Texas! Chase #2 (19 page)

They stared at each other a moment. Marcie held her breath until he took the hem of her sweater in his hands. He removed it over her head. His eyes became fixated on her breasts.

Reaching behind her, Marcie unhooked her bra and let it fall. Chase's chest rose and fell in one quick, tortured gasp. She saw his stomach muscles contract, but he didn't touch her.

At least not intimately.

Pressing her shoulders, he guided her down to lie on her back on the rug. Without ceremony he unfastened her skirt and pushed it down her legs. He wasn't quite so detached when it came to removing her panties, because he had to reach beneath her garter belt to get hold of the waistband.

Once they were removed, he slid his hand between her thighs. They groaned in unison.

The fingers that probed her were thorough, yet gentle. His thumb nimbly separated the folds and found that supersensitive tissue.

He only had to stroke it a few times before her blood began to bubble inside her veins and she saw lightning sparks in her peripheral vision.

"Chase!"

That was all the invitation he needed. He unfastened his fly and shoved his trousers past his hips. Marcie boldly assessed him, but for only a second before he mated their bodies.

She gave one sharp, glad cry. Chase murmured either a profanity or a prayer. They remained like that for several tense moments.

Then, bracing himself above her, he withdrew partially and looked down into her face.

Eyes locked with hers, he slowly penetrated her again. She felt him deep, so deep that the immensity of his possession swept over, stealing her breath, seizing control of her senses.

His dark hair hung over his forehead, mussed and wild. His eyes glowed with the firelight, adding to his animalistic attractiveness. The muscles of his arms and chest bulged with masculine power.

She wanted to concentrate on how gorgeous he was, but he withdrew and sank into her again. He held her breast in one hand, circled the stiff nipple with his thumb. She shuddered.

Her eyes closed involuntarily. Her thighs gripped his hips. He slid his hand between their bodies, stroking her externally even as he pressed ever deeper inside.

And her love for him, which had remained unfulfilled for decades, finally culminated in a splintering, brilliant climax.

He let her savor it, experience all of it, even the shimmering afterglow, before he began moving inside her again. But Marcie surprised herself and Chase by clutching him and raising her hips to meet his thrusts.

By the time his crisis seized him, she had

reached another. They clung to each other, gasping, grasping, dying together.

Marcie was grateful for the knock on her inner office door that came around eleven o'clock the following morning. The couple who had arrived at ten sharp for their appointment were about to drive her mad.

Of course, on this particular morning, her threshold of sanity had been lower than usual.

"Come in," she called.

"Pardon the interruption, Marcie," Esme said. "Mr. Tyler is here to see you."

Reflexively Marcie rose from her desk chair.

"Mr. Tyler? Which one?"

"The one you're married to. The tall, dark, and handsome one."

Then Marcie saw his hand reach beyond her assistant's head and push open the door.

"Can I see you for a minute?"

Chase was the last person she had expected to call on her this morning. Her knees almost buckled. Her mouth was so dry she could barely speak.

"Of… of course. I'm sure Mr. and Mrs.

Harrison won't mind if I step out for a while.

You may continue looking through the listings book," she suggested as she rounded her black lacquered desk.

The man sighed and came to his feet, hiking up his trousers importantly. "We're finished anyway. She's not ever going to find anything she's happy with."

"Me? I liked that four-bedroom on Sun

shine Lane," his wife retorted. "You said we didn't need that much space. You said the yard was too big.

You turned down a beautiful house because you're too lazy to mow the lawn. Which is just as well, I guess. You wouldn't do it right anyway."

"Chase, this is Mr. and Mrs. Harrison."

Marcie said, interrupting. "Ralph, Gladys, meet my husband, Chase Tyler."

"Pleased to meet you." Ralph shook hands with him.

The same.

"Well, come on, Ralph. Can't you see they want their privacy?" Gladys practically pushed her husband through the door.

Esme, rolling her eyes ceilingward, followed them out and closed the door as she went.

Chase and Marcie were left alone. They faced each other awkwardly, but didn't meet each other's eyes.

"Are those the clients you told me about?"

"Real prizes, aren't they? I don't think they'll ever settle on a house. Looking is just a hobby with them. It gives them a break from fighting.

Unfortunately it costs me valuable time and more patience than I've got."

"Hmm. Uh, these are for you."

He stuck out a bouquet of pink tulips, and confused by the gesture, Marcie took them. In effect, she caught them. Chase seemed anxious to get rid of the flowers once he had called her attention to them. If Marcie's reflexes had been any slower, the bouquet would have fallen to the floor.

"It's not my birthday."

"No special occasion," he said with a laconic shrug. "I had to go to the grocery store this morning to pick up some supplies for the office. I spotted them there in one of those little water buckets by the checkout.

Thought you might like them."

She gazed at him with perplexity. "I… I

do. Thank you."

"You're welcome." His eyes made a slow survey of the room. "Nice office. Fancy. Nothing like Tyler Drilling Company headquarters."

"Well, we have different needs."

"Right."

"Did you hear anything about your contract?"

"No."

"Oh. I thought maybe the flowers were part of a celebration."

"No."

"Oh."

He coughed. She tucked a strand of hair back into her bun. He sniffed. She fiddled with the green cellophane cone around the tulips.

"Did you come here to talk about offices?" she asked after the lengthy silence.

"No." For the first time that morning his gray eyes connected with hers. He had left the house long before she'd gotten up. "We need to talk, Marcie."

A sharp pain went straight through her heart and she recognized it as fear. He looked and sounded so serious. He had never come to her office before. Unless it was absolutely neces sary, he rarely even called her while she was there.

Only something extremely important and imperative would bring about this unprecedented visit. The only thing she could think of was that he wanted to back out of his commitment.

"Sit down, Chase."

She indicated the short sofa recently occupied by Ralph and Gladys Harrison. He dropped to the edge of the boldly striped cushions and sat with his knees spread wide, staring at the glossy white tiles between his boots.

Marcie returned to the chair behind the desk, feeling that she needed something between them to help blunt the blow he was about to deliver. She laid the tulips on the desktop. Getting them into a vase of water wasn't a priority just then.

"What do you want to talk about, Chase?"

"Last night."

"What about it?"

"I didn't say much afterward."

"No, but what little you said was very concise.

You certainly got your point across. You said, 'Well, you came twice, so now you've got nothing to complain about.' "

"Yeah," he said, releasing a deep breath around the word. "That's exactly what I said."

He lowered his head again. Around the crown of his head his dark hair grew in swirls.

She wanted to touch them, tease him about their boyish charm, play with them. But touching him seemed as remote a possibility now

as casual conversation between them had been the night before.

Having delivered his hurtful line, he had gotten up, retrieved his shirt and sweater, and gone straight upstairs to his bedroom.

More slowly, Marcie had collected her things, then retreated to her own room. She hadn't seen him again until now.

"Marcie, we can't go on like this anymore."

He raised his head and paused as though expecting her to respond. She remained silent and expressionless. If she tried to speak, she knew that both her control and her voice would crack.

"We're like two animals in a cage, continually competing, constantly tearing at each other. It's not good for me and it's not good for you."

"Don't presume to tell me what's good for me, Chase."

He swore. "Don't get your back up. I'm trying to approach this reasonably. I thought— hoped—we could talk this out without tempers flaring."

She clasped her pale, cold hands on her desktop. "What do you want to do? Just please say what you came to say."

"Sex shouldn't be treated like a contest."

Her only response was a slight nod of assent.

"Our wedding night, the first time we made love—"

"We didn't make love that night. It was impersonal. If you had rubber-stamped my forehead, it couldn't have felt more official."

"Well, thanks a lot."

"You know it's the truth."

He pushed his fingers through his hair. "I

thought you promised not to get riled."

"I promised no such thing." If he was going to dump her, make her a laughingstock in front of a whole town that had always found

Goosey Johns amusing, she wished he would stop pussyfooting around and do it.

"Would you just sit quiet and listen?" he said testily. "This isn't easy, you know."

He had his gall. He had come to weasel out of his marriage to her and expected her to make it easy for him. "Just tell me straight out, Chase."

"All right." He opened his mouth. Shut it.

Stared hard at her. Looked away. Gnawed on his inner cheek. Moistened his lips. "For starters, I think we should start sleeping together."

If her chair had suddenly bitten her on the behind, she couldn't have been more stunned.

Somehow she kept her astonishment from showing. But she held her breath so long that she became dizzy and covertly gripped the edge of her desk to keep from collapsing.

"And I don't mean just sleeping together in the usual sense. I mean, sharing a bedroom, living like a real husband and wife."

He sent her an uncertain glance, then left the sofa and began pacing along the edge of her desk. "I gave this a lot of thought last night, Marcie. Couldn't sleep. What I said after, you know, well, that was a spiteful thing to say. I felt like hell afterward.

"It occurred to me that we've been playing sexual one-upmanship. Driving each other crazy every Sunday afternoon. That's silly.

On our wedding night, granted, I took you with no regard to what you were feeling. I think I even hurt you." He stopped pacing and looked down at her. "Did I?"

Lying, she shook her head no.

"Well, good. That's something. But anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Then last night when, we got home, you seduced me. Pure and simple,

I was seduced. You asked for it and…

and you got it. When you, uh, touched me, I

could hardly hide the fact that I wanted you.

And Marcie, you were, well, uh, you were very wet, so I know you wanted me too."

He ran his palms up and down his thighs as though drying the nervous perspiration off them. "We've always gotten along. We were friends in school. Only since we've been married have we been at crossed swords with each other. Sometime last night in the wee hours, I figured out why."

Moving to the window, he slid his hands into the rear pockets of his snug-fitting jeans.

"There's this chemistry between us. I feel it.

You feel it." He glanced at her over his shoulder.

"At least I think you do."

Her mouth was arid. Again she nodded.

He turned back to gaze out the window.

"So I figured that we're being dumb by fighting this chemistry. We're consenting adults, living in the same house, legally married, and denying ourselves the main bonus of mar riage. I think we should stop that nonsense and give in to it. I mean, why not?

"Okay, so we agreed weeks ago to keep this a chaste, in-name-only marriage. I know that.

But hell, it's driving me friggin' nuts, and if last night is any indication, you haven't enjoyed doing without either. I mean, you were as hungry for me as I was for you. I've got the claw marks on my back to prove it."

When he came around, she dodged his incisive gaze. She was glad that she wasn't required to speak because she still wasn't able to. Apparently Chase had memorized what he was going to say, and he intended to say it all before he stopped to get her response.

"You know why I married you, Marcie. I

know why you married me. We're both intelligent.

I like and respect you. I think you like and respect me. We had some pretty good sex last night."

She raised her eyes to his. This time, he averted his head.

"Okay, some very good sex," he amended.

"I've been sexually active for a long time.

Even since Tanya died. Sometimes that was the only way I could forget…"

He paused, rested his hands on his hips, hung his head as though reorganizing his thoughts, and then began again. "Anyway, I

don't want to dishonor you by going to another woman. Besides, I was taught that being unfaithful to your wife is about the worst sin you can commit." He looked at her soulfully.

"But I can't go for months at a time without it."

She indicated her sympathetic understanding with another nod.

"I don't want it to be a competition, either, where we score points against each other. Our sex life can be an extension of our friendship, can't it? If we work on being compatible in bed, I think we'll be more compatible in other areas. We know it doesn't work the way it's been going. Maybe we should give this other way a try."

He waited a moment, then turned to face her. "Well, what do you say?"

"Hi."

"Hi."