Almost Perfect Read online

  He could taste the salt of her tears and perhaps a measure of the fear she’d felt for him earlier. And he could taste an indefinable hunger, a want that may have been his own darker taste, his own need of this woman who trusted too easily, gave so readily. He remembered the feel of her hands gently probing the wound on his head and felt dizzy at the wave of sharp desire that coursed through him.

  He knew he should have felt awkward standing in her fully lighted kitchen, naked and vulnerable to her, but he didn’t. He felt strangely tender and perhaps a bit dazed, but strong and oddly empowered by her quivering response to his touch.

  He pushed the jacket from her unresisting arms and understood it slid to the floor and knew neither of them cared where it fell. He stiffened when her cold hands tentatively touched his waist...and held his breath as she lifted them away...only to touch again, as if unable to resist the lure of caressing him.

  As unable to resist as he.

  Cupping her face with his hands, he pulled her more deeply to him, plunging into her mouth, telling her a thousand things words could never begin to express. And she opened fully to him and moaned into his breath, her fingers pressing deeply into his sides, exhorting him to explore even deeper.

  A frantic, desperate need swept through him and he dropped his hands from her face to the small of her back, dragging her to him, needing to feel her body pressed sharply to his, aching for her, craving the knowledge that she desired him as much as he did her.

  Stunning him, she arched into him, then slowly, deliberately, slid down and rotated upward, pressing against him in pure, womanly enticement. Not only was she with him on this journey, he realized, she was independent and strong enough to take a leader’s role. She was letting him know, in the sweetest and most primal method possible, that she wanted him, too.

  Oh, but she didn’t know what fire she played with, he thought. She surely couldn’t know.

  Her hands, no longer tentative, swept up his back and across his shoulders. He shuddered in reaction and groaned an oath into the warm curve of her neck. She gave a small, choked laugh that made him grasp her to him and match her kiss for stroke.

  The beating he’d taken was forgotten, her kisses healing wherever they landed, whatever they touched. He was suddenly and vibrantly whole again, revived, resuscitated in both body and spirit by the simplicity of her hunger for him.

  He sensed her knees buckling before he felt her languorous slump against him. He caught her easily, eagerly, and held her tightly against him, aware, in amusement, of his nudity and her far-too-clothed condition. Unable to tear his lips from hers, he held her with one arm and used his free hand to tug her blouse from her jeans.

  When she raised her shaking hands to her shirt buttons and released them with a deft expediency, he wanted to bless her, and did so by following her fingers with a trail of kisses. She arched back, leaning heavily on his arm, granting him full access to her splendid body.

  For half a second, transfixed by her beauty, he could only gaze down at her. Her face tilted up to him, lips parted, eyes closed, and seemed the embodiment of longing. Her breasts, full and ripe, beckoned him from behind the wispy lace of her bra. Part of him wanted to gentle her, to slowly ease her full, dewy breasts from their prison, and another, baser part wanted to yank the brassiere down, rip.it open, exposing her to him completely.

  He compromised by nuzzling her through the lace, smelling her delicate, intoxicating perfume, tasting her skin despite the wispy barrier. She leaned further back, granting him even greater purchase, and one of her damp, jean-clad legs slowly, sinuously raised along the side of his own bare limb until she hooked the backside of her leg about his hips and drew him sharply against her.

  He was both shocked and enchanted by her innocent wantonness and couldn’t resist the urge to press himself against her apex, reveling in her immediate response. He lowered his hand to her raised leg and hitched her even closer as he grasped her other leg and lifted her from the floor.

  Straddling him, straining against him, Carolyn tried telling herself that what they were doing was wrong, that they didn’t know each other well enough for such rough, stark intimacy, that such chemistry couldn’t be allowed to reign so out of control. She tried, but miraculously failed.

  For a split second she worried her weight would be too much for him, that a man who had been beaten and left for dead in the mud couldn’t hold a well-rounded woman of nearly six feet in height. But she lost even that modicum of self-consciousness as he turned around, as if dancing with her, carrying her seemingly effortlessly, holding her tightly against his gloriously naked body, kissing her deeply, his tongue warring with hers, his need as strong as his muscled arms, his want as pure and sharp as her own.

  When she would have slid from her mounted straddle, he held her in place, his large, strong hands keeping her aloft, his kisses shifting in intensity from exhortation to raw demand. She wasn’t conscious of his moving until she realized the room was dark, and understood he’d carried her from the kitchen into the dining room.

  At the stairs, he allowed her to slip from him, but only so that he could strip her remaining clothing from her. He followed his hands with his lips as he tugged the dampened jeans down her legs. He pulled off her wet and muddy boots with a groan that spoke more of his desire for her than any difficulty in removing them. And her jeans he cast aside without so much as a glance. Her shirt followed the boots and pants into shadow and her bra seemed to melt away at his touch.

  Naked on the stairs, a single step above him and placing her at exactly his eye level, she shivered in the sheer awareness that she was so very wanted by this bruised, beautiful man. She knew what he was, a man who had murdered in prison, a mystery, a danger to everything she held sacred, and yet she’d never wanted anyone more than she did this man, this moment.

  His skin was velvet and hot to her touch. His wet hair teased at her breasts and his hands played a torturous melody on her thighs and back.

  He was a murderer. And a battered message from criminals. And, sweet heaven, she wanted him like none other on earth.

  Some inner murmur suggested that it wasn’t too late to call a halt to their passion, but another, much louder voice begged her to continue on the route to what seemed an inevitable union.

  As if he heard her unspoken thoughts, Pete stilled his roaming hands and met her eyes directly. “We can still go back,” he said, his voice as harsh and rough as her own inner thoughts.

  “No...we can’t,” she said, and sighed, knowing it was true but, for some strange reason, feeling she might be lying to him.

  He stood perfectly still, with his hands at his side as he unknowingly echoed her thoughts, “Carolyn...I’ve never wanted any woman as much as I want you.”

  The unvarnished honesty in his face, evidenced in his grainy, impassioned voice, told her far more clearly than elaboration ever could have done that he spoke nothing, absolutely nothing, but the truth. And his truth made her knees weak and her arms languorous and heavy.

  And, perhaps naturally, made her want to say something light, something humorous, something that would bridge the gap between passion and humanity.

  “I’m so glad,” she said, smiling. She was half stunned to find she could flirt with him at such time. “Because I’d hate to be standing here naked with you and find out you really had other things in mind.”

  For a second he looked shocked, as if she’d suggested he go out and saddle Bratwurst for a midnight ride, then his lips quirked into that lopsided grin that did such wonderful things to her insides. The cut marring his lips didn’t hide his relief or his smile. When he chuckled, a low rumbling thunder, she couldn’t help but join him.

  “Not much chance of that,” he said both brokenly and pointedly.

  “I’m glad of that, too,” she said, wholly serious now.

  He reached for her then, lifting her from the stairstep and into his arms. He whirled her around, pressing her tightly to his chest. “So am I, Carolyn. Oh, G
od, so am I.”

  She couldn’t have said how they got upstairs. She supposed they walked, though some part of her remembered floating about six inches above the steps and another portion recalled stumbling, bumbling and giggling as if she were a teenager again. But by some miracle they reached her bedroom.

  As though in unspoken agreement, they hesitated on the threshold of the doorway to her room. His eyes linked with hers and she could read the question inherent in his gaze and was sure he could read the myriad of doubts and uncertainties in hers.

  In some inexplicable manner, she felt they were linked, already conjoined.

  They were both naked and both aching for that moment of total connection, and yet stepping through the threshold of her bedroom door took on the weight of crossing the proverbial Rubicon. On this side of the door they were interested, surely, and vibrantly, vitally aware of each other, and they were still somehow innocent, strangers playing at intimacy. On the other side of that door lay a measure of commitment, promise, doubt, potential regret, and the possibility of fulfillment.

  She had asked him to come to the ranch as protection, as safety, so perhaps it was only natural that it was Pete who stopped her from stepping through the doorway with a single word. “Protection?” he rasped.

  “What?” She honestly couldn’t comprehend his question. Then, at the nearly amused expression on his face, she understood. “Oh, heavens...I hadn’t thought...I don’t know—”

  She broke off, not in embarrassment, for she was vaguely pleased, even flattered that he would remember such an intimate need when she had totally forgotten. And dismayed because she didn’t have a clue where such protection might be found in the middle of the high plains so late at night.

  “Stay here,” he commanded. It wasn’t a plea or an attempt at play. His words were a simple, straightforward demand that she remain exactly where she stood. He held up a finger as if impressing the point before whirling and dashing back down the stairs.

  She frowned, puzzled, them smiled ruefully. She had worked with exiting prisoners. She knew better than most that one essential parting gift was a box of condoms. Dear Heaven, what was she doing?

  She leaned against the doorjamb of her bedroom, waiting, certainly, and suddenly aware of being alone, nude, faced with decision.

  He was back before she had time to dive into the deep well of second thoughts and she could feel the heat radiating from his body as he stopped beside her. She leaned into him as if drawn by a powerful magnet. And at his touch, at his kiss, the well receded and she forgot what scared her only moments before.

  The doorway to her bedroom suddenly seemed less a barrier than a welcome and it was less painful to cross that threshold than to deny what lay beyond it.

  The old comforter on her bed, repaired a thousand times or more to keep the goose down from escaping, beckoned and looked seemingly new again. And the old cotton sheets, nearly threadbare, became the purest silk satin.

  But it was the touch of his skin, the way he smelled—tangy and, somewhat naturally, of the soap she herself preferred and he had used earlier—the way he felt against her, and, most of all, the way he made her feel that allowed her to sink and then swim into a mating so intense, so passionate that heart, body and very soul were intertwined in both giving and taking back.

  As if he understood that the time for doubts, for questions, even for possible answers, had come and then gone, he drew her close to simply hold her for a long, tantalizing while, lying still as if drawing energy, though probably, more likely, to hold back the moment.

  “There are a thousand things I want to say to you,” he said, but didn’t.

  “You don’t need to,” she said honestly, the driving need in her supplanting the wish for knowledge about him. And, truthfully, at that moment, she didn’t want to know more. She’d resolved, within the confines of his embrace, to think only of the moment, of the time they had together.

  Battles with criminals, worry over his past, those things could wait. For now, for tonight, with a miraculous rain pounding against the roof and unable to tell whether it was his heartbeat or her own that she felt thundering at her breasts, she was firmly and irrevocably locked in the present.

  Secure in his arms, his body pressed to hers, his long legs encircling her own; she couldn’t see his death’s-head tattoo, couldn’t feel it...could forget it. Tonight the girls were safe elsewhere, the Wannamachers had already done their damage for the evening, and she could allow reality to slip away.

  “From the moment I saw you,” he said cryptically, but she understood.

  “And I...you,” she whispered, teasing his lips with her tongue.

  He groaned aloud and rolled her over so that she lay sprawled on top of him.

  “Am I hurting you?” she asked, remembering his bruises, stroking them gently, reverently.

  “Not even close,” he murmured before capturing her lips again.

  The kiss was long and deep and she felt they somehow melded together, linked forever in a joining as old as time itself.

  She could feel how much he wanted her and found a profound grace in that knowledge. She reared up and back, relishing the feel of his callused hands upon her legs, her waist and, as if staving off the best until last, her breasts.

  He uttered a low, nearly agonized moan as his hands took the weight of her full breasts, his thumbs and forefingers meeting to capture her hard nipples.

  It’s been so long, she thought, and perhaps said aloud. He muttered something in reply, some oath or maybe a simple agreement. Who are you? she wanted to ask. How can you make me feel this way?

  But she felt no need for words, only for the expression of feelings. And as he growled her name, he rolled her over and onto her back. Her legs parted naturally, easily, and she arched to meet him only to find that the man she’d brought to her place for protection was engaged in protecting her in yet another way.

  Anticipating him, she sighed at the precise moment she heard the final slap of latex, and felt off balance when he didn’t rise above her and take what she was so readily offering.

  “Pete?” she asked, raising a little, opening her eyes, seeing him clearly in the undimmed room.

  He sat at the end of her bed, his jaw tight, as if angry, but she knew, by the look in his eyes, that he was snared by passion, by a longing so intense that it burned through him and literally took her breath away.

  “This is important,” he said.

  She frowned for a moment, wondering what he was trying to tell her, and then she thought she understood. “Yes,” she murmured, holding out her hand.

  Their union, this connection was important. Perhaps one of the single most important things she’d ever done in her life. Significant. Portentous. Meaningful. So very, very important.

  He took the hand she’d held out to him and raised it to his lips to press a kiss first on the back of her fingers, then turning her wrist, to her palm in an oddly tender tribute. Something in his manner made her feel as if he felt this might be the one and only time they would be together and, while this frightened her a little, she responded to the reverence inherent in his caress.

  “It’s okay,” she said, but wasn’t sure of the limits of that acknowledgment. At the moment she felt absolutely no boundaries at all.

  “It’s more than that,” he murmured, releasing her hand and bending over her. He pressed his lips to her sensitive inner thigh and pulled back as she shivered in reaction.

  “Oh, Pete Jackson...” she murmured.

  “Ye-es?” he asked, teasing her, his lips inching upward, his intent all too evident.

  “Words are necessary now...but...”

  “But?” he asked, reaching his goal and blowing hot air across her.

  “But I...can’t think...of any.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Oh...Pete,” she gasped as his hot tongue lightly flicked against her. She reached for him trying to stop him, afraid suddenly and far too vulnerably open to him. She pulled at his s
houlders to draw him upward, but he brushed her hands aside.

  “Please,” he said simply, and the hunger in his voice made her shiver and acquiesce.

  She’d been married before, she’d known intimacy. But she’d never known such intimacy, such tender regard for her wants. She was both terrified of it and strangely confident, because in some deep hidden recess within her, she knew that Pete would keep her safe while at the same time taking her to places she’d never been before.

  His hands cupped her buttocks and lifted her to him, and his tongue drove her insane with a wild, fevered craving.

  Her entire body seemed electrified, her veins filled with pure energy. Every part of her ached for him, for that moment when they would join and become one, and still he wouldn’t listen to her pleas to come to her.

  “Please...please...” she begged, digging at his shoulders, trying to pull him upward. “Pete...please.”

  He raised his head then and met her gaze. His eyes were glazed and heavy, his breathing ragged and seemingly desperate. There was only one answer to the question on his face and she beckoned him upward with a whispered word.

  He gave a low growl and rose above her, his tall, muscular body blotting out the overhead light. He poised between her legs, his eyes never leaving hers, and she felt him press at her opening. He stayed there a moment, not moving, not entering, until she couldn’t stand the delay, couldn’t wait a second longer. She arched her back sharply and met him, encasing him in a swift, sure capture.

  She couldn’t withhold her moan of satisfaction, her deep, wholly impassioned response to feeling him inside her, filling her, conjoining him to her. He felt so right; they felt so right together. Nothing had ever felt so right before.

  He groaned in reaction and lowered his lips to hers, driving his tongue into her mouth in matching thrusts. He gathered her tightly against him, beneath him, pressing down on her and somehow holding her safe at the same time.

  Without searching for it, as naturally as birds flew and grass greened, they found the perfect rhythm. It was slow, deep, and so very, very intense. Every part of her body responded to his touch, every thought in her mind was focused on him. And her heart, moments before uncertain and torn, embraced him and, rather awed, she knew he had penetrated there, as well.