The Bridal Path: Ashley (12 page)

“They probably thought so,” he said. “Besides, they were no doubt a whole lot more fascinated with each other than with their surroundings.” No longer able to resist, he skimmed the tip of his finger over bare skin that was still covered with goose bumps. “The same way I am with you.”

She gave a quick, startled glance at her naked body. “Even though I’m shivering so badly, I look a little like a plucked chicken?”

“Sweetheart, there is not even the remotest resemblance between you and a chicken. You can trust me on that one.”

Grabbing a towel from the heated rack, he rubbed her skin briskly until it was warm and turning pink again. “See, smooth and beautiful, just like satin.”

The gesture and the light tone cost him, though. His pulse was throbbing so fast and furiously he was sure he was no more than one step away from a major cardiac incident.

Ashley’s eyes lit with fire and an impudent gleam that struck him as slightly worrisome.

“Ash?”

“Sssh,” she whispered. “It’s my turn. I have to get you out of these clothes before all that water turns cold.”

Though she fumbled more than once, her dedication to the task of stripping him was apparent. She had his shirt off and his pants unzipped before Dillon could catch his breath. When her fingers skimmed over his arousal, he thought he’d died and gone straight to heaven.

Unfortunately, though, it was a dangerous game she was playing. “I think you’ve had enough fun for the moment,” he told her, gently shoving aside her inquisitive fingers. He shucked off pants and briefs and took a quick step into the tub.

“Perfect,” he assessed and held out his hand. “Join me?”

Gaze and hands locked with his, Ashley stepped gracefully into the water and slid down, tugging him down opposite her so they were sitting face-to-face. Their legs tangled intimately.

Buoyed by the seductive sway of the neck-deep sudsy water, Ashley leaned against the edge of the tub and closed her eyes. With a layer of bubbles foaming provocatively over her pink skin, with the peaks of her breasts playing hide-and-seek in the gentle waves caused by the slightest movement, she could have tormented a stronger man than Dillon into forgetting every resolution he’d ever made. He wanted her with a fierce urgency that drove out common sense and just about everything else.

“Warmer now?” he asked, his voice choked in his battle to move ahead slowly. He vowed he would let her back out at any point along the way, no matter what it cost him.

“Luxuriously so,” she murmured, sounding half asleep.

He might have thought he was going to lose her to sleep if it hadn’t been for the slow, deliberate slide of her foot along his calf. He swallowed hard and tried to focus on counting the tiles above the tub. He made it to thirty-six before succumbing totally to sensation.

“Another ten seconds of that and I’ll have you out of here and into bed before you know it,” he warned in a deceptively lazy tone.

“Really?”

She sounded more fascinated than scared. Dillon scowled as she stretched until her toes skimmed yet another part of his anatomy, which reacted with predictable swiftness. Judging by her expression, she was quite pleased with herself.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he muttered with mock ferocity.

“Oh, yes, I do,” she said cheerfully.

“In other words, you are deliberately provoking me?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Were you this impudent in high school?”

“Of course,” she said breezily. “That’s why you were as fascinated with me as I was with you. We were soul mates. Two of a kind. A matching set.”

Dillon chuckled. “I get the picture. Unfortunately, as we’ve already discussed, it was based on a misapprehension on your part. Still is, for that matter.”

“Don’t go spoiling it for me,” she scolded. “The image of you dressed all in black riding that Harley has kept me going for years now. You looked very bad.”

“You of all people must know that looks can be deceiving. You look like an angel with all that blond hair cascading to your shoulders and your skin all pink and glowing from this steamy water. And yet your behavior…” He glanced meaningfully at her toes, which were doing their inventive best to drive him completely crazy.

She grinned at the implications of that. “Which still makes us polar opposites. If I’m the real brat here and you’re the saint…”

“I never said I was a saint.”

“Don’t split hairs. I’m on a roll here. The bottom line is we’re still opposites, we still attract.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score,” he said, then groaned as her toes hit their mark yet again. Enough was definitely enough.

With a movement so quick she had no time to react with anything more than a squeal, he tucked his hands under her arms and lifted her out of the water, then settled her on top of him, sending water splashing out of the tub.

The slip-sliding of flesh against flesh stirred enough heat to warm the cooling bathwater all over again. With Ashley’s face just above his own, he met her gaze. “Playtime is over, sweetheart.”

She sighed as a half smile tugged at her lush pink lips. “It’s about time,” she murmured as she lowered her head until their lips touched.

Dillon couldn’t argue with that. He felt as if he’d been waiting a lifetime for just this moment.

* * *

Ashley had never felt so exquisitely sensual in her entire life. With Dillon’s naked, aroused body under her own, with warm water lapping gently at their skin, she felt as if she was in the middle of every sexy, romantic scene she’d ever seen in the movies. An image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr tangled heatedly together on the sand as waves crashed around them came immediately to mind.

The slow, deliberate slide of Dillon’s hands over her hips made her heart race. When he touched her already sensitive nipple with his tongue, a fire blazed to life low in her belly. The hard press of his arousal against her thigh teased and taunted. She ached to feel him inside her, to know the magical wonder of truly making love with him after wanting him for so terribly, terribly long.

Okay, maybe her teenage yearnings had been all about rebellion and daring. Maybe this hunger to be united with him still had its roots in rebellion. She didn’t know, didn’t care. All she knew for certain was that she craved the intense feelings he stirred in her. She needed to feel special and desired. She needed to recapture the sense that she was someone, that she was special, that she was perfect.

She had lost all that in one cutting conversation with her agent. Dillon remembered, though, and he had started to give it back with one heated glance. Now, in his arms, she felt whole again. She felt like the Ashley Wilde who could triumph over anything.

Her insecurities of the night before seemed to have vanished. She had taken an incredible risk earlier, practically begging him to make love to her, but she had known deep inside with a woman’s intuitive confidence that this time he wouldn’t refuse, that he couldn’t walk away a second time.

It didn’t matter that the real problem hadn’t gone away. She wasn’t instantly thinner. She wasn’t magically cured of all the doubts and insecurities. She knew the path ahead of her was still uncertain, her future plans clouded.

But at this moment, she could push that aside for the incredible sensation of feeling like a desirable woman again. If nothing more ever happened between her and Dillon, if he walked out of her life and never looked back, he still would have given her that. He would have reminded her that the way she felt about herself could be communicated to others. If she felt sexy and wanton, then she was. Dillon had detected the difference in her at once and responded to it. That was all the proof she would ever need that she could control her own destiny, at least in matters of the heart.

Satisfied by this discovery, she closed her eyes and gave herself up to the wild stirrings of her body, the more and more intense caresses that left passionate yearnings in their wake.

Just when she felt her body reaching the edge of a mind-blowing climax, Dillon’s touch retreated.

“I am not making love to you for the first time in a bathtub,” he said, his voice tight and ragged with the same sort of raw hunger Ashley was feeling.

With surprising agility, he rose in one graceful movement, Ashley cradled in his arms. He carried her into the bedroom and gently lowered her to the bed. She couldn’t recall a time when she had ever felt more cherished.

In bed, the sensual assault began again with lingering caresses and slow, deep kisses.

For a man she’d always assumed would be demanding and dangerous in bed, Dillon was astonishingly gentle. Yet there was no mistaking the urgency of his desire or the possessiveness behind his claiming. He made every inch of her his with a stroke of his finger or the brush of his lips.

And when she was quivering with need of her own, he slid into her oh-so-slowly, filling her, then retreating and filling her again until in a spectacular explosion of sensation, he made her totally, everlastingly his.

Chapter Nine

“P
oor old Mrs. Fawcett should see us now,” Dillon said as Ashley stretched luxuriously beside him.

“Are you kidding? She’d burn up the phone lines trying to find my father.” Apparently feeling emboldened by what they had just shared, she lifted herself until she was sitting astride him, then gazed into his eyes. “And I for one am not interested in being joined up here by him.”

“Ditto,” Dillon said, trying to ignore the provocative sensations that were already slamming through him again. To his deep regret, making love to Ashley hadn’t gotten her out of his system. He feared he might be well and truly hooked. “But we should talk about what just happened here.”

“Why? We’re two adults. We both knew exactly what we were doing.”

“Did we? How would you describe it?”

“We made love.” Her expression faltered ever so slightly. “Didn’t we?”

“I did.”

“You say that as if you’re not so certain that’s what I did.”

Dillon hated to ruin a perfectly incredible afternoon, but he wanted things to be very clear between them. Whatever had drawn Ashley to this hideout hadn’t magically gone away. It would be terrific if he could be part of the solution, but he sure as hell didn’t want to become part of the problem.

“I’m not certain,” he agreed.

“Dillon, I don’t do things like this every day. That should tell you something.”

“It tells me you wanted me, that for today, at least, you needed me. It doesn’t give me a single clue about what’s really going on in that brilliant head of yours, though. For all I know you may be on the rebound. You may be using me as a way to mend a broken heart.”

She was shaking her head adamantly before he finished. “No, this had nothing to do with another man. You can trust me on that.”

“Okay. But you were using me, you were trying to prove something.”

She rolled away from him and gathered a sheet around herself. “Look, I’m sorry if I did something wrong, if this didn’t work for you,” she said, tears brimming in her eyes.

Dillon promptly felt like the worst possible kind of a jerk. Kneeling in front of her, he framed her face with his hands. He brushed her tears away with his thumbs. She trembled at his touch.

“Sweetheart, I assure you there was nothing wrong with anything that happened here.
Nothing,
” he repeated emphatically. “But I need to know why it happened. I’ve been here with you for days now. I’ve seen something in your eyes I’ve never seen before. You’re vulnerable. I don’t want to think I’ve taken advantage of that.”

“You haven’t.”

He wasn’t reassured. “Then, please, tell me what this was all about.”

Even though her lips quivered, they began to tilt into a smile. “Do you realize that thousands and thousands of men and women hop into bed together every single day and they don’t need explanations?”

“No-fault sex?” he suggested. “Sorry, sweetheart, but despite popular opinion of my sorry reputation, it doesn’t work that way for me. When I sleep with a woman, it means something. The potential consequences are too great for it not to.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean…oh, my gosh, we didn’t…I could be…”

Dillon nodded. “The last thing I expected when I came up here was to find you waiting for me. From the minute I saw you, I knew we’d be together sooner or later, but I didn’t expect it this soon or I would have hightailed it into Riverton for some protection.”

He brushed her hair from her face. “You don’t need to worry about most of the possible consequences, but there is a chance you could get pregnant. If that happens, no matter where you are or where I am when you find out, I want to know. Understood?”

Ashley swallowed hard, looking vaguely thunderstruck.

“Ashley?”

“I’ll tell you. I promise,” she whispered eventually. She sighed. “As rebellions go, this one was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

So, Dillon thought, he finally had his answer. She had admitted what he had only guessed before–that making love with him had been no more than a long-delayed rebellion. Riverton High’s Miss Perfect had slept with the school delinquent. Hallelujah and amen!

And even though he knew more about rebellion than most people learned in a lifetime, even though he’d embraced it as a life-style for a very long time, discovering that it was the only motive behind the most incredible lovemaking of his life hurt like hell.

He looked at Ashley and his heart ached. Suddenly he couldn’t bear it a second longer. He brushed a lingering kiss across her forehead, gathered up his clothes and took off.

It was ironic, he thought as he rode off. He had come to Trent’s cabin because it was a place where he had always been able to think clearly. Now it was the last place on earth he could gather so much as a coherent thought.

* * *

Ashley wasn’t entirely sure when she realized Dillon’s mood had taken a nosedive and that she was in some way responsible for it.

She went over their heart-stoppingly beautiful afternoon detail by detail. She recalled his demand that she tell him if she discovered she was pregnant.

Then, only moments later, he’d climbed out of the bed they had shared, tugged on his clothes and disappeared without a word. She’d heard the roar of the Harley shortly thereafter. She hadn’t seen him since.