Twice Kissed

  As she roused and her eyes blinked open, he was taken with the depth of her gaze, the green of her eyes, so vibrant and alive, the dark fringe of lashes.

  She let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead in the next county.

  “Maggie—”

  Quickly she struggled to a sitting position.

  Both horses spooked, neighing nervously.

  “Shh!” His fingers tightened over her shoulder, and he felt the warmth of her seep into his blood.

  “Wha—oh, God!” Her hand covered the spot where her blouse closed over a top button and where, he presumed, her heart was pumping wildly. Between her splayed fingers he caught a glimpse of skin, of cleavage where the lapels gaped.

  His crotch tightened painfully.

  “Damn it, Walker, you scared the devil out of me!”

  “I didn’t mean to, but—” He dropped his hand and felt like a damned fool. His jaw hardened, and he forced the desire that had already started burning in his blood to cool. He wanted her. Hell, he’d wanted her from the first second he’d seen her walking at the side of the road in those tight little cutoff jeans. “I thought you might’ve been thrown.”

  “What? No. Thrown, but why—?” She looked as if she might be offended; her words seemed to tangle in her throat and her cheeks flushed an enticing shade of pink. “Where’s Ink Spot—?” Anxiously she scanned the ridge where boulders and late-blooming wildflowers erupted from the dusty ground.

  “She’s fine.” He hitched his chin in the direction of the two horses who, calming, had begun to pick at the sparse blades of bleached grass. He told himself to back off. They were too close; it had been too long since he’d been with a woman.

  “I…I must’ve dropped off.” Maggie, obviously embarrassed, stood quickly and brushed the dirt and grass from her shorts. “What time is it?”

  “A little after three. You need to be somewhere?”

  “No.” She shook her head and glanced at the threatening sky. “Not for a while. I’m supposed to be at work at five-thirty.”

  “Then we’ve got some time.” He heard the words and silently cursed himself.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Whatever it is you want, Maggie.”

  She looked down at him, still squatted on the ground, and he watched her throat work. “What is it you think I want?”

  “Someone to talk to.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She crossed her arms over her chest as if she was about to argue with him, so he slowly rose and stood, regaining the height advantage. “Why is it you’re always telling me what I need or want?”

  “You asked.”

  “I know but you’re always…giving me advice. I don’t remember ever asking for any.”

  “Sit down, Maggie.”

  She angled her chin up and stared at him. “Why?”

  He gave no answer, because he had none. Instead he linked his fingers with hers, saw denial forming in her eyes, and ignored it as he pulled them both to the ground again. Refusing to listen to the warning bells clanging in his mind, he stared into those wide, innocent, and oh-so-seductive eyes. “I’d just like to get to know you.”

  She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. Looking at him, she rested her chin on her knees and watched him with thinly veiled suspicion. “So, what’re you doin’ up here?”

  He thought about lying, making up some excuse as he rocked back on his heels. There were lots of odd jobs that he could claim needed his attention—the fence, downed trees, trespassers—but he thought better of it and tried to keep his gaze from wandering along her legs, up, past the bend of her knee where her thighs disappeared beneath the ragged hemline of her shorts and the tiniest bit of panty lace was visible. “I came looking for you,” he admitted.

  “For me?” She was wary, disbelief obvious in her eyes.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  “You left the stable a couple of hours ago, and I thought it was time…that maybe something had happened.” And I want to make love to you. Damn it, girl, run. Run now!

  “Oh.” Disappointment clouded her gaze. Her lips twisted into a little, crestfallen pout. Her teeth sank lower into her lip, and he wondered how it would feel to kiss her, to touch her, to run his hands along the smooth flesh of her arms and legs and…“Well, you found me. I’m fine. And I really think it’s time I should be going.” She started to rise, and he should have let her, just let her climb on that damned black-and-white mare and ride down the trail to the ranch house. But he didn’t.

  Instinctively he reached out, the fingers of one hand surrounding her bare arm. Her muscles flexed beneath his fingers. Her head snapped up. The pupils of her eyes dilated a bit, but she didn’t draw away.

  “Stay a while.”

  “Why?” He saw her throat work as she swallowed. She was nervous, nervous as hell. So was he. He shouldn’t be doing this, talking to her, touching her.

  “We could get to know each other.”

  “Why?” Again, that damned question.

  He hesitated just a second. Thought hard. His fingers tightened over her arm. “Because, Maggie,” he said, his eyes searching the jade green of hers, “because I want to.” He leaned forward just a bit, so that his face was closer to hers, close enough to sense her breath catch. “Because you want to.”

  Her gaze skittered to his mouth, then back to his eyes, and the innocent desire he saw on her face was his undoing.

  “I should be shot for this,” he whispered, then, with a hand to the back of her head, he pulled her forward, slanted his lips over hers, and lost himself in her kiss.

  Maggie closed her eyes. She told herself not to panic as each warm, incredible sensation swept over her. Her blood was on fire, her lungs constricted, and when she felt his tongue press against the seam of her lips, she sighed, parting to him, thrilling to the feel of his tongue as it slid past her teeth, slick, wet, searching, flicking against each sensitive recess.

  Warm heat, like tallow running down a burning candle, seeped through her extremities. His breathing was shallow. Ragged as the gust of wind that brought the scent of rain. He trembled as they fell back against the ground, and she moaned, unable to deny the pleasure that rippled through her. She lost sight of what was real and what was fantasy.

  Somewhere a magpie cried, and a horse nickered softly, but it wasn’t here in this time and place. The here and now was filled with the scents of leather and smoke, the taste of salt on skin, the feel of callused, rough hands reaching beneath her tank top, of fingers grazing her nipples.

  He kissed her hard, so hard her head spun, so hard she felt a desperate yearning deep in the most delicate core of her. She didn’t protest when he lifted her tank top from her shorts or when he bowed his head and pressed hot, wet kisses to the bare skin stretched over her breastbone. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and he nuzzled, gently at first, but harder and harder, his tongue dipping along the lacy edge of her bra.

  Pulsing and hot, desire sped through her bloodstream. In the back of her mind she told herself that she should stop this now, before it was too late, but the words died in her throat, and all that escaped her lips were soft, anxious moans.

  She sighed as he lifted one breast from its lacy cup to run a rough thumb across her already-aching, button-hard nipple.

  “I want you,” he admitted, and the words sounded ripped from his throat. “I’ve wanted you from the first second I laid eyes on you.”

  “No—”

  “Shh, Maggie, it’s true, and I hate it.” He breathed across her bared breast, and she gasped, then, slowly, his eyes locked with hers, he took the nipple into his mouth and kissed it as if he’d never stop. Deep inside she started to throb. With his tongue, teeth, and lips, he tasted and teased, causing the world to spin and desire to thrum around her. The interwoven branches of the trees overhead became indistinct, the clouds farther up dark and sensual.

  With deft, practiced fingers he removed her bra, his hands skimming her skin, his
mouth following close behind. She smelled the scent of rain, felt the first drizzling raindrops as he buried his head in her naked abdomen, and she felt his breath on her navel.

  “Is it all right?” he asked, slipping the button of her waistband through the buttonhole.

  “Is—Is what—?” She couldn’t think, gulped back words, couldn’t stop.

  He gave a tug. The button fly opened with a sharp report of snaps. She felt moist between her legs and knew somewhere in the deepest recesses of her brain that she was about to step over a line that could never be recrossed, that going any further was more than dangerous, it was playing with fire. But the feel of his tongue and lips caressing her skin, breathing flames across the sheer cotton of her panties, creating a swirling warmth deep in the center of her, made the words of denial die in her throat.

  A part of her loved this man. Another part was curious about him. Another part was scared beyond reason, and the last, that very intimate part of her, wanted desperately to break down the walls of girlhood and embrace becoming a woman.

  His teeth tugged at the elastic of her panties and she swallowed hard as both the tattered cutoffs that had guarded the scrap of cotton lace and the panties themselves were slipped easily off her body. Cool moist air caressed her skin while skillful hands parted her legs and a man she barely knew, a man she had fantasized about, a man whose mystery and irreverence had touched her soul, began to kiss her as intimately as any lover dared.

  She moved against him, moaned at his ministrations, and wanted more. Her fingers curled in the soft ground, the wind sighed overhead, and she began to writhe.

  God help me, she thought wildly, perspiration mingling with the dewy rain. A rumble swept over the hills, and, as the first spasm hit her, she cried out, her voice low, guttural, unlike her own. And then he came to her. Shedding his clothes as easily as he had shucked his hands-off persona, he kicked off boots and jeans, threw off his T-shirt, and slipped upward, through the bridge of her knees until he was kissing her on the lips again and his hard thighs pressed hers farther apart.

  “Maggie,” he said, looking into her eyes as she felt his erection, hard and thick, brush against her. “I didn’t mean…Oh, God…I…” His gaze caught in hers. The rain started to fall in fat drops, and before another word was spoken, he thrust. Deep. Hard. To a point that pain blinded her and she gasped.

  “Oh, hell, I—”

  She moved then. By feminine instinct. And he groaned, the apology that was forming on his lips cast to the wind. His arms surrounded her, and he drew her close, his lips claiming hers in anxious, wild abandon as he withdrew and thrust, over and over again, easing the pain, creating a whirlpool of hot, wet need that surpassed the ache.

  And she moved with him. Her body slick with rainwater, her blood on fire, her mind splintering as faster and faster he stroked, pushing her—them—into a place she’d never been. She cried out as the first convulsion ripped through her. A loud primal roar answered her. Thane’s face contorted as if in pain. He collapsed atop her spent, sweating, and gasping. She held him tight, tears glistening in her eyes, raindrops collecting on her skin.

  He lifted his head and kissed her tears away. A tortured shadow passed through his gray-blue eyes. “For the love of God, Maggie Reilly,” he said as rain ran down his chin and dripped on her bare breast, “what the hell am I gonna do with you?”

  “Funny, I was wondering the same thing.” She offered a tentative smile.

  He laughed then and kissed her again. Despite the rain, the wind shimmering in the trees, and her lingering doubts, she wound her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, felt his body rub against hers and, closing her eyes, she gave herself to him all over again.

  “Okay, so I get it,” Mary Theresa confided a couple of weeks later as she wheeled the BMW into the parking lot of Roberto’s restaurant. Olive trees shaded the long low building, and a laurel hedge separated the street from the parking lot. Traffic whizzed by on the busy street.

  “Get what?” Maggie grabbed her purse and apron, then shouldered open the passenger-side door of the BMW. A gust of hot air shot through the interior of the car, stealing the breath from the air conditioner.

  “Why you’re so crazy for the cowboy.” As the radio blasted, Mary Theresa, wearing her favorite pair of designer sunglasses, scrounged in her purse, retrieving a pack of cigarettes and her lighter.

  Maggie’s heart jolted. The last person she wanted to know that she was involved with Thane Walker was her sister. She remembered Thane’s comments about Mary Theresa. She’s almost as pretty as you. The one man in the universe who thought so. She warmed inside at the compliment, remembered making love to him in the rain, or in the barn, or anywhere they happened to be, then shook her head as she stepped out of the car. “I’m not crazy about anyone.”

  Mary Theresa clicked her lighter shut and drew in hard on her Virginia Slim.

  “Oh, yeah, like I haven’t seen that look before. You’re in love with him all right.”

  “In love?” Maggie repeated, upset. How could she have been so transparent? “That’s nuts, M.T.”

  “Maybe, but there it is,” she said in a cloud of smoke. Angling the rearview mirror down to catch her reflection, she patted at the edge of her lips where her peach-colored gloss had found the nerve to smudge. She opened her mouth in a perfect oval, then wiped away the excess. How could anyone, especially Thane, think Maggie was prettier than her sister? “Anyway, I know I put him down, but I figured out what you see in him. He’s kind of a bad-boy type, right? A rogue, the kind of guy that if Mom and Dad knew you were seeing him, they’d both shit. Right?”

  “No, I—”

  “Oh, come on.” Mary Theresa looked over the tops of her sunglasses, pinning her sister with her knowing green eyes as Maggie stood with the passenger door swung wide. M.T.’s voice dropped an octave and was barely discernible over the rush of traffic and the pulsing beat of a tune by Bruce Springsteen. “We both know about temptation, about being turned on by things we shouldn’t, about…” She lifted a shoulder. “Living a little. My shrink would call it rebelling.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Sure you are.” Mary Theresa’s gaze was steady. “We both are.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “You wait a minute, Maggie. I know how you feel. I understand you better than anyone else in the world. We’re twins, remember. Supposedly you heard me when I cried out in my mind—though I still can’t figure that one.”

  “I—” Maggie tied the burgundy-colored apron around her waist with nervous fingers.

  “Somehow you heard me or read my mind or whatever you want to call it.” Mary Theresa shook her head in wonder. “I don’t know how or why, but you did. So, trust me, I can feel things about you, too. And you’re falling in love with Thane Walker. Whether you want to or not. So—could you close the door? I’m late.”

  Maggie nudged the door closed with her knee. Mary Theresa, cigarette clamped firmly between her peach-tinged lips, threw the BMW into reverse, shoved her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose with one finger, and turned to look over her shoulder as she backed out of the parking space.

  “Don’t forget to drop the car off…” Maggie said, but Mary Theresa had already flipped on the blinker and gunned the sports car into traffic. Great. For a reason she couldn’t explain, Maggie felt as if the trouble she sensed on the horizon had just taken a giant step closer.

  Maggie, dead tired from her shift, walked out of the restaurant at eleven and, after a quick view of the parking lot, wanted to strangle her twin. Mary Theresa had forgotten her again, she thought, when she didn’t spy the BMW parked anywhere in the lot. “Damn you, M.T.,” she muttered, intent on going into the restaurant and calling the house.

  She’d gotten as far as the door when she saw her father’s red Mercedes speed into the lot.

  Dad was behind the wheel.

  Maggie’s guts clenched.

  Something was up.

  And it wasn’t g
ood.

  Frank Reilly stopped the car by the front entrance and Maggie braced herself. Her father’s expression was as dark as the night. His jaw rock-hard, his lips beneath his mustache white with repressed anger.

  Terrific.

  She slid inside, closed the door, and felt her father’s anger radiating in unspoken waves as he jammed his pride and joy into Drive.

  “What happened? Where’s Mom’s car?” Maggie asked, her feet aching from the long hours of standing, walking, and carrying tubload after tubload of dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  “In the garage.”

  Something was definitely up.

  “My God, what is that odor?” he demanded.

  “Garlic…spices…it gets on my shoes.”

  “Well, roll down the window, will you?”

  She opened the window, and cool night air raced into the posh interior.

  “Is there a reason you picked me up?” she asked, cringing as she reached down, slid one pump off with the toe of the other, and massaged her foot.

  “I thought you and I should talk. Alone.”

  Uh-oh. Her stomach tied itself in painful knots. This was no good. No good at all. “About?” She tried to sound calm and nonchalant, as if her father picked her up from work every night.

  “About what’s going on, Maggie, and don’t start denying anything before I start talking.”

  Maggie’s mind was spinning in circles, and none of the images that flashed by were good.

  “Your mother and I…we’re afraid that one of you girls is involved with some boy, that you’re seeing him behind our backs. That you might be getting yourself into trouble.”

  She froze. Just stared straight ahead at the taillights of the car in front of them. Well, no one had ever accused Frank Reilly of being subtle.

  “So, Maggie, what do you have to say?”