Walk Away Joe (2 page)

“No problem, Tucker,” she said, banking on his reputation as truth. “And no complications. I promise. Just tonight. I’m only asking for tonight.” She swallowed hard, hating herself for letting the pleading note creep into her voice, hoping he didn’t recognize it for what it was.

But he recognized her desperation. And in the moment before he surrendered to it, she sensed that at some time in his life he had felt it, too, and had suffered its debilitating power.

Moonlight gilded the hard planes of his face as he caught her shoulders in his hands and drew her toward him. Starlight reflected in the blue eyes that searched hers with a painfully searing intensity. And the night sounds, as soulful and lonely as the look on his face, blended with his tortured groan as he brought his mouth to hers.

The hesitation ended then. He took her mouth with the fierceness of a warrior, with the sureness of a conqueror. No slow introduction. No sweet seduction. Open- mouthed, hot and demanding, he slanted his mouth across hers, offering no options, making no allowances.

Punishing and rough, erotic and exciting, his kiss was the beginning of the escape she needed. And she told herself this was what she wanted. All the power, all the fury, all the promise of losing herself in his fire.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him, her open mouth accommodating his demands, desperate for his tongue and the savage sexual healing his explosive passion promised.

“Where?” she whispered, breathless and yearning when he came up for air.

He didn’t answer. Just clenched his jaw, lifted her against him and started walking. She buried her face against his shoulder, wrapped her legs around his waist and hung on for the ride.

This was what she wanted, she assured herself, as excitement blended with fear, then blurred unexpectedly into shame. This was what she needed. To be lost in something more powerful than pain. To enjoy, if only for the moment, the honesty of lust, the false intimacy of physical love that would end long before sunrise.

His booted footsteps echoed against the floor of the brick-and-tile courtyard as he carried her under the archway. The screen door creaked, then slammed shut behind them as he shouldered his way inside the small casa that had been both her home and her prison for the past week.

Draped in darkness, wrapped in his heat and the scent of aggressive, aroused male, it took a moment for her to realize he was urging her to let go. Another moment before she became aware that they were in her bedroom, standing beside her bed.

Slowly, she unwrapped her legs from around him. Slower still, she unwound her arms from around his neck.

A sharp stab of panic swamped her again. What was she doing? What had she come to? This wasn’t her. This wasn’t right.

But this was real, she reminded herself, battling the feeling back. And it was vital. The physical rush she felt in Lambert’s arms reminded her that she was a living, breathing woman who had functioned too long in the drugging fog of nothingness.

With a shaking hand, she reached up and tugged the hat from his head. With a tremulous breath, she tossed it to the table by the bed.

As still as the silence, he watched her. As illicit as the original sin, he tempted her. His only reaction was the tight clenching of his jaw, the accelerated pulse beat that raced at his throat.

Her hand was way past trembling when she reached for him. She touched her fingers to his jaw, then ran them through the lush, damp gold of his hair. Closing her eyes, she trailed spread palms down the light dusting of curls covering his chest, then lower.

The fine curling hair on his belly tickled the back of her hands when she reached for his silver belt buckle. The flat muscles of his abdomen tightened with his indrawn breath, just as her chest tightened with anticipation and need. And as she closed her fingers over the buckle and tugged it free, she felt his heartbeat quicken with hers.

In a lightning move, his hands covered hers, stilling them.

Her head snapped back. For a moment, in the shadowed darkness, she could have sworn she saw denial in his eyes. The shock was quick, the disappointment cutting. Then she reminded herself who she was with and smiled at her own naivety. This was Tucker Lambert. This was the love-’em-and-leave-’em legend of the Texas sage. How had Karla summed him up?
Quick with a grin, time to kill, women to win.

“What’s the matter, Lambert?” she baited him huskily. “Am I going too fast for you?”

He slowly shook his head as a smile that held less humor than it did grim restraint lifted one corner of his mouth. “Oh, sweetheart, if you only knew—”

Before she lost her nerve, her hands moved back to his buckle. “I want to know. Word has it you’re just the man to fill me in.”

Again his strong hands stopped her.

“Ladies first,” he insisted when she raised her gaze to his.

Bold in the darkness, foolishly discounting the thought that she was about to make love to a man she barely knew, she met his challenge. “Then by all means...” She reached behind her, gripped the corner post of the four-poster bed at her back with trembling hands and leaned against it. “You do the honors.” Her throat was so tight it came out as a raspy whisper.

Without a word, he leaned over to turn on a bedside lamp. Pale lamp glow cast soft shadows over the room— and too much light on the reality of what was about to happen.

His sleepy gaze dropped to her breasts, where her blouse stretched tight across them. She felt her nipples harden under his bold stare, and knew by his deep, shimmering breath that the soft cotton gave away her body’s response.

“This particular stage of the game,” he said, watching her face as he cocked one knee and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, “I prefer to enjoy as a spectator.”

His intent couldn’t have been clearer. He wanted her to strip for him. Shame almost got the best of her then.

 
Shame and indecision. She hadn’t planned on this. She hadn’t planned on having to think about what she was doing, or that she’d have the presence of mind to try to talk herself out of it.

What she’d planned on was a few hours of dark, mindless sex. No promises. No regrets. The price of a condom seemed a fair exchange for her pride.

But suddenly her pride and her brazen disregard for the values she’d lived by all her life seemed a high price after all. He must have read the indecision on her face in that moment before she remembered that she had little pride left to hold on to... and that her values had already been discounted by events over which she had no control.

One corner of that teasing, tempting mouth tipped up in a mocking grin. “Well, now... What’s this? A change of heart?”

He was laughing at her. And why not? She was a joke.

“Change of heart?” she echoed, with a lift of her chin and a renewed resolve to see this through. This might be a real low point in her life, but she’d be damned if she’d come this far and miss out on the punch line.

Clawing her way out of the depression that haunted her, she met his gaze with defiance. “My heart has nothing to do with what I want from you. And I’m told that what I want—” she paused, wet her lips and flicked open another button on her blouse “—is something you’ve had lots of practice giving.”

He stood motionless as she undid the last button. Didn’t so much as blink as she shrugged the gauzy cotton from her shoulders. Her heart stalled, then battered her breast, as she bared herself to the lamplight and the last of her pride to his burning gaze.

Before she lost her nerve, she unbuttoned her skirt and stepped out of it. Her chest hurt, her throat felt as raw as her nerves as she stood before him, naked except for her panties and the light dusting of Texas sand on her bare feet.

And still he stood there.

“Don’t tell me you’re not up to it.” She was taunting him, wishing she had something stronger than her courage to help her see this through.

He took a slow, stalking step toward her. Stopping mere inches away, he searched her face, then raised his hand and brushed his knuckles in a soft, sensual caress across her jaw.

She trembled and, with a boldness that sent her heart racing, cupped his hand in hers and guided it slowly to her breast.

Her breath stalled, thick and aching, as his big hand, hot and callused and blatantly possessive, closed around her. She swayed against the heat of his touch, her eyes drifting shut as he kneaded her softly, and then, with a groan that could have been desperation or desire, dragged her roughly against him.

His open belt buckle bit into the sensitive skin of her hip as he lifted her off her feet. The corded muscle of his arms held her steady and strong as he carried her out of the room.

An unsolicited surge of panic swamped her as she looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know what you’ve got in mind... but the bed’s back there.”

“And the shower’s in here.”
 

Letting her body slide in a slow, sensuous glide against him, he lowered her to her feet in the middle of the tub. With a smile as tempting as it was wicked, he reached for the faucet—and turned on the cold water full blast.

Liquid ice hit her full in the face. She sucked in a sharp breath, then shrieked at him, jolted out of shock mode and into rage. “What—what the hell are you doing!”

“Giving you a chance to cool off,” he said in a maddeningly placating tone as she scrambled to get away. “A chance to cool off and sober up,” he added, his voice growing strained as she fought him.
 

“You b-b-bastard!”

“So some say.”

She screamed then. And swung. And kicked with everything that was in her. Dodging her clubbing fists and ignoring her bloodcurdling oaths, he held her where she stood with an ease that sent her into an even wilder rage.

She had the supreme satisfaction of hearing his grunt of pain when one of her fists connected with his jaw.

“Just hold still now, and get it over with. Believe me, you’ll thank me for this in the morning.”

She glared at him through a thick curtain of water- soaked hair. “I’ll
thank
you to get the hell out of here!” When he didn’t budge, she called him every ugly name she could summon up from her vocabulary. When he covered her mouth with his broad palm, she bit him.

He yelped and jerked his hand away. Ducking another uppercut, he moved in on her, pinioning her arms behind her back. “If you’d stay the hell put, I’d let you go,” he growled, forcing her under the spray again. “Just settle down. If you promise to be good...”

“I’ll promise you n-nothing,” she gasped, spitting water and shaking with fury. “Let... me... go, you... you sorry s-son of a bitch! ”

 
“Careful, now... All this sweet talk’ll turn my head.” His chuckle infuriated her beyond the point of control. She bucked and twisted and reared back until they were both in danger of falling. Finally giving up, he released her and backed a healthy step toward the door.

She hurled a bar of soap at him. Then a bottle of shampoo. He ducked, but not in time. The plastic bottle grazed his shoulder, then bounced off the wall to land on the floor. He stopped abruptly, his face darkening with a swift loss of patience. In two long strides, he stalked back to the shower.

He caught her swinging fists in midair, banded both wrists behind her back and dragged her roughly against him. “When you decide you want to talk about what’s eating you up from inside,” he demanded, his mouth an inch away from hers, “let me know. And when you make that decision, you make damn sure you come to me sober.”

Ignoring the shower spray, her wet, shivering body and her vivid curses, he pinned her with his gaze. “And one more thing... if you come to me again looking for what you were looking for tonight, don’t count on a replay of this little shower scene. Next time, you’re going to get exactly what you asked for.”

Nose to nose with him, she stared him down, determined that he’d see none of her humiliation and all of her anger.

“I wouldn’t come to you for—”

He cut her words off with his mouth, and with a kiss that was as disabling as his arms were strong around her.

It started out with one intent. To overpower. To dominate. To make a liar out of her anger. Bruising and rough, punishing and possessing, he kissed her the way he had outside in the moonlight. Yet when she murmured in surrender and sagged against him in defeat, instead of taking advantage, he eased his hold.

The kiss was transformed, in a subtle, sensual heartbeat, to something generous and giving, soft and healing. As gentle as the hand that brushed the wet hair away from her eyes. As tender as the callused thumb that stroked her jaw. So gentle, it made her weak. So tender, it made her want to cry.

Slowly, he pulled away, watching her face all the while. Defenseless against the compassion in his eyes and a damnable rush of tears she refused to shed, she lowered her head.

“I hate you.” It came out as a raw, reedy whisper as she fought a bewildering tangle of anger and need.

He let go of a deep, labored breath. “Yeah, well, that was the idea.”

The gentleness in his tone brought her head up. “Seemed to me you needed someone to hate a little more than you hate yourself right now. But I figure you’ll get over it. And I figure I’ll live if you don’t.”

She didn’t cover herself when he just stood there. Didn’t fight him when he cupped his palm around the nape of her neck. Didn’t resist when he drew her toward him again.

And she told herself she didn’t let her tears fall when he touched her mouth with a soft, almost apologetic kiss before he left her... shivering, shamed and alone.

2

………

S
UCKING IN A DEEP DRAFT OF AIR
, Tucker let the door shut softly behind him. Hands on his hips, head lowered, he stood in the archway, waiting for the fist that had clenched in his gut to let go.

Hell. He didn’t need this. He didn’t like it. And he sure as the devil didn’t understand it. He’d left women crying before. And, yeah, it had bothered him. But not like this. Never like this.

He didn’t even know the woman. He told himself he didn’t want to know her. He was just putting up with her as a favor to Karla and Lance.