"Do you want to go away for Christmas or stay home this year?"
"If things are still hard financially, hadn't we better pinch pennies or something?" She didn't add that she could use those few weeks to get her designs well underway and get paid for them, so that she might be able to help him out.
His hard mouth tugged up in a smile. "Will you leave me if I lose it all and wind up living in a line cabin, posing for Gene's western landscapes?" "Silly man," she whispered, her smile warm, her eyes full of soft affection. "Where would I go, without you?" His dark eyes slid down to the bodice of the gown. "Isn't it a little cold for a see-through gown?" he asked huskily. She nuzzled her face against his suit coat. "I didn't notice the cold. I was lonely, and I'm tired of sleeping by myself." That made his heart race. His jaw went taut. "Then why didn't you come to me and say so?" He looked at her quietly. "You say I'm always holding back, but what are you doing?" She looked up at him. "You're the one who said we needed to get to know each other before we slept together again." "I thought that was what you wanted," he said, puzzled. "Babies ought to be made out of love, not uncontrollable desire, isn't that what you said to me the night we argued?" "I wish you could read my mind sometimes," she sighed as she got off his lap and moved away. "But you keep giving me what you think I want" She kept her back to him. "No, babies oughtn't to be made out of desire. But then, ours wasn't." He stood up, studying that straight, tanned little back that was all too visible in the low cut of
the gown. He wasn't sure he'd heard her right. "You wanted me," he said.
She turned, her pale eyes holding his, her body straight, her chin lifted proudly. "I loved you,"
she corrected, her eyes bright and steady as they met his. He was suddenly, acutely still.
"You what?" She searched his shocked, glittery black eyes. "I loved you. I still love you. I'll
always love you. Deathlessly," she whispered, ripping away the mask. "Endlessly. Hopelessly. I
loved you from the very beginning, Jason." She smiled bitterly. "I tagged after you like a
lovesick child, you even said so. I goaded you into making love to me, and I deliberately didn't
take precautions because I thought if I got pregnant, you might love the baby even if you
couldn't love me." She laughed, but through sudden tears as she leaned back against the wall for
support.
He stood there like a statue, not moving. She'd said once before that she'd loved him in the past, but that she didn't anymore. He hadn't realized, until now, that she was still in love with him. It changed him. It knocked him completely off balance.
"But it all backfired, didn't it, Jason?" she was asking miserably. "Because you're never going to feel like that about me...!"
His mouth cut her off. He was close against her, his body hungry like the mouth that devoured her trembling lips. His weight crushed her gently against the wall behind her. She tasted tears on her mouth, like salt, mingling with coffee and smoke on his breath. He was hard and warm over her, and she was trembling. Then his mouth opened and his hips shifted. She stopped thinking at all.
Lightning shot through Kate's body. It was the most primitive kind of thing that she felt in Jason as he bent over her, devouring her in a hush that was only broken by the rasp of his breathing and the rough bump of his heartbeat. There should have been thunderstorms around them, or crashing waves, or an earthquake. They should have been in the middle of an open field with the rain coming down in pitchforks around their oblivious heads. But there was only the bright room, with its pink decor and canopied bed, the soft sound of the wind outside the closed window and the hum of the furnace coming through the register behind Kate's feet.
She didn't have enough room to respond to him. His powerfully muscled body was against her from thigh to breast, one leg bent between both of hers, his hands rhythmically pulling her hips upward into his while his tongue probed past the soft trembling of her lips.
"I'm trying...to talk to you," she whispered against his hard mouth when he finally lifted it just enough to catch a breath of air.
His lean hands moved up to her breasts, slowly taking their weight over the silky fabric of her
bodice. "You told me you loved me," he whispered unsteadily. "What did you expect me to
do?"
"I didn't think you wanted to be loved," she breathed as his mouth lowered again.
"More fool, you," he murmured against her welcoming lips. "If you don't want to get pregnant
again, you'd better tell me while I can fumble something to use out of my wallet."
"Is that where you keep it?" she whispered.
"God knows. I think the only one I have is three years old, and it's probably long since rotted," he managed with the last traces of humor in him. He was trembling, and she could feel that, and he didn't give a damn. She loved him. And he loved her. He wanted to show her how much, and it was going to take one hell of a long time.
"What happens if I say I don't want a child yet?" she asked unsteadily as he bent to lift her. "Hold the thought while you rush into town to the drugstore...?"
"Dream on, honey." He eased her onto the mattress and followed her down, his mouth nudging her gown out of the way so that he could get it over her taut nipple. She moaned when he did that, clutching at him with satisfying hunger. He knew what she liked best, and he did it, overwhelmed with the newness of knowing she loved him, wanting nothing in life more than to please her.
"Jason, the door..." she managed. It was standing open, and her eyes were like green and black
saucers. "Who's going to see us, or hear us?" he asked softly. "What if they come back to pick up something, or Sheila did?" she asked. "Damn," he sighed. But he got up and closed it, then locked it. He stared down at her as he
returned to the bed, warm, possessive desire making him arrogant. His dark, hungry eyes ran the length of her body in the gown that concealed nothing from him, lingering on the taut tips of her breasts. She felt all woman, letting him look at her like that. She liked it. And because she did, and because she had no more secrets from him, she pulled the bodice down and slid it over her hips. Then she lay back, her body curled and soft on the coverlet, and let him look at her. "I love you," she whispered huskily. "I don't even care if you know it. I love you to distraction." "If you don't stop saying that, I'll never get my clothes off," he said with black humor as he tried to work buttons with hands that wanted nothing more than Kate's body under them. "Why?" she murmured dryly. "Does it disturb you?" "Disturb me, the devil," he laughed. "It excites me so much I can't even feel my damned hands!" That was new, too, to see Jason ruffled. She liked it. She watched the clothing come off that powerful, darkly tanned body with a feeling of utter possession. He might not love her, but he wanted to be loved. And as long as he was open to her, she might move in under his heart if she was very careful. He turned finally, his body like bronze in the light except for one wide swathe because he didn't sunbathe in the nude. He was beautifully made, she thought, watching him with blatant interest. She loved the evidence of his hunger for her, the powerful masculinity that was hers alone now. "You've never looked at me like that before," he said quietly as he eased down alongside her. "I was too shy of you," she said gently. "I still am, a little. But you give me so much when we make love. I tingle all over, just thinking about how it is." "You give me a lot, too." He slid his hand along her breasts, watching her stomach curve in suddenly with plea
sure, and he smiled. But it was no mocking, superior smile. It was amused, indulgent, even conspiratorial. She made his head spin. She made him invincible. He found new things to do, that made her cry out, that made her shudder. He touched her in ways he'd been too reticent to touch her before. He smoothed his mouth over silky skin that trembled. He lifted her and held her, he pushed down against her and buffeted her, and all the while she looked at him with those eyes. Those soft, green, misty eyes that held enough love to bind him forever. It was sweet madness. She looked down where he lifted up her hips in firm, sure hands. And she watched. And so did he. Her eyes slid back up to his with new knowledge and fascinated pleasure. It was like no other time with him. Even the sounds were different. There was passion, but it was so slow, so tender. Every movement was careful and loving, and their rhythm like summer wind,
slow and sultry and sweet. She caught her breath and he smiled. "There?" he whispered, and did it again. She gasped, laughing. "It... never felt...like this."
His hands cupped her face and he smiled down into her eyes. "We never loved like this," he whispered, and bent to her mouth. His breath caught as his hips moved again. "Don't be afraid of another baby, Kate," he breathed into her open mouth, and then his hips moved sharply.
The world exploded into a dazed kaleidoscope of color and urgent, quick movement, of jerky gasping cries and then buffeting, rough, shuddering rhythm. She felt him and heard him, and held
him. And all around her, the world became red and blazing hot, and throbbed.
She couldn't get any closer. She remembered trying to. Jason was still trembling in the aftermath, his heart shaking him, his breath gasping. She was trembling, too. She thought she'd cried out his name, but she was dazed in the aftermath of unbearable fulfillment.
Kate breathed, trying to calm down. And just when she almost did, he lifted and pushed, and began to move. She started to speak, but his mouth covered hers with exquisite tenderness, and when he slid against her she realized that he was still part of her. Then the rhythm changed and he moved again.
The morning light streaming into the room woke her. Kate opened her eyes and looked for Jason, but he was nowhere in sight. As she sat up, she felt a lingering soreness and smiled. Her eyes went lovingly to the dent in the pillow beside hers, and she leaned over and pressed her lips tenderly to it. "What a waste," Jason murmured from the bathroom as he stood in the doorway, laughing at her.
She flushed. He was wearing his dress slacks and boots, and she could see that his naked chest bore the marks of her fingers and her mouth from the long night. "Good morning," she said shyly.
"It was a good night, too," he mused as he sat down on the bed and stripped the covers off, lifting her across his lap. Her bare breasts were now lying soft and warm on his hairy chest. "Now tell me good morning," he breathed, and kissed her.
She reached up to hold him, kissing him back, warm all over with the sweetness of belonging
to him. There was nothing to compare it with. Always before, there had been some conflict,
something to spoil it when they came together. If nothing else, there was his own inability to
open up with her. But that seemed to be miraculously gone.
Her eyes opened lazily as he lifted his head, and she searched his face, finding no traces of
conscience or guilt or moodiness.
"I thought it would only be another dream," she whispered. "I was afraid to open my eyes."
"So was I, if you want the truth," he whispered back. His dark eyes searched her, and then
went over her like hands, caressing, possessing. "My God, if last night had been a dream, I'd have jumped off the roof." "I thought we'd never be close again," she said softly, dazed by the feeling in his deep, tender voice. "Not this close, anyway." He lifted his eyes back to hers. "You're the only person who ever was," he said gently. "I don't want anyone that close, except you." She smiled up at him, her hand touching his hard shoulder, his chest, his neck. "Now that I'm here, do I get to stay?" she asked, only half joking. "Suppose we start acting like married people," he suggested. He spread her fingers flat on his hard chest. "Suppose we sleep together from now on." "And make babies?" she asked slowly, looking up, because that was the one thing she did remember from that long, sweet loving; what he'd said at the last.
"Did you hear me?" he whispered as his eyes searched hers. "I wasn't sure I'd said it aloud."
"You did." Her face flamed, like the body so close against his. "And I want to."
He hadn't been sure of that at all. She did lip service to wanting a child, but he hadn't been sure that it wasn't either grief at the loss of the other one, or just desire. He was afraid a baby so soon would tie her down again and she wouldn't like it. But if she loved him, it didn't seem to matter. To him, at least.
"Kate...your career...this traveling..." He hesitated.
"Hell, I'll go with you," he said. "I'll take care of you."
"I'm not risking that again, if I get pregnant," she said
quietly. "Not if it means spending nine months in bed. There isn't going to be any traveling." "No. I won't try to chain you here," he said firmly. "You have a talent. I want you to use it." Her eyes searched his. "You don't mind my career anymore, do you? You really don't." "I told you once that it disturbed me, I just couldn't tell you why. Not then. You see, Kate, I
wanted to come first," he said shortly, admitting it at last. "I wanted to know I was loved. All right. Now I do. I won't feel jealous of your work anymore." She wondered if a woman could faint sitting up. She cocked her head. "You wanted to know that I loved you?"
"Is that so surprising? I made you pregnant on purpose, or haven't you even realized it?" he asked matter-of-factly. "I could have taken precautions. I didn't even try. And you never questioned it. My God, does a man who doesn't really want ties deliberately risk getting a woman pregnant when he's as old-fashioned about that sort of thing as I am?"
Her lips parted. "Oh, my goodness," she managed. "I never thought about that."
"Thank God. A man likes to have a few secrets." He kissed her softly and pursed his lips as he looked down her body with lingering desire. Then he sighed. "I guess you're going to be out of commission for a couple of days, after last night." He looked up and grinned, looking unspeakably happy and at least five years younger. "But we can always feel each other up under the covers, can't we?" he asked.
She laughed. And then she cried. She held him convulsively. "I love you," she breathed. "Yes. I noticed that a few hours ago." He sighed, drawing her closer. "How about some breakfast? Then I can go to town and try to talk the bank out of foreclosing." She stiffened. "But the production sale—didn't you say it made enough to pay off the interest note?"
"Sure," he agreed. "But I still have to pay off the other mortgage, honey, the one on the house
and land. I paid off the interest note on the last cattle shipment, that's all." He searched her
troubled eyes gently. "Kate, I don't care. Nothing comes before you, not even the Spur. If I lose
it, and I still have you, then I haven't lost a thing."
He might not love her, but he certainly felt something for her, if he could make a statement like that. The Spur had always been his life. She smiled tenderly, touched beyond reason. "It's pretty momentous, to be told that you're more important than somebody's enormous big ranch."
"I meant it, too." He brushed his mouth over hers. "Let's go down and have something to eat. Then I've got to get to town. And you've got to get to work." He grinned "If I lose my shirt, you may have to support us."
"Oh, I would, gladly," she began.
He put his finger over her lips. "No. I was kidding. I'd sell the place before I'd let you pay for it," he said, and the look in his eyes was level and genuine. "I mean it. My pride wouldn't stand that."
"I just offered," she faltered.
"Yes. Thanks. Now get dressed, you brazen hussy," he said, tossing her lightly into the middle of the bed, his dark eyes appreciating every line and curve. "God, what a body! Get out of there before I go crazy looking at you."
She laughed delightedly. It was like a totally new marriage, bright with love and promise. He picked up his shirt and suit coat and tie.
"I'd better find something less rumpled to wear," he remarked. "See you downstairs, Mrs. Donavan," he added, and there was real tenderness in his voice now.
She showered and put on her working clothes—jeans and an embroidered top. Her freshly shampooed and dried hair fell like black satin around her shoulders. She felt young. Honeymoonish, in fact. Not only that, she felt determined. Jason might not want help, but he was going to get some. Now the Spur had become not only her future, but the future of her prospective children. She wasn't going to see it go down the tube because of Jason's pride. She had more than enough to bail the place out, in her own account. She was going to save the Spur and swear the bank to secrecy. Then, when things were a little more stable than they were right now, she could tell Jason the truth and wait for the explosion.