Almost Perfect (26 page)

She was terrified that he was right, but that didn't stop her now. He refused to offer her oblivion, but he offered something far better. She gripped his biceps, lifted herself to lick his nipples, and laughed as he rolled over and
pulled her on top of him. Laughed. She didn't think she could do that anymore.

“I'll wear you out and throw you away like a used carpet,” she warned. “I won't have to tell you no.”

“Have fun trying.” He grasped her hips, lifted her over him, and pulled her down.

Cleo bit back her shriek as he reached a place she'd thought untouchable, and she surrendered all over again.

This was not going at all the way she planned it.

She rode him as if he were a wild stallion, doing her best to break him to her velvet saddle, and Jared gloried in her effort, even if he knew she couldn't accomplish it. Despite her claim to experience, she had none. She'd been bruised and battered, but she'd never been loved. He could do that for her.

As she rocked in the first throes of pleasure, Jared rolled her over and took her up again. She climbed easily, thrilling him with her responsiveness. For her, it was just the sex, he realized. She didn't know what to make of it, didn't understand the deeper connection behind it, but it was there, a starting place. It was up to him to lead her forward.

He only prayed he had sufficient wisdom to proceed slowly and not drive her screaming behind her solid defenses again.

He let his body take over for his mind, let her drive him to that state of bliss where he needn't “fret it,” as she said, and surrendered to the flood of their desires with the joy of newfound love.

Later, as they lay side by side, she curled into his embrace, and he rested his chin against her hair while she slept peacefully. Wondering what it would be like to marry this woman, to plant his child within her, the first stirring of doubt and fear tormented him.

A gap so wide it would take an engineer to bridge separated them, and neither of them were engineers. He'd known that going in, but he didn't like being told he couldn't have what he wanted, and he definitely wanted Cleo. He didn't know that he wanted her lifestyle, or if she wanted his. He hadn't even met her son. She hadn't met his overeducated, highly opinionated, and intolerably obnoxious family, except for Tim. That hadn't turned out too bad. Maybe they could make it work.

Provided she wanted to make it work. That was a huge If. Provided he still had enough money to support her if he didn't meet his deadline.

Lying there letting the worries roll over him, listening to hurricane winds slam into the house, Jared wanted to wake Cleo and seek mindless bliss again.

Maybe he wasn't as ready to grow up as he'd thought. His Peter Pan existence had definite advantages he didn't foresee in the one lying ahead.

The calm before the storm, Cleo thought as she woke to a disquieting silence—the eye of the hurricane probably.

A man's heavy hand fell over her waist, and his naked heat against her back shot warm shivers through her. She hadn't had a man in her bed for nearly eight years. What the hell did she think she was doing?

All right. She wasn't a saint. Everyone slipped occasionally. Matty wasn't here to see the slip, and that's what mattered. Matty was fixated on his Uncle Axell, and that's the way it should be. She didn't want him depending on a man who wouldn't be around long.

Gene and Kismet really didn't need any more examples of immorality either, but they weren't naive seven-year-olds. They'd probably thought she and Jared had been sleeping together all along and would see nothing unusual in it. She didn't know how to undo their lifetime of experience.

She did know the danger of dreaming. Maya lived in a dreamworld. Cleo had learned practicality at an early age as a self-defense for both of them.

Carefully swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she crawled from beneath Jared's hampering hold. He stirred as the cold air hit him, but she'd escaped. Let him wake if he wanted.

She desperately needed a shower but she'd have to settle for the water she'd left hanging over the fire. She could heat more on the kerosene stove later. She really should have rewired, and installed a generator by now.

“Do you always wake so early?” Jared grumbled from the bed. “You can't be thinking of going in to work.”

Pulling on a flannel shirt, she darted a curious glance at the bed. His styled hair now stood on end, dark whiskers marred his jaw, and his dreamboat eyes were only half open as they watched from the pillow. Her heart flipped over in her chest, and she almost smiled in pleasure at the gorgeous sight, and that was before he pushed up on his elbows and let the sheet fall to his waist. Men like that had
never
graced her bed. It was like waking inside a TV soap opera.

“I thought I'd check for storm damage while I have a chance. You just stay where you are, Sleeping Beauty.”
She couldn't help the sharp edge of her words. That's who she'd been for too long to discard it after a single night of glorious sex.

He winced and flung a pillow at her, then dragged himself fully upright. “Fine. You crawl around on the roof and I'll fix breakfast, if role reversal suits you.”

“Somebody wakes up grumpy in the morning,” she taunted, pulling on the trousers they'd left in a heap by the door. She looked like hell, but beauty queens didn't climb on roofs.

In one graceful move he stood, reached across the gap to grab her, and hauled her next to all that breathtaking male nudity. Cleo thought she ought to run, but the flame in his eyes fascinated her. How could he look at her like that when she was such a mess?

“No, somebody wakes up hungry in the mornings, and pancakes aren't the menu he has in mind.”

He nibbled the nape of her neck, ran his hands beneath her shirt to cup her breasts, and buckled her knees before she could take a breath. Then he politely stood back, still holding her upright, and grinned at her in satisfaction.

“But I'm a patient man,” he declared generously. “If this is the eye of the storm, we'd better take advantage of it, although I am beginning to see the disadvantage of kids around the house.”

He released her to reach for his jeans, and Cleo ran while she had the chance. She thought she heard him chuckle, but she avoided the image. Charm like that could totally waste a woman. She knew better than to fall for it, but she didn't like to overexpose her weaknesses either. He'd even have her believing he didn't mind the disadvantages of kids.

As she crawled around on the roof a little later, searching for damage to the newly installed shingles, Gene fed
the animals in the shed, and Jared climbed up to join her, carrying a steaming cup of coffee.

“That's not an easy trick,” she grumbled, taking the cup precariously offered and sipping while scanning the landscape below. Her witch tree had toppled. She'd have to power up the saw before a car could get out or in. Regret over losing her favorite mechanism stabbed at her, but the man surveying the scene from beside her soothed the worst of the pain. His laid-back presence had a way of taking the edge off. She sipped the scalding coffee peacefully.

“I don't want to go up to the top and see the beach, do I?” he asked.

“You can't really see anything but the surf from here. The tide is high and a lot of beach has washed out, from the looks of it.” And that was only the first half of the storm. She could feel the wind rising beneath the heavy clouds already.

“I always wanted to live right on the beach.” He leaned back against his elbows and scanned the drive. “But I can see where it might be a problem losing a house every few years. Can you rebuild your witch?”

He seemed so calm about it. She was up here frantically checking every shingle to be certain her home didn't blow away, and he was already accepting the possibility that his had washed to sea. Of course, he had others to take its place. That was one of the many huge gaps between them.

She shrugged at his question. “I suppose, but I don't like repeating myself. Shows a lack of imagination.”

He snorted, and gave her a look that should have pierced like a laser. He knew her far too well already.

“I am not a repeat of your past mistakes,” he reminded her. “We have our differences, and we might not
work them out, but giving up without trying would be the mistake here.”

It frightened her that she almost believed him. She handed him the cup, and slid toward the attic window. “We'd better go in before we blow away.”

He'd scared her by pushing too hard. Jared drained the cup and glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the beach. He'd loved that house. He didn't want to think what would happen if it was gone. Cleo might not appreciate his moving in with her permanently just yet.

His agent would have a dire fit if he didn't turn in his strips soon. A sensible man would have stayed on the mainland and taken shelter instead of wasting time out here without the means to finish his work.

The world was full of sensible men. He wasn't one of them.

Sliding down the roof to follow Cleo, he could hear his family's admonitions already: “Wastrel. Slacker. You could have a brilliant career in films. How do you plan on getting ahead in the world if you don't apply yourself?”

He had yet to figure out what he was supposed to get ahead of, much less why.

Gene was haunting the kitchen while Cleo poured batter into a frying pan over the kerosene stove as Jared entered.

“Cleo says the strawberries are melting in the freezer and we'll have to eat them up. And there's whipped cream in the fridge we've got to finish off. I'm starved!”

“Yeah, the kid with the hollow leg. How you can eat after everything you put away last night is beyond me.” Jared affectionately clipped the back of the kid's head and watched Cleo's economical movements as she flipped one pancake, poured another, and reached for a plate. When he realized he could stand here all day and watch a
wild-haired woman flip pancakes, he knew he was in deep trouble.

She looked up then and their eyes met. The bolt of lightning between them should have fused them both to the floor.

Rearranging a suddenly stiff portion of his anatomy, Jared smiled ruefully and eased out from underfoot. He now understood the custom of a honeymoon. Two people in the throes of first lust should not be left in the company of others, especially not impressionable teenagers, drat it.

He discovered Kismet huddled on the floor in a far corner beside the couch, obviously doing her best to disappear into the woodwork. That cooled his ardor rapidly. He tried to imagine Cleo hiding from her molesters and couldn't. She would have defied anything and anyone and thrown their advances back in their face, then taken their beatings until they ultimately killed her. Instead, she'd stayed alive by killing a portion of her soul. He hadn't met her younger sister, but he suspected Cleo's need to protect had warred with her survival instincts until her confused psyche found an effective compromise. He wondered if it was really cigarettes she'd obtained the first time, or something the sister needed.

“Hey, kid, got any good drawings I can use?” He dropped into a chair as far from the girl as the small room would allow. On the surface, he had no clue as to what he was doing, but he remembered his own eagerness to show his work at that age. Kids at school had loved it. He'd quit showing his parents when their disinterest became too painful.

Kismet darted him an uncertain look, slowly flipped a few pages of her ever-present drawing pad, and slid it toward him.

He leaned over and picked it up. The upright dragon
had shrunk to a more proportional size, still equipped with the necessary apparatus, unfortunately. Jared supposed it was preferable to sketching a real man in that position. The dragon's victim was nowhere in sight this time. He didn't want to delve into the psychology of its disappearance.

The object she apparently wanted him to see was a knight in shining armor, he supposed. Not Cleo as phoenix this time. The guy wore one of those weird visor things so an observer couldn't see the face, but the length of the knight's legs and arms and his strange fighting stance stirred uneasy recognition. His brothers had laughed at Jared's ungainly proportions enough for him to see satire for what it was. The kid would make a damned good caricaturist.

He grinned, probably weakly, and handed the pad back to her. “Give the knight a sword, at least, so he stands a fighting chance. You've got talent. We just need to give you better subjects.”

A shy smile teased the corner of her mouth, and she settled in to give her knight a sword. Jared thought his heart would break at the sight of her haunting face beneath the ebullient curls, industriously bent over a psychological horror story. The child had skill to rival his. What were her chances of ever applying it successfully? He'd had connections, education, opportunities she would never see. And he'd come from a stable home with no dragons to fight while developing his work. Someone had to rescue her.

He made a damned awkward knight, just as she'd so cleverly discerned. He didn't like being so obvious.

The wind slammed the remaining palm across the shed roof before they'd finished washing the breakfast dishes. Leaves and debris crashed against the windows in the
sudden squall, and daylight dimmed to night. The kids looked worriedly at the ceiling as if expecting it to take flight, and Cleo sought for some way of reassuring them before they started worrying about their mother and the shack they called home.