A Child Of His Own, page 12
“He didn’t deserve to die.”
“Nobody killed him, Dory. It was an accident.”
“I know that, and I don’t feel guilty for his death, really I don’t. Nobody could have saved Eddie from the burning carousel.”
“Oh, I get it,” said Ben. He was just now beginning to realize that there was much more to her secret than she was telling him. “You blame yourself for not being able to make the marriage work. That’s it, isn’t it? And because of it, you’re afraid. You made a mistake once and now you think any other attempt will be a mistake as well.”
Dory shrugged out of his embrace and jumped to her feet, unaware of the provocative outline of her legs through the sheer white fabric of her gown, and charged, “How dare you psychoanalyze me.”
In spite of her beautiful indignation, her response told him he had struck a tender nerve, and provided the answer to a question he’d been asking himself for weeks. “So, that’s why you’ve tried so hard to keep your distance from me.”
“You’re threatening to take my son away from me. That should be reason enough to keep my distance from you.”
“But I didn’t tell you about Jason at the beginning, so how do you explain your standoffishness from day one? You’ve done everything you know to keep me from getting too close to you, and we both know that Jason has nothing to do with it. Tell me something, Dory, are you afraid of getting involved with any man, or just me?”
Her back stiffened with anger at the question, yet she answered candidly, “Don’t take it personally.”
Ben smiled crookedly up at her. “Right.”
“I don’t want a man in my life. Any man. I was doing just fine until you came along.”
“Sure, Dory,” he scoffed, “you were doing just fine. But how about Jason? The kid’s crying out for a father figure, so much so that he set his sights on me, of all people. What the hell do I know about being a father? Yet suddenly, there’s this kid, reaching out to me, and I’m thinking, ‘Man, what’s this all about?’ If you think that was a can of worms I opened up for you this afternoon, I can tell you that the one you and your son opened up for me is just as powerful.”
“Jason, yes, but why me?” she questioned.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know.” Starlight bounced off his dark head that shook slowly from side to side as the truth dawned on him. “You really don’t, do you?”
“Know what?”
“How much I want you.”
She was stunned by his revelation, and immediately suspicious of it. “But it’s Jason you want.”
“If he’s my son, yes. I don’t deny it. But there’s another longing inside of me that I’ve been feeling from the first moment I saw you. I want you, Dory. More than I thought I could want any woman.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug that signaled his helplessness over it.
Her voice was low and unsteady. “Do you think that will sway me?”
He got up and came to stand directly before her. His warm, moist breath whispered against the night, scattering goosebumps across her flesh. “Do you think me that devious?” There was a low undercurrent of anger beneath what sounded like hurt in his voice.
Indirectly, she replied, “I think we do what we have to do to get by.”
He gave a contemptuous snort. “Well, at least you didn’t call me the devil. Or are you reserving judgment on that?”
He wasn’t the devil. He was worse. She had her faith with which to grapple with the devil. But where were her defenses where this mortal man was concerned?
She knew what he meant, and that Jason had nothing to do with it, and it frightened her. To be wanted by him with such fierce candor was one thing, but to want him back with the same intensity was a new and frightening experience.
Want and desire welled up within her, but the need was the greatest. Never had she felt such overwhelming need as she did just then, standing there in her flimsy nightgown, tears staining her cheeks, inches away from the comfort he offered, if only for tonight.
What would be the harm? she dared to think with some detached part of her mind. To let herself be taken into his embrace, to feel safe in the strength of it, and wanted in the urgency of it. To drown in his kisses and forget, for the time being, the demons that haunted her past and the one that threatened her future.
For one frightening moment desire conflicted sharply with common sense. It would have been easy for her to succumb to the powerful emotions his candor aroused in her. Could she surrender to this man without trading away her son? The stakes were too high, and there was too much for her to lose.
She backed away from him, as if putting distance between them would still her frantically beating heart and bring a semblance of sanity back to her beleaguered mind.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Sure, you can walk away if you think it will help. But how do you get away from your own emotions? Your own needs? We try, don’t we? We run, but we never quite elude them. Sometimes, they creep up on us at the worst times.”
She tried, but how could she hate him for the accuracy of his perceptions, when she sensed that he was speaking as much about himself as he was about her?
“Like now,” he went on, his tone low and accusatory. “You want me, too, but you’ll be damned if you’ll admit it.”
Angrily, she complained, “That’s awfully presumptuous.”
“I’m a presumptuous kind of guy. But I guess you already know that about me.”
The carefully veiled reference to Jason made her more uncertain of his motives than ever. “Maybe you’re not devious,” she conceded. “Maybe what you are is desperate. So desperate for a son, any son, that you’ll make love to me to try to get my son. It’s understandable. I would probably do the same thing if I were you.”
“You just don’t get it, do you?” he charged. “Why is it so hard for you to admit to yourself that someone wants you just for you?”
Her eyes flared wide and her mouth opened, but Ben spoke up quickly to staunch the argument she’d been about to make. “All right, so I can see why you’re hesitant. This isn’t exactly your standard boy-meets-girl story. Granted, there are some extenuating circumstances. But attraction is attraction. If nothing else, you’ve got to admit to that.”
“I don’t know what it is you want me to admit. Am I attracted to you? Yes, in a basic sort of way. Am I stupid enough to do anything about it? Hardly.”
“If there’s anything you’re not, it’s stupid. Afraid is more like it.”
Dory grew uncomfortable under the weight of his hot, ardent gaze. “You’re right. I am afraid. Afraid that you’ll take my son away from me.”
“Is that the only thing you’re afraid of?”
“Of course.”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“I said, prove it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Kiss me.”
She looked at him as if he’d gone insane. “What on earth would that prove?”
“That losing Jason isn’t the only thing you’re afraid of.”
“Wh-what else...would I be...”
“Of me. Of getting involved.”
“I already told you I don’t want to get involved.”
“That’s right, I remember. You don’t need any man. You were doing just fine, in fact, until I came along.”
She detested the sound of her own words coming back to haunt her. “Well, yes.”
“Then prove it.”
“How? By kissing you? Isn’t my word good enough?”
“Is mine to you?” he challenged. “When I tell you that I want for Jason only what you would want for him, when I say that it’s not my intention to take him away from you, when I put myself on the line by telling you how much I want you for reasons that have nothing to do with him, is my word good enough? Do you believe me?”
“I—I don’t know. Sometimes I think I do, and then sometimes I think I don’t.”
“When I kissed you that first night, when you fell off the carousel. I hope you don’t think I planned that, desperate man that I am. But what did my kiss that night tell you? And again, that day we went to get the horse. I didn’t plan that one either, although I can’t say I wasn’t thinking a lot about something like that happening. What did my kiss tell you then? Was I lying to you, Dory? Did you sense that I was conning you?”
She cast her gaze downwards, unable to bear the scrutiny of those dark, predatory eyes, and answered almost shyly, “No.”
“Then don’t I at least deserve some proof?”
Dory wet her lips nervously. “Now let me see if I have this straight. I tell you that I don’t want to get involved, and you tell me that the only way I can prove it to you is to kiss you.”
He answered with a self-satisfied nod.
“And you’re counting on reading in my kiss whether what I say is true.”
“Actually, I’m not counting on anything. What you say probably is true. If it is, I’ll give up.”
“You mean you’ll leave?” Judging from the way her heart tripped, Dory wasn’t sure if that would be a blessing or a curse.
He gave her an apologetic half smile. “Sorry, Dory. I can’t do that until I find out about Jason. What I meant was, I’ll make him the only thing between us. Nothing more, unless and until you ask for it.”
He made it sound so simple, but Dory knew from the pandemonium racing through her blood that there was nothing simple about this man, from his dangerous purpose in their lives to his even more dangerous presence in her soul. His was a deep, dark, complicated existence, its haphazard appearance deceiving. Somehow, when she hadn’t been looking, he had slipped beneath her guard to pierce her defenses. Unless and until she asked for it, indeed. His arrogance was infuriating.
She told herself that she could do it, that she could kiss him and still walk away, not unscathed, but at least with that part of her life still in her control. She had made one grave mistake where a man was concerned. She wasn’t about to make another one.
Her experience with Eddie had cost her her faith that decent, honest, loving relationships existed not only in her imagination, but in real life as well. But with Ben she stood to lose so much more. She stood to lose her son.
“I won’t play these games with you,” she said. “I told you I don’t want to get involved.”
He gave an abrupt laugh. “You already are involved, Dory, whether you like it or not. But don’t kiss me if you don’t want to. That proves more to me than if you had. But just in case there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about what’s really going on here, let’s get one thing straight.”
“Oh? What?”
“This.”
His arm shot out to wind automatically around her waist and pull her up tightly against him, lifting her practically off her toes, and crushing the breath right out of her. His body was lean and incredibly strong. There was the same urgency in him that she had sensed that first night by the carousel.
He brought his face to within inches of the outrage he saw stamped on hers. In a softly menacing voice he told her, “Go on, Dory, deny that there’s any attraction between us. Deny that what’s going on here isn’t scaring the daylights out of you. And then, deny this.”
She made a small, startled sound that was swiftly silenced by the crush of his mouth against hers. Her body stiffened, and even as she struggled to be released, she knew that resisting was useless, that everything he said was true, and that he was about to prove it.
Chapter 11
Unlike that first urgent kiss beneath the stars, and the tender one under the apple tree, this one was filled with angry emotion. His lips obliterating any protest she might make, he kissed her fiercely, hungrily, overpowering her with the sheer muscular force of his desire.
Dory struggled halfheartedly against the restraint of his strong arms, the bruising pressure of his lips, and the unmistakable press of his arousal against her. But most of all she struggled against the sensations that ignited like tiny fires deep inside of her, spreading white-hot passion through her system like an inferno.
In the midst of the turmoil, he lifted his head and looked at her. In the moonlight that bathed her face he saw that her lips were reddened with the roughness of his kiss. Her eyes were half-closed. Several strands of dark brown hair were matted against the sides of her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
“Don’t cry, Dory,” he whispered. “Nothing can hurt you, not right now, here, in my arms.”
Dory’s thoughts were swirling like bubbles in a glass of champagne. Ben’s breath against her flesh was making her heady with desire. He felt warm and solid against her, his muscular arms wound like protective bands around her.
“You said before you don’t want a man in your life. But what about need? Do you need a man in your life, Dory? Show me what you need.”
The very need he taunted her with sprang up within her, mingling with earthshaking desire. She wanted him, wanted the thrill of letting herself go, of giving herself to him in ways she had only imagined.
Without forethought her palms flattened against his naked chest and began a slow exploration of the smooth, firm flesh, coming to rest upon the two dark circles whose edges were puckered with readiness beneath her fingertips. She could hear his soft intake of breath when she brushed the hardened nipples.
Like skaters on ice, her hands slid smoothly to his arms, fingers flexing around the muscular biceps before gliding upwards, across his broad and powerful shoulders, to clasp behind his neck. The hair that grazed her fingers was like silk, the skin at the back of his neck so incredibly soft.
It was as if she were being manipulated by a will outside of her own. It was her own desperate longing for him that lured her into these dark and dangerous waters, but it was the sound of his voice, a softly pleading rasp at her ear, that pulled her strings and set her in motion.
“Show me,” he breathed. “Show me what you need.”
She was beyond thinking rationally, beyond saving. Beneath the onslaught of his desire, all she could do was give him what he wanted...what she wanted.
Her fingers obeyed blindly, moving upwards to splay in the thick, dark hair at the back of his head, pulling his face slowly, inexorably closer to her own.
Ben’s pulse began to pound, starting at his temples and moving steadily downward, invading every corner of him, throbbing without mercy. His muscles ached from holding his urgency under a tight rein, forcing himself not to rush, when all he could think of was being inside her and having her all around him.
Her kiss was driving him wild, and if it proved anything at all, it was that she was as much a slave to her needs and desires as he was. That she, like him, had kept them under wraps for so long that they surged now to the surface like wild, caged things longing to be free.
He could feel the pressure mounting. He couldn’t hold back much longer.
His hands slid over the thin fabric that barely covered her, tracing the outline of every bone in her rib cage. Beneath the cool white cotton her skin was smooth and hot and yielding. He paused at the outer curve of her breasts, thumbs flicking across her nipples, which were hard with anticipation.
Her back arched in reflex at the maddening sensations his teasing thumbs were arousing. She pulled her mouth away, gasping for the breath his kiss robbed her of. Her head fell back, dark hair spilling over his naked arm that held her, her slender white throat bared to him.
He pressed hot, wet kisses to her neck, swirling his tongue in the hollow of her throat. His whisper was like a breath of hot wind against her flesh.
“Dory,” he breathed, “let me help you forget, at least for tonight.”
As he held her he could hear the beating of her heart, or was that his own heart pounding savagely through his blood? He was no longer certain of where each of them began and ended. Their lives had become so inextricably woven, just as their bodies were now. In a deep voice that fanned her ear, making her skin jump, he whispered, “Dory. Dory. I want to make love to you. I’ve wanted it from that first day.”
His quick, hot breath against her ear mingled with the thunder in Dory’s blood. She opened her eyes to look at him. His face, mere inches from hers, was agonizingly handsome with its desire-hazed obsidian eyes.
He tried to tell himself that having her like this was enough for him, but he knew it wasn’t. “There’s just one thing,” he said, his voice low and guttural against her neck. “You have to want it, too.”
There was no escaping the obvious. What a fool she’d been to think that she could kiss him and walk away unscathed. But what if she made love with him? Would she be able to walk away at all? A fan of ebony lashes swooped down to mask her eyes. She turned her face away from his, and her agony mounted as she teetered on the brink of no return.
“Dory?”
She tried to swallow down the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. Her voice emerged husky and raw with emotion. “You asked me to show you what I need. What else do you need to know?”
“That you want me as much as I want you.”
No! Dory silently begged. Not that. This was about suppressed desires and the need to fill a sexual ache, nothing more.
Her thoughts were spinning out of control. It was becoming harder to tell the difference between want and need when the thrust of his knee between her thighs sent a spasm of pleasure through her, and when her body felt so open and empty and begging to be filled.
“I want to hear you say it.”
His throaty whisper thrilled her, yet she held back as the last vestige of sanity clung stubbornly within her.
Her hesitation pushed his patience beyond the brink. He’d known her such a short time, and yet it seemed as if he’d been waiting for her forever. All those dark days in prison, and the loveless years preceding them, meant nothing to him at this moment.
He didn’t wait for her response. He lowered his head and brought his lips to her breast, drawing the swollen nipple into his mouth through her nightgown, making the sheer fabric wet with his tongue.
