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Then he took a couple of deep breaths, sucking the cold night into his lungs.
Leaving Cassandra had been the right thing to do. It wasn't just that O'Banyon was up and the last thing she needed was to get caught between two jealous men. It was mostly because if he'd stayed much longer, he would have taken her back to the shop with him and woken up next to her in the morning. And he would have...finished.
Which was a bad idea, all the way around. Just because he'd outed his need for her, didn't mean the essential dynamic between them had changed.
So it was just as well that O'Banyon was with her over the weekend.
Well, provided Alex didn't think about the two of them together.
Cursing himself, he went into the shop and fired up the potbellied stove, stoking it for the night. He undressed and hit the mattress. As the temperature rose, he shoved the covers from his upper body and flopped onto his back.
Staring at the ceiling, he thought of Spike's words.
What if he could forgive himself a little? Just enough to have Cassandra once. Only once. The aftermath would be a tossing sea of guilt, but the taking...the taking would be wondrous.
God, he was a bastard, he thought. o even think such a thing.
He turned his head and looked at the desk where his father's plans were laid out.
His father never would have found himself in this situ?ation. Ted Moorehouse had had honor. Honor in the life he'd led and in how he cared for the people who mattered.
Alex was ashamed to admit it, but he had pitied his father. Had been so focused on the brighter horizon he hadn't un?derstood how someone could live such a small life.
Now he would settle for being half the man his father had been.
Alex closed his eyes and went back into the past. He saw barbecues on the front lawn with his father at the grill and him shucking corn on the back step. He remembered ice fishing on the lake in March when they'd shared hot chocolate and rubbed their hands over a little propane heater. He returned to the times he and his father had climbed the mountain behind the house in the spring and gotten mud in their boots.
Funny, he couldn't recall much about the last five finish lines he'd crossed. He'd gone past so many that the partic?ulars of each one were a blur now.
The memories of his father, though, were as vivid as the experiences had been. He could bring up the smells of smoke and molasses off the grill, the taste of the cocoa, the mucky, creepy feeling of having mud slide around the inside of his boot like a molten sock.
And those things had happened twenty years ago.
God, he had lost so much, and the losing had started before his father and mother had died. It had started when he'd left his family behind.
Alex took a deep breath and tried to let go, but his regrets had set up shop and were staying put. They were like an ant farm in his chest, little paths of teeming remorse, always moving, always shifting, never, ever getting free.
He had to smile, thinking this was a hell of a way to break in the New Year. All around the world people were partying and blowing shooters and pitching confetti. Meanwhile, he was in bed with one hell of a dominatrix: Mistress Con?science.
Sometime later Alex came awake to the feel of some?thing on his chest: a soft stroke over his n**ed skin. He shot up and grabbed hold of
“Cassandra? What are you doing here?” He released her wrist as he realized how very n**ed he was. He pulled the blankets up farther on his chest.
Oh, she was lovely. She had changed into casual clothes, and her hair was loose around her shoulders, a thick curtain of copper red.
When she knelt down by the side of the bed, he propped himself up on his arms.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked.
“Did you know?” she whispered into the darkness. “Know what?”
There was a long pause. “That I wanted you. When Reese was alive. Was that why you didn't like me?”
Shocked, he studied her fine, delicate profile, lingering on her lips.
Good God...“Did you?” he said roughly. “Did you want me?”
“I think so. I mean, there was that one moment. After you came out of the shower...”
Alex's heart went into a flat-out sprint.
Cassandra wrapped her arms around herself. “I just want you to know something. Whatever you sensed about me, or picked up on...I didn't realize it. I didn't even know until very recently.” She looked at him. “I swear to you, I—”
“I never thought you were attracted to me.”
“Oh.” She stayed curled up tight, looking beyond him, at the wall.
“Cassandra, don't worry. I know you loved him. You have nothing to feel badly about.”
Her shoulders eased a little. “Thank you. Thank you...for saying that. I took my wedding vows seriously and I never— I was always faithful to him.”
They were quiet for a long time, the muffled crackle from the fire in the stove the only sound between them. He found looking at her down-turned face an absolute privi?lege. But she really needed to go.
Tonight, for whatever reason, the shield and sword of his guilt had been put down. And he felt as if there was nothing to keep him from her.
“Cassandra, is there something else?”
“Yes.”
She moved so fast, she startled him. She lunged up and her lips found his, her hands diving into his hair, her tongue entering him in a slick rush.
Oh... She was so good.
He let her push him down onto the mattress as his mind spun.
She was going to take him. She had come to take him.
And...holy hell, he was going to let her. He was going to let her do anything she wanted to him.
Spike was right. Life was short, and warmth was fleeting, and the cold would last forever.
Just this once, he thought, giving up, giving in. Only once. And then never again.
“Yes,” he said, answering the question she wasn't asking, answering it for himself. “Yes...only tonight, but yes.”
She pulled back and swept off the fleece she was wearing. Her br**sts were bare, and in the glow from the potbellied stove, the sight of her had his h*ps surging up from the bed. She rose to her feet and stripped out of her jeans, her eyes luminescent and powerful.
With a single movement she swept the covers from his body and her eyes raked down him from head to foot. She looked at all of him, his skin, his muscles, his bones, his scars.
His wild physical response to her.
Then she lay on top of him, her silken body covering him, her thigh sinking between his, her belly absorbing the thick length of his arousal.
I love you, he thought, rubbing himself against her, sinking into her and getting lost. She was all of his fanta?sies and more. Flesh and blood bringing what he had dreamed of to life.
“You're so beautiful,” he groaned.
He bent up and captured her mouth, reveling in the sen?sation of their lips and tongues meeting. Her body shifted to the side and slid off his. He turned instinctually toward her, but her hand stopped him.
“1 want to touch you,” she said, kissing his neck.
And she did. Everywhere. When she reached the place where he ached the most, the shock of the contact wasenough to take him to the brink. He steadied her hand, stopping her from stroking him.
“I'm about to— That is, I don't want to...not unless we're—”
Oh, yeah. He was smooth. Real smooth.
Funny, with other women, he'd had no trouble spelling out what he wanted and what the limits were. With Cas?sandra, he felt like a fourteen-year-old boy. All pounding hormones and raw vulnerability.
Then it happened.
Her smile as she held on to his flesh was so sexual, so womanly, so beautiful, it didn't matter she wasn't moving her hand anymore. His body surged, his lower back and thighs grabbing tight. The release shot out of him.
As the pleasure hit, horror curdled his blood. And would have sucked the testosterone right out of him if he hadn't lost it all a second and a half ago.
Damn it. He'd been a good lover once. Truly. At an earlier point in his life, he'd been rock-solid confident about his ability to pleasure a woman. But he couldn't catch a break with her. First time he'd had to stop. This time...
Alex squeezed his eyes shut and crossed his arms over his face as she let go of him.
Cass wanted to laugh, and not with cruelty or out of awkward disappointment. The truth was, she was thrilled that Alex had lost control.
In all her life, she'd never been a seducer. Had never had the kind of confidence it took to ravish a man. But tonight, with Alex, she felt...different.
“I'm sorry about that,” he said gruffly. His voice was muffled beneath his forearms.
She wasn't. His lapse made her feel erotic and powerful. Especially because discipline was so much a part of him. The idea that she'd burrowed beneath that strength was...well, it changed a little bit of how she saw herself.
“It's okay, these things happen—” She stopped as he winced.
Yeah, that probably wasn't what he wanted to hear right now.
As the silence stretched out, she thought she probably should go. She kissed him on the chest and sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was chilly on the soles of her feet.
“Well...” she murmured. “I guess I'll see you—”
It happened so fast that her head spun. Literally.
One minute she was on the verge of standing up. The next, she was flat on her back with Alex on top of her.
He smoothed her hair from her face as he parted her legs with his knee. His h*ps moved against her and... wow, okay. Recovery time was over.
“You understand that I can't have you leaving just yet.” “Male pride?” she said with a smile.
“The need to be with you.” He nuzzled her neck. “And, yeah, okay, a little male pride.”
She arched as he found the tip of her breast with his fingers and he pulled away, looking down at her as he lightly brushed her nipple. She moaned at the sensation, throwing her head back.
His voice was low. “Do you have any idea how beauti?ful you are?”
Well, when he looked at her like that, she had a pretty clear idea.
His hands were slow and thorough as they explored her body, leaving a path of heat in their wake. She was shaking with need when he reached between her legs.
“Oh, Cassandra,” he said as he touched her heat. She cried out and bit into his shoulder.
The mattress wiggled as he kissed a path down her body. But then he stopped and cursed.
“This bed is too damn small. I feel like I'm making love to you in a shoe box.” He tried to reposition himself, shifting this way and that, but his arms and legs and torso wouldn't fit no matter how much he tried.
With a growl of frustration, he came back up and covered her with his weight. “Now. Cassandra, I want you now.” “Yes...”
His tongue shot into her mouth as his hand came between them. She felt blunt warmth brushing against her and then his thick arousal slid into her body. He shuddered as they were joined, and she felt the shaking inside of her.
“Is this okay?” he asked tightly.
“Please...more...”
With his first powerful thrust, she knew there would be no stopping. His rhythm was strong, dominating, his heavy, muscular body churning above her. The surging took her right to heaven, her release shooting through her in waves, stiffening her, stealing the air from her lungs, the sight from her eyes, the sound from her ears.
Alex paused, as if savoring the way her body grabbed onto his, and then as soon as she stilled, he took over again. He held nothing back, spared her no ounce of his weight and strength and need as he drove his h*ps over and over again. She held on to him at the waist, her arms sliding up and down the small of his back as he pumped, his skin blooming with sweat.
Tension built within his body as his driving h*ps went faster and faster, the stroke of his retreats getting shorter and shorter.
And then in a mighty yell, he called out her name and pushed inside one last time. The force of his release took her over the edge with him.
