Amanda stared up at him, mesmerized. She had the hazy understanding that she would have been able to pull away if he had offered only the lustful but in-control desire she had seen and felt before, and understood. A passion of the flesh only, touching the emotions but lightly and the soul not at all. She could have walked away from that, or stayed without anxiety, accepting what he offered in the mutual understanding of pleasure for its own sake. That would have been … civilized.
There was nothing civilized about this. His desire had burst forth like floodwaters over a dam, sweeping her into a burning current she was unable to control, and even as she was carried along wildly, the sure knowledge that he was every bit as overwhelmed was incredibly seductive. She had never in her life felt so necessary to a man.
“Goddammit, Amanda.” He surrounded her face with hands that shook and kissed her again, his mouth as hard and fierce as his voice. “Either say yes or else tell me to go to hell again, but don’t make me wait another minute for some kind of answer.”
Somewhere in her mind was the whisper of a sane warning to slow down and think about this, to estimate the cost of allowing him to see her vulnerable, but rational thought was swamped by wild emotion. Shaken, she heard an unnervingly sensual little whimper escape her, a response to him and to her own burning desire, and her hands slid slowly around him until her nails dug into the shifting muscles of his back. The tips of her breasts, already visibly aroused beneath the fine cotton of her blouse, touched his chest.
Walker caught his breath. “Yes?” he demanded thickly.
“Yes.” She wasn’t even sure she would say it until the word emerged, but uncertainty dissolved in a flood of sensations when he kissed her again with that intense, overwhelming hunger.
His fingers slid down her throat and followed the thin lapels of her blouse until he reached the first button. Before Amanda could move to help him, the blouse was swiftly opened and jerked down her arms, making her back arch and her naked breasts rake hard against his chest.
He made a rough sound, his teeth and tongue playing with her lips in carnal bites and enticing touches more wildly arousing than simple kisses could ever be, and his hands slid down her back to pull her close to him. He was moving, rubbing himself against her swelling breasts.
Amanda heard herself whimper, felt her breasts ache and her nipples burn, the urgent desire rising in her so quickly it was like some kind of madness taking hold of her. Wild and rapt, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth, and the low sound he made in response was a growl, their breath mingling. His hands were at the elastic waistband of her shorts, pushing them down over her hips, and only when she felt the damp grass beneath her bare feet did she realize she had gotten rid of her shoes.
She fumbled for the snap of his jeans, her fingers awkward in her impatience but still able to open the snap and slide the zipper down. He caught her hand when she would have reached for him, and his voice was hoarse.
“No. If you touch me, I’ll—”
“Hurry,” she whispered, no longer surprised by her own compulsion to have him.
Walker shuddered and made another low sound, but then he was shoving his jeans and shorts down, kicking them to one side as Amanda kicked her shorts out of the way. He pulled her down to the ground and pressed her back into the dew-wet grass, and she moaned when she felt him dispense with her panties by simply tearing them off her.
“I can’t wait,” he muttered, one heavy hand rubbing over her breasts and stomach and then sliding down to ease between her shaking thighs and cup her mound.
Amanda whimpered, her hips lifting needfully when his long fingers probed and stroked. She was burning, aching, empty in a way she’d never felt before. Nothing else was important, nothing mattered except feeling him inside her. “Don’t wait,” she told him, her husky voice curiously broken.
“I have to. I have to slow down. Christ, it’s like I’m starving for you …”
His mouth was at her breast, and he let her feel his teeth as well as his tongue tease her nipple as he sucked strongly. His hunger was so powerful it made his caresses ferocious, primitive, and he almost hurt her. But his very lack of control was arousing in itself, evidence of the depth of his need, and Amanda felt freer to let herself go, to enjoy her own passion without holding anything back.
She pulled at his shoulders frantically, her body arching up off the wet ground as his mouth and fingers drove her higher and higher, so high it was frightening. Then his mouth was sliding hotly down over her quivering stomach, lower, and she let out a low, wordless cry of pleasure when his tongue stroked the most exquisitely sensitive spot her body possessed.
She fought to catch her breath, to be still, but there was no control left to her. At first dizzily aware of the scents of grass and honeysuckle and the soap he’d used, aware of the humid heat of the night and the sounds of crickets and the faint rumbles of thunder off in the mountains and their breathing, all her senses began to focus until she was aware of nothing but him and the raging needs of her own body.
“Walker … I can’t stand it … please …”
He moved back up her shaking body with painstaking slowness, his mouth caressing the silky flesh over her belly and rib cage, her breasts, her throat. His hips spread her thighs wider, his hardness rubbing against her, and Amanda moaned.
“Damn you. …”
“Easy,” he muttered, but he seemed to be ordering himself because his every movement, every caress, lingered achingly. When he raised his head, his face was taut, his eyes glittering down at her with the almost-blind look of frantic lust. “I wanted to … make it last … but—”
Amanda felt him, hard and insistent, and she made a choked little sound as her body began to admit him. It had been a long time for her, and his slow penetration stole what was left of her breath. She opened for him, stretched almost painfully, gripped him tightly. She was full of him, so full, and then he abruptly withdrew and thrust hard just once, and she writhed with a sob because she had never felt anything so wildly perfect.
“Jesus—” He groaned gutturally and bore down as if he needed to go deeper inside her, then uttered another harsh, primitive sound when she moaned and raked his back with her nails. “I have to—”
“Yes, Walker, please,” she pleaded, her legs lifting and gripping his hips desperately.
His forearms slid under her back, his hands gripping her shoulders, and the heavy thrusts, deep and hard, quickened until he was like some untamed creature obeying ancient drives to possess its mate. Amanda felt possessed, taken in a primal way unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and her body gloried in it. Her hips lifted eagerly to receive him, her hands roamed over the rippling muscles of his back in the frenzied need to touch and seek and hold, and her body shivered beneath the onslaught of his possession.
Without warning, the coiling tension inside her snapped, and Amanda cried out as waves and waves of throbbing pleasure swept through her and over her. He groaned and kept driving into her, holding her pinned beneath him and refusing to allow her to drift away from him. Dazed, all her senses buffeted, she felt her body obey his insistence as fresh tension wound swiftly and sharply inside her, and when it peaked this time the release was so devastating that her scream of pleasure was utterly silent.
Still shuddering, she felt him jerk and heard the hoarse cry that seemed ripped from deep in his chest. Then he was pouring his seed into her, his weight heavy on her as he bore her back into the ground.
Amanda didn’t know how much time passed, but gradually she became aware of her surroundings. Beneath her, the grass was thick enough to provide a marginally comfortable bed and she no longer felt the dampness of dew—probably because both her body and his were slick with sweat. Not that she cared. The air was hot and still, humid, and when she opened her eyes she saw lightning bugs flickering high up in the spreading branches of the old oak tree. She could hear crickets and, faintly, thunder. She could hear her still uneven breathing, and his.
> Walker lifted his head, easing himself up onto his elbows. There was an indefinably male look of satisfaction stamped into his handsome features but no triumph, as if he realized that this had been more a respite than a resolution. He kissed her, slowly and thoroughly, then lifted his head again.
“That was … remarkable,” he said, his voice low but matter-of-fact.
Knowing it would be useless to try hiding how completely overwhelmed she had been, she merely said, “I think I’d choose another word. Maybe … frantic.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” She glided her palms over his back slowly and remembered digging her nails in more than once. “But I think I drew blood.”
He chuckled, a lazy sound of amusement. “I don’t think you broke the skin.”
Amanda didn’t protest when he lifted himself off her and relaxed by her side, but when he kept one hand on her just beneath her breasts, she was obscurely glad he didn’t withdraw completely from her. She should have been uncomfortable lying there naked, she thought, but though she was mildly astonished at herself for having sex right out in the open under a tree on a brightly moonlit night, she wasn’t embarrassed.
A slight breeze stirred then, rustling in the tree above them and wafting over her moist body, cooling and drying her feverish skin. It felt wonderful. She didn’t want to move.
Rising on his elbow beside her, Walker looked down at her for a moment, then began to fondle her breasts with indolent interest, kneading, lifting, and shaping them. It was as if he had to touch her, as if his desire had been only temporarily appeased rather than sated.
“I think you have a perfect body,” he told her, still casual.
She gazed at his absorbed expression, feeling her pulse begin to quicken and her flesh respond to the caresses, and she tried to hold her voice steady when she murmured, “Thank you. Good genes, I suppose.” His hand paused, and Amanda silently swore at herself for reminding him. For reminding them both.
Then he was stroking again, his fingers tracing curves and examining her tightening nipples. “you’re surprisingly voluptuous for such a little thing,” he murmured. “Judging by the painting, your mother wasn’t.”
If she was your mother, of course.
He didn’t have to say it, and Amanda felt herself tense. With an effort, she kept that out of her voice. “No, she always bemoaned having the figure of a child. Whenever she bought my bras, she said it depressed her no end that mine were a cup size larger than hers.”
Walker pulled gently at a stiff nipple, then leaned over and flicked it with his tongue in a brief but wildly arousing caress. When he raised his head, he was smiling. “Nice detail.”
Knowing damned well he wasn’t referring to her breasts, she pushed his hand away and sat up, reaching for her clothing.
He sat up as well, catching her shoulders to hold her still. “All right, I’m sorry.”
Now Amanda felt uncomfortable naked, and she didn’t like the feeling. Shifting her shoulders jerkily to escape his grip, she drew her knees up and hugged them to her breasts. “We both know you’re not, so skip it,” she said tensely. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“It matters to me, even if it doesn’t to you,” he told her flatly. “I am sorry, Amanda. I don’t want my … suspicion to ruin what we have together.”
That didn’t really surprise her, and there was irony in her voice when she laughed. “What we have together? You mean the sex? God, you men will suppress every doubt and ignore every rational thought in your heads if it means getting laid.”
“Don’t lump me into a group.” He was smiling slightly, more amused than insulted. “I’m neither suppressing nor ignoring anything, and I certainly don’t expect you to sleep with me just to keep my mind off my questions; since Jesse’s already satisfied, my opinion hardly matters. Am I convinced you’re Amanda Daulton? No. But that, as you pointed out earlier, hardly matters either. I want you, whoever or whatever you are, and if you don’t believe that after the last hour or so, then there’s something wrong with one of us.”
Amanda didn’t say anything for a moment, wrestling silently with the choice she knew she was making. She could gather up her clothing and leave with what dignity she could muster, refusing to have a sexual relationship with him in the face of his suspicion, or else she could accept his distrust as a thing apart from the explosive passion between them and not let it end what promised to be the affair of a lifetime.
“Amanda?”
She drew a breath. “I want your word on something.”
With a lawyer’s natural wariness, he said, “What?”
“I want you to promise me that when we’re together like this, whether or not I’m Amanda Daulton is a taboo subject. Off-limits. No sly little questions or subtle probes. No hints or digs designed to catch me off guard. No exceptions.”
He nodded promptly. “All right, you have my word—when we’re like this. But I can’t make the same promise for any other time.”
“I don’t expect you to.” She eyed him somewhat warily. “Well, this should be interesting.”
“On that, we definitely agree.” He leaned over and kissed her, his hands gently pushing her legs down so that he could begin fondling her breasts again.
Amanda didn’t know whether to be upset at herself or at him for being able to change the tension of anger into an entirely different tension so swiftly and completely. For the second time tonight, he had first enraged her and was now seducing her.
“you’re maddening,” she told him as he pushed her back to the ground.
“But you want me as much as I want you.” His lips trailed down her throat toward her breasts. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, damn you.” She gasped, her eyes closing because waves of pleasure were making her dizzy. The feelings he evoked were so overwhelming and escalated so swiftly that they would have frightened her if he had given her a chance to think. But he didn’t. However satisfied their earlier joining had left him, it was clear his desire for her was every bit as potent as it had been the first time.
So was hers.
“I’m glad,” he muttered against her flesh. Then he made a little sound, and there was a thread of rueful humor in his hoarse voice when he added, “If this were one-sided, I think I’d kill myself.”
She slid her fingers into his thick hair, her eyes still closed as she absorbed the blissful sensations of his mouth at her breast. Huskily, she said, “Stop talking, Walker.”
He did.
The panties were hardly more than torn scraps of material. Amanda shook her head over them and then stuffed them into the pocket of her shorts. She pulled the shorts on, lifting her bottom off the ground without getting up. She shook out her blouse and shrugged into it, discovering two buttons gone.
“Are you going to be this rough on my clothes in the future?” she asked him.
Walker, who had climbed reluctantly to his feet and reclaimed his jeans, chuckled as he reached down for her hands and pulled her up. “Probably. Not intentionally, you understand, it’s just that they get in my way.”
“Mmm.” Amanda looked down at her blouse for a moment, then sighed and tied the tails in a loose knot beneath her breasts. She didn’t expect to meet anyone on the walk back to Glory, but if by chance someone else was wandering the night in search of coolness, at least she’d be decently covered and the missing buttons wouldn’t be noticed.
“You could stay here,” Walker suggested.
She looked up at him, wondering if it would have been any easier to read his expression in the daylight. The fierce, intense lover of only minutes ago was back in his deceptive skin, calm and lazy once again.
“No,” she said, “I should get back. It’ll be dawn in a few hours.”
“And you have to be safely in your own bed when the sun comes up?”
Amanda hesitated only an instant before saying deliberately, “Of course. After all, it would certainly ruin my sweet-Amanda act to have it known I’d spent a ni
ght fornicating underneath an oak tree in your yard.”
“What makes you think I won’t spread the word?” he asked her with equal deliberation.
She wondered why she was so sure he wouldn’t. “Oh, I don’t know. Because you want more than one night?”
A reluctant laugh was forced out of him. “I suppose that’s as good an answer as any. You don’t have any illusions, do you, Amanda?”
“Not many.” She found and put on her shoes, then looked up at him again when he stepped closer. “In case you’re wondering, I hadn’t planned to be especially secretive about this. I just don’t think it would be a good idea to be blatant. I’m still a curiosity in these parts, definitely on probation while everyone makes up their mind about me, and I’d rather not give them even more to consider just now. Besides—as I remember, small towns tend to be unforgiving of certain … sins.”
“They are that,” he agreed after a slight hesitation. “So we let them wonder without providing proof?”
“I think so.”
“What about the family? Jesse?”
It was Amanda’s turn to hesitate. “Why don’t we play it by ear?”
He half nodded, then reached out and combed his fingers through her hair slowly several times. “You have grass in your hair.”
Amanda was reasonably sure she had grass in other places as well, and no one getting a good look at her would doubt she had spent the past couple of hours in sensual pursuits. Her lips felt hot and swollen, her clothing was decidedly wrinkled (not to mention the missing buttons), and she had the uneasy suspicion that his passion had left at least a couple of faint bruises on her neck. But she remained silent and still under what felt more like a caress than anything else.
“We were careless,” he murmured, his fingers moving slowly against her scalp.