AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You knew what I wanted from you, Kelly. ” He turned away, stalking across the room before turning back to her. “You knew I wanted you in my bed. You knew what was going to happen when I came home. Didn’t you?”
“I knew. ” She couldn’t deny it.
“Did you think I’d try to take you while you were raw from an attempted rape?” Disgust filled his voice.
“That’s not true. ” She couldn’t let him believe that.
Moving across the room, she gripped his arm, holding him in place when he would have moved from her.
“I knew you wouldn’t, Rowdy,” she cried fiercely. “I know you would never, ever hurt me. I can’t help it. You don’t know how long I waited for you to come home, how much I needed you to touch me, and now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make sense of any of it. ”
She stared back at him, desperate for him to understand, on the edge of crying and knowing the tears would do her no good.
“What you made me feel has always scared me,” she finally admitted, her voice trembling. “How much I needed your touch always terrified me. And now, it’s like all the fears are swirling together until I can’t make any sense of any of it. ”
His expression twisted into a grimace of raw pain as his arms came around her. Slowly. Powerful, naked, sun-heated, he pulled her against him as her hands clutched at his waist as the scent of him infused her senses.
“Kelly. God, baby, do you have any idea of what it did to me to realize I wasn’t here to protect you?” he whispered against her hair, one big hand holding her head against his chest as the opposite arm wrapped around her back. “If I had been here, I would have been in your bed that night. No one would have touched you. ”
“This isn’t your fault,” she snapped, her head lifting, a frown tightening her brow as she glared back at him. “I knew you were going to think that. ”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” he growled, holding her tighter, pressing his hips against her lower belly as she felt the
breath slam out of her chest.
His erection, impossibly large, hot even through the denim, pressed against her as he stared down at her with heavy-lidded arousal.
“I know, Kelly. ” His hands moved to her hips as she felt the familiar weakness sweeping through her body. “There’s not a damned thing that could have kept me away from you. Why the hell do you think I spent so much time in the Marines? I stayed away because I couldn’t keep my hands off you. ”
His hands were on her now, clasped at her hips as hers flattened against his bare chest and she stared back at him in shock.
“I want you until I can’t breathe for it,” he whispered then. “But I would never hurt you. And I would never take what you can’t give me, Kelly. Ever. ”
“I know that, Rowdy,” she cried, the aching need and shadowed fears that rose inside her clenching in her chest. “I never thought you would. ”
“I wanted to hold you this morning. ” His hands smoothed over her back, her hips. “I wanted to pull you in my arms and put myself between you and the world to keep anything, everything, from threatening you ever again. ”
She shook her head. God, what was she going to do? He wasn’t even concerned with what his father had said, the fact that he had been thrown out of his home. He wasn’t angry with her or with Ray. He was angry with himself for not being there.
Kelly stared back at him, dazed, uncertain. Rowdy’s expression was fierce, arrogant, equal parts frustration and determination mixed with pure, hot lust.
“Rowdy—”
“I want to take all the fear out of your eyes, Kelly,” he whispered, his head lowering, his eyes holding hers. “I want it gone. I want to see all that fire and arousal and need that’s always been there. That I see now. ”
She breathed in roughly, fighting to find reality, to make sense of the influx of sensations racing through her body.
“I want to kiss you, Kelly. ” Her lips parted.
Beneath her hands, his heart raced, just like hers. A hard, rushing throb that transferred to her veins, her nerve endings, and washed through every cell of her body.
“Did you miss me, Kelly?” he whispered.
“Yes. ” Her vision was filled with his lips. Sensually full, a treat she had dreamed of for too many years, had ached for with everything in her woman’s body.
“No. Keep your eyes open. ” He stopped as her lashes drifted closed. “Watch me, baby. See me. It’s just Rowdy. Just my kiss, remember how much you liked my kiss?”
She loved his kiss. Her lips parted in anticipation, but perhaps she hadn’t fully remembered what being kissed by Rowdy meant. Somehow, she must not have remembered just right, exactly how it felt that night on the lake.
