The Heart Breaker (22 page)

“It is unfortunate then,” Heather replied with cool defiance at his taunting, “that I have never been considered particularly obedient.”

His return smile was lazy, although there was nothing casual about the glitter in his smoky eyes. “A proper wife isn’t cold to her husband, either. Then again, you weren’t cold last night. You were hot as a firecracker, out of control.”

Her cheeks warmed with color. “You are deliberately being crude.”

“What if I am? You could do with a little shaking up.” He was studying her intently, his heated eyes lingering on her naked breasts. “At least those prudish notions of yours disappear in bed.”

“I hardly think it prudish to be a bit shocked by your wickedness. Any lady would have been scandalized by the things you did last night.”

“You enjoyed the wicked things I did to you, admit it.” Sloan shifted on the mattress, wincing slightly. “I can feel the nail cuts you left all over my back and shoulders.”

“Perhaps… I did enjoy them, but that doesn’t
mean I care to repeat the experience this morning. I have work to do, duties to attend to.”

“One of your main duties is pleasing your husband. Come here and please me, duchess.”

Her spine stiffened. “My name is not
‘duchess.’
”

“Heather, then. Come here, sweetheart.” His voice dropped to a caress, infused with masculine charm. “Please.”

She eyed him archly. “You can’t possibly be eager to make love again.”

“Oh, yes, I can. I want you, Heather. I want you beneath me, your legs wrapped tight around me as I lie buried hard and deep inside you.”

Every low, husky word stroked her. Almost against her will, Heather rose and went to stand before him.

At the nearness of her luscious, naked body, Sloan began to harden as desire heated his loins. He’d taken her four times last night and again this morning, but it hadn’t been enough. He wanted her still, more powerfully than before. He wanted to make her lose the last of her inhibitions.

Her hesitation just now, however, was not simply due to modesty or ladylike reserve. “Sloan … I’m not certain I can … bear any more just now.”

His hard gaze suddenly softened. “I should have realized you’d be sore.”

He could think of nothing he’d like better than to bury his fingers in that silvery mane and stretch Heather naked on this bed and have her over and over again. But he had to remember the fierce demands he had already made on her body.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t employ other methods. He wanted to teach her what it was like to enjoy a man. He wanted to bring out the sensual side of her nature—and drive her mindless with unbearable pleasure at the same time. The woman
he wanted in his bed was the incredible lover he’d known in his dreams.

He drew the sheet aside, an invitation for her to join him in bed. “We won’t do anything that hurts you. In fact, I won’t do a thing. You can have all the honors.”

She gazed at him uncertainly, at his body rippling with muscles. The center of his chest was sparsely furred with a silky gold triangle of hair that narrowed over his hard, flat belly to his groin. Her gaze dropped lower. His upthrust sex was already thick and swollen, reaching almost to his navel. That exciting hardness made her blood race.

“I don’t know what to do,” she murmured, her voice holding a strange huskiness.

“Use your imagination.”

Slowly, she climbed onto the bed and knelt naked beside him. His magnificent masculinity no longer shocked her. Instead, it left her tingling with sexual awareness. She wanted to reach out and satisfy her natural curiosity about his body. She actually ached to touch him.

“Touch me,” he murmured, echoing her thoughts. His eyes were hot and held dark promises. “Take my cock in your hands and hold me.”

Gently, he captured her hand to encourage and guide her. When her fingers closed around him, he winced slightly.

“Does that hurt?” she asked.

He gave a strangled laugh. “A good hurt.” His fingers wrapped about hers so she held him tightly. With a soft groan, he shut his eyes.

For the first time in their stormy relationship, Heather understood the effect she was having on him, and it soothed her initial panic. She took a deep breath. She had not given Sloan much pleasure during their first sexual encounters; she’d been
too nervous and inexperienced even to try. But now he was giving her the chance.

And she wanted to take it. She wanted to make this man, as remote and icily detached as he was, feel the same hot, uncontrollable pleasure he aroused in her.

Her fingers cupped him tentatively as she watched his face. The bronzed skin was pulled taut across lean cheekbones while the pulse beat so strongly in his throat, she could see its throbbing rhythm. Her exploration grew bolder, learning the feel of him, the sensations of swollen sacks nestled in soft dark hair, the long, thick shaft that was hot and silken to the touch, the flushed, bulbous head with the encircling ridge....

With effort, Sloan lay completely still, allowing her to set the pace. Only his hand moved, guiding her, showing her how to stroke and arouse him.

“Like this?” she whispered.

“Exactly … like that…” he agreed, his voice an uneven gasp.

In fascination she fondled him, caressing until he arched his hips in fitful need. Yet Heather was not inclined to satisfy him just yet. She wanted to draw out the intimate moment, to drive Sloan as mad with desire as he did her.

Following her intuition, she rose up on her knees. She wanted to taste him. Daringly, she bent over him, her long hair caressing his body as she pressed her lips to his engorged flesh. Sloan groaned.

Her own body aching shamelessly for him, she placed a questioning kiss on the velvet-smooth head. His every muscle went rigid. Greatly encouraged, she touched him with her tongue, tasting salt and musk and male sweetness. His head moved restlessly on the pillow. Her tongue traced the rigid
length, and she felt a surge of triumph when his fists gripped the sheets.

The last remnants of shyness fading, she continued her sensual assault, sliding her lips down over the swollen crown as her fingers caressed him.

It was the startling boldness of her next intimacy, however, that made him shudder. She sucked gently, drawing him into her mouth with an innocent passion that inflamed him.

Pulsating wildly, Sloan let the male ache wash over him in ripples of pleasure-pain. “Duchess…”

“My name is Heather,” she whispered against his hot flesh. “Say it, Sloan.”

He laughed softly and then groaned. “Heather … ahh … sweet Jesus, what are you doing to me?”

She was reveling in her sensual power—but suddenly it wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to take him inside her body. “Sloan … please… I want you.”

It was all the encouragement he needed. Reaching for her arms, he pulled Heather on top of him. The soft warmth of her naked breasts met the hardness of his chest with the impact of a brand. Their eyes met, his hot, hers dazed.

Trying to quell the raging lust that rippled through his body, Sloan lifted her up till she sat astride his sinewed thighs. Instinctively her back arched, her breasts filling his palms, hardening and thrusting out to seek his touch, his mouth—but he held her still.

His eyes had sharpened to a glittering awareness. In a soft guttural tone he demanded, “You sure I won’t hurt you?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

She was breathless and ready for him, hot and
dripping wet. In a single swift motion, he raised her up and lowered her on his shaft.

The sensation of her sleek, heated flesh sheathing him was so exquisite he nearly came right then; his hunger was that raw, that explosive.

“Ride me,” he rasped, and she obeyed. Her soft thighs settled over him and she began to move, seeking an urgent rhythm, her hips undulating in search of the hot pleasure he had taught her.

Desire flared hot and bright inside him, a desire he couldn’t hold back. The frantic rhythm became a frenzied hunger. He bucked wildly beneath her, driving relentlessly. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she cried out, her head thrown back in ecstasy as her climax came. His release followed instantly in a fiery explosion, and he spilled his seed in pulsing spasms.

Panting, she collapsed against him, her lush body flushed and dewy with perspiration.

This was how he wanted her, Sloan thought weakly, with her elegant, aloof image shattered. And yet remorse tinged his triumph. He’d been way too rough with her. But then… he couldn’t have controlled himself, any more than he could have stopped a wildfire racing up a dry canyon in the heat of summer.

“Is it always like this?” she whispered long moments later.

When he didn’t answer, she drew back a little to look down at him.

His eyes grew hooded. He didn’t want to meet her searching gaze.

Just then, they heard the sound of a child’s gurgling laugh through the partially open door. Janna was awake.

Grateful for the interruption, Sloan eased himself from beneath her and left the bed. Giving her a
glimpse of taut, bare buttocks, he bent to pull on his denims.

“Hell, it’s just sex, duchess,” he lied. “Happens all the time. Nothing to get worked up about.”

T
heir relationship changed that day, at least physically. Where once Sloan had ignored her, now he couldn’t seem to get enough of her. He took her whenever and wherever he pleased.

Helpless to resist, overwhelmed by his heat and sexuality, Heather gave him everything, her body, her honor, her pride.

He became master of her body. Under his tutelage she discovered a wild, uninhibited side of herself she never suspected existed. To her dismay, she reveled in her liberation, appalled yet renewed at the same time.

He showed her the many different facets of passion. She’d never realized that lovemaking could be a slow, languorous tangle of bodies, or a feverish battle of wills. She never felt so alive as she did in his arms, losing herself in a pleasure so intense she became mindless.

Sloan, however, appeared to escape the devastating impact of their smoldering encounters. The words he whispered to her in the heat of passion were of lust and carnal need, merely that. She could put no stock in them.

Oh, he wanted her body, of that she was certain.
She couldn’t mistake the taut, savage look on his face as he took her. But their lovemaking was raw and hot and purely sexual, nothing more.

Heather tried not to let it wound her. She tried to ignore the fact that Sloan’s bedchamber was still off limits to her. He never took her there, although any other location in the house seemed acceptable—her bedchamber, the kitchen, his study in front of the hearth, the spare room upstairs that was used for sewing and storage and extra overnight guests. Each time, she desperately fought the feelings he unleashed inside her. If she was to survive, she would have to keep her distance emotionally. She would have to try her level best to hold herself aloof.

But she feared she was fighting a battle she could never win.

The battle proved easier once spring roundup began in mid-May. She’d heard tales of the West, thrilling stories of cattle drives and gunfights, but the reality of a ranch was endless days of grueling, mundane work as Sloan and his cowboys brought the cattle down from the hills to mark them with the Bar M brand.

Several times Heather drove out with Janna to observe the operation at a safe distance. The scene looked chaotic, the air filled with the smells of dust and smoke and burning hide, as well as the lowing of hundreds of cattle and the singing and calling of the drivers at their flanks.

Watching, she thought she understood how cowpunchers got their name. There were several members of a branding crew. First a cowboy on a racing horse would cut out a calf from the herd, rope it, then drag to closer to the fire, where a bulldogger would throw it to the ground and tie it. Then the brander would shove a hot iron into its rump, all
in a matter of seconds. Lastly the ears were marked with a sharp knife, and if the animal was male, the testicles were castrated and the fries thrown into a pile to be cooked later.

Heather felt for the poor calves. Their pitiful bawling as they ran crying back to their mamas wrung her heart. But Rusty assured her it wasn’t as brutal an ordeal as it looked.

“Their hides are tough,” he insisted, “and they’re more scared than wounded.”

On her first visit with Janna, Sloan broke away from the branding operation and rode over to greet them. His smile was chiefly for his daughter, but his gaze held Heather’s for a long, sensually charged moment. “Glad you could come.” When he bent near, she caught the hot, earthy scents of sweat, sun, leather, and man, and her blood quickened.

The spell was over in a moment. Sloan scooped Janna up in his arms and set her before him on his horse.

“Come on, darlin’. It’s time you got a look at your heritage.” Much to the child’s awed delight, he rode slowly around the camp, showing her the sights.

Except for the few sojourns to the range, however, Heather saw little of Sloan during the weeks of roundup. After putting in a long day branding calves, he came home late and fell wearily into bed each night, only to rise before dawn to begin all over again.