Chapter Four
“D o you remember what I told you in our workout room, right after you kissed me?”
Keenan asked, reaching behind her and gently lifting her braid, pulling it over her shoulder.
“I—” Rachel swallowed and tried again. “I don’t remem—what did you say?” she asked hoarsely, trying to see his face through the shadows. She couldn’t see a damn thing, so she looked down—and could only watch, mesmerized, as he deftly opened the clasp, pocketed her barrette, and then slowly twined the freed ends of her hair around his fingers.
“I told you the next time we reached this point, that I intended to finish it.”
“And we…we’re at that point now?”
Slowly, and with such gentle precision that Rachel tingled all the way down to her toes, Kee began undoing her braid.
“We’re past that point, Rachel.”
Her skin tightened in awareness.
The braid slowly unfurled, and his hand moved higher.
Breathing became difficult.
And when his fingers finally reached the nape of her neck, he cupped her head, leaned down, and brought his lips to hers—not kissing her, not quite touching her—just close enough to bring every nerve in her body alive in anticipation.
“Either smack me with your flashlight, Rachel, or kiss me.”
The flashlight clattered to the floor.
Sarah stopped breathing, her eyes glued to the page as the hairs on her body stirred. “Don’t do it, Rachel,” she whispered. “You go to bed with him, and there’s no turning back. He’s going to demand more than you’re wanting to give. Don’t do it.”
But Rachel did do it, right there in the next sentence, when she threw herself at Keenan Oakes and kissed him with the urgency of a passion she could no longer deny. “Now you’ve done it,” Sarah muttered as she pulled her own hair over her shoulder, twisting it into a tail as she read on, her eyes widening in shock. Holy smokes, Kee was going to take her right there, right against the wall! And not only was Rachel letting him, she was demanding he hurry up!
He shoved her jeans down to her ankles at just the same time she pushed his down. He lifted her up, moving her back against the wall like before. Rachel wrapped her legs around him, this time gasping at the shock of having nothing between them.
Nothing but glorious, quivering heat.
He positioned her higher, then stopped suddenly, the tight muscles of his arms twitching, his eyes closed, sucking breaths rasping from his lungs.
Rachel realized he was fighting for control.
She didn’t want that. She dug her nails into his skin to make him look at her, and stared up past the angular planes of his face in the moonlight, into dark blue eyes blazing with primordial need.
“It’s not trespassing if you’ve been invited,” she told him, shooting him a crooked smile.
“Or do I need to clarify that point as well?”
A shudder ran through him, shaking them both.
Rachel tilted her pelvis, relaxing her thighs to lower herself until she could feel the tip of his shaft probing the wet folds of her opening.
And still, he held back.
“I’ve always had a thing for cavemen,” she whispered.
His eyes burned at her reference to their first meeting, his nostrils flaring and his hands biting into her thighs. He swore, hotly and crudely, grabbing a fistful of her hair as he braced one forearm on the wall behind her and captured her mouth in a hard and consuming kiss. He moved that kiss to her cheek, then her throat, then buried his face in the crook of her neck and thrust forward, and upward, not stopping until she—
“Sarah. Sarah!”
“What!” Sarah snapped, looking up with a glare. Then she gasped, slapping the open book to her chest. “What are you doing here? This is my bedroom. And where’s your shirt?” she squeaked when Alex walked up to the foot of her bed.
“What in hell are you reading?” he asked, one eyebrow raised as he looked at the book covering her chest. “I’ve been calling to you, and I knocked on your bedroom door loud enough to raise the dead.”
Sarah couldn’t stop staring at his chest, even as she felt a blush climb into her cheeks. He was…he…holy smokes, his shoulders were broad. And his muscular chest was dusted with soft-looking hair. And his belly was flat enough to—
“Earth to Sarah,” he said, moving to stand right beside her. He waved a hand in front of her face, then bent at the waist and squinted into her eyes. “Exactly how much whiskey did you have?”
“Wh-why are you looking for me?” she whispered, forcing her eyes up from his rippling stomach to his frowning face.
He straightened. “None of the beds upstairs is made, and the mattresses have some mealy purple stuff all over them.”
Sarah tried to focus on what he was saying and not on the fact that he was towering over her in nearly naked glory, until his words finally sank in. “Oh, I forgot. I stripped the beds when everyone left so the mattresses could breathe. That’s lavender buds all over them, to make them smell nice.”
The face she was forcing herself to look at—so she wouldn’t look at his chest—slackened in disbelief. “You’re letting them breathe and making them smell like lavender?” he asked. He scowled.
“What in hell for?”
“It’s common practice to air mattresses several times a year,” she said, scowling right back at him. Where, oh, where was her blanket? Too mortified to actually find out, Sarah could only hope it was tucked up under her book and not crumpled down at her waist. Her nightgown was paper-thin, and she just knew she was blushing furiously enough to make it transparent. “I was taking advantage of everyone being gone.”
“So where am I supposed to sleep?”
“Ah…I-I’ll go make your bed.”
He didn’t move, so she didn’t even try to get up. Instead, they stared at each other, until Sarah’s gaze slipped down to his chest again. She immediately snapped her eyes back up and found that his gaze had also lowered—and she doubted he was looking at her book.
“You have a double bed,” he said ever so softly, slowly lifting his gleaming—or more likely whiskey-glazed—eyes to hers. “Maybe you could read to me until I fall asleep. I don’t think I have the strength to climb those stairs again.”
Sarah pressed her book even harder against her breasts. What would Rachel Foster do? Throw her book at him? Carry him up the stairs if she had to?
No, Sarah thought with a mental shake of her head. A smart, feisty, confident heroine would probably scoot over if a handsome man with gleaming blue eyes made such a provocative offer. Besides, what could the man possibly be capable of in his condition? He’d finished off half a bottle of whiskey, he was worn out from two weeks of running for his life, and he had said he only wanted to sleep. She was not such a shrinking violet that she couldn’t let him lie on top of the covers beside her, was she? Begin as you intend to go on, she was constantly reminding herself. Well, she certainly didn’t intend for Alex Knight to think she was some frightened little mouse, much less a twenty-nine-year-old prude. Maybe it was only the whiskey giving her courage, or maybe it was Rachel Foster whispering in her ear, but Sarah suddenly scooted over, smoothed out the blankets, and patted the bed beside her. Alex Knight didn’t move.
Sarah took one of the pillows propping her up and set it in place for him—keeping her book pressed to her chest—then patted the bed again without looking up.
“Do you know what you’re doing, lady?”
Now what would Rachel say? “Sure,” Sarah said with a negligent shrug of one shoulder. “If you’
re too tired even to climb the stairs, I think that says it all. You’re at least a foot taller than the couch is long, so that’s out. You stay on top of the blankets, and I’ll stay on my side of the bed,” she told him, giving the bed one more pat.
When he still didn’t move, Sarah suddenly felt empowered. Was she really capable of making this man back down simply by calling his bluff? Whew, this heroine business was heady stuff!
She shot Alex a grin that would have made Rachel proud. “I promise not to take advantage of you, Mr. Knight, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
The scowl Alex gave her should have sent Sarah running for the woods, but she merely widened her smile. With the shadows from the bedside lamp making his scowl look more cartoonish than menacing, Alex finally crawled on top of the covers and settled beside her, lacing his fingers over his flat belly with a tired sigh.
Sarah went utterly still as she felt the hot weight of his body pressed against hers with only a thin blanket between them. I can do this, I can do this, she repeated to herself over and over, until her racing heart finally slowed down enough that she could gently wiggle away.
“Go back to your reading, but read out loud,” Alex said, closing his eyes as he settled deeper into the mattress with another sigh. “I like your voice.”
She couldn’t possibly read the scene he had just interrupted; Rachel and Kee had been doing it!
“I—ah—I’ll just read you the first chapter, since I only started this book this evening,” she said, marking her page and quickly leafing back to chapter one.
“What kind of book is it?”
“A…it’s sort of a mystery. Written by a woman who lives right here in Maine. It’s set on the coast.”
She looked over to see that Alex had his eyes cracked open, looking at her. “You like gory mysteries?”
She shook her head. “This is more of a woman’s mystery. There’s a bit of romance in it, too.”
His mouth slashed into a grin, and one eye fully opened when he lifted his eyebrow. “Any good stuff? Any heavy breathing and groping?”
Sarah tamped down the blush creeping up her throat. “It’s a mystery,” she repeated. She looked back at the book and started reading before he could say anything else. “Using her cane for support, Rachel Foster limped down the steps of the library and headed for her truck, eager to get home and take a long soak in a tub of steaming water. The torn cartilage in her knee was nearly healed…” Sarah read softly, her voice picking up the rhythm of the prose. She made it to page twelve before Alex’s breathing evened out and Sarah realized he’d fallen asleep. She stopped reading and smiled. Holy smokes, she’d done it; she had a real live man in her bed instead of a fictional hero! He was passed out, so she felt safe enough, and having a few drinks of her own appeared to have given her the courage to call his bluff. She only had to make sure she was out of bed and dressed by daybreak, so she could wake him up to greet his family. Sarah was just leafing back to her old place in the book when she let out a jaw-wrenching yawn. She shut the book with a sigh, secured the cloth sleeve she always slipped over the racy romance covers so nobody would realize what she was reading, set the book on her nightstand, and shut off the light. Sarah carefully scooted under the covers near the edge of the bed, yawned again, and quickly fell into sleep with a smug smile.
Her muscles were leaden, her mind foggy with colorless images. Sarah only vaguely sensed she was floating in that ethereal gap between conscious awareness and deep sleep, where surreal dimensions materialized in a way that caused dreams to seem real.
She was reliving Rachel and Kee’s passionate lovemaking, her vivid imagination filling in the blanks from where she’d stopped reading. Only it wasn’t Keenan Oakes her dream had conjured but the equally imposing Alex Knight. And it wasn’t Rachel Foster boldly stroking his body, it was Sarah’s fingers running through the downy-soft hair on his chest.
This was the fun and the safety of dreams, Sarah decided as she leaned over her dream hero and touched her lips to his chest. A wave of warmth shot through her when he shuddered, encouraging Sarah to let her fingers wander up his shoulder to his neck as she kissed him full on the mouth. His arms came around her in a heated embrace, and his tongue enticed her lips apart. Her own passion exploded with pulsing energy, so that when her hero rolled Sarah onto her back and covered her with his body, the ache in the pit of her stomach made her wrap her legs intimately around him. His thick, throbbing manhood pressed through his pants against her panties, and Sarah caught her breath at the appearance of the barriers.
Rachel was already naked, wasn’t she, and had helped Kee out of his own pants? Right after she’
d dropped the flashlight?
Strong, probing fingers ran under Sarah’s nightgown to the elastic at her waist and slowly pulled her panties down over her hips. Ah, yes, now she remembered. Kee had helped Rachel undress. Sarah pushed her panties low enough that she could slide them off with her toes. Her dream hero fumbled with his own pants, then immediately moved back between her thighs. Sarah wrapped her legs around him again, throwing her head back with a moan of delight when he suckled one of her nipples right through her nightgown. He captured her wandering hands and held them to the pillow as he settled more deeply against her— this time making her gasp at the shock of having nothing between them. Nothing but glorious, quivering heat.
He stilled suddenly, the taut muscles of his arms twitching.
“It’s not trespassing if you’ve been invited,” Sarah whispered. A shudder ran through him, shaking them both, and Sarah tilted her pelvis, lifting herself until she could feel the hot tip of his shaft probing the wet folds of her opening. He captured her mouth in a hot, consuming kiss, his lips then trailing down to her throat. He thrust forward, and upward—
Sarah’s gasp of surprise brought her fully awake, and she could only stare wide-eyed as Alex Knight reared up in equally wide-eyed shock. Holy smokes, she wasn’t dreaming! She was making love to Alex for real!
Well, almost. Was he really awake? Could a…could a man actually do it in his sleep?
“No, don’t stop,” she rasped, digging her fingers into his shoulders to back up her demand.
“Finish it,” she desperately cried as she lifted her hips toward him, her entire body aching to feel him fully inside her.
A growl erupted from deep in his chest as he pushed through her barrier. Sarah felt a moment’s discomfort, and then he was fully, deeply inside her. She held herself still, not even daring to breathe, until he started to move in a rhythm that began rocking Sarah in waves of blossoming passion. Oh, merciful heavens, yes! It felt so good, so beautifully wonderful to be so full. Sarah thought she might die of wonder as she answered his thrusts with tiny moans of encouragement, every nerve in her body focused solely on what she was feeling, each tremor of pleasure surprising her with its intensity. Her insides clenched, tightening inward and upward as she began to sense something—something amazing—just beyond her grasp. But then Alex suddenly stilled above her, and Sarah opened her eyes to find his head thrown back, his muscles corded with tension as he pulsed his release. He quietly collapsed against her with a growled sigh, and Sarah could only blink at the ceiling in disbelief. That was it? They were done?
Well, he was done, apparently.
But she’d just been getting started. She had been about to finally experience it. Fulfillment. The big O. Dammit, he couldn’t be done!
Sarah pushed at his shoulders. “I can’t breathe.”
Alex rolled to the mattress with a groan but pulled her with him until she was tucked up against his side. He brushed her hair back from her face, and lightly—if not somewhat negligently—kissed her forehead before he let his head fall back with a deep, contented sigh. Sarah stared past his rapidly rising and falling chest. They were going to cuddle now? With her nightgown up around her armpits, his heat scorching her breasts and thighs, and her body still tingling with…with…? Oh my god, what had she done?
She’d slept with her husband!
And just consummated a marriage neither of them wanted!
“Sorry about that,” he suddenly murmured. “You kind of caught me by surprise.” He patted her naked backside. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll see if I can’t take care of you.”
Take care of…good God, he didn’t even realize what they’d done! He was still half asleep, still drunk, or quite possibly both.
“I—ah—I need to go to the bathroom,” she muttered, wiggling out of his grasp and sliding off the bed.
He made a halfhearted attempt to stop her. “Hurry back,” he mumbled when he failed to catch her.
“Sure,” she agreed, fumbling through the dark to the bathroom, scurrying inside, and quietly closing the door behind her. She didn’t even dare turn on the light, for fear of what she’d see in the mirror.
What madness had compelled her to invite Alex into her bed to begin with, and then what devil had made her start stroking him? She had actually begged him to finish it. Sarah slapped her hands to her fevered cheeks. How was she ever going to face him in the morning? What could she possibly say in her defense? Sorry, Alex, I really didn’t mean to seduce you? I was just a sexually frustrated, twenty-nine-year-old virgin in need of a lay?
And Grady. How would she ever explain this to Grady?
Sarah stiffened her spine and balled her hands into fists at her sides. She wasn’t explaining anything to Grady, because she wasn’t telling a soul what she’d done. And Alex just had to promise not to tell anyone, either.
But he wouldn’t be any more eager to let people know what had happened between them, would he? After all, she hadn’t exactly dragged him into her bed, and she hadn’t poured all that whiskey down his throat. He was just as guilty of poor judgment as she was, wasn’t he?
Sarah heard movement in the other room, and a bright light suddenly shone under the crack of the bathroom door. Alex was awake? He seemed to be walking around the bedroom. Sarah snapped on the bathroom light, then quickly checked to make sure her nightgown completely covered her.
She heard what sounded like her closet door banging open. What was he doing? She heard hangers sliding, and then something bumped against the bathroom wall. She twisted the doorknob and opened the door to see Alex, wearing only his pants, toss her suitcase onto her rumpled bed.
“Get dressed,” he said without looking at her, apparently too busy pulling her clothes off their hangers. “You’re out of here.”
“What?” Sarah asked as he dropped her clothes on top of the closed suitcase. She came to an abrupt halt when he spun to face her. And for the first time since meeting Alex Knight, Sarah was actually afraid of him. He looked fully awake and completely sober and angry enough to…to kill someone. How had the man gone from a sleepy, sated cuddler to a fire-breathing monster in less than two minutes?
Sarah eyed the doorway leading into the kitchen, but Alex walked over and slammed it shut, planting himself in front of it.
She immediately backed up to the wall of her bedroom and held out her hands. “It—it’s not what you think. I was dreaming, Alex. I-I thought you were someone else.” She gave him a tentative smile to let him know that she wasn’t mad. “Let’s consider it no point, no foul, and I’ll go spend the rest of the night on the couch.”
“Dreaming?” he repeated ever so softly, his anger laced with disbelief. “You thought I was someone else?” He took a step forward. “No point, no foul?” he said in a near shout. “You were a fucking virgin!”
Sarah lifted her chin and said, “I think that’s an oxymoron. Look,” she quickly added when he took another step closer. “Nobody has to know I was a virgin. Nobody even has to know we slept together, for that matter.”
He folded his arms over his chest, his expression saying she might as well have told him she was the president of the United States. “But wouldn’t that ruin your plan, if we don’t tell everyone we’ve consummated our marriage?” He nodded toward the rumpled bed. “Isn’t that the reason you staged this little seduction?”
Sarah gasped. “There you go again, accusing me of having an agenda.” She pointed an unsteady finger at him. “I do not want to be married to you! I only went along with Grady’s plan because I thought you were dead.”
“And now that I’m not? What’s your plan now, Sarah?”
“I don’t have a plan,” she snapped, walking over to her bureau and opening a drawer to pull out a sweater and a pair of pants. It was damn hard to defend herself wearing only a nightgown. And since having her back to him seemed to have a calming effect on her, Sarah went back to pretending he didn’t exist.
But she spun around when he started pulling more clothes from her closet and throwing them on the bed. “Pack up your stuff. You’re out of here.”
“You can’t really mean to kick me out.”
He nodded. “I can, and I am. You can go to the hotel in Greenville. Grady will come down and see you…” He looked up at the ceiling, then back at her. “Saturday. He’ll see you Saturday or Sunday, after we’ve had a nice, private family reunion.”
“But it’s the middle of the night!”
“The pickups have lights. Take whichever one you want.”
Stunned, she sputtered, “But—but the turkey. I have to put it in the oven at six. And all the other food—it’s only half prepared.”
He opened the suitcase and started stuffing her clothes into it. “You’re out of here, lady. I don’t trust you any farther than I can spit. I intend to have a nice, long talk with my father, and I intend to be alone with him when I do.”
“But Delaney and Tucker. They won’t understand.”
He pointed a piece of her clothes at her. “You leave my kids out of this, or I’ll make you sorry you were even born.”
Sarah spun back to the bureau. Holy smokes, he was mad. She knew from personal experience how angry men could get when they thought they were being manipulated—especially by a woman—and she’d rather spend the rest of the night braving the cold, dark woods than this man’s anger. So Sarah pulled out most of her undies and socks, walked over to the bed without looking at him, and dropped them into the suitcase. She made several more trips back and forth, stuffing everything she possibly could into the suitcase and the backpack she’d grabbed from beside the bureau. She felt Alex’s dark, accusing eyes on her the whole time, and it wasn’t until she snapped the suitcase closed and zipped up the backpack that he grabbed the two bags and walked out the bedroom door. “You have two minutes,” he said as he strode into the kitchen. “Then I’m kicking you out with whatever you’re wearing.”
Sarah picked up the clothes she’d set aside, ran to the bedroom door, and shut it. But dressing proved difficult, what with her shaking so violently. As she was bent over trying to slip into her panties, she noticed the blood on her thigh. That’s when she finally lost what little composure she’d been clinging to and silently started to weep.
How had everything gone so terribly, horribly wrong? Not twelve hours ago, she’d been bustling around her kitchen, anticipating Thanksgiving dinner with every intention of making it special for her family.
Only they weren’t really her family, were they?
Sarah slipped into her jeans and zipped them up, then walked over to the bed and sat down to put on her socks. Her book was sitting on the nightstand, and she picked it up and flung it as hard as she could at the wall. “This is all your fault, Rachel Foster,” she hissed. “Filling my head with your foolishness. There are no heroes in this world, and being smart and feisty only gets a woman in trouble.”
“Time’s up,” Alex said through the door.
“I’m coming!” Sarah yelled back, swiping her face with the back of her hand. “I’m putting on my socks!”
She stood up, took a deep breath, and, with her head held high, opened the door and strode through the kitchen. She stopped at the already open back door, slipped into her jacket and boots, picked up her backpack and suitcase, and pushed through the screen door without looking at Alex. The screen door banged behind her just as the inside door slammed shut, and Sarah shuddered when the dead bolt snapped closed.
She stood blinking into the black night until her eyes slowly adjusted and she could finally make out the boundaries of the dooryard. She looked at the four pickups parked beside the machine shed, then stepped off the porch and started walking down the driveway. She stopped at the edge of the forest, zipped her jacket up to her chin, hefted the pack over her shoulders and picked up her suitcase, and started walking the eight miles to Oak Grove.