Princes of the Outback Bundle (27 page)

Her breath hitched when, with that one fingertip, he traced the draping folds of fabric down to her breast. He stopped. Leaned closer and sniffed the warm scent at her throat.

“My favorite scent is you.”

She laughed, a husky sound of surprise that smoked through his blood and settled in his groin. “Whatever I smell like isn’t me. It’s a fancy day spa. It’s lotions and potions.”

Nuzzling closer, he inhaled again, then leaned back and met her eyes. “No, that’s you…wife.”

Her eyes darkened dramatically, and Rafe smiled with a satisfaction just as deep, just as dark, just as dramatic.

“My turn to find out about you,” he said. “What’s the origin of your name, Catriona?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay…so, what’s your favorite color?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Yeah, you do. Come on, own up.”

“Sunset,” she relented, after a short pause. “Pink and orange and indigo all strung together in a perfect outback sunset.”

“Favorite scent?”

“Peaches. Fresh picked, ripe, juicy. We used to—” She
stopped suddenly, gave a dismissive shrug of one shoulder. “Just…peaches.”

Rafe pressed his lips to that shoulder. Smooth. Warm. Sweet as a fresh-picked peach. “Come on,” he coaxed. “You used to…?”

“We had an orchard. At Corroboree.”

He remembered. An orchard that was now a graveyard of gray-timber and naked boughs. “And…?”

“If it didn’t rain we didn’t get fruit, but when we did…” She sighed, a soft sensual memory as her mouth curved into a smile. “You know when you take that first bite and the juice oozes out between your fingers and sweetness fills your nostrils…? That’s my favorite scent.”

Rafe kissed her then, while her eyes were soft and dreamy, while her lips were parted and curved with the contemplation of sweet and succulent fruit. Face cupped between his hands, his thumbs stroked the warm silk of her cheeks and along her jaw. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, savoring the thought of peach juice on her lips, her tongue, her skin.

Gently he nipped at her bottom lip, and she opened to him with a sigh, a yielding that hummed in his throat with satisfaction. He licked into her mouth and felt a tremor run through her body. Hunger gripped his, not raw and primal like in the elevator, but rich and earthy and unexpectedly sweet.

Like the fruit she’d described; like Catriona, the woman. His wife.

Her arms settled heavily on his shoulders; the tips of her fingers traced a slow pattern against the back of his neck. And when he changed the angle of the kiss, she shifted in his lap, angling closer to his body. Pressing more firmly against his arousal while she kissed him back with her eyes fixed on his with drowsy-eyed passion.

And when he eased back slightly, drawing out of that long, lazy, kiss, she followed. Kissing the corners of his mouth. His
chin. The line of his jaw. While her hands shaped his face and sifted through his hair.

Rafe laughed softly. Shook his head a little.

“What?” she breathed, hot against his skin. Hot against his thighs and areas in between.

“You.”

“What about me?”

“I didn’t expect you to be so…” He hesitated over word choice.

“Easy?”

“Willing,” he corrected.

“Oh, I think you knew I’d be willing before we left this room tonight. You knew when I first suggested we stay in.”

“Yet you decided to go out. Were you being contrary or cautious?”

She smiled, slow, sexy, mysterious. “What do you think?”

“I think I married a phony.” Narrow-eyed he looked at her a second and then he gathered up her hair, masses of curls that he fisted in one hand. “I thought I’d have to work extrahard.” With his free hand he started to undo the halter neck of her dress. “That I’d have to take this real slow.”

“And?”

The question came out on a husk of breath as the last button came undone. As the fabric slipped from Cat’s neck.

“And I don’t know if slow is going to work.” His fingers gathered the material, stroked it over her breasts, briefly teased her taut nipples, then were gone. The dress pooled at her waist. His eyes met hers. Flames licked and burned. “What do you like, wife? Fast or slow?”

Cat’s heart beat hard, knocking her ribs with the same deep sultry note as his voice. He demonstrated
slow
with the backs of his fingers, barely grazing her skin as they trailed upward over her ribs. She sucked in a breath, closed her eyes and waited, breath held, waited and willed him to keep going. To touch the breasts that grew tight and heavy with longing.

He didn’t.

Those taunting fingers trailed back down to her waist. “That isn’t slow,” she groaned. “That’s torture.”

But when she opened her eyes, his were fixed on her breasts, on that artfully created cleavage that fleshed over the half cups of sheer white fabric. Heat traced the line of his cheekbones. Heat burned in the eyes he slowly raised to hers. His hands palmed her ribs, pressed up against the undersides of her aching breasts. “You prefer fast?”

“I prefer…efficiency. I don’t like wasting time.”

“Some things are meant to take longer.” A slow finger traced the line where lace met flesh. “To draw out the pleasure.”

Cat wasn’t sure how much more drawing out she could stand. Or how much of Rafe Carlisle’s expert brand of pleasure. For a hint of a second she revisited that moment in the elevator, that stab of fear, of knowing she’d bitten off more than she could chew.

But then his thumbs stroked over her nipples, and the spear of desire low in her belly and hot between her legs razed everything from her brain. Her breath hitched and caught as his head dipped and he brushed his whisker-rough cheek against the flesh that pushed out of her bra. That same breath rushed from her lungs in a long, low sound of wanting as he turned his head and kissed her sensitized flesh.

With his lips, with his tongue, with his teeth.

He laved her nipple through the sheer material of her bra, and she was so lost in the intensity of sensation, she didn’t notice his hands at her back. Didn’t register the clever flick of his fingers until the hooks she’d taken minutes to fasten gave effortlessly. Through the sensual pall that expertise vaguely registered. A dull glimmer of unease because he’d undone more kinds of bras that she’d ever seen.

But then his hands palmed her naked breasts and he made a guttural sound of arousal that echoed through her whole body.

With single-minded concentration, he circled each nipple
with his fingertips. Played the aching tips with the pad of his thumb. Then with a soft grunt that was unabashedly male, unashamedly turned on, he lowered his head and sucked her deep into his mouth.

And, oh, man, he was just as skillful with his tongue on her nipples as when he’d kissed her mouth. Just as attentive. Just as big a tease.

She couldn’t sit still. She couldn’t stand her lack of participation. Fingers twined in his hair, she dragged his head away and up and their mouths met at exactly the right angle, with moist heat and erotic promise. They kissed, strong and hot and bold, and her body took on the rhythm of his mouth, the rhythm of sex.

It wasn’t enough.

Without breaking the hot, wet contact of mouths and lips and tongues, she leaned her hands and her weight on his shoulders while she rose from his lap and resettled herself straddling his hard thighs. Their mouths parted but their gazes locked and held as his hands cupped her hips, molded her bottom and rocked her, slowly, deliberately, against the thick bulge of his erection.

“One of us is wearing too many clothes.”

He leaned forward and blew warm air over her exposed nipples. “I gather that’s not you.”

For a second she could do nothing but ride the intense wave of pleasure generated at both breasts and her female core. Then she wiggled back a few inches.

“Quick on the uptake,” she murmured, “for one so slow on the uptake.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Maybe.” With deliberate purpose she shifted her hands from his shoulders to his chest. Started unbuttoning his shirt. “Be warned. I’m all about efficiency.”

“You don’t want my help, then?”

“No.” She finished the buttons, then looked into his eyes
as she tugged the shirt free of his trousers. “You are altogether too slow.”

His laugh was thick and turned on. “You are altogether too sexy.”

Cat pushed both his jacket and shirt from his shoulders. “You find my efficiency sexy?”

The last word hitched and hissed as he slid his hands under her dress and palmed her thighs. “I’m finding pretty much everything about you sexy, wife.”

Oh, she loved how he said that.
Wife.
The word drummed in her blood as his thumbs stroked a sinuous path up her inner thighs. Built to a sweet pressure point of pleasure when he touched her through her panties.

He knew how to scintillate her with a word or a touch. He knew every sweet, delicious secret of a woman’s body. He knew every smooth ego-seducing line.

And Cat knew why. He was Rafe Carlisle. Prince of the bedroom.

She held no illusions about what he was doing here on her bed, sliding the dress up her body, urging her to lift her arms so he could pull it all the way free. She was his wife—perhaps because he’d been born of a single mother, perhaps for his mother’s sake—but only because it suited him. For as long as it suited him.

He tossed the dress behind her, on the floor, and she felt a sharp frisson of foreboding.

“That’s a very expensive dress to treat so carelessly.”

“I bought it,” he told her. Hands spanning her waist. Head dipping to her breasts again. “I can treat it however I want.”

And me?
she wanted to ask.
Now you’ve bought me, will you treat me the same? Discard me as easily?

But then his mouth closed over her nipple, and her back arched with a pull of desire that obliterated her disquiet. As she took pleasure from his expertise, as he rolled her from his lap onto the bed and slid her panties down her legs, she re
fused to think about how he’d grown so clever. How he knew exactly how to touch her, how long to tease her, how to use his tongue so ruthlessly.

When that clever tongue brought her to an abrupt, unexpected climax, he smiled with supreme masculine pride. “Nice, but too fast.”

“Efficient,” she retorted, her voice thick and slumberous, as she sagged back onto the bed. “Sufficient.”

“Hardly.” He finished undressing himself, and she prolonged her pleasure by watching. He let her. He stood before her, as spectacularly beautiful as she remembered from that morning in her guest room.

More so, with his assets at full look-at-me attention.

“I have condoms if you want.”

She rolled her gaze from belly height to his face. Found his eyes narrowed and his eyes glittering with blatant arousal. Cat blinked, trying to gather her wits. “Condoms?”

“Protection. I’ve always used them.
Always.
But I had tests when this clause came up. For your reassurance.”

“You had tests.” To reassure
her
about unprotected sex. She frowned. “What about me?”

“Need I worry?”

“I’ve only had one lover.” Drew, who was paranoid about an unexpected pregnancy screwing with his plans to make world champion. Maybe he’d had a premonition of what lay ahead. “He used condoms. He did with me, leastways.”

And maybe this wasn’t the time to be making cracks about Drew and the baby he clearly hadn’t planned on making with his new girlfriend. Not the time to recall how much it had hurt, seeing the man you thought you loved, whom you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, shudder with dread at the thought of getting you pregnant.

Rafe still hadn’t moved. His expression was guarded. His voice quiet and deliberate when he asked, “So, Catriona.” Not
wife,
but
Catriona.
“Do we start now?”

Cat’s stomach lurched as their gazes locked. “Perhaps you should have asked before we signed that marriage license.”

“When you signed it,” he said, “I took it as your binding word.”

Not just that she would marry him, but that she would try to conceive his baby. Her heart thundered. Her world spun on its axis with the enormity of what she had done. And all she hadn’t considered.

“Well, Catriona?”

A baby in return for saving Corroboree. Rafe’s baby, yes, but also hers. A McConnell to carry on her family tradition, as her father had wanted. As she silently promised him, every time she stood at his grave, every time she stood under the unforgiving western sky and faced another tough season, another year of uncertainty.

She exhaled slowly, and her heart steadied to a dull, thick beat.

“Okay,” she said finally. Then stronger, echoing the beat of her heart. “Yes. We start now.”

R
afe knelt on the mattress beside the sexy sprawl of her naked body. “Are you sure, Catriona?”

She took a long time to answer. A long time while he took in the spill of her hair and the loose abandonment of her limbs. A hellishly long time with the scent of her desire in his senses and her eyes fixed low and still on his body.

Impatience growled through his blood, but Rafe waited.

He’d played on her vulnerabilities when he challenged her with the wager. He’d crowded her when she needed time to think, coerced her with the win-win nature of the deal, coaxed her with all she stood to win even if she lost that last spin. And then he’d rushed her to the altar before her head stopped spinning.

Suddenly he couldn’t rush her any further. He wanted her willing now and tomorrow and the next day back home in Sydney. He wanted her willing for as long as he wanted her, however long that might be.

“You know there’s no going back.”

Her lids fluttered for an instant as if his words had scraped a nerve. But her redirected gaze met his with the openness that had attracted him to her from the very start. No coyness, no chicanery, just Catriona about to tell it like it was. “I said yes to not using a condom. That doesn’t mean I’ll fall pregnant. That’s not something you or I can control.”

“Is this a good time?”

“We’re both naked.” Her gaze slid back to the part of him that wasn’t used to being naked in this situation. “I’d say that makes it as good a time as any.”

Rafe laughed, short and gruff, as he stretched out beside her on the rich cream sheets. His knee brushed against the side of her thigh, accidentally the first time. Deliberately the second. He propped himself on an elbow so he could look down into her face. “I meant a good time in your cycle. For conception.”

Her nostrils flared and her eyes darkened and jittered. Rafe felt it, too—the slam of reaction that was more than lust. Unsettling, unusual, uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure. Maybe.” She shifted restlessly. One hand lifted, then dropped back against the bed. “I hate talking about this. I feel…”

Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t find the right word. Rafe sympathized. Easy to describe the hard tension in his groin. Not so easy to identify the weight bearing down on his chest.

“Can we forget about the conception part?” Direct as always, but her voice sounded raw and edgy. “Can we just do this?”

Now was the time to grin and tease her. To regain that sexy byplay of before by framing some lazy comeback about how he never “just did it.” Except the smile wasn’t happening and the line sounded superficial and shallow—the kind he’d drag up in any situation, for any woman.

This wasn’t any woman. This was his wife gazing up at him, moistening her lips with apprehension. His wife whose hand shifted nervously against the sheet at his side.

And suddenly, intensely, he wanted those eyes, those lips, those hands on him.

“I think we’ll get to that,” he said slowly, heart drumming in his ears, desire throbbing in his blood. “But first I’d like you to touch me.”

“Where?”

“Wherever you want.”

She swallowed. “How?”

“That depends on where.” Leaning closer he blew softly against her breast. A shiver of reaction rippled through her skin, traveled the length of her arm until her fingers curled into her palm. “Some places require a whisper.” He leaned down and licked the skin at the inside of her elbow. Heard the change in her breathing. “Others demand a kiss.” Lower still, he stroked the length of her thigh until her toes curled and her feet flexed. “And some require a firm hand.” He continued that long, slow, firm caress all the way back up her body until he was gazing into her eyes.

Dark, turned on, not apprehensive anymore.

Satisfaction, fierce and intense, gripped Rafe where he lived. He watched her ease up onto her elbows to blow a whisper of sultry breath against his lips. Watched her follow him down to the mattress so she could press her tongue to his nipple.

“How am I doing so far?” she asked.

“Very efficient. Very—” Air hissed through his teeth as she stroked her hand down his body, across the tightly held muscles of his abdomen, skimming the hair at its base with her fingertips. Whatever he’d been about to say was gone. Every red blood cell had rushed from his brain as she followed her hand with her mouth, tracing the play of muscles in his belly with her lips and her tongue.

Teasing him for way too long before finally—
finally
—she took his steely length in her hand.

The dark curtain of her hair obstructed his view as it swung
and dragged across his taut belly, his flexed thighs and that giant pulsing scream of need in between. She squeezed gently and he jammed his eyes shut. Fisted his fingers in the sheet as her thumb coasted over the head and almost brought him undone. Then she leaned down and breathed, a hot wash of breath against the moisture she’d incited, and the tentative touch of her tongue caused a bolt of sensation that almost lifted him off the mattress.

Her head came up with a start. “Not so good?”

Rafe couldn’t stand that flash of uncertainty in her expression, any more than he could stand the torture of her touch.

He slid his hands up the inside of her arms, stretching them over her head, as he rolled her onto her back and followed. Her eyes widened, heat flushed her cheeks as he settled between her legs, as he instantly found the perfect position.

“Too damn good,” he growled into her mouth as he kissed her. As she wrapped her legs around his hips and pressed up against him, inviting him into the moist heat of her body.
Too damn good,
he repeated silently, easing his way into that exquisite heat, holding back the urge to go faster. To pull back and just bury himself. Deep. Hard.

That urgency clamored in his blood and tightened in his lungs until he had to end the kiss, to breathe, to press his face into the side of her throat to escape the passionate intensity of her expression.

“That does feel pretty damn good,” she whispered and
that
was almost too much. A simple, straight comment that struck him with the same erotic force as the tight clasp of her body closing around him, drawing him deeper, sinking him into her core.

Not just pretty damn good but pretty damn perfect. Pretty damn unforgettable. That’s what he wanted for this first time. He wanted to obliterate everything from her sensual memory except him. He wanted momentous where in the past, with every other woman, every other lover, he’d only wanted to sat
isfy. And for a brief instant of still and silent intensity, their eyes locked and it stunned him how much he wanted…and how much that wanting shook him up.

Sweat beaded on his brow, traced the line of his backbone as he slowly started to move, as he willed himself to set the same torturously slow rhythm he’d used hundreds of times before. He knew how to please a woman, how to drive her wild, how to hit every sweet spot.

How could this time feel infinitely sweeter…more intense…and so damn different?

Because it’s only your naked flesh moving in hers, with no barrier and nothing to diminish the pleasure. Because of the expression in her eyes, the soft humming noise in her throat, the grip of her fingers as her hands fluttered under yours.

Because this is Catriona, your wife.

And he couldn’t hold back any longer. He released her hands, freed his so he could palm the stretch of her body beneath his, so he could reach between them, between her soft folds to find the supersensitive spot and stroke it with sure pressure.

So he could watch the explosion of heat in her eyes, so he could know that he’d given her the same pleasure that he felt building as he drove harder, deeper, stronger. As he flexed his hips with a last full thrust and let his release come, more powerful than he’d imagined possible, a wild spasm that rocked through his body and reflected in the splintered depths of her eyes as she came again, and he spilled himself deep within her body.

Cat woke slowly. The smile came easily to her lips, the stretch not so easily to her shattered body, and her mind took another ten minutes to get within cooee of cognizance.

Her first random thought was,
Crikey, it’s bright!
Eyes squinted against that brightness, she rolled onto her side and checked the bedside clock.

For several ticks, the time displayed made no sense. It couldn’t be after ten. She never slept this late, even on holidays.

But she had, and the reason why struck suddenly and with devastating force.

Because of a very late night…a very late
wedding
night.

Her heart thumped loudly in the morning silence. She was alone, she knew, even before she rolled her head on the pillow and inspected the vast stretch of her king-size bed. Even before she lifted up on her elbows and listened to the enveloping quiet that extended beyond her bedroom door.

But she hadn’t dreamed up amazing wedding-night sex in her jet-lagged sleep. With her left thumb she touched the gold band on her ring finger. A borrowed wedding band, and that fact chimed, loud and significant, through Cat’s sluggish consciousness.

Borrowed because of the whole rushed nature of the event. She barely remembered the moment when he put it on her finger. She barely recalled the vows or where they’d taken them.

How could she be married? How could she have a husband?

How could she have slept so long and so soundly that she didn’t even know if he had stayed in her bed or retired to his own? She hadn’t heard him leave…but then she didn’t recall anything much of afterward. The incredible force of her last climax, the relaxed weight of his body on hers, stroking the cooling sweat over the long planes of his back. Sifting her fingers through his hair and smiling against his throat when he’d murmured something about waking him when she was ready to “just do it” again.

She’d probably fallen asleep with him still there within her arms. Still in her body.

Heat crept through her veins, remembering. Regret stole through her mind, remembering how she hadn’t woken him again.

Would he have expected that? Would he have expected
more from her than that once? More times, more variety, more participation? More—

She cut herself off with a sharp mental slap. Rafe Carlisle’s critique of her sexual performance didn’t matter. Rafe Carlisle as her husband did. She’d married him to regain control of Corroboree, to secure its future in her family. Her hand lifted and paused above her lower abdomen as a whispery flutter of hope stole through her body.

Hope that she could secure that future with a baby…a baby he also needed.

Except they had a lot to work out, to get straight, before any baby came along, and this time Cat would not trust a handshake deal. She’d married Rafe for his money, and he needed to protect his interests as much as she did. With a written contract.

She needed to find him and get this sorted out.

That decision to act sat well with Cat—much better than lying in bed with the morning half-gone. She tossed the bed-covers aside, and—despite the obvious emptiness of the suite—made a quick dash for the closet and the hotel robe inside. The Rafe Carlisles of this world could be as content and arrogant as they liked with their nakedness. The Catriona McConnells needed their robes.

What about the Catriona Carlisles?

That out-of-nowhere thought stopped her short, one hand on the closet door. She sucked in a deep breath—so deep it turned her slightly dizzy. But she gathered herself and shook her head and uttered a grim “No way.”

Marrying him didn’t include taking his name. She didn’t want that kind of link. She didn’t want anything beyond what he’d promised in the casino. Not even great, toe-curling, spine-tingling, world-altering sex. She didn’t want anything she would miss once he was gone. She wanted—

“Blast.”

With a pained grimace she eyed the clothes in the closet—
the ones Bridget had ordered on her behalf after yesterday’s shopping extravaganza. She’d forgotten all about returning them; she’d forgotten about everything sensible and practical from the moment he appeared in her doorway.

Well, today was another day, and Bridget could take the clothes back.

Cat slid the robe from its hanger and pulled it on. And when she turned, heading for the bathroom, her eyes snagged on the one dress that wouldn’t be going back to the store. The green fabric hung limply from the edge of the chaise, where it must have caught when he tossed it so glibly. A frisson of déjà vu crawled over her skin, a reprisal of that moment in the night when she’d thought about him discarding her.

The morning after, for example.

“Don’t be so silly.” Impatient with herself, she picked up the dress and flung it into the closet, then jammed the door shut. He’d probably gone to do the business that brought him to Vegas. She didn’t expect his attention. She didn’t want a big-deal morning after. She was practical, capable, independent Cat McConnell. After her shower, she would find Bridget and arrange to have the clothes returned. The ring, she supposed, would have to go back to the concierge, as well.

Twisting it on her finger, she realized it felt tight. Too tight. She lifted her hand and studied her fingers. They looked a bit swollen. Her feet felt the same, no doubt from the flying and not enough exercise.

Okay, so after her shower, and after she found Bridget, she would go for a long walk. Find a shop that sold cheap and comfortable footwear.

Their flight home from L.A. wasn’t until tonight. She had plenty of time, time she would put to good use walking and thinking through what terms to include in their contract.

Rafe had gone downstairs to the jewelers on an impulse. Lying beside her in the bed watching her sleep, fighting the
desire to wake her the same way he’d put her into such a sound sleep, he’d caught sight of the ring on her finger. And the beat of desire in his veins changed in nature. Suddenly he’d wanted to wake her with more than a platinum-strength erection. He wanted to surprise her with a ring, her own ring, a symbol of last night’s significance.