Jeopardy (6 page)

He drove his fingers through his hair. “Dammit, you’re right, and I think I’ll stop trying.” The air turned flammable in the space of a second, and the suddenness of the change left her without defense. Her heart pounded, heat began to twist through her Insides. All of that—and nothing had happened yet.

Then he moved, coming toward her, intent in every taut line and muscle of his body, a predator with one thing on his mind: Her.

She felt as if the breath had been squeezed from her lungs. She struggled for air, for resolve, for determination that would make her turn and leave. She didn’t stir from where she was.

He halted in front of her, and the heat sparking off his body touched her and started her burning.

He reached out his hands and framed her face. “Do you have any idea how beautiful I think you are?”

His deep voice rolled over her, through her— a crashing wave of heated emotion. Something momentous was about to happen, an explosion was building, and she felt helpless to stop it. Her lips parted. “You think I’m beautiful?"

He shifted his weight; somehow he was closer to her. “You have no idea.”

She felt his breath on her face, his hands on her skin. She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. His golden eyes were ablaze.

“What do you feel like on the Inside?” he whispered.

A cry left her lips. He captured the sound with his, and then he was kissing her with a completeness she felt to her toes. She didn’t think she’d ever had such a kiss before. It was a possession, a ravagement, and, she sensed, it was only a small preview of the lovemaking that would come. Her legs turned to water at the thought.

He pulled his mouth from hers to graze his lips up and down the smooth, silky skin of her neck. “What do you feel like on the inside?" he asked again. “Am I going to be able to stand it or am I going to go up in flames and be consumed?”

She had no answer and he didn’t expect one, she realized with a thrill. Neither one of them had any control over what was about to happen. The course of a hurricane couldn’t be changed. A tornado couldn’t be made to turn in the opposite direction. She and Amarillo could not be stopped.

“I think I'll go up in flames,” he muttered roughly, answering his own question. He reached behind her and unzipped her dress, then he swung her into his arms and strode to the sofa. He put her down, and came down next to her. Passion gripped his body, frustration hammered in his head. There were things he should think about, do, say, but something primitive was driving him. The process of undressing became an excruciating task. He couldn’t bear the intricacies of hooks and buttons or wasted time.

“These damn clothes.” He pulled at her dress, managing finally to slide the top of it from her shoulders and halfway down her arms. Similar effort managed to get her panties off. Then he parted from her for only a moment to undo his jeans, push them down his hips and free himself.

She tried to help, attempting to unbutton his shirt, but in her hurry she ended up tearing buttons off. It didn’t matter. Her hands discovered his chest and the springy texture of the hair that covered the broad expanse.

They were tangled together, arms, legs, clothes. His patience was in threads. His hand found the softness of her thighs and higher. He touched her and heard her give a quick gasp of pleasure. He nearly lost control then, but he forced himself to hold on. Probing further, he found the tiny, sensitive cleft. Her hips began to lift and circle. In his loins, pressure wound tighter, heat became molten. He slipped long fingers into her.

"Amarillo!”
Her hands clenched his shoulders, her nails dug into his flesh.

She was velvety soft, temptingly hot, deliciously damp. His teeth bared in agony. “Lord, Angelica, I don’t think I can wait.”

“Don’t. Don’t.”

Her plea of urgency was his final undoing. “I
can't.’’

He thrust into her, and she cried out as her senses exploded with new, more powerful feelings of ecstasy. He surged in and out of her, and she matched him movement for movement. It was hot and savage, and pleasure swept through her like a rampaging river. She couldn’t think, couldn’t catch her breath. Something was building within her, something unbearable, something uncivilized. She clutched frantically at him and called his name.

With a deep, guttural groan he lifted her hips and thrust deeper into her. Once. Twice. He felt her tense beneath him, then her body began to shudder and contract around him. Control fled, and a fine madness overcame him. He cried out hoarsely and drove into her one final time.

When next she woke, she was being carried up the stairs. “Amarillo?”

He kissed the top of her head. “Shhh, go back to sleep. I’m taking you to bed.”

She pressed her face into his chest and inhaled the musky scent of his body. “I should go home,” she murmured.

“Morning’s soon enough.”

With a barely audible sigh she gave herself up to the warmth of his arms. There was no one at home waiting for her, no one who would be worried. Perhaps he was right. She would sleep here. With him.

When he lowered her to the bed, she gazed up at him. Through a huge arched window behind the ebony headboard, moonlight streamed, gilding his hair and half-bare body.

He rested one knee on the bed. “We never did manage to get undressed.”

“No, we didn’t.” Her gaze traveled to his jeans that hung low on his hips, unfastened, unzipped. Heat surged through her. Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she sat up and scooted backward until she was against the pillows.

He took the place beside her, leaning back against the headboard. She looked unbelievably sensuous and erotic, with her hair tousled, her clothes disheveled, her lips swollen and pouty. “I was right,” he murmured huskily.

“About what?”

“I did go up in flames.”

She wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue and whispered. “I did too.”

With a groan he reached for her and brought her across his lap. She adjusted her legs so that she was astride him.

He felt her pressing down on him, warm and moist. Instantaneously his body caught fire and his mind began to haze over. “Dammit, this time I’m at least going to get your clothes off you.” He skimmed her dress up her body, over her head, and tossed it aside. Her bra and slip followed.

And then he was inside her, so simply, so easily, so mind-bendingly wonderfully that he wondered why he had let his obsession with getting her undressed delay him.

When his hands fastened on her breasts, he remembered and understood why he had wanted to delay. He had a deeply primitive need to feel every inch of her skin, both inside and out. He clasped her hips and began moving her in a circular motion, and at the same time began to thrust up into her.

She felt filled with him. No part of her remained unaffected. Powerful sensations swept through her time after time, threatening to carry her away in the maelstrom of ecstasy. She reached behind him and grasped the ebony headboard to brace herself as she undulated against him, uncaringly plunging herself deeper into the dark, sweet mire of passion that Amarillo offered.

The moonlight streamed in the window behind him, highlighting Angelica. She looked like pure passion to him, with her head back, her hair streaming down her back, her lips swollen from his kisses, her face intent yet softened with desire.

He bent his head and captured a nipple and pulled on it. Sweat beaded his brow, his muscles hurt from the restraint he had imposed on himself. She was driving him mad. He had never known lovemaking to grip him like this, to take possession of him so completely that he couldn’t consider the consequences, couldn’t consider anything but the deep, gut-wrenching, soul-satisfying completion that was fast approaching for both of them. The sounds she made and the tension he felt in her body told him she was with him all the way.

“Let’s do it now,” he muttered hoarsely.

She gasped out her agreement. “Now.”

He tightened his grip on her buttocks, and his movements turned more urgent, more fierce and savage. He didn’t know how much more he would be able to stand of the incredible fiery pleasure. There was the risk that he might combust, and take her with him.

And then the risk became a reality. And the reality became a fantasy that went on and on.

Four

The deep, steady breathing of the man lying beside her startled Angelica into wakefulness just before dawn. She listened, at first somewhat bemused. The sound was foreign to her; she wasn’t used to having a man in her bed.

Then she remembered.

She wasn’t in
her
bed.

She closed her eyes as the preceding night’s events came rushing back to her. She had come to the warehouse so that she and Amarillo could discuss their first kiss—the kiss that had been so out of character for them both, the kiss that had gotten completely out of control, the kiss that had turned into another and another, her hope had been they would be able to place what had happened between the two of them into some sort of perspective, and then put the incident behind them.

Instead, their talk had turned into a firestorm of lovemaklng that had continued all night. And still she knew no more about Amarillo now than she had when she’d stood by her car and watched him walk away from her. He remained, as ever, an enigma.

At the same time, she had no idea what was going on with her. Each time he touched her, she went up in flames. What kind of sense did that make? She had known him for years. She could find no explanation. A prudent retreat, she decided, was the only answer.

It was the feeling of emptiness that awakened Amarillo as the first golden rays of the day’s sun began to filter through the window behind him.

His hand shot out to the place beside him. The sheets were cool. Unoccupied. Abandoned.

He clenched his hand into a fist and slammed it into the bed.
Damn!

Angelica walked into her bedroom that evening, kicked off her shoes, and shrugged out of her suit jacket. She was exhausted, but she headed straight for her closet and her luggage. Sometime during the day she had decided that she would leave for SwanSea the next day. She had labored feverishly to finish as much of her work as possible. As for the work she had been unable to complete, she had decided that what could not be handled from SwanSea could wait until her return. She needed to get out of town.

Amarillo had not tried to see her or talk with her that day, but she had decided not to worry about what he was thinking or feeling. More than likely he was very embarrassed about the previous night. He might even blame the whole situation on her in some way. He had obviously decided to stay away from*her. In any event, he was impenetrable as granite. It would take dynamite to blow him apart and see what was inside him, and she simply didn’t feel up to using explosives.

It had been a night of wonder to her. Together they had traveled to heights she had never dreamed possible. She knew she would never be the same, either emotionally or physically.

But she had to go on with her life.

It wasn’t in her to dismiss lightly what had happened between them, nor could she forget it. But what she could do was to view the whole thing as a freak occurrence, and, in addition, physically
leave
the situation.

She set about packing with a vengeance, and sometime later, when she heard the doorbell ring, her task was nearly completed.

On her way to answer the bell, she cast a satisfied glance at the red-violet ballgown that had been delivered earlier in the evening. It was in a plastic bag and ready to be laid on the backseat of her car for the following day’s trip.

Downstairs she stood on her stockinged feet to peer through the door’s security peephole. What she saw made her pulse pound into overdrive.

Amarillo was on her porch, a scowl of anger on his face.

She straightened and pressed suddenly shaking fingers to her forehead, undecided what she should do. She felt extremely stupid, because for some reason that totally escaped her at the moment he was the last person she had expected to see on her doorstep.

The bell rang the second time. Her mind cleared. There was really only one course of action open to her. She let him in.

“About time,” he said, stepping into the entry hall. “What took you so long?” 

 She closed the door and folded her hands across her breasts. “Hello, Amarillo. Why are you here?”

“It’s not obvious?”

The sharpness of his voice stabbed at her, attempting to cut into her. His anger must have been simmering all day, she thought, and definitely had something to do with the previous night. She just wished she knew what so that she could prepare herself. She turned and started down the hall. “Come into the living room.”

“Why do you look so tired?” he asked as they entered a spacious, elegantly furnished room.

“Maybe because I am. Look, why don’t you go ahead and get whatever it is that’s bothering you off your chest so that I can get to bed early tonight."

His hands flipped back his jacket before they settled on his hips. “Whatever it is that’s
bothering
me? Lady, you are one cool customer. We just spent a night joined together in the hottest, sweatiest, most intimate ways imaginable, and you ask what’s
bothering
me?”

She swallowed and discovered a hard lump had settled in her throat. “So then, can I gather from that outburst that you're upset because we had sex last night?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, as if, she thought uneasily, he were trying to gain a better focus and see into her mind.

“You’re not?”

His deep growling tone made her want to seek shelter. She rolled her shoulders in a casual shrug and felt a twinge of pain, her first indication that she’d been holding herself rigidly. “I decided not to let myself get upset. We got into trouble when we tried to pursue what happened with the kiss. There’s no telling what would happen if we tried to pursue the rationale behind last night.”

“Last night.” He shook his head, and for a moment she thought she saw amazement on his face. “Last night,” he said, continuing. “I want you to know, Angelica, that I didn’t intend for anything to happen.”