He swallowed, so overwhelmed by the sensation of being inside her again that he wasn’t sure he could form an actual word. “Nice,” he murmured at last.
“Yeah.” Her gaze held his as she began to move.
Bracketing her hips with both hands, he closed his eyes, the better to savor this moment. He’d made love with several women in his life, and not one had welcomed him the way Tyler did. He wasn’t sure how she did it, but somehow she opened to him in a way no other woman ever had. And, at the same time, she gathered him in close, as if wanting him, and only him, to learn the secrets of her body.
Leaning forward, she brushed her lips over his. “You okay?”
“I’m so okay it’s frightening.”
“I wasn’t sure. You closed your eyes…”
“I wanted to… I needed to concentrate on…” He pushed up, not much, but enough to tighten the connection, lock it in. “On this.”
“You’re not imagining I’m someone else?”
He opened his eyes at once. “God, no. Is that what you thought?”
“For all I know, some woman broke your heart again and I’m handy.”
“Come here.” He guided her closer and kissed her, putting all the gratitude, tenderness and passion he felt into that kiss. Then he drew back. “You’re not a substitute, Tyler. There’s no one like you. No one.”
She framed his face in both hands as she glided up and down, up and down. “Last summer, I think you wanted to forget.” She moved a little faster, her breath coming in quick gasps.
“Maybe.” He lost himself in the depths of her eyes. “Now I want to remember. I want to remember how it feels to be loving you.”
“That sounds serious.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement.
“Not that serious,” he lied. His climax stalked him, ready to pounce. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you go.”
“I know.” Her hips pumped faster. “Don’t think about that now.”
He laughed. “Who’s thinking?” His grip tightened and the blood roared in his ears.
Her voice was low and intense. “Not me. I’m coming. Oh, Alex, this is so…”
“Yeah…” The sound of their ragged breathing drowned out everything but the slap of her thighs against the denim of his jeans as she hurtled toward her orgasm.
She took him with her. As the spasms rocked her body, he erupted, driving upward in an instinctive impulse to plant his seed deep in her womb. He understood that she wasn’t asking for anything but this, sex for the sake of mutual pleasure. But his body, responding to signals hundreds of years old, had other ideas.
His body would just have to get over it. Any thoughts that Tyler had been affected the way he had were dashed once she’d recovered enough to talk.
“Well, that was fun.” She laughed but didn’t meet his gaze. “However, getting unwound from each other will be more of a challenge than untangling a strand of Christmas lights.”
So, they were supposed to keep their comments superficial. He could do that. “How are you at untangling Christmas lights?”
“Pretty good. Let me move first.”
“I think that’s a given. If I move first, you’re going out the door and into the dirt.”
“Hold on to me.”
He cleared his throat. “You bet.”
“I meant that literally, not figuratively.”
“I know.” He wished she hadn’t felt the need to remind him, though. And once she lifted her body free of his, he battled a sense of loss that didn’t bode well for his future peace of mind.
“If I swing around and put both feet on the floor, then I think you can slide out, and I can sit back down in the seat.”
“You must be a whiz at Twister.” There. That was the right tone to set. Fun and games. He hoped he could maintain that attitude.
“I am good at Twister. And cruise ships are also a marvel of spatial economy, so I’ve learned a lot there, too.” She put her right foot on the floor mat. Then, bracing both hands on the back of the seat, she put her other foot on the floor, giving Alex room to duck underneath her and climb out of the cab.
He murmured his thanks, and once she was sitting on the seat, he closed the door, which turned off the dome light. That gave him the necessary privacy to deal with the condom and button up. By the time he came to the driver’s side of the truck and opened the door, she was once again dressed in her jeans and was putting on her shoes.
She’d braced one foot on the edge of the seat so she could tie her laces, and her hair fell forward, obscuring her face so he couldn’t read her expression. He would have thought she was totally cool and in command of herself except for one thing. Her fingers trembled and she was having some trouble tying her shoe.
Apparently she was as shook up by their lovemaking as he was. The breezy way she’d talked to him afterward had been her way of trying to maintain some distance. He’d promised not to cause problems for her, but it seemed he had, anyway.
“Maybe we should just go back,” he said softly as he climbed behind the wheel.
“We can’t.” She finally tied her shoe and switched feet to work on the other one.
“Why not?” He left the door open so she could see what she was doing.
She yanked at the laces, as if that would stop her fingers from quivering. “Because we told everyone we were coming out here to take a look at the sacred site, so we need to look at it. I don’t want to have to make something up if anybody asks what I thought.”
“I can describe it for you, if that’s all you—”
“No, I want to go out there.” She finished tying her shoe and turned to him. “Maybe it will help.”
“I think what might help is me keeping my hands off you for the next four days.”
She gazed at him, her dark eyes troubled. “That’s just it. I don’t want you to. Making love with you seems like the only worthwhile thing in the world right now. Maybe if I stand on that rock, I’ll get my sense of purpose back.”
“All right.” He closed the door and started the engine. “But no matter how that rock affects you, I’m backing off. I’m not about to derail your dreams.”
8
THEY RODE IN SILENCE the rest of the way, which turned out not to be very far. Tyler’s body still hummed with awareness of Alex. She was tuned in to his breathing and the subtle sound of denim against the fabric of the seats. Even in the dim light from the dash, she could make out the movement of his thighs as he worked the pedals on the truck.
And she knew, even without looking, that he was aroused again, despite his vow to keep his hands off her from now on. She drew in his musky, masculine scent and imagined she could read his heated thoughts and his desperate attempt to tamp down his desire.
She’d fed that desire with her behavior, and she took full responsibility for the turmoil she’d created for both of them. She’d been the one who’d suggested they work together on tomorrow’s event. Yes, he’d initiated the kiss in the barn, but she’d wanted it as much as he had.
So they’d talked themselves into the idea that they could have a lighthearted affair and then go their separate ways. But now her future plans seemed like pale, lifeless things compared to the warmth of the Chance family unit and the heat she and Alex had created in the past few hours. She was terrified by that. She’d worked too long and too hard to abandon those plans on a whim, just because the image of a different future had appeared tonight.
“It’s up ahead,” Alex said. “I don’t know if you can see the rock yet. It doesn’t stick very far out of the ground.”
Tyler peered into the darkness. “I think I see it.”
“I’ll swing around so the headlights will help you catch some of the sparkle.” Alex veered to the left and then turned the truck so it was parked across the road. The headlights illuminated the surface of a flat rock about the size of a cruise ship’s lifeboat once it was lowered into the sea.
“Huh.” Tyler gazed at the subtle white stripes of varying widths, some only a few inches, some more than a foot. They did indeed sparkle. “It’s quartz.”
“Yep.”
“My folks would love this rock. Quartz is supposed to be good for meditation, and it’s also a healing stone.”
“Which fits with the local lore about this place,” Alex said. “Emmett told me that years ago he tried digging down to find the bottom of the rock, and after about seven feet he gave up. I’m sure somebody with special equipment could measure the depth, but nobody’s ever done that.”
“So it’s like an iceberg,” Tyler said. “We’re only seeing the smallest part of it.”
“True.” He gazed out the windshield at the rock.
“I guess now would be a good time to test its powers. Rain’s supposed to have a purifying effect on the quartz.”
“I read that.”
She glanced over at him. “You read up on crystals?”
“I thought I might as well, once I’d made up my mind to take a trip out here. I resisted the idea for weeks, thinking it was too mystical for me. Plus, Crystal is my ex’s name.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Josie’s the one who finally convinced me to come out here. She said I was still angry, which wasn’t doing me any good, and maybe it was perfectly appropriate to use a crystal to stop being angry with Crystal.”
“Was this after I was here?”
He nodded. “Maybe a month or so after.”
“I can sure believe you were still angry in August. There was an edge to you, something a little fierce about the way you made love.”
He looked stricken. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I know we got kind of wild in the hayloft, but—”
“No, nothing like that. It was more a mental thing. I could sense that anger Josie was talking about.”
“Do you sense it now?”
“No.” She hesitated. “But I think…I think you’re still wary.”
“You’re calling
me
wary? You, the person who’s scared to death that marriage is contagious?”
“Yes. You’re wary. If I suddenly reversed course and said I was giving up my career and wanted to settle down here at the Last Chance with you, I’ll bet you’d run in the other direction.”
He held her gaze for several long seconds. Then he looked out at the rock sparkling in the headlights. “We haven’t known each other long. I’d hate like hell to make another mistake.”
“You think it was your fault that the marriage didn’t work out?”
“No, but we shouldn’t have married in the first place. If I’d thought about it beforehand, I might have realized that Crystal would get bored. She needed more excitement, more action, so she finally went out and found it.”
Tyler frowned. “I’m sorry.” She’d suspected that Crystal had cheated on him, but hadn’t been sure until now.
“It was just a bad combination.”
“You mean a loyal person hooking up with a disloyal person?”
He smiled. “Thanks for that. I meant that I was focused on work, and she hadn’t expected that from me because I was a party animal when we met in college. So was she, and she never changed. I did.”
“I think that’s called growing up.”
“Or is it just different needs? You’re not really like her, but the job you love is full of parties and exotic destinations. My ideal life would be putting in a hard day’s work and relaxing quietly at home with…somebody special.”
That sounded way too appealing, and she found herself longing to be that
somebody special
in his cozy scenario. Dangerous, dangerous thinking if she expected to stay on course. With that kind of temptation, she could get sucked into the marriage-and-baby whirlpool before she knew what was happening.
“You’re right,” she said. “We do have different visions of how we want to live our lives.”
“That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m going to see what the rock has to say.” She opened her door. “Would you mind leaving the engine running and the lights on while I get out?”
“Nope.” He put the truck in Neutral and set the emergency brake. “I’ll come with you.”
She thought about snakes as she hopped down from the truck, but she also didn’t think Alex would have let her get out if he’d been worried about her safety. She trusted him to do the right thing. She just didn’t totally trust herself.
He, on the other hand, didn’t totally trust her, but she didn’t take that personally. He wasn’t ready to trust any woman yet, unless maybe she was the cookie-baking, curtain-sewing, nesting type. And that was fine. A lack of trust on his part was a good thing if it kept her from falling for him.
He met her at the front of the truck and offered a steadying hand as she stepped up onto the damp rock. She decided not to mention that he’d vowed not to lay a hand on her ever again. Being a gentleman didn’t really qualify, anyway.
Besides, he released her hand right away. “You’re now standing on the sacred site revered by the Shoshone Indians for…”
“Centuries?” She looked down at her feet.
“Who the hell knows? Let’s just say it’s been a long, long time.”
She took a deep breath of the cool air scented with pine, and focused on her dilemma. Did she plow forward and grab her career opportunity, or should she open her heart to the possibility of a home and family, maybe even with this man?
But no answer came to her. “Are we supposed to say anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like an incantation, a special chant, a Native American prayer.” A breeze sighed through the tops of the evergreens nearby, but it was only the wind, not some magical message.
He shrugged. “I never did, but if that appeals to you, go for it.”
“Alex! I’m looking for a mystical experience, here. I want clarity of purpose.”
“Hmm.” He glanced at her before gazing off into the blackness surrounding them.
“I could use a little help. I mean, you’ve been here before, and obviously had a positive experience, so if you’d be willing to make a suggestion instead of staring off into space, I’d appreciate it.”
“When I was here last fall, I was alone.” He continued to look into the inky night as if mesmerized by the darkness.
“I realize that. Maybe alone is better, but I’d rather not have you leave me here in the cold and dark with potential wild animals around, if you don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Tyler.”
“Good. So when you were here, how did you maintain your focus?”
He cleared his throat. “Like I said, I was out here by myself, so naturally it didn’t strike me as a particularly sexual place.”
“Well, it’s not. It’s a very hard rock which looks wet and extremely uncomfortable.”
“Does it?” He turned, allowing her to see the glow of desire in his eyes.
Despite the unsexy conditions, she responded with a rush of heat. “Yes, it does. This is not a good place for sex, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Are you sure? Because to me, it looks like the perfect place to pull you down, strip off your clothes and pump into you until neither one of us can see straight.”
Her breath caught. As she imagined him doing that, her panties grew damp and her nipples became tight buds of anticipation. She swallowed. “I suppose that’s another way of looking at this place.”
“I was hoping for clarity about us when I stepped onto this rock.”
“So was I. Sort of, anyway. I mean, clarity about my job, and what I—”
“Turns out I have clarity.” He closed the gap between them but didn’t reach for her. “I can see clearly that although I want to be noble and leave you alone, when I have a chance to touch you, kiss you and slide my cock deep inside you, I’m going to take it. What sort of message do you get from this rock?”
She ached with longing. She had no answer to what the future held for her, but she knew what she needed in the present. “It’s…becoming remarkably similar to yours.”
“I guess the rock has spoken.”
“Are we really going to do it right here?”
“Yes, I believe we are.” Pulling her into his arms, he began working her out of her clothes.
She decided not to let that become a one-sided situation and started working him out of his clothes, too. It was complicated by his boots and her shoes, but eventually they accomplished what they both had in mind.
He pulled her close and feathered a kiss over her lips. “I have a blanket in the truck.”
She was hot, achy and desperate. “I don’t want to wait for no stinkin’ blanket. We’ll use our clothes.”
“The rock’s wet,” he said. “They’ll get messed up again.”
“I don’t care.” She pushed the discarded clothes together into a makeshift bed and stretched out. “Perfect.”
“You know, it is. Except you’re lying on something important.”
She started to get up.
“Stay there.” He knelt beside her. “I’ll have fun finding it.” Leaning over to kiss her, he fondled her breasts with one hand while he reached underneath her.
The maneuver, which stimulated her both in front and in back, was driving her insane with wanting. Clutching his head in both hands, she forced his mouth away from hers. “Stop fooling around.”
He chuckled. “I thought that’s what we were here for.”
“No, we’re here so that you can get down to business, so either you find that little raincoat toute de suite, or I’m getting up and finding it for you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He produced the foil packet and tore it open.
“And don’t litter.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He shoved the foil packet under the pile of clothes before kneeling between her thighs. “Is the rock too hard?”
“No.” And even if it had been, she wouldn’t have told him at this point in her frenzied state. Some things were worth suffering for.
“I’m glad, because I really, really need to do this.”
“And I really, really need you to. Forget the foreplay.”
“Nice to know.” With a quick movement of his hips, he thrust deep and joined them together. Then he groaned softly. “Damn, that’s good.”
“Uh-huh.” When she felt him there, the tip of his cock touching her womb, her world shifted and settled into place. She wasn’t supposed to feel this sense of completion, wasn’t supposed to want this more than anything else in her life. But she did.