Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (6 page)

“How is it,” she said quietly, “that you can go among people and think about working with them at the mill, if you can't trust yourself any more than that?”

“I'm not sure I can. I expect to take it nice and easy, and to keep my back to the wall.”

“You tackled me out there in the woods without hurting me. I don't remember it being a problem for you.”

His jaw flexed so that the muscles stood out in relief. “That was what you might call a planned attack. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was in control.”

She certainly could not deny that. She tried again. “What about out on the porch. I approached you in the dark, or very near it, and you didn't harm me.”

“I was facing you at the time, I saw you coming. There was no element of surprise.”

“I think there was a little,” she said in dry tones. She hesitated, then went on. “Anyway, just for my own protection, I'd like to clarify a point. As long as you realize what's coming at you, there should be no problem. Do I have that right?”

“Generally speaking, yes. There is no — reaction, usually, if there is no surprise, no apparent threat.”

“There are many different kinds of threats.” The words were spoken in low tones, almost to herself.

“I meant in physical terms,” he said in caustic explanation.

Her eyes were wide as she met his dark blue gaze. “So did I.”

A visible tremor ran over him, leaving a prickle of gooseflesh along the surface of his arms. He looked away from her. His voice rough, he said, “Well, then. Where is this bed?”

Cammie lay awake sometime later, staring into the dark and watching the constant flicker of lightning around the edges of the curtains at her bedroom window. The wind was rising, whining around the eaves of the old house. It appeared to be blowing up a spring storm to go with the rain.

She wondered if Reid was asleep, two doors down the hall. Or was he lying there in the old four-poster bed wide-awake, wondering why he had let her talk him into staying?

There had been no men's pajamas in the house. Her father's things had been donated to a charity drive long ago, and she had packed Keith's belongings and had them delivered to his girlfriend's trailer. Not that Keith's clothes would have fit Reid. Her husband had put on weight around the middle over the years, and was at least two inches shorter.

She found herself wondering if Reid was sleeping in his briefs or if he preferred the nude. He didn't seem like the kind of man who would accept confinement of any kind.

Cammie shifted in the bed, sliding one arm above her head as she rolled to her side. Her own nightwear, a gown of peach silk, felt heavy and binding against her skin. She thought of discarding it, but that seemed too much like discarding a restraint.

Restraint from what? That was the question.

But no, that was dishonest. She knew perfectly well the confusion of desires that tempted her. Her problem for most of her life had been that she understood herself too well. Ignorance of her inclinations and impulses had never been an acceptable excuse.

Was it some peculiar need for self-immolation that drove her to consider rising from her bed and making her way down the hall in the lightning's flare? Was it sheer female contrariness, a craving for something that had been deliberately placed beyond her grasp? Or was it the ancient feminine need to offer compassion?

Was it the simple lust of a woman who had been without a man for months? Or was it an urge toward mutual healing?

Was it, perhaps, a need to extend recompense for past injuries?

It could be any or all of these things. It felt, however, like a homing instinct.

Reid Sayers was nothing to her. How could he be? She hardly knew him, and the little she had learned of his activities over the last decade and a half was not encouraging.

He was not someone she would have seen much of if he had remained in town; the family differences meant they would seldom have met in a social way. Even if they had seen each other from time to time, the incident at the lake might well have kept them apart.

If these things were not enough, there was his background and obvious inclinations. He might own the mill, but his education had probably been neglected while he was in the army. His clothes seemed to consist of jeans and camouflage. He lived in the game reserve and drove a Jeep. All that added together made him the King of the Red-Necks. He was, in fact, everything that she most despised in a man.

Why, then, did her body respond to him as it had to no other?

She kicked at the sheet that covered her as she flung herself over on her back. This was a passing moment of insanity. She would get over it.

The last thing she needed was another complication in her life. In any case, a woman didn't throw herself at a man.

She wanted him with a deep internal ache that had nothing to do with physical need. It was as if something of her essential self reached out to him.

He would think she was crazy, or possibly depraved. Maybe she was. Why else would she even think of risking the pain and danger he might bring her?

She sat up and slid out of bed, walking to the window, where she pulled the curtain aside and looked out. The trees in the garden were silver-green in the lightning flashes, the undersides of their leaves showing pale gray as their branches tossed in the wind. Thunder rumbled a warning, then detonated with a solid boom.

Grasping the window sash, she pushed it up. The sound of the rain and wind blew into the room on a gust of fresh, moist air. The rich, wet smell of it was like inhaling an aphrodisiac. The thunder was louder, the lightning's glow more intense. As she leaned on the sill, a silver trident streaked down the sky above the treetops. Hard on its singeing crackle came a shattering explosion of thunder that shook the floor under her.

And yet, the greater storm was inside her, a violent conflict between values and instinct.

There had been a great deal of thought and discussion about the last this evening. Why should she be concerned about following its lead now?

She straightened from the window and, leaving it open to the rain, moved across her bedroom and out into the hall. She hesitated, closing her eyes tight, then opened them wide and turned toward the bedroom at the end of the long corridor.

As she took one deliberate step after the other, it seemed that she was somehow outside herself, watching what she was doing in mingled approbation and disbelief. It was eerie, as if she had little to do with the legs that moved forward or the feet that trod the soft, Oriental runner stretching down the hall. She felt compelled, or perhaps drawn by some force outside herself.

Was it true, or only an excuse? Either way, she couldn't seem to stop herself. She wasn't sure she wanted to try.

She was not quite without self-preservation, however. Reaching out toward the blue bedroom door, she grasped the knob with delicate precision. She turned it slowly to prevent the quiet metallic noise it might make. As she pushed on the door panel so that it swung inward, she called the name of the man inside in soft warning, trying not to startle him if he was asleep.

He wasn't.

His sigh was so ferocious, and so close beside her, that she felt it like a warm wind brushing her face. In the same instant, a hard grasp fastened on her wrist and pulled her forward. It was a small jerk, almost gentle, but it carried enough force to send her spinning into the room. She caught the post of the bed and sat down, abruptly, on the mattress.

Reid pushed the door closed with a snap, then swung toward her. “Testing my reflexes?” he asked in quiet rage out of the darkness.

His window, like her own, was open to the storm. Beyond the curtains that billowed with the wind, lightning stitched its way down the dark night sky. In its fading blue glare she saw the stalwart masculine beauty of his naked body. And the torment in his face.

“No,” she said in quiet answer. “Rather, tempting them.”

“Pity the poor beast. Is that it?”

His voice recoiled from her, drifting away toward the room's blackest corner. With his back to the wall there, he stopped.

“More like mutual consolation,” she said, when she was sure he did not intend to leave the bedroom.

“And to hell with the rules.”

She shook her head, and her hair slid forward, half concealing her face. “This isn't a case of forever. Consider it, if you like, simple human contact. For that, I've followed procedure.”

“Coming here in the middle of the night?” he asked incredulously.

“You weren't asleep, or you would never have heard me. I tried to approach you from the front. I gave you fair warning by calling out. I moved as slowly as possible. And I don't think, if you're fair, that you can call my being here a threat.”

“That is a matter of opinion,” he said succinctly.

“Maybe I misunderstood,” she said, rising to her feet and moving toward him with gliding steps. “Tell me, if I come toward you now, like this, if I reached out to touch you, would I still be within the rules?”

The wind sweeping into the room molded her gown to her every curve and hollow. It took the folds of silk, the ends of her long hair, and sent them flying toward him. As they swept out to brush him with feather strokes, she stopped. Lifting a hand, she placed the tips of her fingers against his chest one by one. Slowly, carefully, she trailed them through the golden brown tangle of hair on his chest.

“Don't!” The word was harsh with command.

She ceased all movement. She had been sustained until this moment by bravado and desire and an odd sense of rightness. They were beginning to desert her.

She drew back her hand and clasped her arms around her upper body, holding tight. In tones freighted with need and despair, she said, “I don't pity you; you do a good enough job of that yourself. But you might consider, before you sacrifice both of us, that other people have problems that require human contact as much as you reject it. And they, too, feel pain.”

He listened, it seemed, to the truth that decorated her words. He said quietly, “The only thing I'm hurting is your pride. Pride mends.”

She considered that, and also the faint shiver she saw in his arms, which were pressed behind him as if he would push the wall aside to give himself room for retreat. Her voice was tentative, but without the sound of defeat: “Tell me you don't want me, and I'll go.”

“That would be an obvious lie.”

It would indeed. The glimmering lightning confirmed the evidence of his arousal.

She said, “Why is it so complicated, then?”

“Oh, it isn't,” he answered in challenge, “not if all you want is plain sex. I somehow thought you would expect moonlight and flowers. And promises for tomorrow.”

“I had that,” she said, her eyes wide in the dark. “It didn't last.”

“Nor will this. And I will hurt you,” he went on, the words fretted with desperation. “If not now, then in some moment when you most need kindness, when you are least ready.”

Her voice aching, she whispered, “I only need tonight.”

The wind blew around the house. The rain washed it. The lightning glimmered with the steady pulse of old, worn-out neon.

His answer, when it came, carried the biting edge of defeated anger. “So,” he said, “do I.”

He reached for her as if he meant to break every bone in her body, or make her regret her daring. She didn't flinch, still she could not prevent the shiver that ran over her as he closed his hands upon her. He swept her up in arms like the hard, enclosing branches of trees, and stepped with her toward the bed.

She expected to be flung onto the mattress. Instead he sank down upon it, holding her close as he settled with her upon its yielding surface. His fingers, as he touched her, drawing her close against his long body, were careful not to bruise. His kiss, as his lips found hers, was tender beneath its demanding force.

The ache of released tension and gladness crowded into her throat. Cammie swallowed hard and placed her hands on his shoulders, curling them around his neck. Endlessly accepting, deliberately pliant, she moved against him in accommodation.

It was her last conscious decision. His mouth on hers destroyed thought, and the caresses of his hard hands pushed aside the barriers of polite social usage between them as he stripped away the silk that covered her. If they had ever been strangers, they were no longer.

His warm breath grazing her nipple caused it to contract. He laved the sweet, crinkled nub with his tongue in pensive pleasure, circling the dusky coral aureole and the pale, soft-skinned mound that trembled with the beating of her heart. Arriving at the peak once more, he took it into his mouth with gentle suction, delicate abrasion.

Cammie smoothed her hands over his shoulders, pressing the sensitive palms to the ridged muscles while rich, triumphant pleasure rose inside her. With it was mingled an immense, spreading lassitude. She wanted this moment, this night of storm, never to end.

Alive, she could not remember ever being so alive. With deep drawn breaths, she reveled in the burgeoning responses of her body. She was aware with every molecule of her being of the man who held her, the formidable strength of his lithe form, the fresh, heated male scent of him, the silken curl of his hair at the base of his neck, the taut resilience of his skin.