Chapter Five #2
“I’m not like those other women,” she said, her hazel eyes wide and afraid. “I’ve never done this before.”
He’d taken her further than she’d wanted to go.
He folded his arms over his chest and tried to ignore the flicker of shame.
Further and faster. She’d never resisted, or said no, but he’d been aware that Jane would have been happy to keep their physical relationship less physical.
Lovemaking had been—he frowned—awkward at best.
The memories made him uncomfortable and he pushed them away.
But this time the thoughts refused to return to their small box at the back of his consciousness.
They intruded with images that made him wonder if he’d crossed the line from ardent suitor to horny jerk with her.
She’d been a young nineteen, he admitted to himself.
He looked at her, sitting on the edge of his sofa, her fingers twisting together. She still looked young.
But nine years had passed. She had grown up. She was a teacher and a mother. That reminded him. Billie.
“How old is Billie?” he asked.
Jane swallowed as her stomach flipped over. Why did he want to know? “Eight.”
He drew his eyebrows together as if doing the math. “And her father?”
“What?”
“Billie told me she’s never met him. You and he want it that way?”
Oh, God forgive her, she didn’t have the strength to say it. Not now. Not today. “It seemed like the best decision at the time.”
“A kid needs a dad.”
“Billie and I are getting by.”
“She deserves more than just getting by.”
“That’s why I brought her home.”
“Home?” His mouth curled into a cruel twist. “I’m surprised you’d still think of Orchard as home.”
“I grew up here.”
“And left.”
And left. It always came back to that. “I’m sorry,” she said, wondering how many times she would speak those exact words.
“I never meant to hurt you. And you were right, this morning. I never did think about what my leaving would mean to the bank. You had all those responsibilities. I should have handled the situation differently.”
“Yeah, a note would have been a nice touch. Maybe you could have left it on the church steps, weighed down by your bouquet and the engagement ring.”
However well deserved, his sarcasm hurt. She didn’t flinch, but had a bad feeling her pain showed in her eyes. She looked away. “I meant that I should have told you about my doubts when they first occurred to me. I should have talked to you. I apologize for that.”
“I don’t care enough to be angry or enough to forgive you, so seek your absolution elsewhere, little girl.”
She stood up and planted her hands on her hips. “I am not a child.”
His gaze raked her from the top of her head down to her sandal-clad feet. “You might not look like one, but you’re still acting like one. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, Jane. What are you really here for?”
“I’m going to be living next door. We have to—”
“We don’t have to do anything.”
He straightened and glared down at her. Fire burned in his brown eyes—flames born of pain and suffering and a desire to exact revenge.
She wanted to run—it had always been her way of facing problems—but the time for running was long past. She’d returned to Orchard because she needed Adam to forgive her, and because her daughter and her daughter’s father deserved to know each other.
But to get to that, she and Adam had to lay the past to rest. A high price for a family, she saw now.
“You used to frighten me,” she said, fighting the urge to retreat and holding her ground. “But not anymore. Not your temper or your demands or your—” Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then back to his eyes. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Is that what this is about?” he asked, taking a step closer to her.
Back up, her mind screamed. Her muscles tensed to respond to the message, but she stiffened and remained in place. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t play games, Jane.” His gaze traveled over her face, then stopped at her mouth. “Years ago you wanted pretend passion. A boy, not a man. Is that why you’ve come home? To see if the woman likes me any better than the girl did?”
“No. I never—”
He reached out and grabbed her arms. Before she could catch her breath, he pulled her up against him. Her breasts flattened against his chest as he clutched her upper arms and trapped her hands between them.
She braced herself for the fury, fully expecting to pay a high price for her defiance. She waited for rage and violence. Instead it was the impact of coming up against her past that caused her to sag against him.
Her sharp intake of air was silenced when his lips touched hers.
He kissed her hard, punishing her with the pressure, moving back and forth quickly, without consideration for her pleasure, or even comfort.
Before she could protest or even begin to pull away, the kiss softened.
Slowly he withdrew, until they barely touched.
Familiar, she thought, as his lips brushed hers. Familiar and welcome and wonderful.
The soft contact enticed her. He teased, allowing their lips to join, then withdrawing until only the air whispered against her sensitized mouth.
Instead of holding her trapped, his hands began to rub her arms, moving from shoulder to elbow.
Against her palm, his heart beat steady, the pace gradually increasing to match the rhythm of her own.
Men had kissed her, she thought as he swept his tongue across her bottom lip, but those memories paled by comparison with the reality of Adam’s touch.
He had been her first, her only lover. It had been his kisses that had given rise to young passion.
But that girl had grown up, she realized as she opened for him. He no longer frightened her that way.
Despite her parted lips, he continued to trace a wet line around her mouth.
First the outside, then the inside, teasing, tempting, but never entering.
A low moan escaped her. She shifted back far enough to free her hands, then slid them up his arms, across his shoulders and around him until she could hold him close.
Her fingers reached the coffee-colored silk of his hair.
Sensibly short strands tickled her fingers.
She knew this man. The scent of him. And the feel of him. Those tiny hairs on the back of his neck, the strong line of his jaw, the sensation of a day’s worth of stubble rasping against her fingertips. The taste of him. He grew tired of his game and slipped into her mouth.
“Yes,” she whispered.
At last. His tongue moved delicately past her teeth to meet and embrace hers.
They touched, tip to tip, then circled, rough to smooth.
Long strokes imitated the act of love, whirlpool-like plunges dueled.
He tasted exactly as she remembered. Sultry sweetness with a hint of the forbidden.
His hands dropped from her arms to her waist, then lower and behind to her derriere. He cupped her curves.
Yes, she cried in her mind. She wanted him. He’d aroused her before, but always there had been the fear. Her body wasn’t curvy enough. She didn’t know how to please a man. She felt embarrassed by his looking and touching her.
She hadn’t been taught by anyone but him, and now the fear was gone. She was a woman, ready to be taken by this man. When he pulled her hips close, she felt the length and breadth of his arousal. An answering heat rose between her thighs. He had readied her with a kiss.
“Adam,” she breathed against his mouth.
It was as if his name had broken the spell that held him next to her. He stiffened in her embrace; his arms fell to his sides.
Don’t, she thought frantically, as the haze of passion lifted and allowed her to recall the difficulty of their situation. He still hated her for what she’d done to him. She continued to withhold the truth of his daughter from him. An impossible circumstance.
She stepped back before he could completely reject her.
Her eyes searched his, hoping for a lingering sign of arousal, a hint that his wall of control had been bridged.
He stood tall, with his arms at his sides and his hands balled up in fists.
There was nothing soft about him. Nothing forgiving.
If it were not for the memory of his body next to hers, the sweet taste his tongue had left inside her mouth, she would have wondered if she’d imagined the moment.
Coldness invaded his eyes, stealing away whatever desire might have stayed. He stared directly at her. “That should never have happened.”
Of course it should have, Jane thought touching her fingertips to her still-trembling lips.
Didn’t he get it? She wasn’t afraid of him.
A liberating thought, heady even. No fear.
For months, years after she’d left Orchard, she’d carried around the weight of that fear.
Her uncertainty, her knowledge that she wasn’t woman enough to please Adam or strong enough to tell him what she was feeling had convinced her that she was so much less than everyone else.
As she had survived and raised a child on her own, her confidence had grown, but she’d still shied away from men.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. They should do it again, she decided, wondering if the passion and fire had been real. Had he felt it? Her stomach and thighs tingled with the memory of him pressing hard against her. He had felt something; she’d been touched by the proof of that.
She thought about stepping closer, of trying to tempt him. Even as she took one step toward him, he spun and walked to the window.
“I don’t have an explanation,” he said, staring out into the darkness. “I don’t usually lose control like that. It won’t happen again.”
He sounded so angry and final. His words battered at her newly discovered passion until she was ashamed.
He’d wanted to punish her, make her suffer as he had.
The kiss had been about retribution, not affection or desire.
The thrill and excitement began to die within her.
She tried to hang on to the feelings. The moment had been important to her. Don’t let it go, she told herself.
It was too late.
Defeat hunched her shoulders and she folded her arms over her chest. “See that it doesn’t,” she said, in a flash of self-preservation, then wondered if he knew she lied.
He stood so proudly, she thought as she stared at his back. Strong and broad. A man. He wore his power easily. The athletic prowess from his youth had stayed with him, adding grace to his movements. Tonight, however, he stood stiffly. The past weighed on him.
“Once your furniture arrives and you move into your own house, I don’t want to see you again.”
It hurt, she thought with a flash of surprise. It hurt that he could dismiss her so easily. Not seeing her wasn’t an option. Not if he wanted to get to know his daughter. But then Adam didn’t know he had a daughter. She’d have to tell him.
Not yet. She again touched her fingers to her lips. The sensitive skin quivered from his kiss. In a few days. When she was stronger. When the bridge between them didn’t seem so long and dangerous.
“Good night, Adam.”
“Good night.”
She turned to leave. Before she could open the door to the hallway, he spoke.
“Jane?”
“Yes?” Oh stop, she told herself, hating how hopeful she sounded.
“It won’t happen again.”
The kiss. Of course not. Why would he have thought she’d think otherwise?
“I know.” That was the hell of it really. She did know.