Page 37 of Point of Mercy
“Is that what I’m doing? Punishing you?”
His voice was so low, so sexy against her ear that she could hardly respond. But she forced the words past her lips. “I think you plan on making me pay for my mistake for the rest of my life.”
He stiffened, and she knew that she’d finally gotten through to him. But he didn’t move away, and his body molded over hers as closely as if they were making love. Hard contours pressed intimately to hers and she could hardly catch her breath. The smell of him, the heat of his body, his dark looks as he stared at her assailed her senses,and her mind wandered dangerously backward in time to when she and he had so innocently, so desperately made love. She licked her lips and wondered if he was thinking of kissing her again. Somewhere in the barn a horse snorted.
“My mistake wasn’t sleeping with you, Turner. My mistake was loving you and thinking I could make you love me.” Her voice was low and she forced her gaze to his. “I was wrong. All you wanted from me was what I gave you—a summer fling. A distraction from hard work at the ranch.”
His back teeth ground together and she saw the protests forming on his tongue. “I cared about you—”
“Don’t lie, Turner. It belittles us both and only makes things wor—”
His mouth slanted over hers and his arms tightened around her body. His hands pulled her tighter still and her breath was lost between her throat and her lungs. Raw passion surged between them, racing hot as wildfire through her blood, pounding in her brain, shutting down all her defenses. The taste and feel of him brought back memories she’d tried for years to forget. Her body responded of its own accord, knowing instinctively that this was the man, the only man, who could arouse a desire so torrid, she lost all reason and abandoned herself to him.
This can’t be happening,she thought wildly, and yet she was unable to stop the seductive assault of his tongue pressing hard against her teeth, gaining entrance to her mouth and exploring her with exquisite little flicks that caused her to tremble inside.
His hands caught in the silver-blond strands of her hair,forcing her head back farther so that he could kiss her throat and neck, as if he had every right to kiss her, to touch her, to make love to her.
Stop him! Stop him now! This can only lead to trouble!one side of her mind cried desperately, but another part of her melted against him, thrilled by the sensations he aroused in her, toying with the idea that making love would be a good way to bury the pain of the past, to start a new relationship, to…to conceive a child.
She yanked herself away. “No!” she cried, and he jerked back, lifting his head. What was she thinking? Conceiving a child. Oh, God, no! She couldn’t deceive him. He already thought she’d used him. She wouldn’t do this…. She was shaking so badly, she had to touch the side of the barn for support.
“What the hell?” Turner took a step back and shoved his hands through his hair. He kicked at the stall in frustration. A frightened horse whinnied nervously. Outside a dog barked and in the barn bats took flight yet again.
“I’m sorry, Turner,” she said, then hated the weak sound of her apology.
“Hell, Heather, I wasn’t going to force you to—”
“Oh, I know that,” she said, flustered. Her hands trembled as she finger-combed her loosened hair back to her ponytail and felt like an awkward teenager. “I—I—just don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
His lips twisted into a cold smile. “I understand,” he said, and there was something in his words that forewarned her of dangers to come. “You still don’t want a cowboy.”
“That’s not true—”
“Oh, so you do want a cowboy?”
“Of course not.”
A trace of sadness touched his eyes. “There’s the problem, Heather. Always has been. You have trouble admitting exactly what it is you do want. You claimed you loved me—yeah, I remember. And you probably believed it yourself. But all along I knew that you thought I wasn’t good enough.”
“Oh, Turner, that’s not true—”
“Of course it is! I wasn’t blind, damn it!”
“I loved you!”
“You convinced yourself you loved me so that you wouldn’t feel so guilty about what we were doing. You confused love with lust—”
“I never—”
“Oh, yes, Heather,” he hissed. “You did. We both did. What we shared, hell, it was the best sex I’ve ever had—the kind of passion that cut right to the bone and turned me inside out. And you felt it, too.” He touched her neck, rubbed the tiny pulse at the base. “You still do. We both do.”
She couldn’t argue with his logic. Even now, when she burned with fury, his hand touched the hollow of her throat and she wanted to melt. Instead, breathing hard, she swiped his arm away and stepped back from him.
He held up both hands, as if in surrender. “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I wanted you, Heather. The way I still want you, but I knew, even then, that it wouldn’t work between us. All we had was sex—great sex, but that’s not enough.”
His words stung as surely as if a dart had pierced her heart, draining it slowly of lifeblood. She ached, because he was telling the truth, at least as far as he knew it.Tears welled behind her eyes and she stumbled forward, her hands brushing against the rail of the stall. She had to get out, get away; coming here had been a vast mistake.
His voice jarred her. “The problem was, I didn’t have this all figured out then, at least not clearly. I had a gut feeling that you weren’t the right kind of woman for me, but I had trouble convincing myself.” He leaned his back against the stall and closed his eyes, as if willing his passion to rest. “At least I didn’t know until it was too late.”
