Taming Tess, page 7
"You're going to have to move in order for me to leave."
"Okay,” she said but didn't move.
He gazed down at her—at the shiny, dark hair and bare, creamy shoulders that invited his touch. Or did those hunched shoulders say stay away?
"Stay,” she whispered, her voice raspy ... thin. “Just until the storm passes."
She sounded so forlorn. Roman's fingers twitched at his sides as he fought the urge to wrap her up in his arms and comfort her. To gather her slim runner's body into his lap and hold her close. Maybe lift her off the floor and deposit her on the bed where he would join her—cuddle her close. He growled. A mistake, to stay in this little room with Tess—a room filled by a double bed, his need, and her vulnerability.
"It's heat lightning, Princess. It won't likely even develop into a storm."
Distant thunder rumbled through the house. She shivered.
"Princess?"
* * * *
Why did he have to keep calling her “Princess"? Why did he have to make this hard for her?
Near panic gnawed at Tess’ gut as she stared across the room at the curtainless window. The distant lightning flashes turned the pines behind the house into a black picket fence, its points irregular ... menacing. She'd lived this nightmare before.
"Don't like storms either, huh, Princess?” If only Roman's words had maintained the bite of his earlier words, there'd have been nothing to resist. But his voice had softened.
Not a man to lean on.
Oh, but he was. He was exactly the kind of man a woman could lean on. But she wasn't the kind of woman to lean on any man. Still...
Why couldn't she just blow him off?
A man to lean on.
Tess shook her head, looked up at Roman, and muttered, “I'm going to have to tell you all the sordid details of how I came to fear the dark and storms in order to get you to stay, aren't I?"
He opened his mouth to speak. She cut him off.
"I was at summer camp. Thirteen going on thirty. One of those posh places built on the bank of a private lake. Girls on one side. Boys on the other."
She studied his face for any sign that he might throw that reference to her privileged background in her face, half hoping he would so she could stop before she made a total fool of herself. But the best she could make out in the shadows at the edge of the flashlight's reflected beam was the grim line of his mouth. So much for wading blindly into the deep end.
"I had a crush on one of the boys,” she rushed out. “He snuck out one night, stole a boat, and sailed across the lake. I was waiting for him. We'd sailed out to the middle of the lake when the wind kicked up and the sails tangled."
The memory came back to Tess with an intensity she wasn't prepared for. She closed her eyes and was instantly back on that tiny sailboat being tossed about by wicked waves, thunder rolling over her and lightning knifing into the water around them. The fear she'd felt in the face of that storm front long ago had been the culmination of a lifetime of pretending she wasn't afraid of thunder or lightning in hopes that her father would notice, in hopes that he'd see the son he wanted in the daughter he had.
"Tess?"
It was the first time Roman had called her by her by name and, much as she wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob out the rest of the story, she resisted. She'd never told anyone about that night or her fears. She wasn't about to confess now to a man, especially one so ready and willing to protect—one looking for a wife.
But, when she opened her eyes, there he was, hunkered down in front of her, eye level, the smiley-face pajamas taut across his knees.
"It wasn't just a wind, was it?” he intoned in a low, soothing tone. “It was a storm."
She nodded, afraid to trust her voice—afraid to show him her weakness.
"Something else happened, didn't it?” he prodded, drawing her into his question like a swimmer caught in a vortex.
Silently, she cursed Roman for guessing ... for knowing. For pushing.
"Yeah,” she shot back at him, hiding behind her clipped city demeanor. “I got knocked into the water. My little boyfriend panicked and sailed off."
The look of horror that crossed Roman's face almost undid her. “How did you..."
"I swam,” she cut in, afraid of what else he might say—ask. Afraid anything he said would undo her.
Roman gaped into the dark eyes defiantly raised at him. He could almost see her remembered terror beneath the glaze of unshed tears caught by the flashlight beam.
"Hope the little jerk got what he deserved,” Roman growled.
The haunted anger shifted in her dark eyes and a wry smile tugged across Tess’ mouth. “He's running for Congress. Maybe I'll volunteer to help his opponent."
Roman settled on the floor beside Tess, his back to the door, and chuckled. “That would make him sweat."
Tess peeked at Roman's profile, at his high, intelligent brow, his slightly hawkish nose, and his strong, sweeping jaw. She'd love to run a fingertip along that long jawline.
Just as she'd love to take back every harsh word she'd ever spoken to him. But, she'd given him a hard time for good reason. He was too tempting. Too strong.
Too deserving of a woman more wifely—more maternal—than her.
Still, as they sat there on the floor, side by side, staring out the window at the heat lightning flashing on the horizon, she couldn't help but notice the threatening storm no longer scared her so much. Was it so wrong to need a man like Roman St. John once in a while? Another rumble of thunder reverberated up through the floor and he slipped an arm around her.
The kind of man a woman could lean on.
She wanted to lean on him. She wanted to relent to the safety of his arms. To give in to all the ways she wanted him.
And why not?
* * * *
Her bare shoulder with the thin camisole strap caught halfway to her elbow taunted Roman. He shouldn't have put his arm around her. He'd realized his mistake the minute she snuggled into the crook of his arm like the two of them had been hewn from the same board. Of course, that was impossible. A man like him and a woman like her were as different as pine and oak.
She laid her cheek against his chest and her hand on his stomach just above the drawstring of his pajama bottoms. He covered her hand with his to keep it from venturing lower and discovering exactly how he wanted to comfort her.
She shifted against him, her pebble-hard nipple imprinting his ribs. The muscles across his abdomen bunched painfully. She edged a leg over his, and that part of him most definitively male, that part hard-wired in antiquity to respond to the slightest call to procreate, jerked.
"You could come downstairs with me while I get that lantern,” he said, fighting the urge to slide his hand down that long leg hooked over his, to explore the sensitive back of Tess Abbot's knee and close his fingers around her slim, tapering ankle.
"I could,” she said, but didn't move.
"Princess..."
She rose onto her knees, straddling his thigh, facing him with her hands on his chest. He twitched where she touched him ... on his chest ... between his legs. He caught her by the wrists, half expecting her to start swinging once she figured out what part of him bobbed against her leg.
But she didn't swing. She didn't shrink away.
She didn't laugh.
She simply slipped one hand from his grip, reached down between them, and laid her hand lightly upon that part of him that nudged her knee—that part governed by the most basic of instincts.
His cock jumped against her palm, and he murmured hoarsely, “This isn't a good idea."
"No, it isn't,” she whispered against the corner of his mouth a millisecond before slanting her lips across his.
Weeks of restraint evaporated in the conflagration of that kiss—of tongue meeting tongue. His hands flew over her, scouting terrain he'd up until now dared only look upon—gauging the angle of her hips and breadth of her back. His fingers tripped across her ribs and climbed the laddered indentations of her spine.
Her hands were like firebrands against his chest, his shoulders, the back of his neck. Her fingers as urgent in their exploration as his. Her need, poised over his thigh, as heady and musky as his. Her tongue as adept in its circling, thrusting duel as his.
He brought his hands down over her hips, anchoring her against his rock hard need. She was hot and wet against his thigh. Ready.
He rolled her to the floor beneath him, mouth to mouth, breast to chest, pelvis to pelvis. He swept a hand between them and across the slick second skin of the camisole. The hard nub of a nipple rose against his thumb.
He tugged on that furled bud, making it grow, making it strain. Making her cry out against his mouth.
Her hands caught hold of his head and, the next thing he knew, he was beneath her. She ground her pelvis into his. Pain. Pleasure. He groaned into her mouth.
His fingers found the bottom edge of the camisole and slid beneath—slid across skin soft and hot as velvet fire. He cupped her breasts, filling his palms with her silky flesh and hard nipples. She was a perfect fit.
Perfect.
She reared back from him, breaking the hold of her mouth on his—of his hands on her. She gathered the camisole up her torso, the flashlight beam slanting from beneath the bed casting a long shadow from the gleaming ring piercing her belly button.
The ring he had wanted to touch with his finger and his tongue ... that he still wanted to touch.
He froze in mid-reach as she peeled the camisole up over her breasts. Heat lightning cut through the curtainless window and detailed her compact curves and knotted nipples, turned the tiny gold ring piercing her belly button silver, and burned her image across his nerve endings.
He stopped breathing.
Static electricity sparked from her hair as she tore the garment away and, when she touched his nipples, it felt as though sparks shot between them. Breath slammed into his lungs. Life-giving oxygen jolted through his body. Every muscle contracted.
Yet, she didn't stop. She tweaked his naked nipples into tight, little balls—tweaked them until they ached—until he bucked against her—bucked and slipped his thumbs into the high-cut leg openings of her panties. Now it was her muscles tightening and spasming beneath his touch. Her gasps filling the fresh air. Her body swayed in the illumination of heat lightning.
He went straight for her crotch. Her musk smelled sweet, inviting, far too tempting. And she tasted as sweet as she smelled.
She groaned and arched against his mouth. He slipped his tongue between her cleft, rolled it around her hard clit. She bucked and he took her between his lips, working her until she shuddered.
Almost immediately, she rose, tugged the happy-face pajama bottoms from him, and skidded the French cut panties down her legs ... her long, muscled runner's legs. He gazed up at her, framed by the artificial light escaping from under the bed ... and natural light flashing through the window from a not-so-distant horizon. He gazed up at the ring glinting from her belly button and at the dark triangular thatch at the apex of her legs. He gazed up at the promise of paradise.
For one agonizing, eternal second, he thought it might all have been a dream ... her erotic caresses, her heady responses ... her hot, musky scent. Or maybe that it was all over—that she'd had her fun with him ... or her revenge. Until she redeposited herself astride his lap.
That most sensitive of male flesh butted against that moistest of female parts. Hungrily, they took each other's mouths, touched each other's bodies, circled each other's desire. A little shift one way or the other by either of them and they'd begin the slippery slide to oblivion.
He hitched one hip upward, and she broke from his mouth, panting, “Not without protection."
"Protection?” he panted back against her rainwater-soft lips.
"Yeah,” she breathed against the corner of his mouth. “You know. Rubbers. Condoms."
He went still beneath her, poised on the brink of heaven, closed his eyes and croaked out, “I don't have any condoms."
"What the hell kind of bachelor are you, you don't have condoms?"
The next instant, she was on her feet, towering over him in all her naked glory. God, she was beautiful. He twitched painfully.
"What kind of liberated woman are you, that you don't have any?” he fired back at her from the floor.
"Hello,” she sang, jamming her fists against her hips. “Did you see me arrive here with an evening bag? Everything I own is burned up or locked up in the charred ruin of my house."
He closed his eyes and groaned. At least that voice deflated some of the pressure building in his groin.
"No raincoat, no shower,” she sang. “No glove, no admission. No safety, no holster for your gun."
"I get the picture,” he growled, waving her aside and climbing to his feet.
"Where are you going?” she demanded as he opened the door.
"I'm going to get the price of admission."
Chapter Five
Tess paced back and forth between the kitchen and living room, watching the driveway through the front windows. What kind of bachelor was he indeed, that he didn't have the proper protection on hand?
The kind whose caress had been as smooth as the slick fabric of The Bargain Mart robe that now slipped across her thighs.
With a groan, she wheeled away from the windows. But her new trajectory faced her into his bedroom—faced her toward his bed. That dominating piece of furniture shouting marriage bed told her what kind of bachelor he was. He was the kind looking to end his bachelorhood—looking to find a mate. He was the marrying kind.
Sweat trickled down Tess’ spine, and she fled the temptation of that bed ... fled its trap. At the front door, she stopped and pressed her forehead to the cool, dark glass of its window. She stared out into the blackness, into a night closed in by a storm that hadn't broken but had instead passed, leaving in its wake a sticky humidity. Like desire brought to boil then left all steamed up without a way to vent.
Not that she hadn't gotten a bit of venting for herself. The memory of Roman's tongue artfully servicing her clit almost made her come again. She sure would like to have gotten that long, thick cock of his inside her and found out if he was as skilled with it as he had been with his tongue. Her muscles clenched at the mere thought of closing around him—of him moving in and out of her until she spasmed in ecstasy. She could have it all ... if she allowed him to finish what he started.
But it was a sign, Roman St. John not having condoms. That's what Aunt Honey would have told her. It was a sign as bright as neon spelling out how badly they needed to rethink this whole thing before proceeding. It was her father's I told you so in giant, flashing letters. Never mind that she'd left him in a state of frustration. That's the state he'd been in when he'd gone out in the middle of the night to search for protection in a town that rolled up its sidewalks promptly at ten p.m.
How was she going to explain to him the fact neither of them had condoms was a billboard broadcasting no way? That the man for whom she lusted was after a wife and, even if she hadn't sworn off marriage, she lacked the domestic skills he required. For her, Roman St. John spelled trouble with a capital T.
Tess groaned against the dark glass, knowing the ramifications of the mistake they'd already made. Knowing they couldn't make another, deeper, more costly mistake.
Truck lights strobed into the driveway. Tess backed away from the door, cinched closed the front of the sateen robe, and folded down onto the chair at the end of the table furthest from the door. Cold chrome touched the backs of her thighs, and she shivered.
She should have chosen a robe that covered more than a modicum of thigh and was closed with buttons rather than a slippery tie. She should have shooed him out of her room the minute he volunteered to get her that lantern.
She should have kept her hands to herself.
He came through the door like a bull, a hot, sweaty, aroused bull. Dark circles of sweat plastered the T-shirt he'd donned against his ribs and his chest. Sweat sheened his skin and made his hair cling in wavy rivulets against his forehead. And there was an intensity in his eyes as he strode toward her. A purpose. A determination. Without having to read the label, she knew exactly what was in the small box gripped in his fingers. She spoke before he could take her in his arms, because, once he touched her, she would be lost.
"We made a mistake,” she said.
The fingers banded around the box tightened and one end popped open, revealing the foil-wrapped packages within. She recalled the tension in those fingers as they'd traveled across her skin—recalled how her muscles had jumped and pinched beneath his exploration. She ached to feel those deft, callused fingers playing across her naked skin again.
"We shouldn't make another mistake,” she said as he stopped so near her she had to crane her neck to see into his face.
The dark lashes whose tips burned a fiery gold beneath the kitchen's overhead light lowered at her, and he growled, “I should have known you'd pull something like this."
"Pull something like this?” She reared up, sending the chair skidding backward into the stove, and stuck her face in his. “I didn't pull anything. I came to my senses and, if you think about it,” she poked him in the chest with her finger, “you will, too."
Roman wanted to close his hand around that jabbing finger, bring it to his lips, and draw it into his mouth. He wanted to suckle it as he had her clit.
But those lips that had slanted across his, that had parted in invitation, now flapped away about him needing to cool his jets, keep his fly zipped, and think with the head on his shoulder. Duct tape. That's what he needed for her mouth.
"My senses were just fine until you came along,” he said through gritted teeth when she finally took a breath.
"Is it my fault my house burned down?"
He grimaced. “It didn't burn down. Just part of it burned."
"How nice that you were able to observe that fact for yourself,” she scoffed, folding her arms across her chest, brushing his chest with the satiny cuffs of the robe that barely covered her thighs. He wondered if she'd put her panties back on—wondered, if he reached into the opening of the robe, would he find the woman he'd almost made love to on the floor of his spare bedroom still wet and ready. God, he could still smell her arousal.
