Diamond Spur (15 page)

It was more intense than before. She lay in his arms trembling for a long time after they came shuddering back to earth together. She couldn't breathe, and her heart was beating so heavily that she thought she might the of it.

He rolled onto his side, still locked with her, holding her against him. "Are you all right?" he asked, kissing her face wherever he could reach it, his lips tender and loving. "I didn't hurt you?" "No," she whispered. She kissed his closed eyelids, his shoulders. "Jason, I thought...I was going to the." "So did I." He pressed her mouth against his chest. "Kiss me there. Open your mouth and do it. God, that...burns me up! Do it again." She did, glorying in the pleasure it seemed to give him. She laughed, wrestling him over and she put her mouth in the center of his chest and bit him. He laughed, too, his face younger and more alive than she'd ever seen it. His eyes were soft. Almost tender. He let them slide over her with frank delight.

"I adore you," she whispered, and it was in her eyes, her smile, her whole look.

"No regrets?" he asked quietly, as if it mattered.

A few, she thought ruefully, but she'd determined that she wouldn't spoil it. He might give in to his conscience and go away if she said anything.

"No," she lied. She bent and kissed him softly. "Do you do this often?" she murmured.

"Do what...often?" he asked against her nibbling lips.

"Seduce virgins on the floor."

"We started out on a sofa," he reminded her.

"Do you go around seducing virgins on sofas, then?"

He sighed lazily. His fingers touched her soft body, savoring its delicate contours. "I've never made love to a virgin before, Kathryn," he said quietly. "And I've never made love to any

woman the way we just did, here on this rug."

That pleased her. At least she was special to him, somehow, even if just as his only innocent.

"It wasn't anything like I'd thought it would be," she confessed. "Even the first time. I thought it would hurt."

"Some men like that," he said, his voice deep and steady. "They like the pain of initiation. But I don't have a sadistic bone in my body," he replied, his voice deep and slow, his eyes possessive. "I'd have done anything to spare you. I don't have to hurt a woman to feel like a man."

"I don't think you could hurt me if you tried," she replied. "Not physically, at any rate."

"Emotionally, I've done some damage, haven't I, Kate?" he asked. "Now it seems unnecessary. I thought you wanted to save your virginity for marriage, and I couldn't offer you marriage." He touched her hair, about to tell her that his attitude toward it had changed during that sweet interlude. He'd decided that marriage wasn't the end of the world. Judging by what he and Kate had shared, it might be the beginning of everything for them. He'd never imagined anything as tender, as profound as what they'd just shared. And because of it, he was going to take a chance. He was going to marry Kate, and to hell with consequences.

But before he could open his mouth, Kate anticipated a totally different attitude. And because she loved him so much, and didn't want him to feel trapped by his old-fashioned conscience, she forced herself to laugh at the idea of marrying him. She couldn't know what the sound of a woman's laughter did to Jason, or the memories it brought back.

"Marriage is for women without any ambitions at all," she told him, reaching for her clothes because she felt uncomfortable sitting with him this way when they were no longer intimate. "I don't have any inclination to be an obedient wife with a string of preschoolers behind me." She added that for effect, feeling her heart break at the very thought of Jason's black-haired babies that she could never have. He didn't want to get married, after all, that was why he'd tried so hard not to be intimate with her. Now he had, and she had her exquisite memory of him to put away for her old age. And she was giving him his freedom, in return for that sweet keepsake. Because she loved him enough to let him go, to spare him the guilt and torment that she was sure he was already feeling.

"I thought you'd always wanted children," he said after a minute. He got to his feet and started getting into his own clothing, keeping his eyes averted so that Kate wouldn't see the sudden darkening in them.

Kate didn't watch. She finished dressing and sat down on the chair across from the sofa and flushed as he moved the sofa throw he'd drawn under them when he'd first started making love to her.

"You'd better put that in the washer," he told her quietly, averting his eyes from the faint red stain. She took it without looking at it and put it in the washer, starting a load of clothes before she came back. "Kate, when was your last period?" he asked unexpectedly. He was standing by the window,

drawing on a cigarette he'd just lit.

She stared at his back warily. "What?"

He turned, his face hard. "I hate asking, it embarrasses me, too, damn it," he said shortly. "When was your last period?"

She swallowed. That was something she wouldn't tell him. Couldn't tell him. This was her fertile period. She hadn't thought about it in time, and they were both too far gone to think of precautions by the time she had. But she didn't want him to worry.

"It was about four days ago," she lied, averting her eyes.

He thought the quick jerk of her head was because she was embarrassed to tell him. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but only for an instant. Well, he told himself curtly, it was just as well that she probably wouldn't get pregnant. He'd lost his head and tried to make her that way in a positive fever of need. Probably it was just the excitement of knowing she was a virgin and having been emotionally close to her all these years. God forbid that he should be falling in love with a career woman.

"Thank God," he said deliberately. He drew on the cigarette. "I'd hate to have the threat of an unwanted pregnancy hanging over us."

She felt her heart sink. Unwanted. Well, he'd made no secret of how he felt about ties. She forced a smile to her swollen lips. "There's little chance of that," she lied. And prayed that there wasn't any threat because she'd never be able to have an abortion. She loved him too much not to bear his child, and she'd love it with the same fierceness with which she loved him. But everyone would know. Her mother would be horrified, and everyone in the community would stare at them because in small towns like San Frio, everybody knew everything about their neighbors.

He moved closer, pulling her gently into his arms. He stood holding her, with the cigarette smoke wafting to the ceiling from his forgotten cigarette. He brushed her hair tenderly with his mouth.

She savored the warm embrace, without passion. Her

eyes closed, and she sighed, drinking in the familiar, delicious scent of him. "I'll live on today all my life," she whispered. His hand smoothed her hair. That didn't sound like ambition to him. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. "You said you wanted a career."

"I do. But I wanted a memory, to carry me through the loneliness and the long nights," she said honestly. She searched his eyes. "Oh, Jason, I'll be a spinster. I'll die before I'll ever let another man touch me."

His face went rock hard. He could barely breathe. His head felt ten sizes too big, and he wanted to cry out with sheer joy. But then he realized that it was reaction. She'd just had her first sexual experience, and she'd had a kind of crush on him in the past few months. He'd just made her dreams come true. She couldn't know how many of his she'd fulfilled. But whatever she felt physically, it must not have gone further, because she'd said that her career came

first

He touched her cheek, thinking about his babies that she'd never have, about the nights he'd

spend alone remembering her in passion. He took a deep, harsh breath.

"There will, someday," he said with deliberate carelessness. He managed to smile. "When

you're the toast of the fashion world, you'll be fighting them off with sticks."

"Will you miss me?" she asked, peering up at him with a coquettishness she didn't feel.

He brushed back her hair. "I'll miss you."

"That sounds like good-bye," she said, hiding the anguish her suspicions were already

causing.

He took her hand and brought it to his lips. He brushed it gently. "Isn't that what you want,

Kate?"

It might be for the best, she realized that, but it broke her heart. "For good?"

He shifted. "For a while. I leave for Australia the end of next week."

"I'll miss having you to talk to," she said without looking at him.

"I'll miss it, too," he said quietly. "You're...very special to me," he said tautly, and Kate, who knew him to his very bones, was aware of the difficulty he had in just that simple admission. She went close to him and held him. "I meant it," she whispered. "There won't be another man." "Don't," he bit off. His hands contracted on her shoulders and he felt a horrible emptiness. "You'll forget this in time. As I will. It should never have happened."

"You didn't force me, Jason," she reminded him, because she could see the guilt behind those terse words. She was feeling some guilt of her own already, now that the flush of desire was turning cold.

It was a good thing, she thought, that he couldn't see the tears forming in her eyes. She stood very still until she had them under control. He was frozen over again. The fleeting vulnerability she'd glimpsed just as he lay exhausted from fulfillment was gone. He was himself again, invulnerable, unapproachable. Completely in himself.

She drew back after a minute and drew herself erect. "Will we see each other when you come back from Australia?" she asked.

"We'll see. Five weeks is a long time."

"I know," she murmured quietly, glancing up. "That's almost how long it had been the last time I saw you."

He let go of her slowly, watching her move away. He stared at his cigarette, which had burned down to the filter. "Good-bye, Kate," he said quietly. His eyes were eating her, but the minute she turned, he averted them to the door. "It's getting late. I'd better go."

She walked him to the door in a static silence. As he opened it, she slid her hand into his big, lean one, loving its strength. Loving him. She didn't dare look up then, because he couldn't have missed it. "Take care of my best friend," she said in a hushed tone.

"Take care of mine," he said after a minute. He bent, brushing his mouth with infinite tenderness over her closed, wet eyes. "Oh, God, don't cry," he ground out, his hand contracting around hers, "I can't bear it!"

"All right." She drew in a steadying breath and flicked away the tears with her free hand. "It's just that I'll be alone," she said simply. He stared down at her bent head with eyes almost black with pain. He had to clench his teeth to keep the words from pouring out. That soft hand, so trusting in his, her eyes tender with the aftermath of shared passion; he wondered if they were going to haunt him for the rest of his life. My God, he thought fiercely, I think I could love her...! She looked up in time to see the pain, and forced a smile to her lips so that he wouldn't torment himself with the guilt she thought she saw in his eyes.

"I'm all right," she assured him. "You mustn't worry about me."

"Are you damned sure about that career?" he asked abruptly.

She felt the tears threatening again. Why couldn't he just go and stop tormenting her? "Yes,

I'm sure," she said doggedly. "I want it more than anything in the world."

He wanted to throw something. She couldn't know that she was putting a knife into his heart.

She'd made him vulnerable. He'd thought he could compete with her aspirations, that she cared

for him. But apparently she cared for the pleasure she could get from his body, and now that he'd

given her what she wanted, she was through with him. Just like that. Melody, all over again.

He felt used. Damn women everywhere, he thought bitterly as he looked down at Kate's bent head. Damn them! And damn her most of all. He turned on his heel without a single word and climbed in the Bronco. He gunned it out into the road, and he never looked back. Not once.

Kate, watching him go, was grateful that she'd managed to set him off and make him leave so quickly. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. Another few seconds, and she'd have blurted out the truth. That he was all she wanted, ever. That a career would always be second to what she really wanted—making a home for him, and giving him the children Melody didn't want to give him.

She turned back into the house, broken sobs racking her. She didn't hear the Bronco stop just down the road, or see the hard-faced man sitting in it look back with tormented eyes in a face like broken stone. She didn't hear his soft, agonized "Kate!" or hear the faint break in his voice that not one other human being had ever heard, or ever would. She'd never know how close he came in that instant to turning the Bronco around and going back to force her to marry him. Because after a minute, he regained his pride and pulled away, smoking a cigarette as he drove back toward the Diamond Spur. In all his life, he'd never felt so empty, or so determined that Kate would never get past his defenses a second time. She didn't want him. All right. Let her have her career. He didn't want her. He whipped the Bronco out onto the main highway, and left skid marks behind him.