California Caress (18 page)

Crossing her arms over her chest, she averted her gaze to a ray of sun that flickered over the hem of her skirt. Where were all the words she had carefully rehearsed as they’d crossed the yard? she wondered. Shaking her head, Hope tried to pull them back to mind, but they were gone. Her mind was frighteningly blank.

Drake’s hand reached from out of nowhere to cup her chin, gently pulling her attention back to him. The caress of his rough fingers was warm against the coolness of her rain-damp skin. His gaze was dark, searching, and totally unnerving.

“I never paid you.” To her embarrassment, she spilled out the first words to enter her mind. The comment brought a spark of emotion to Drake’s eyes. Or was it a trick of the light? She couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, it disappeared too quickly.

“I know that.” His voice rang a pitch lower than normal as his thumb traced the delicate line of her jaw. She shivered, but didn’t pull away from the touch. Drake wondered why.

“No, you don’t understand. I never...never—”

“I know.” Turning his hands, he savored the feel of satiny flesh beneath his palm. She felt good, he thought, as he caught the sweet scent of the lilac petals clinging to her skin. The fragrance, though fleeting, overrode the smell of sawdust, of dirt, of everything. Did she know how much emotion her doe eyes revealed? No, he didn’t think she did. Otherwise, she would have turned away.

Hope swallowed hard. The tip of her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. She tried to focus her attention on forming the words that came awkwardly to her tongue, but it was difficult to think with the feel of his palm searing her cheek.

“You—you know I haven’t paid you,” she conceded, her voice husky with pent-up emotion. Her gaze dropped to the pulse throbbing at the base of the thick cord of his neck. “You don’t know why.”

“Then tell me.”

Hope looked long and hard into that penetrating gaze, then nodded. She dropped to the floor of the shed as though her knees could no longer support her weight. Drake hunkered down beside her. To Hope’s relief, he made no move to touch her. She didn’t think she’d be able to concentrate with that roughened hand caressing away her thoughts.

“I never intended to pay you,” she admitted, finally. The words were torn from somewhere deep in her soul. “I—I really thought I could—?” she sucked in a ragged sigh. “That I could—oh, I don’t know what I thought.”

“You thought you could hire me to fight for your brother and that afterward, with any amount of luck, I’d find myself on the wrong end of a Winchester come dusk on Saturday night.”

She chuckled despite herself. “No, I’ve never had that kind of luck.” She ran her fingers through the sawdust that powdered the dirt. Her expression turned serious. “I should never have promised you something I couldn’t give. My father’s a good man. He brought his kids up better than that. He told me to never make a promise I couldn’t keep, and until now I never have. But Luke’s life was at stake and I had to do something. I couldn’t let him fight Larzdon. He would have been killed. I know it as sure as I’m sitting here—and so do you.”

The urge to touch one of the chestnut waves spilling over her shoulder was too great to resist. Drake reached out and captured one of the curls between his fingers, marveling at its softness and the way it wrapped around his finger. “So you came to me.”

“Damn it, Drake,” her open palm slapped her lap, “you were supposed to take the money. You weren’t supposed to—”

“Take you?”

Sea-green clashed with brown velvet. Hope’s gaze dropped to the lips that were slowly lowering toward her. A heartbeat passed, more than enough time to stop him if she tried. She didn’t try.

This was not at all like the hard, punishing kiss he’d left her with that night in his hotel room. His lips were soft, surprisingly gentle, and when he urged her back, Hope went without complaint. It was enticing, the feel of the hard floor against her back, and the feel of the hard man against her front. Her arms circled his neck.

He drank deeply of the honeyed sweetness being offered. There was no stiffness in the body beneath him, only soft, generous curves begging to be explored. His palm slowly ascended the small taper of her waist, brushed lightly against the outer swell of her breast, then ran a tantalizing path down the sensitive inner column of her arm. He marveled at the way her breath fanned his cheek, igniting a burning fire there that quickly seeped into his blood. A groan escaped his lips as her body curved into his own with bittersweet perfection.

The aroma of fresh sawdust mixed with the tender scent of lilacs. It rekindled the fire that had been burning in Drake since the first minute he’d laid eyes on the chestnut-haired beauty. Her hair spread around them like a pillow of glistening silk, soft and inviting. His lips left hers to trail a path of fiery kisses across her cheek, fluttering over her brow, and finally tasting the salty pool of tears clinging to her eyelids.

Grudgingly, he pulled away, resting his weight on an elbow as he looked down at the delicately carved face, and the stream of tears that moistened her cheeks. Mesmerized, he reached out to capture a tear on the tip of his index finger. It glistened for a second in the shadowy light before he rubbed it into the calloused finger with his thumb.

“I don’t understand,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper against the backdrop of squawking wet hens outside. She was crying now, but she
had
responded to him, damn it! It wasn’t his imagination, not this time.

“I know,” she sputtered weakly. With a clenched fist, she wiped away her tears. “You can’t understand. You don’t know.”

“Know what?” Drake tried to keep his impatience from creeping into his words, and failed miserably. “I’ll receive payment from you now, or I’ll have the reason why.”

“Damn it, Frazier! You don’t understand anything.”

Taking a deep breath, Drake struggled to restrain his raging emotions. Fear had crept into Hope’s eyes, and it pierced him to the core. “Maybe not. But one thing I know for sure, sunshine. You can’t tease a man with promises, then expect him to turn away.” His fingers trailed a feather-light line over her trembling lower lip. “Life doesn’t work like that.
I
don’t work like that.”

“I didn’t mean to tease you. I would never do that.”

Her doe eyes pleaded with him to believe her. Instinctively, he did. “But you won’t pay me either. You’re talking in circles, Hope. Either you want me or you don’t.”

She released a trembling sigh and turned her gaze away, only to have him drag it back. “The situation isn’t that easy. I—I’m not like the other girls. I—I can’t
do
what they can, no matter how much I might want to.”
Drake strove to read some meaning into her words, knowing that whatever she was trying to convey bothered her deeply. Yet, no matter how he tried, his mind circled back to one thing. He couldn’t understand how she could kiss him with such unabashed passion one minute, then tell him she couldn’t physically love him the next.

He scowled as he reached out and cupped an ivory cheek. The tingling sensation her cool skin caused his palm made coherent thought impossible. He wanted her; God! he wanted her, like no other woman he’d known before. And she wanted him, too. The fire in her kiss told him that. So why did she insist on building this wall between them? Didn’t she know that he would tear it down, brick by brick, if that’s what it took to possess her, body and soul?

Hope watched the emotions flickering across Drake’s face. For once they were not concealed. For once he had dropped his guard long enough to reveal the inner workings of his mind. He was confused, and he had every right to be. She had made promises she hadn’t kept. But how could she explain her reason for entering into their arrangement under false pretenses, and explain it in a way that didn’t sound foolish and contrived?

The words formed on her tongue, then stubbornly refused to spill from her lips. Her gaze misted over, settling on the sensuous line of his lips, afraid to look higher. She couldn’t stand to see the recrimination that must be floating in his eyes.

She swallowed hard. Her heart told her it was time Drake knew the truth. She would have no more lies between them.

Hope’s fingers flickered over the hand that caressed her cheek before she nudged Drake away. Thankfully, he eased back far enough for her to turn and sit cross-legged, her back facing him.

She took a deep breath, then pulled the ties beneath her chin. The cloak floated around her shoulders, landing atop the floor like a blanket. She barely noticed. She was too busy concentrating on her trembling fingers as she slipped free the line of tiny buttons holding the bodice of her dress in place. She could feel Drake’s gaze through the coarse blue homespun, grazing the flesh beneath. She was glad her back was to him. She had no desire to see the disgust in his eyes when she showed him in action what her voice refused to say.

With the last button free, she pushed the ivory lace collar down over her shoulders and freed her arms from the tight-fitting sleeves. The fabric sagged, wrinkling around her waist. Now the thick curtain of her hair and the nearly transparent cotton of her chemise were the only barriers between her naked back and Drake Frazier.

A hen squawked in the distance as she worked the laces of her chemise. The white cotton joined the dress, gathering in a belt-like circle of material around her waist. She closed her eyes tight, hating the salty tear that dropped over her cheek, splashing on her bare forearm. With the last of her energy, she reached up and swept the lush chestnut waves over her shoulder, exposing her back.

Drake squinted, at first thinking the rippled stretch of flesh a trick of light and shadows. He was wrong. The scar, as long as it was wide, ran from the left side of her waist, across the delicate spine, and disappeared just above her right shoulder blade. Thicker than the rest of her skin, it had the puckered appearance of water into which a stone had just been thrown, except there was no distinct pattern to these ripples. Leaning closer, he noticed the flesh edging the scar was faded pink that gradually shaded into a more healthy peach as it neared the middle.

His heart tightened as though clenched by an iron fist. She had been burned, and burned badly. She was lucky to be alive. He had seen men die of lesser burns, whether from the trauma itself or from infection settling in after the healing process had begun. There was no risk of that happening to Hope now. This was not a recent injury, and new flesh had grown to cover the sensitive tissue and muscle beneath.

Physically, she appeared to have survived the ordeal with few repercussions. What the scar had done to her mind and soul was another matter.

Instinctively, he reached out and caressed the scarred strip of flesh. Her back stiffened beneath his palm, every muscle growing rigid with morbid anticipation. A small gasp escaped her lips at the feel of his fingers, and the sound tugged at Drake’s heart with a force he would never have thought possible.

“No,” she cried, her voice a desperate, strangled whisper as strong hands tried to turn her around. “Let me go. You’ve seen why I can’t pay you. There’s no reason for you to stay.” She hugged her arms close to her chest, rocking back and forth as tears flowed freely down her cheeks. She hated those tears. She hated them almost as much as she hated the scar that crossed her back and the painful memories it accompanied.

“You’re wrong. There’s every reason for me to stay.” His voice came out as a growl filled with raw emotion, as he succeeded in turning her to face him. “You’ve avoided me long enough, Hope Bennett. I won’t let you push me away again.”

“But—” She lifted her tear-streaked face, letting his warm breath caress her moist cheeks as he captured her gaze. There was no disgust in those sea-green eyes, no repulsion, no glint of pity. Only compassion shimmered there, and—could it be? Yes. His eyes were aglow with deep, burning desire that mirrored in her soul.

Slipping a hand beneath her chin, Drake’s mouth captured her lips. The salty taste of her tears was strong on his tongue as he slowly lowered her atop the cloak blanketing the dirt.

“You should have told me sooner,” he whispered against her lips, as his hand slid down her side to the gentle indentation of her waist. Her skin felt like spun satin beneath his fingertips. “Do you know how badly I’ve wanted you?”

“No,” she confessed in a husky, awe-filled whisper as his lips trailed down the slender column of her throat. “But I know how much I’ve wanted you.”

Her arms wrapped around the thick cord of his neck as she pulled his lips to hers. She kissed him deeply, clinging to his warmth like a drowning woman clutches her rescuer. His hair was silken beneath her fingertips, the curls at his nape, still damp with rain, tickled her palms. She was lost, lost to everything except the feel of his lips, the smell of his skin, and the gentle rush of his breath in her ear. Any protest she might have made withered like a desert rose beneath the hot magic of his kiss.

A throaty moan echoed in her ears as she tipped her chin, allowing him better access to the sensitive hollow of her throat. His tongue flickered over the soft skin, a moist caress against her hot flesh. Her fingers entwined themselves in the thick golden mane, but she neither pulled him away nor guided him as his kisses trailed lower.