Unlikely Lover (7 page)

“I found him. He says you’re okay, no stroke,” he told Lillian. “You can leave. I’ve signed you out. Let’s go.”

“But we need a wheelchair…” Mari began.

He handed her Lillian’s purse, lifted the elderly woman easily in his arms and carried her out the door, his set features daring anyone to question or stop him.

Back at Three Forks Lillian’s room was on the ground floor, and despite all the protests she immediately returned to the kitchen and started supper.

“Do you want to go back to the hospital?” Ward demanded, hands on hips, glaring. “Get into bed!”

“I can cook with a broken leg,” she returned hotly. “It isn’t my hands that don’t work, and I’ve never yet used my toes!”

He sighed angrily. “Mari can do that.”

“Mari’s answering your letters,” he was pointedly reminded. “She can’t do everything. And with David gone…”

“Damn David,” he muttered darkly. “What a hell of a time to get married!”

Lillian glared at him until he muttered something rough under his breath and strode off toward his den.

Mari was inside the paneled room, working away at the computer. She was trying to erase a mistake and was going crazy deciphering the language of the computer he’d shown her. The word processing program was one of the most expensive and the most complicated. She couldn’t even get it to backspace.

“I can’t do anything with your aunt,” he grumbled, slamming the door. “She’s sitting on a stool making a pie.”

“No wonder you can’t do anything with her,” she commented innocently. “Your stomach won’t let you.”

He glared at her. “How’s it going?”

She sighed. “Don’t you have a typewriter?”

“What year do you think this is?” he demanded. “What kind of equipment have you got at that garage where you work?”

“A manual typewriter,” she said.

His head bent forward. “A what?”

“A manual type—”

“That’s what I thought you said. My God!”

“Well, until they hired me, one of the men was doing all the office work. They thought the manual typewriter was the latest thing. It did beat handwriting all the work orders,” she added sweetly.

“I work with modern equipment,” he told her, gesturing toward the computer. “That’s faster than even an electronic typewriter, and you can save what you do. I thought you knew how to use it.”

“I know how to turn it on,” she agreed brightly.

He moved behind her and peered over her shoulder. “Is that all you’ve done so far?”

“I’ve only been in here an hour,” she reminded him. “It took me that long to discover what to stuff into the big slots.”

“Diskettes,” he said. “Program diskettes.”

“Whatever. Anyway, this manual explains how to build a nuclear device, not how to use the word processing program,” she said, pushing the booklet away. “Or it might as well. I don’t understand a word of it. Could you show me how it works?” She looked up at him with eyes the color of a robin’s egg.

He actually forgot what he was saying. She had a way of looking at him that made his blood thaw, like the sun beating down on an icy pond. He could imagine how a colt felt on a spring morning with the breeze stirring and juicy grass to eat and a big pasture to run in.

“Could you?” she prompted, lost in his green eyes.

His big hand touched the side of her face tentatively, his thumb moving over her mouth, exploring its soft texture, mussing her lipstick, sensitizing her lips until they parted on a caught breath.

“Could I what, Mari?” he asked in a tone that curled her toes inside her shoes.

Her head was much too far back. It gave him access to her mouth. She saw the intent in his narrowing eyes, in his taut stance. Her body ached for his touch. She looked up at him helplessly, his willing victim, wanting his mouth on hers with a passion that overwhelmed her.

He bent slowly, letting his gaze fall to her parted lips. She could smell the heady fragrance of his cologne now because he was so close. There was mint and coffee on his breath, and he had strong white teeth; she could see them where his chiseled lips parted in anticipation of possession. Her breasts throbbed, and she noticed a tingling, yearning sensation there.

“Your skin is hot,” he whispered, tracing her cheek with his fingers as he tilted his face across hers and moved even closer. “I can feel it burning.”

Her hands were on his arms now. She could feel the powerful muscles through the white shirt that he’d worn with a tie and jacket when they went to pick up Lillian. But the jacket and tie were gone, and the shirt was partially unbuttoned, and now the overwhelming sight of him filled Mari’s world. Her short nails pressed into his skin, bending against those hard muscles as his lips brushed over hers.

“Bite me,” he whispered huskily and then incited her to do it, teasing her mouth, teaching her.

She knew nothing, but she wanted so desperately to please him so that he wouldn’t stop. This was magic, and she wanted more.

Her mouth opened and she nipped at his firm lower lip, nibbling it, feeling its softness. He laughed softly deep in his throat, and she felt his hand move from her cheek to her shoulder, down her arm to her waist. While he played with her mouth, his fingers splayed out and then moved up, and the thin fabric of her flowery shirtwaist dress was no barrier at all as he found her rib cage and began to tease it.

This was explosive. Mari trembled a little because she was catching fire. He hadn’t been kidding when he told her he was a good lover. She hadn’t dreamed of the kind of sensations that he was showing her. She hadn’t realized how vulnerable she was. Her mind was telling her that it was a game, that he didn’t mean it. He’d said so. But her body was enthralled by new feelings, new pleasures, and it wouldn’t let her stop.

“Oh,” she whispered unsteadily when his tongue began to taste the soft inner surface of her lips.

“Open my shirt,” he whispered against her warm mouth. He drew her hands to the remaining buttons and coaxed them until they had the fabric away from him.

She put her hands against hard muscle and thick hair and gasped at the contact. She’d never touched a man this way, and he knew it and was excited by it.

He bit her lower lip with a slow, ardent pressure that was arousing. “Draw your nails down to my belt,” he murmured against her parted mouth.

She did, amazed at the shudder of his big body, at the soft groan her caress produced. She drew away slightly so that she could see his face, could see the lazy, smoldering desire in his green eyes.

“I like it,” he told her with a husky laugh.

She did it again, lowering her eyes this time to watch his muscles ripple with pleasure as she stroked them, to watch his flat stomach draw in even more with a caught breath. It was exciting to arouse him. It gave her a sense of her femininity that she’d never experienced.

Meanwhile, his hand was moving again, this time up her rib cage. Not blatant but subtle in its caress, teasing lightly, provocative. It reached the outer edges of her breast even as her nails were tenderly scoring him, and his fingers lifted to touch around her nipple.

She shuddered, looking up at him with the residue of virginal fear in her wide blue eyes. Her hand went to his hairy wrist and poised there while she tried to choose between pleasure and guilt.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked, his lips against hers.

“No,” she confessed.

Odd, how protective that made him feel. And how much a man. He brushed his lips gently over hers. “Lillian isn’t fifty feet away,” he whispered. “And we won’t do anything horribly indiscreet. But I’m as excited by this as you are, and I don’t want to stop just yet. I want to touch you and feel your reaction and let you feel mine. Mari,” he murmured, tracing a path up her soft breast, “I’ve never been the first. Not in any way, even this. Let me teach you. I promise you, there’s not the slightest danger. Not right now.”

“Oh, but I shouldn’t…” She was weakening and her voice betrayed her.

“Don’t feel guilty,” he whispered over her mouth. “This is love play. Women and men have indulged themselves this way since the beginning of time. I’m human. So are you. There’s no shame in being hungry.”

He made it sound natural. It was the seducer’s basic weapon, but Mari was too outmatched to care. She arched toward his fingers because she couldn’t help herself. That maddening tracing of his fingers was driving her to her limits. She wanted his hand to flatten on her body. She wanted him to touch her…there!

His teeth nibbled at her lower lip, catching it in a soft tug just as his fingers closed on an erect nipple and tightened gently.

She cried out. The sound would have penetrated the walls and door, but he caught it in his mouth and muffled it, half mad with unexpected arousal. Her cries and her trembling were driving him over the edge.

Somehow he had her on the sofa, flat on her back with his heavy body half covering her. Her dress was coming undone, she could feel the air on her bare skin, and her bra was all too loose, and his hand was…there.

She shuddered and her eyes opened, hazy with passion. Her mouth was swollen, her cheeks red, her upward gaze full of rapt wonder.

His big hand flattened over her soft breast, feeling the tip rub abrasively on his palm as he caressed her. His thumb circled it roughly, and she shuddered all over, her breath sighing out unsteadily like his own.

She wanted him to kiss her some more, but his eyes were on her dress now. He peeled it slowly away from the breast he was touching, moving her bra up so that he could see the pink and mauve contrast and that taut little nub. It was as if he’d never looked at a woman before. She was beautiful. Sweetly curving and high, and not too big or too little. Just right.

She felt as if she were watching from a distance. Her eyes wandered over his absorbed expression, seeing the veiled pleasure there, the wonder. If she was awed by him, so was he awed by her. He was touching her like some priceless treasure, taking his time, lovingly tracing every texture.

He took the nipple between his thumb and forefinger and felt its hardness. He looked up into her fascinated eyes. “If I put my mouth on you, you’ll cry out again,” he whispered softly. “And Lillian might mistake the sound and come hopping.”

She was trembling. She wanted it. Her body arched sinuously. She reached up, shyly, and cupped his face, gently tugging at it.

“I won’t…cry out,” she whispered, biting her lower lip to make sure.

“Say ‘taste me,’” he whispered back, searching her eyes.

She blushed feverishly and turned her face into his throat to hide her embarrassment.

“Virgin,” he breathed, trembling himself with the newness of it. “Oh, God, I want to have you so much!”

She thought she knew what he meant, but just then he took her breast into his warm mouth, and she had to chew her lip almost through to keep from screaming at the incredible sensation.

Her hands released his face, and she clenched them over her head. Writhing helplessly, she was caught up in the throes of something so powerful that it stopped her breath in her throat. She twisted up toward him, her body shuddering, her breast on fire with the feel of his mouth.

With a rough groan he suddenly rolled away from her and sat up with his face in his hands, shuddering, bent over as if in agony.

She lay there without moving, shaking all over with reaction and frustration, too weak from desire to even cover herself.

After a minute he took a deep, steadying breath and looked down at her. If she expected mockery or amusement, she was surprised. Because he wasn’t smiling.

His dark green eyes ran over her like hands, lingering on all the places where his mouth had been, devouring her. He drew the bra slowly back down and reached around her for the hooks, fastening them. Then he pulled the edges of her dress together and buttoned them. He didn’t speak until he was through.

“Do you understand why I stopped?” he asked gently. Yes, there was that. There was tenderness in every line of his face, in his voice, in the fingers that brushed her cheek.

“Yes,” she returned slowly. “I think so.”

“I didn’t frighten you?”

That seemed to matter very much. She felt suddenly old and venerable and deeply possessive. “No,” she said.

He tugged gently on a strand of damp hair. “Did I please you?” he persisted and this time he smiled but without mockery.

“As if you couldn’t tell,” she murmured, lowering her face so that he couldn’t see it.

“If we ever make love completely, it will have to be in a soundproof room,” he said at her ear. “You’d scream the house down.”

“Ward!” she groaned and buried her face in his chest.

“No.” He shuddered, moving her away, and he looked pale all of a sudden.

Her eyes questioned his. All these feeling were very new to her.

He drew in a harsh breath, holding her hands in his. “Men are very easy to arouse,” he told her without embarrassment. “When they get to fever pitch, it takes very little to fan the fire. Right now I’m beyond fever pitch,” he mused with a faint laugh, “and if you touch me that way again, we’re both going to be in a lot of trouble.”

“Oh,” she returned, searching his eyes. “Does it hurt?” she whispered softly.

“A little,” he replied. He brushed back her hair. “How about you?”

“Wow.” She laughed shakily. “I never dreamed that could happen to me.”

He felt incredible. New. Reborn. He touched her face lightly as if he were dreaming. Bending over her, he took her mouth softly under his and kissed her. It was different from any other kiss in his life. When he let her go, he had to stand up or lay her down.

“You’d better get back to work,” he said and gestured toward the computer. “And, no, I’m not going to try to teach you. My body won’t let me that close without making impossible demands on both of us so you’ll have to muddle through alone.” He laughed angrily. “Damn it, are you a witch?”

She stood up, smoothing her dress and hair. “Actually, until about five minutes ago, I thought I was Lady Dracula.”

“Now you know better, don’t you?” He stood watching her, his mouth slightly swollen, his shirt open, his hands on his narrow hips. The sight of him still took her breath away.