The Rogue (27 page)

Holt’s reflection joined hers, hard, lean, and very male. He stood behind her. Diana watched his dark head lower to the curve of her neck and heard a quickly indrawn breath before realizing she had made the sound. His hands slid down her arms, crossing them in front of her as he explored the pulsing vein in her neck. Turning her around, Holt lifted her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, dim now in the purpling dusk of night.

Side by side, they lay in the bed, their lips meeting in an occasional kiss, but mostly they simply enjoyed the freedom of touching one another. Her hand was on his shoulder, sliding across to his spine. Diana felt the faint ridges on his hard flesh.

“How did you get them?” She shifted her head on the pillow to see his face.

“Get what?” He rubbed a knuckle in the little hollow behind her ear.

“Those scars.”

“I don’t remember.” And Holt leaned over to kiss her lips, but Diana didn’t want to be sidetracked just yet.

“That’s the same thing you said a long time ago when I asked you.” She moved an inch out of reach of his mouth.

“Are you surprised my story hasn’t changed after all this time?” There was a lazy curve to his mouth, and his hand cupped the back of her head so she couldn’t elude him again.

“Somebody used a whip on you. Why?”

His answer was a hard, silencing kiss. Diana surrendered to it, responded to it, but the instant he released her, she fought back through her befuddled senses to the topic.

“Tell me what happened, Holt.”

A muscle along his jaw rippled in impatience. “This isn’t the time to be recalling ugly memories.”

Her fingers traced the faint marks on his back. “It must have been very painful. Was it?”

As he had that morning, Holt was dragging her hand from his back. He pinned it to the mattress, looming above her, a cold anger flashing across his face. It dissipated just as quickly as his gaze roamed over her features.

“I’ve never met a woman like you.” It was a grudging compliment, issued almost in growling irritation. “You mess up a man’s head until he can’t think straight.”

“I do?” Diana felt an exhilarating sense of power at his admission.

“You knew you were tearing my guts out today when you kept rubbing up against me in that booth,” he accused. “You were all but sitting in my lap.”

“Not deliberately.” She touched a hand to his cheek, stroking the smooth hollow of his jaw. “I couldn’t help it. The booth was meant for two. It was either your lap or that man’s.”

“I even convinced myself that I didn’t give you the room key so that this would happen.”

“Then why did you want me here?” Diana frowned.

“It doesn’t matter. This is really why I wanted you all to myself. It’s why you came, too, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she admitted without hesitation. Anger had merely been an excuse. She had wanted Holt to make love to her.

“Then we both have what we wanted.”

His head moved down, his mouth kissing the exposed hollow of her throat. His weight shifted on the mattress and his hand was curving on the underside of
a breast, lifting the nipple to his lips. It grew into a hard, sensitive bud under the manipulation of his tongue. Her skin quivered as he made a matching rosebud of the other. Content with his success, Holt let his attention wander to the swelling curves of her breast and down to her rib cage. The muscles of her stomach constricted spasmodically as he explored the recesses of her belly button. When his downward descent continued, Diana stiffened.

“Holt, no.” Her protest came in an apprehensive whisper.

He laughed at her softly, without malice, his breath warm against her ultra-sensitive skin. “Do you mean you still have some inhibitions left, or do you want me to say ‘grace’ first?”

A crazy, wild tingling was taking over her limbs. “Holt, please, Rand never ... he considered it . . .” Diana never got the rest of the words out as a searing, breath-stealing fire swept through her.

Purring like a kitten, Diana snuggled closer to his side. She tried not to examine too closely the wildly sweet emotions she was feeling. She just wanted to feel them and not look ahead to see where they might lead. Her fingers lightly stroked his shoulder and arm. Even relaxed, his flesh was hard and muscled. It was crazy the way she couldn’t seem to have enough of touching him.

“Do you have any family?” Diana wondered aloud, her voice a soft whisper. “I can’t remember you ever leaving the ranch. Were you raised in Arizona?” She let her nose be tickled by the hairs on his chest, inhaling the scent of him. At his silence, her thoughts wandered further. “Your wife . . . Guy’s mother—I know you split up when he was small, but you must have loved her once. Didn’t you?”

“That’s typical. A man takes a woman to bed and she thinks she’s entitled to know his life history.”

For all his amused and mocking tone, there was a closed look about him when Diana tipped her head back to see his face. She laughed softly in her throat.

“You’d like to tell me to shut up, wouldn’t you, the way you always do with Rube? It won’t work, not with me.” Her hand slid up to the tanned column of his neck where a fingertip began tracing a lazy circle near his ear. “You’ll have to find some other way.”

“Like this?” His fingers closed around her throat, exerting pressure and lifting her face to his. With hard demand, Holt covered her lips, kissing her into silence before his mouth blazed a fiery trail to the curve of her neck.

“God!” Diana felt the taut breath he released against her sensitive skin, his mouth nibbling here and there. “I’m beginning to memorize the smell of you. I could find you in the dark.”

“It is dark.”

Diana arched closer to him, shooting fires racing through her veins. She had believed her passion was burned out, but his touch, his kiss, his nearness was rekindling it again.

At her growing arousal, Holt accused, “You are an insatiable bitch.”

But Diana felt the hardening bone against her skin. A feline smile curved her lips. “What does that make you?”

With a quick twist, Holt rolled her onto her back, pinning her shoulders against the mattress. Then he was lowering his body onto hers, his mouth finding hers in a fiercely consuming kiss. The fire raged out of control.

For a second time, Diana fell into an exhausted sleep in his arms. She felt at home there, more comfortable than in her own bed, the most natural place in the world to be. Even in sleep, there was a trace of a smile on her lips.

A hand gently shook her shoulder. “Wake up, Diana.” With a negative movement of her head, she cuddled closer to the hard pillow she had made of his chest. “Come on. Wake up.” Holt’s voice became firm. “It’s almost midnight.”

Moaning a protest, Diana forced her eyes open. Holt took his arm from around her and tossed back the covers. She sat up, covering her eyes when he switched on the light. The mattress shifted as he climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom, where he had left his clothes.

“Get dressed,” he ordered.

Diana obeyed. She was fastening her sandals when he walked from the bathroom. Except for the darkening shadow of a beard, he looked vital and fresh, tobacco-brown hair gleaming in the artificial light.

“I’ll bring the truck and van around and wait for you in front of the hotel.”

Before leaving, he tossed the room key on the dresser to save leaving it at the night desk. The door closed as Diana took the hair brush from her purse. The image of her love-softened face in the mirror held her spellbound. Anyone looking at her would know she had been made love to very thoroughly and had enjoyed it. There wasn’t a trace of haughtiness or arrogant pride. Diana knew, at this moment, she was very, very vulnerable.

The thought of Holt waiting for her lifted the brush to her hair. A touch of lip gloss and Diana was ready. There were voices in the hallway outside the door, and the first crush of reality began to press on her. She waited until she heard the closing of doors before she
ventured
out. She almost ran to the staircase.

As she descended the steps, Diana felt like she was running a gauntlet of eyes. On the surface, no one seemed to pay undue attention to her, no more than any halfway attractive woman would receive at that hour of the night. Yet, Diana was weighted by the knowledge that she might be recognized by local people. Would they wonder where she had been? Would they guess she had been in one of the hotel rooms with her lover? Would the gossip about her divorce feed their imaginations? Would the rumor get back to the Major?

Diana almost burst out of the door, away from the suffocating atmosphere of the hotel into the fresh air and silence of the night. The truck was idling in the street on the other side of the cars parked in front of the hotel. Diana ran to the passenger’s door and climbed in, her heart pounding. Holt shifted the truck
into gear and started out slowly. Diana could hear the shifting of hooves in the horse van drawn behind the truck.

“I hope the Major isn’t worried about me.” It was an attempt by Diana to communicate the twinges of guilt she was experiencing at her immoral behavior.

“He knows you are a big girl now. He won’t be waiting for you to come home.”

The indifferent response wasn’t what she had hoped to hear. “I suppose not.”

When they reached the open highway, the truck picked up speed, staying within the limits because of the van it pulled and the precious cargo of a blooded Arabian stud it contained. Diana rested her head against the seat back, letting the cool wind blow through the open window over her face. She closed her eyes.

Holt seemed so distant, and she wondered why. Was he thinking about the Major, too, and wondering what his reaction would be if he learned? She turned her head to look at him, his bold, aquiline profile outlined by the moonlight.

“Would it bother you if the Major knew?”

There was a second’s hesitation before he answered, simply, “No,” his attention not leaving the road.

She wished she could say the same, but old habits die hard. “Don’t you think he’d be upset if he found out?”

“It’s unlikely he would find out unless you intend to make a full confession and tell him how we spent the afternoon and evening making mad, passionate love.” There was a cynical, taunting quality to his voice that sliced at an open wound. “If he did, what would you expect him to do? Play the outraged parent? I was married at the point of a gun once. It won’t happen twice.”

“He could dismiss you.”

It was an ineffectual thrust. “We are two consenting adults. Your father is a man. Given the same set of
circumstances, the Major wouldn’t have behaved any differently than we did.”

“No, he wouldn’t fire you.” She could hear the acidity in her tone, but couldn’t prevent it. “He needs you. He depends on you. And you were just doing what any normal, red-blooded American male would have done in your place.”

God, Diana wished she hadn’t brought up the subject. Why hadn’t she left it alone? She turned her face to the window, staring at the looming, dark mountains flanking the highway. The tires whined in the silence. Diana closed her eyes again, not sleeping, but losing herself in the droning hum.

Miles later the rhythm altered as the truck slowed down. Diana opened her eyes to glance out Holt’s side, expecting to see the light from the ranch yard. He caught her look and nodded to the right.

“Would you like to stop here for a while?”

Diana looked in the direction he had indicated and recognized the rest stop where she and Guy had been this morning. Her gaze jerked back to Holt, wary and alarmed.

“Why?”

“You found it an idyllic spot before. I thought you still might be in the mood.”

“You saw us.” She wanted to leap at him and claw his eyes out.

“I left shortly after you and Guy did this morning. When I saw the ranch truck parked there, naturally I slowed down. It was entirely possible that you were having a mechanical problem.” Holt started out speaking in a cool, flat tone, but she could hear the anger mounting. “That was before I had a glimpse of what was going on inside the cab. You are a consummate little actress, Diana. If I hadn’t seen you with Guy this morning, I might have believed that—” He didn’t finish it, his mouth thinning into a hard line.

“Was that your motive for this . . . the hotel room . . . everything?” Raw pain screamed through her nerves. “Some perverted kind of logic that said, ‘if
she’s with me, she isn’t with Guy’? Plus it was cheaper than some visit to a chicken ranch.”

Cold and ruthless, steel-gray eyes flashed to her. “Maybe that’s the solution—just make love to you until you’re too exhausted to look for sex with any other man—most of all, Guy.”

Diana turned away holding back tears. She felt sick and sickened. Holt had all but called her a tramp, as he had done before. Right now, Diana felt like one. The miles to the ranch couldn’t fly by fast enough. She felt the truck accelerate and guessed Holt shared her wish to get home quickly.

The silence between them was unnerving. It seemed forever before Diana saw the lights at the ranch winking through the grove of trees. Holt pulled the truck up to the stud pens, stepping out of the cab before the motor had completely died. Diana’s leaden feet were much slower. By the time she walked to the rear of the van, he already had the ramp down and was leading the stallion out of the trailer stall.

Diana’s gaze swept absently over the latest addition to their breeding program. The new stallion was a dapple-gray with black points, iron-gray shading to silver, fine-boned and finely muscled. A small muzzle, small pointed ears, an arched neck, and spirited carriage showed all the characteristics of a well-bred Arabian. The stallion pranced at the end of the lead, blowing out rolling snorts and testing the strange smells of his new surroundings. His concave head turned toward the distant paddock where the broodmares were held. He caught the scent of his future harem and sent out a strident, whickering call to them.

“Quiet, fella.” Holt patted the sleek neck. “You’ll meet them soon enough.”

An eruption of sound came from the paddock, shouts and a rifle shot, followed immediately by frightened neighs and the thundering of hooves. Diana raced to the stud corral, climbing to the top rail, mindless of her billowing skirt. Far off in the distance, she saw a ghost-white shape floating over the desert
sage, moving ever closer to the shadowy recesses of the mountains. Their return had coincided with the night visit of the mustang stallion.