Chapter 5
H
e was in heaven.
A paradise of sensations—heat and hunger and the sweet tug of anticipation.
He was lying on a beach, palm fronds rustling and clicking overhead. Sunlight seeped into his bare skin, his toes dug into warm sand and his arms were filled with naked womanly curves.
Heaven.
Kate.
She was everything he hadn’t let himself imagine. Her skin was creamy and smooth and when he pressed his mouth to the curve of one shoulder, she tasted like sun-warmed vanilla candy. He wanted to lick every inch of it, to work his way from her pink-polished toes to that sweetly bowed mouth then back again.
“Mmmm, that’s good,” she murmured, arching her back as she stretched beneath him so that the tight buds of her nipples brushed against the hard muscles of his chest.
He groaned and kissed her neck, that intriguing hollow just above her collarbone, then shifted his body just enough that he could cup one of those warm, tantalizing breasts in his fingers.
She made a soft, erotic sound and arched again, long, smooth legs sliding against his. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close.
He couldn’t seem to breath as a torrent of sensations crashed over him like those sea waves buffeting the shore. So long. It had been so terribly long since he had tasted and touched and explored the mysteries of a woman’s body.
She called his name and her low voice rippled down his spine like a slow, warm trickle of suntan lotion on his skin. He reached for her again, craving her touch with every cell, every synapse. She came to him with an eagerness that stunned and aroused him, with that secretive, seductive smile that hinted of female delights he had nearly forgotten.
“I want you,” he murmured.
Her sleepy-lidded eyes beckoned him. “I know.”
One hand slipped from behind his back between their bodies. He waited, stomach muscles contracted, not a single particle of air in his lungs, as she reached for him.
Her hand moved with agonizing slowness, down, down and it was all he could do not to whimper.
He had never been so aroused, never wanted so ferociously. He couldn’t wait, he wanted to consume her. To take her until neither of them could move. Fast, slow, and every way in between.
“Hunter?”
The voice came again, more insistently this time. Instead of a warm, sensuous whisper, this time it blew across his skin like the Arctic Ocean had suddenly come crashing over him.
In an instant, everything disappeared, yanked away with such cruel abruptness he wanted to bellow with rage. The warm sand, the sunshine, the naked and beautiful Kate in his arms. It was all gone.
He blinked quickly back to awareness, to the inside of his Jeep, to Belle snuffling around in her crate. Instead of warm tropical breezes, snow whirled around outside the SUV, blowing hard across the highway.
A dream. He was having a dream about Kate Spencer, about making love to her on some tropical beach, while she sat oblivious two feet away.
Holy hell.
He drew in a ragged breath, more grateful than he had ever been in his life that sometime while he’d slept she must have covered him with that fleece blanket he’d put behind the front seat in case of emergency.
This definitely qualified as an emergency. He was so aroused, it was a wonder he hadn’t popped a few buttons on his Levi’s.
He was sick thinking about what might have happened if she hadn’t awakened him—and if the blanket wasn’t hiding his obvious arousal. In another few moments, he would probably have embarrassed them both, something that hadn’t happened to him since he’d hit puberty.
He would have had to move away, to another country, possibly another continent. Though he would have hated it, he would have had to break off all contact with his own sister to avoid ever having to see Kate again.
He had been far too long without intimacy. While on one level it was good to know he was still capable of all the normal hunger he thought had shriveled away during his incarceration, he would really rather not have discovered this salient fact on a long road trip with the one woman he couldn’t have.
He could only hope and pray he hadn’t said anything incriminating while he’d slept, that he had only done all that moaning and groaning in the feverish recesses of his mind.
Hunter blew out a breath and tried to focus on anything but the need still centered in his groin.
Even though the electronic clock on the dashboard read only five-thirty, the sky had darkened while he’d slept. They were approaching the shortest day of the year, he remembered. Outside the window, he saw nothing but snow swirling in their headlights. No house lights, no headlight beams from other traffic.
It was otherworldly, that total absence of life, as if they were completely alone in their own intimate little universe. His shoulder blades itched and he almost—not quite—forgot about that horrifying dream.
“Where are we?”
“On the Navajo Reservation. The last road sign said five miles to Shiprock, so we should be seeing some signs of life soon.”
“How long has it been snowing?”
“Right before I hit Blanding.”
That must have been a hundred miles ago! He couldn’t believe he’d slept that long or that deeply. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept three hours at a stretch.
Of course, he couldn’t remember the last erotic dream he’d had, either.
His lingering embarrassment turned him surly. “I told you to wake me up if the weather turned bad. Why the hell didn’t you do what I said?”
“There was no reason to wake you. I was doing fine. I’m still doing fine. You looked like you needed the rest and I didn’t see any need to disturb you. I wouldn’t have awakened you now except I thought since it’s your vehicle here I’d better check to see if you want to stop in Shiprock and wait out the storm or keep driving onto Farmington or points south. I’ve been listening to weather reports on the one station I’ve been able to get and they’re saying it’s snowing hard between Farmington and Albuquerque and the Weather Service has issued a travel advisory.”
Damn. So much for his plans to reach Albuquerque that night—or his hopes of outmaneuvering the storm by heading south. He had to hope this wasn’t a grim precursor of what was to come on this trip.
“I guess we’d better stop in Shiprock for the night. Pull over and I’ll drive from here.”
She slanted him a quick, amused look before turning her attention back to the road. “Why? I’m perfectly comfortable driving in snow.”
But
he
wasn’t comfortable with her driving in snow. It was irrational, he knew, as from what he could see she was handling his SUV just fine.
She wasn’t exactly driving at a snail’s pace but her speed didn’t seem at all excessive for conditions. She had engaged the on-demand four-wheel drive, he noted, and she seemed very competent behind the wheel.
She was a doctor. No doubt her hands were probably capable of all kinds of things.
The thought reminded him of that damn vivid dream, of those hands caressing him, reaching for him….
Hunter pushed the memory aside quickly.
“We should keep an eye out for a hotel, since it looks like we’re starting to hit civilization.”
They discovered as they drove slowly through town that Shiprock had very little in the way of overnight lodging. At last, almost at the outskirts, they stumbled past a small two-story hotel with a neon Vacancy sign out front. Underneath it was an even more encouraging message—Pets Welcome.
Kate pulled a U-turn in the deserted street. The Jeep slid a little as she made the turn but she expertly maneuvered out of the skid and pulled up in front of the modest brown brick building.
The parking lot was crowded with vehicles. His heart sank until he remembered that Vacancy sign out front.
“Wait here. I’ll see what they have,” Hunter said.
Kate nodded and he climbed out, relieved that any lingering effects from that dream had expired.
The lobby was pleasant but impersonal. The only bright spots were a striking woven Navajo rug hanging behind the front desk, a homely Christmas tree that looked like some kind of juniper gleaming cheerfully in one corner, and a sign that read Happy Holidays and what he assumed was the same sentiment in another language, undoubtedly Navajo.
The clerk was about forty with a round, cheerful face and smooth black hair that reached past her hips. She looked frazzled but still managed a smile as he approached the desk.
“You’re in luck,” she said in response to his request. “You’ll be taking my last two rooms. Usually this time of year we’re pretty empty but I guess you’re not the only ones looking to get out of the snow today. Don’t blame you a bit. Looks like a bad one out there.”
He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. At least they wouldn’t have to share a room. He wasn’t sure if his taut nerves could handle that. After nine hours in the car with her, he desperately craved a little distance to regain his much-needed control.
He handed over his credit card. As he waited for her to process it, his gaze shifted out the window. While he had been speaking to the clerk, another vehicle had pulled up behind his SUV and, out of habit, Hunter automatically catalogued the make and the model and the occupants—a woman and what looked like two small children, in a late-model extended-cab pickup truck with a sleeper shell, Utah plates.
The woman lumbered out and rocked her torso back and forth on her hips for a moment, her hands pressed to the small of her back. As soon as she turned, he realized why the need to stretch. She looked at least eight months pregnant and even from here he could see the fatigue and discomfort in her features.
She walked inside the hotel lobby shaking off the snow that had collected on her parka just in the short distance between her vehicle and the building.
The woman mustered a tired smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes, the color of creamy hot cocoa. “
Ya’at eeh.
Your sign out front says Vacancy. I need a room for one adult and two children.”
Any minute now, it looked like that tally would rise to three children, Hunter thought.
The clerk’s hair rippled in a sleek black waterfall as she shook her head regretfully. “Haven’t had time to turn off the sign yet. Sorry, but I just gave our last two rooms to this fellow here. You might try the SleepEasy, down at the other end of town.”
Everything about the pregnant woman seemed to sag in defeat. “I just came from there. They were full, too. Guess we’ll try to push on through to Farmington.”
She looked as if she barely had the energy to walk back to her truck, forget about driving through a blizzard to the next town.
Hunter muttered an oath. He couldn’t turn a pregnant woman and her children out into the teeth of a blizzard—even if his spontaneous act of generosity would mean he had to spend the night trapped in a room with Kate Spencer.
“Stop.” The word burst out of him just as the woman reached the door. Damn, he was going to regret this. But he knew he would regret it even more if he let her walk out. “Look, we can get by with one room. You take the other one.”
The woman turned, wary and hopeful at the same time, as if fate had handed her so many disappointments she was afraid to believe this chance wouldn’t be snatched out of her hands.
“Are you…are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he growled, though his mind was already filling with all kinds of forbidden images. Kate walking out of the shower, her hair damp and that beautiful face scrubbed clean. Kate curled up in the next bed. Kate waking up in the morning, all soft and warm and welcoming…
“Both rooms have two double beds,” the clerk offered helpfully.
That was something, at least. If he had to share a room with Kate, he knew he would be up all night. But at least with two beds he could pretend to sleep on a bed instead of pretending to sleep on the floor.
He grabbed the two key envelopes the clerk had prepared and handed one to the woman. “Here you go.”
“I can pay for it,” she said, somewhat stiffly.
“The charge has already gone through on my card. It would be a hassle to void it, so don’t worry about it.”
“But…”
Something in his expression must have stopped her argument. Tears swelled in her eyes but to his relief they didn’t spill out. She was gazing at him like he had handed her the keys to Fort Knox. “Thank you. Thank you so much for your kindness.”
“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, then turned to the desk clerk. “Is there somebody who can help with her bags?”
The clerk nodded and paged someone named Vernon to come to the front desk.
When he was certain the woman was taken care of, he walked back to the SUV. Now he only had to explain the situation to Kate.
And wonder how he would survive twelve hours of driving the next day on no sleep—except for one brief nap, tormented by dreams he had no business entertaining.
“I’m sorry again about this.”
Kate, perched on the edge of one of the two double beds, gave Hunter an exasperated look. So they had to share a room. It wasn’t the end of the world. He didn’t have to glower like it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. The man had spent more than two years in prison—as punishments went, sharing a hotel room with her shouldn’t even rank in the same stratosphere.
“It’s no big deal,” she said again, trying not to be hurt by his obvious unease. “What else could you have done? That woman needed it worse than we did. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep knowing we sent her on her way into that storm. You did exactly the right thing.”
He didn’t answer, just continued standing at the window gazing out at the snow still falling heavily.
Kate swallowed her sigh. What were they supposed to do for the rest of the evening? It was far too early for bed and the idea of sitting in this hotel room with Hunter edgy and restless all evening was about as appealing as cleaning out an impacted bowel.
She stretched a little to take the driving kinks out of her back and was debating whether she should turn on the television set to watch the news when he turned from the window abruptly. “I’m going to take Belle for a walk.”