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The roughness of his kiss was hungry and needing, and she returned it willingly and unreservedly. They were locked together, straining, made raw by this intolerable pressure inside them. But there was no easing of it.
Ty was breathing hard, his cheek pressed against the side of her hair, his arms binding her tightly to him. “Jessy. Jessy.” In the muttering of her name, there was a question, a need expressed that his hard, muscled body had already told her.
“I know.” She felt lightheaded. For all the pounding of her heart and the almost violent ache inside, she felt a remarkable calmness, too. “Carry me?” she asked.
There was a moment when she sensed an uncertainty in him, when she thought honor might pull him back. Then his arms were loosening, shifting to scoop an arm beneath her thighs and pick her up. He stood there, holding her and looking at her shining face. There was curiosity behind his desirous look.
“I never thought of you as the romantic kind, Jessy.” His husky voice throbbed.
“Why?” she asked softly as she stroked his cleanly shaven jaw, touching a fingertip to the brush of black whiskers above his lip. “Because I can ride like a man and do the work of a man, did you think I didn’t have a woman’s feelings? Why can’t I like flowers and candy, too?”
“1 don’t know.”
He carried her into the darkened bedroom and set her down. For a silent moment, they stood facing each other, tense and poised like a mare and stallion meeting. All the pawing and mane tossing were finished; now the instinct for silence heralded nature’s most precious and most sacred act.
Her face was lifted to him, conveying the age-old signal to be kissed. Ty read it clearly and felt a splinter of irritation. The signals were all the same, whether they came from Tara, Jessy, or some other woman. Yet Jessy was like none of them, and he’d wanted it to be different.
Only it couldn’t be different, because this was the way of things. She was a woman and he was a man. No matter what level of communication was used, physical or verbal, they were locked by the pattern. In their minds and hearts, they stored the wonderful images, but the acts themselves never varied. Slowly it filtered through to him that it didn’t really matter.
Reaching, he pushed the heavy coat off her shoulders and tossed it into the dark shape of a chair in the corner. When he turned back, Jessy had begun unfastening her blouse. His fingers reached for the buttons of his shirt.
Her eyes were on him, watching, seeing the layers of clothes come off to reveal the hard expanse of muscle and flesh, the clean male lines. There was one awkward moment when Ty moved to the bed and turned to wait for her. His gaze drifted over her nude form, pale-shining and slender as a tall willow. She felt the touch of his eyes on her small breasts. Neither in looks nor form could she compare with Tara.
She had her moment of second thought; then his hand reached out to her. No more did she have to be strong; no more did she have to hide her feelings—her love. There was a wealth of passion in her going unused, too long suppressed. She had to give it or shrivel up inside and die. Its pressure was that strong. She went to him, to lie with him and live again.
20
After she had lighted two cigarettes from the pack on the bedstand, Jessy rolled back and passed one to Ty, conscious of his warm flank against hers beneath the sheet. The delicious curling sensation hadn’t left her toes. Her body was still tingling with the aftermath of their lovemaking. A small smile curved the wide edges of her mouth.
Ty shifted onto his side to study her, the caramel tangle of her hair darkening the pillow under her head. “You’re looking very pleased,” he murmured.
“Why not? You’re feeling quite proud of yourself, too, because you had me.” Jessy lightly teased the near smugness in his expression.
There was no remembrance of that first time in his eyes. She had looked for it so often—waited to see it. Now she was just as glad he
didn’t remember. There had been too much hurt involved, one way or another. She wasn’t going to tell him about it. No purpose would be served except to make him feel guilty and sorry. Whatever his feelings toward her, she didn’t want those two things to be part of them.
His expression became weighted with thought, somber lines drawing down his rugged features and bringing a troubled look to his eyes. “Jessy, sometimes I—”
“Don’t say it, Ty.” She cut in to stop him, firm and sure. “For both our sakes, don’t say something you don’t really mean. I went into this with my eyes wide open, knowing you would leave before morning came. Right now you’re thinking that you don’t want to go, but you will.”
“How do you know what’s in my mind?” Ty watched her closely, trying to fathom this woman who fitted him as comfortably as a second skin.
Just for a minute, Jessy dropped her guard and let him see the depth of love in her eyes. “Maybe because I’ve wished it, too.” Yet her tone was near to a challenge.
Of all the times he’d made love to a woman without regrets, this wasn’t one of them. There was a fierce surge of tender feeling that turned him raw. It was deep-seeded, as wild in its way as the stirrings Tara aroused in him.
That look almost made Jessy believe things could be different. Before she succumbed to the certain hurt it would bring, she swung her legs out of bed and sat up on the edge. It was not from any sense of modesty that she reached for the blouse at the foot of the bed and clutched it loosely to her small breasts. Clothes were a protection that kept others from seeing too much.
She crossed to the dresser and crushed the barely smoked cigarette in a glass ashtray. Ty sat up on one elbow, eyes drawn to the tightening play of muscles in her buttocks. When she turned, his gaze lifted past the triangular drape of her blouse with its apex at the valley of her breasts to center on the closed-in expression.
“Jessy, there’s something I’d like to explain.”
“I don’t want to hear any explanations, Ty,” she said with a shake of her head; then her chin came up. “I’m not as tolerant and understanding as you think I am. I’m not the cause of your problems with your wife, and I don’t want to know what they are. I can’t pretend she doesn’t exist, but I don’t have to listen to you talk about her. I’m more of a woman than she is, for all her pretty looks and frilly clothes—and I know that. So I’d say things about her that you wouldn’t like to hear.”
No matter how he was feeling now, Tara was the woman who held claim to his emotions. Part of it was her beauty, but the rest of it was Ty’s dream. It was something Jessy understood too clearly. Ty had made Tara into the image of his wishes. Men dreamed the things they wanted into a woman. Even if Ty was beginning to see Tara was not all he believed, he was not ready to give up his dream.
In the semidarkness of the room, he caught the determined light in her eye, that unshakable courage to face a situation no matter how unpleasant it was. He left the cigarette to burn in the ashtray on the bedstand and rolled out of bed to cross the room. She half turned, avoiding his eyes.
