He tore his eyes away from the dancing flames and looked at her closely. His hand cradled the back of her neck as his thumb stroked along her jaw. “You see, Lauren, my whole life, my parents had used me as a pawn to hurt each other. If I did something to please one, it infuriated the other. If I came to Keypoint, which I loved, my mother would be on a rampage for weeks after I returned to Coronado. My childhood and adolescence were one big battle to see who had the most influence over me. The older I got, I just didn’t give a damn anymore. I sought to please myself and to hell with everyone else. I didn’t relish having a wife chosen for me, especially when I wasn’t sure what kind of relationship she had had with my father.”
Lauren was suffused with love and pity for this complex man who was her husband. No wonder he had reacted to her intrusion with hate and resentment. “I think I see how confused you must have been by my coming here.” Then, with an insight that surprised him, she said quietly, “You want to know why I followed Ben here. Is that it?” He didn’t answer, but she sensed by his silence that this was the crux of the matter.
She sighed and stared at her hands as they pleated the skirt of her robe. “Jared, there was never anything illicit between your father and me. You couldn’t be more wrong if you think there was. I was attracted to
him because he was dashing and exciting and interesting. To someone raised in a parsonage, living with a sweet, but naive couple interested only in their small world, he was like a character out of one of my books. Of course, accepting his invitation to come to Texas to visit was unthinkable, and I never would have done it except for something that happened within days of Ben’s departure.”
Her lips trembled slightly as she remembered William’s attack. Quickly, nervously, she said, “Believe me, it… those reasons for my leaving were justified.”
He cupped her chin in his fist and asked, “What happened to make you want to leave your home?”
She tried to turn away, but he was adamant. He didn’t release her chin, but forced her to meet his probing eyes. “It… I… Does it matter so much?” she asked piteously.
“Yes.”
Again she tried to lower her eyes, and again he held her fast. “Please,” she begged in a whisper. Slowly he eased the pressure of his fingers and his hand fell away. She turned her back on him to stare into the fire.
“There was a man,” she said. “His name was William Keller. He… the Prathers thought that we should marry. I told them countless times that I couldn’t abide him, but…” Her voice trailed away to nothingness and she breathed in deeply. Dare she tell Jared the rest of it? Would he turn away from her in disgust, blame her as her guardians had done? “Go on,” he said from behind her.
Haltingly, she related the full tale of William’s attack, his deception of the Prathers, her inability to persuade her guardians that the minister was lying. “After that, I had to leave,” she finished hoarsely.
For at least a full minute, a heavy silence hung over them. She had raised her knees and rested her forehead against them. She didn’t want to know what Jared thought. Yet she had had to tell him the truth.
His movement was so sudden that she started when he bounded to his feet. Whipping her head around, she saw him reach for his hat and clamp it on his head. Then, as she watched in stupefaction, he grabbed his gun belt with the deadly pistol safely ensconced in it and strapped it around his hip.
“Jared? What… what are you doing?” she sputtered.
He had reached the door by now and his hand gripped the knob. Glancing over his shoulder, she could see the rigid planes of his face set with determination. His amber eyes shone with resolve. “I’m going after that sonofabitch to kill him.”
Despite the severity of his pronouncement, a smile twitched Lauren’s lips and then burst forth in delighted laughter. “Like that?” she asked, her eyes shining with new love. He cared! He wasn’t angry at her, but at William.
Stunned by her laughter enough to shake him out of his fury, Jared suddenly realized the picture he must present. He glanced down at himself. The gun belt was his only garment. He smiled at her sheepishly from the shadows under his hat. “You reckon he’s worth going out buck naked in a snowstorm for?”
Her eyes still twinkled, but she answered seriously, “He’s not worth going after at all.”
He rid himself of the ludicrous attire and, before she realized, was beside her, gathering her into his arms. “I’ll kill anyone who touches you again. I swear it.” He spoke in a low rumble in her ear as he pressed her head against his chest.
His mouth descended and captured hers in a blazing kiss that branded her as his own. Their mouths fused together hotly. Tongues sought, found, took, gave.
Lauren’s fingers tangled in the curls lying in wild disarray around his head and pulled her mouth free. “Jared, you must believe that my attraction to Ben was not sexual. To me, he represented the affectionate father I never had. Since that day I saw you framed in the doorway of my room, looking like the meanest desperado ever to roam the plains of Texas, you have dominated my thoughts. Until you kissed me in the office that morning Olivia said we were to marry, I had no idea how a woman was supposed to feel toward a man.”
He took her head between his strong, lean hands, sliding his fingers under her hair and drawing her mouth back to his. The kiss was tender, soft, and her lips yielded to the slight pressure of his. But, as all their kisses had done in the past intimate hours, the tenderness turned to passion, and when he lowered her to the fur blanket covering the floor, she was more than ready to comply. Her hair spread out like a dark fan behind her head.
He slid his hands into the opening of her robe and separated the folds, revealing her breasts. His hands closed over them, gently, but with no question of his possession. His mouth gave them the high praise he thought them worthy of. First his lips closed around each crest, then his tongue paid them homage until they glistened wetly in the firelight.
Lauren moaned ecstatically under his adoration while her own hands smoothed over the bunched muscles of his shoulders and back.
His lips left a fiery path across her breasts, down her ribs, back onto her stomach, and then lower to her abdomen. He kissed her navel and then lower still until—
“Jared—” She covered the dark thatch his lips had just reached with the palm of her hand.
He raised passion-clouded eyes to hers, opened wide in alarm. “Lauren,” he said huskily, “you must know that I would never do anything to hurt you. Trust me.” When she remained silent, staring at him with fearful, pleading eyes, he repeated, “Trust me.”
Slowly she nodded her head, and didn’t resist when he leaned down and kissed the back of her hand where it lay. His lips were warm. Pleasure-giving. In spite of her modest wariness, she felt her muscles surrendering to the diplomacy of his mouth.
Without haste, he lifted her hand and pressed a kiss into the palm. Then he kissed her where it had lain on the dark delta. An intense heat washed over her and a cry of joy bubbled out of her throat. His mouth brought her a pleasure so exquisite that she was helpless to think of anything except his lips and tongue as they moved lower to explore, probe, and please.
The storm mounted and ebbed as he alternately teased and demanded. The pressure within her increased, and when it crashed around her, she called to him plaintively and was gratified when his body covered hers to protect her from the assault of emotions and senses. Still, she wasn’t satisfied until he was inside her, deep, hard, fulfilling, touching her womb with the essence of himself.