Home To Texas - Ransom My Heart Part 30

Finally she flattened her palm, allowing his big hand to rest, open and exposed, on hers.

"I'll never forget how you touched me that night."

"I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted you so much, had wanted you so long, that I was afraid... I was afraid I'd lose control. Scare you off," he said, his eyes on her down-turned head.

She looked up at that, and what had been in her eyes that night was there again.

"You didn't scare me," she said.

"It was ... perfect. What I had always imagined it would be--the way I'd imagined you would be."

"Tonight..." he began, and then he hesitated.

"Tonight I show you."

"Show me what?" he asked, the question tinged with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"How I want to touch you. I want to show you what you gave me that night. What it feels like to have someone Oayte Wtlson make love to you. So you don't have to think or plan orplease. Just feel. Just let me make you feel."

The thickness in his throat would probably have made speech impossible,but he truly didn't know what to say in response to that. Exceptsuddenly he did. He knew exactly what to say. What he had wanted tosay as he had worshiped her body that night five years ago. What hehad wanted to say to her through the dozen long years he had felt it.

"I love you," Chase McCullar whispered.

Her eyes didn't change, didn't widen in shock or fill with tears. Theyrested steadily on his, accepting what he had said, accepting who andwhat he was. Just as they always had, he finally realized.

"I know you do," she said softly.

"I think I've always known that you do."

HE WAS LYING BACK on her bed, still cradling his arm against his body, his trembling fingers locked around the elbow. Eyes still closed.

Breathing in aching gasps.

But nothing was the same. Not like it had been in the car. The exquisite agony he was suffering was Samantha, moving above him in the darkness.

"I want to show you," she had said.

Then she had made that desire reality, touching his body in ways thatwere intimate beyond his wildest fantasies. Her hands had movedtonight in the scented darkness. Exploring.

Sliding with deliberate slowness over his shivering skin. Her tongueflicking against his extended flesh, hot and sweet. More than hisfantasies. Beyond any dream of her he had ever had. Until everythingexcept her hands and her mouth and her tongue were forgotten, buried inthe sensations that shook his frame, that shook the lonely isolation inwhich he had somehow existed without her. Not lived, but existed. Heknew that now.

He opened his eyes. She was astride him, her head thrown back, exposing the slender column of her throat,

Kanxom my Heart white against the blackness of the surrounding night.

Her hair was touched with moonlight, as the candles had touched it. It floated as she moved, drifting over her shoulders, burnished with light.

He reached out, the tips of his fingers pressing against the damp, shadowed hollow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and then gliding downward, pulling against her skin, over her stomach, where she had carded his child, his seed. And then lower still to where their bodies were joined. One.

They had always been one, but it seemed it had taken them a very long time to realize that.

He almost sensed her reaction, the trembling response beginning and then building as her body moved above his.

Then she arched backward, her breathing audible now, gasping, echoinghis own. Her fingers caught the hand with which he touched her andtangled in his. Grasping tightly.

Holding on to him. Anch.o.r.ed by him.

When he felt her climax, her body out of her control, he joined her, allowed himself to arch upward, his own body exploding with convulsive power. Then again. And again.

It was not until those sensations eased, rippled into aftershock and then shimmered into slow heat that he was aware again of the pain in his shoulder. Aware of the price he would pay for even this semi controlled movement.

Aware but uncaring. It had been worth whatever price he would have to pay.

"You okay?" she asked softly. He opened his eyes to find hers, wide and dark, looking down on him.

He laughed, the sound of it low in his throat, and he watched the response of her mouth. Her smile a little too generous. Eyetooth just the tiniest bit crooked.

"I'm not sure," he said truthfully.

"Maybe we ought to give it another shot. Practice makes perfect."

"Are you saying that wasn't perfect?" she challenged.

"Is that what you're saying, Chase McCullar?" She put her hands on either side of his stomach, palms down, and leaned forward, almost threateningly, over his body.

llUt VF [tUn "I'm not saying anything of the kind," Chase said.

"I.

just always heard that the Kincaids demand the best."

"The best man for the job," she said gently, not tauntingly.

"If you're gonna start quoting Sam, then I'm going to sleep."

"Bet me," she whispered.

Chapter Sixteen.

It was pretty late the next morning when the phone rang.

Chase came awake to find himself alone in the bed they had shared the night before. Still nude. There had been a sheet somewhere, he remembered, but it seemed to have disappeared. He lay and listened to the morning, relaxed as a cat in the sunlight that was streaming into the bedroom.

Samantha must have been in the kitchen when the phone rang. He could smell coffee, and he could hear her footsteps over the wooden floor, hurrying to pick up before the phone could wake him.

She reached it before the third ring. Like the time at Jenny's, he didn't really intend to eavesdrop, but there wasn't anywhere to go to get out of heating distance of the conversation. Besides, even if there had been somewhere to go, his aching body was too lethargic to drum up the energy to move. It was probably Sam, he thought, asking about last night.

Her father hadn't been thrilled about the role Samantha was supposed to play in what had gone on, but when Chase had called him to set it up, he had promised Sam that he'd see to it that nothing happened to Samantha.

"I'll keep her safe," he had said.

"On my honor, Mr. Kincaid."

The old man had made no reply for a moment, and then surprisingly he'd agreed.

"You take care of my babies, McCullar," he had said just before he'd broken the connection.

At least, that was what it had sounded like.

"No, of course, I'm pleased," Samantha was saying now, her voice coming

to him clearly from the front of the house. Chase raised his head carefully and propped his bent right arm behind it, testing. He was sore--that was natural after last night's accident--but it would be bearable, he thought, until he could get back to Doc's.

"It's just that it happened a little sooner than I'd expected,"

Samantha continued.

Chase thought about that, trying to fit it into what she might tell Sam. She sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't tell him that, he decided, grinning.

"How long do we have?" she asked, and he waited with her through the

reply."Well, I guess that's good. It may take me a little while to findsomewhere. You did say he wants everything?" Another silence.

"Okay. I'll come in Monday. Thanks for calling. I really appreciateyou calling, taking time on a Sunday morning to let me know."Chase heard her hang up and return to the kitchen."Samantha?" he called."In the kitchen," she said.

"You ready for some coffee?"

Which meant she would probably bring him some, and he should start the process of sitting up. He unbent his right arm and used it to lift his body, easing his shoulders back against the headboard.

"Why don't you let me take you in to one of those twenty-four-hour things in San Antonio, one of those doc-in-a-box deals?" Samantha asked from the doorway.

She held a mug in one hand.

"Or better than that, to the emergency room?" she suggested.

"I'll go by Doc's when I leave here," he said.

"Doc doesn't have the latest equipment--" "I promise you, sweetheart,

what's wrong with me doesn't need the latest equipment to fix."

He held out his hand for the coffee and enjoyed watching