Any Man Of Mine: A Waiting Game / A Loving Arrangement

“Hide, here?” He glared at the workmen. “You’d have hell trying with this crowd. It looks like a damned construction site in here.”

“Would you like to come in?” she asked.

“My insurance company wouldn’t like it,” he said bluntly, with a wary eye on the two carpenters up on ladders just inside the open door.

“Well, we could sit in the porch swing,” she suggested, gesturing toward it.

His eyes followed hers. Two boards were missing in strategic places. His dark eyes danced and just for an instant she caught a glimpse of something different in them.

“Not unless you want to sit on my lap and give your audience something to stare at,” he replied. “Besides that, it’s blasting cold out here, and you aren’t dressed for it.” He caught her arm. “We’ll sit in the car and talk for a minute.”

“Lecherous thing,” she murmured, following him to the car quickly to get out of the biting cold. “You’ll probably lock me in and try to seduce me.”

“There’s an idea,” he agreed, putting her in the passenger side of the Rolls. “Slide over.”

She made room for him, feeling swallowed as he slid one huge arm around her and gave her the benefit of his warmth against the faint chill of the car.

“Some idea,” she murmured. “You’ve never even made a real pass at me.”

He leaned down, his face suddenly closer than it had ever been before, so close that she could see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the thickness of his eyelashes, the faint shadow around his firm, chiseled mouth. An expensive fragrance, a familiar fragrance, clung to his big, warm body.

“You never wanted it before,” he reminded her. His eyes went to her mouth, pale without lipstick, and her heart rocked at the sensuous look in his glittering eyes. “Not until the night I left for Paris. But this is as good a time as any to satisfy your curiosity, little Miss Purity. Let me show you how I kiss.”

He leaned closer, brushing his parted lips against hers before she had time to protest. The tenderness of the action paralyzed her, and in a trance, she watched his mouth touch and lift and brush against hers in a silence that was suddenly sparkling and alive with new sensations, new awareness.

His strong white teeth nipped softly at her lips, tugging them deftly apart as his tongue tasted, slowly, the inner curve of her upper lip.

She gasped at the contact, her eyes looking straight into his, seeing shadows that had never been there before.

“You taste of coffee,” he said in a deep, sensuous tone.

“I...had it...for breakfast.” Was that her voice, that high-pitched, husky stammer? She felt as rigid as a board, tense, waiting for something with a hunger that was as shocking as the look on Nicholas’s face.

“I think I’ll have you for breakfast,” he murmured, and she watched his mouth open slightly as it fitted itself expertly to her soft, tremulous lips. “Open your mouth,” he whispered against the silken softness. “Don’t make me force you.”

“Nicholas?” His name came out as a gasp when she felt his big, warm hands cupping her face, barely aware of his body half covering hers, crushing her back against the soft leather in a warm, breathless embrace.

He didn’t answer her. His mouth was hard and warm and faintly cruel as it moved with slow deliberation deeper and deeper into hers. Her heart felt as if it were on a merry-go-round. She was spinning, flying.

“Oh,” she whispered, shaken, into the hard mouth laying claim to her lips.

His tongue went into her mouth, teasing, withdrawing, causing sensations she’d only dreamed about before. Something devastating was happening to her.

One of his big, warm hands left her cheek and eased down to the soft cotton fabric over her breast. He took the weight of it into his cupped palm, savoring its softness, testing its firmness, and she gasped at the newness of his touch, drawing back to look into his dark eyes.

“You don’t wear a bra, do you?” he asked in a slow, tender voice. “You don’t need one, either. Your breasts are so soft, Keena, firm and soft and warm under my hands.”

“Nick...” she gasped, drowning in the sure touch of his fingers, probing, caressing.

She caught his hand and stilled it, half-frightened.

“Please, don’t,” she whispered. “Nick...”

“I like the way you say my name,” he murmured deeply. “Say it again.”

She felt like a fish out of water, floundering. She couldn’t get her breath at all, and her mouth throbbed with both his possession of it and her own hunger to have him do it again. She lowered her eyes to his white shirt.

“Shy of me?” he asked softly. “After all these years?”

She looked up at him warily. “We’ve never made love before,” she whispered unsteadily, keenly aware of his fingers still resting lightly on her breast.

“I wouldn’t call this making love,” he corrected quietly, studying her wild eyes. “Why don’t you want me to touch you?”

She blushed furiously, hating her foolishness, her lack of sophistication, hating his mocking laughter.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” he asked, removing his hand to ruffle her dark hair.

“I’ve got to go back inside,” she ground out.

“Not yet. When was the funeral?”

“A week ago.”

He scowled. “And you’re still here?” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Her lips compressed stubbornly. She wasn’t going to be talked out of this, not now. She told him why she was staying, in no uncertain terms, tacking on, “And the first guest I’m inviting to the party is James Harris.”

His dark eyes seemed to burst with flame as he stared down at her.

He knew that Keena had loved James Harris and that he had hurt her badly because Keena had cried her heart out on his shoulder one night after too many whiskey sours on an empty stomach—one of those rare occasions when she drank hard liquor. But he’d never learned exactly what Harris had done to her to cause her so much pain. All he knew was that he’d never let James Harris hurt her again.

“You’re crazy as hell if you think I’m going to let that creep get his hands on you,” he said in a cutting voice.

“And just what do you think you’re going to do about it, Nicholas?” she demanded with more courage than she felt. The long, searching kiss and the touch of his big hands had knocked half the fight out of her.

He moved away from her, got out of the car and stood back to let her get out of the car. “I fight with no holds barred,” he reminded her with a strange, cool smile. “And I’ve put in a lot of years on you. I’m not about to stand by and watch you put your pretty neck into a noose.”

“It’s my neck,” she murmured.

He tilted her chin up and bent down to her, brushing his mouth slowly, softly, against hers with something like possession in his dark eyes. He watched her helpless reaction with a smile. “I told you before I left for Paris that one day I was going to be your lover. That day’s closer than you think, sweetheart, and you’re hungrier for me than I’d imagined. Ripe, ready to be picked.”

“I’m not an apple,” she ground out.

“No, you’re a peach,” he corrected with a last, soft kiss. “A sweet, juicy little peach that I could eat. But first, I’m going to have to knock you out of the tree.”

She glared at him as he went around the elegant hood of the Rolls and got in under the steering wheel. “You’d better get a big stick, Nicholas Coleman!” she cried.

He only laughed. “No, honey, you had. I’ll be back.”