Louis Armstrong and found a hard-rock station. The raucous music of Creed filled the car, and Kylie surprised him by singing.

Deacon stepped on the gas. The wind ruffled their hair, and Kylie reached across the seat to rest her hand on his thigh. Her touch was tentative, not grasping, just something he imagined a married couple would do. It pleased him to know they were both on the same track. They’d be married in no time at all.