Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (23 page)

Then he heard a splash.

It was followed by a giggle.

A shadow rose before him, spilling water in cascades, and dumped another hatful over itself when it crammed the Stetson onto its head.

"That was fun!" the shadow shouted cheerfully.

Zack felt his blood start pumping again.

"Goddammit, McShane."

He grabbed her arm, which threw them both off balance, and the next thing he knew, they had landed side by side on their butts in about two feet of water. Bailey laughed uproariously, kicking her feet, which drenched him from head to toe all over again.

"Fooled ye, didn't I?"

He scowled, water dripping from his lashes, his nose, his chin. He had to toss his hair from his eyes to see her clearly, and when he did, he saw the outline of his drooping Stetson still perched upon her head.

"Why you little—"

She squealed, trying to dive away from him, but he caught her around her waist, pulling her into his lap. Another shower doused him as she sank between his knees. She squirmed, but his thighs closed around her, and when she twisted, he pinned her breasts to his chest. Her gaze locked with his, her eyes widening for the shortest of moments. He could feel her shuddering breaths and hammering pulse as if they were his own.

Then she had the audacity to smirk. He glimpsed it as a purely wicked flash of feline teeth.

"Ye give up yet, cowpoke?"

She stuck out her tongue at him.

Well, that was it. The final straw. With a feral sound that was half frustration and half mirth, he fastened his lips over hers, drawing her tongue deep into his mouth. With a hunger he hadn't realized he possessed, he tasted and feasted, plundering the hot, wet mystery behind her breaths. His craving grew more insistent, more demanding with each intoxicating moment.

She gasped his name, and he pulled her hard against him, arching her spine over his arm. He reveled in the feel of her breasts, full, firm, and exquisitely taut, jutting into his sodden shirt. He'd never kissed a woman in the rain before. He'd never wrapped his legs around the sweetness of a female's core and let the satiny black currents of a stream suck his rising maleness gently, irresistibly toward her forbidden treasure. His liquor-fogged brain was nearly overcome by the temptation to fumble with buttons.

"Bailey," he groaned, struggling to remember his code of honor, struggling to beat back the desire that crackled along his electrified nerves. "Honey, don't pretend you're hurt again. Please. You scared the devil out of me."

She drew back an inch and blinked. She looked thoroughly mystified, perhaps even dazed by his concern, and in truth, he couldn't blame her. His jumbled feelings had caught him unawares too.

For a heartbeat, a fleeting measure of time, he gazed into her eyes. Raindrops streamed down her cheeks, and he felt them spill like liquid silk into his collar. He felt the warm, sweet caress of her breath on his lips and the tantalizing heat of her womanhood seeping through the wet denim that spanned his bulging crotch.

Then the moment was over. She wrinkled her nose mischievously and punched him on the shoulder.

"Good! It's about time you started worrying, neighbor."

He hid his grin and shook his head, striving for a tone of firm reproof. "Bailey McShane, if you weren't too damned roostered to remember a well-deserved lesson, I'd paddle your behind."

"I am not roostered!"

"Uh-huh."

She began squirming again, much to his sinful delight, and he took wanton pleasure in tightening his thighs around her hips, until her only battle recourse was to glare.

"Ha!" Water lapped in frothing waves around them. "Ye freighted yer crop a whole lot faster than I did."

He snorted, inordinately amused. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted to laugh so much. "Hell, my Aunt Lally's lemonade packs a stronger wallop than that shepherd's juice that's got you so pickled."

"Humpf." She tossed her hair, spraying water all over him. "Liar. If ye keep this up, yer pants are gonna catch fire."

He felt a lightning-quick surge to his loins, and he blushed, grateful for the night and the rain. Did Bailey have any inkling how close her words were to the truth?

"All right," he said gruffly., "it's time you dried off."

"Ye mean out, don't ye?"

She laughed gaily, whooping at her jest. He stifled a snicker. Summoning the last shreds of his sobriety, he turned her in his lap, doing his best not to be tempted by the sagging derriere of her jeans when he boosted her to her feet. The instant he released her buttocks, though, she splashed without ceremony back between his knees.

"Oops!" More giggles followed. "I think I'm losing my pants!"

"Bailey," he warned, delighted, scandalized, and beguiled by her behavior.

"Oh, yeah." She flashed an impish smile at him. "I promised not to scare ye."

That smile was enough to light the night and dazzle his befuddled brain. He worried he was tottering on a precipice. The thought of two moon-white buttocks cupped between his hands in all their satiny softness was nearly enough to push him over the edge into damnation. And what a glorious hell it would be, he mused, to ache in every body part that only a woman's touch could cure.

God save him. God save him from seeking the remedy with Bailey.

"On your feet, woman," he growled, "before you catch your death of cold."

She threw her arms around his neck as he staggered to his own feet. "Would ye come to my burial?"

"Yes," he said, steadying her against his fevered length in spite of his better sense.

"Would ye miss me?"

Her breathless whisper wrapped around him, unraveling yet another fiber in his fraying cord of restraint. He swallowed. The need to kiss her was so urgent, it left a tremor in his limbs. But surely to taste her a second time would only plunge him past the point of no return.

"Yes," he said more quietly. "I'd miss you."

She sighed, her smile almost dreamy as she gazed up at him through the misting rain. "I'd miss ye too, Zack."

He cleared his throat. "Well, I'm glad that's settled. Now—"

"Uh-oh." Her features screwed into a comical look of distress. "'Tis terrible!"

"What happened?" He eyed her suspiciously. She looked truly agitated, so he glanced around them, trying to see past the gloom and the shadows, not entirely sure what was frightening her. "What's wrong?"

She shook him in something close to panic. "Ye're all wet!"

He blinked, her joke taking a moment to sink in, and she dissolved once more into gales of mirth, backing away to splash him with her hands.

"Bailey!" He raised a forearm to defend himself, and she waded merrily behind him, soaking his back with another wave.

"All right, woman, that's enough." Plunging through the spray, he grabbed her around the waist and knees and hoisted her into his arms.

"That was fun too!"

"McShane, you're a mess."

She kicked her legs, her husky giggles tickling his ear. "Just don't tell Mac, okay?"

"Trust me. I won't."

She beamed up at him. Then she patted his dripping hat down onto his head. "There, cowboy," she said with dubious solemnity. "That'll keep ye nice and dry."

When he shook his head at her, the world started spinning, and he staggered, stumbling a step closer to the shore. She threw her arms around his neck.

"Don't drop me!"

"I'm not going to drop you, sweetheart," he murmured, feeling her heart slam into his chest. He hugged her closer, and she peered up at him through wet, spiky lashes. His own heart bumped giddily at how completely she had placed herself in his care.

"Where are ye taking me?" she asked, sounding childlike and uncertain as he waded toward the reeds.

"Inside, out of the rain."

"What for?"

"So you can change your wet clothes."

She seemed to think about that for a moment, worrying her bottom lip. Then she loosed a dreamy sigh and dropped her head against his shoulder. "Okay. Ye're a nice cowboy."

"I am, eh?"

"Uh-huh. I always wanted ye to be the one..."

He didn't have the vaguest idea what she was talking about, but he figured it didn't matter, since moonshine was wielding her tongue.

She snuggled cozily against him, stifling a yawn and occasionally swinging a leg as he trudged through the stretch of mud that once had been her sun-cracked yard. He could have put her down anytime, of course, but some ornery part of him refused. He invented a dozen excuses for not lightening his load: She'd sink in the mud; she'd dash back to the bridge; she'd trip in the dark and break her fool neck.

When he got to the porch, she smiled drowsily, her expression soft, almost shy as she blinked up at him in the pool of lamplight. His excuses only multiplied then, so he told her to hold the lantern while he held her, prying his boots off his feet with the help of the jack by the door.

Squishing inside in his soaking socks, he climbed the stairs. He would see her safely to her room, he told himself. He would wrap her in blankets and tuck her in bed, nothing more. After all, he had an election to win, and the last thing he needed was a torrid affair with his neighbor, a woman who, God bless her, raised sheep.

"It's the open door," she whispered when the bobbing circle of light reached the landing a step before he did.

Heading for what he guessed to be the master bedroom, he strode across the threshold and caught a glimpse of a gigantic pineboard bed. Beside it was an unadorned box of an armoire and a saddle stand, over which was draped a coiled lariat. A mounted bobcat snarled over the mantel, and a china doll peeked out from under the wrinkled linen duster that had been tossed over the back of a rocker.

He had a moment to marvel that Bailey even possessed a doll, much less was letting it occupy space in this otherwise masculine sanctuary. Then he caught her peering up at him through her veil of lashes.

"What now?" she whispered with uncharacteristic timidity.

Her question set his loins to throbbing in the most immoral way, so he quickly distracted himself from his unbidden desire with a question of his own.

"Why are you whispering?" He spoke as normally as his racing pulse would allow. "Surely we're the only ones in the house."

She blushed prettily. He'd never before realized how enchanting a rosy bloom could be on cheeks the color of golden ivory.

"Sorry." She cleared her throat. "I just figured it went with the territory."

He nodded, setting her on her feet. When he took the lamp from her hands, she shivered.

"I'm cold."

He hiked an eyebrow. "It's at least seventy degrees in here."

"Doesna matter." She hugged her arms to her breasts, trembling in the puddle she was making and gazing up at him with shining blue eyes. "Will ye make me a fire? Please?"

An unbidden smile curved his lips. He couldn't remember the last time she'd ever asked him to do anything, much less affixed a "please" to the request. Usually she was ordering him out of her way, snapping at him that she could open her own doors and mount her own horse. Woe be to the man who dared, as he once had so foolishly done, to tell her how to aim her Winchester.

"All right." He kept his tone businesslike, hoping to stave off his body's response to being in steamy proximity to a wet female in a translucent shirt. "Do you have any wood up here?"

She nodded, pointing to the box that shared a corner with a tattered, well-rumpled cushion. The sprinkles of dun-colored dog hair served as memorial to the cushion's missing owner. Zack caught a glimpse of her chin. It quivered the tiniest bit.

"Why don't you make yourself warm?" he murmured, brushing his thumb across her cheek. He couldn't help himself. She needed the comfort, and he longed to give it to her in ways that transcended a touch and a kiss. What was it about this woman that drew him like a bee to a flower?

And what the hell was he doing in her bedroom? In her
father's
old bedroom, for God's sake?

Abruptly breaking contact with those captivating eyes, he set the lamp on the mantel and squatted before the hearth. Making a fire wouldn't take long, he consoled himself. Then he could stagger back down the stairs, heave himself onto his horse, and ride off to sleep under some rock. He doubted whether he could stay astride long enough to find his way home.

In the meantime, while his back was turned, he hoped she would strip off her clothes and dive under the covers to save them both any further embarrassment.

But Bailey, being Bailey, didn't do that.

"I canna get my boots off," she complained, trailing a quilt over her shoulders like a great checkered cape. She plopped down beside him and propped her heel on his thigh. "Help me?"

Dropping to his knees, he turned reluctantly from the kindling he'd just coaxed to combust. Her playful expression was back, vying with an endearing vulnerability that he wasn't sure he'd ever seen her wear before. He tried not to notice how it tugged at his heartstrings.