Featherlight in his pressure, he nuzzled the corner of her eye and the prominent ridge of her cheekbone, followed the curve of her cheek to the corner of her lips, and rubbed his mouth over them, exploring their shape and softness. When he felt her straining toward him, inviting his full possession, he took a couple of tasting kisses, lipping their moist softness, then backtracked along the sculpted line of her jaw to her ear.
He took his time tracing the outline of its delicate shell with his tongue, nibbling at her lobe and nuzzling the sensitive hollow behind it. An involuntary quiver traveled through her when he located her particular erotic spot. He went back to ignite it again and again, taking satisfaction in the faint, animal sounds of pleasure and need that came from her throat.
All the while her hands moved over his back and shoulders, her fingers flexing and curling, while his own made long, slow strokes down her spine and up the side of her waist, allowing his thumb to only occasionally brush the outer curve of her breast. Yet, ever so gradually, he worked his way down, abandoning the erotic spot by her ear and transferring his attention to the arcing curve of her throat and the hollow at its base.
When his hand at last cupped the underside of her breast, her body arched in anticipation. Its firm roundness was nearly his undoing. Even as his thumb circled its peak, feeling it grow hard under his stimulation, he struggled to keep control. Drawn by its irresistible lure, his mouth began a slow foray to it. Upon arrival, his tongue encircled her button-hard nipple, and she breathed in sharply in reaction.
She dug her fingers into his hair, applying downward pressure. His mouth opened on her breast, drawing its nipple inside. Conscious as he was of her every response, he knew the exact moment when her inner thighs tightened and her hips writhed slightly in an attempt to ease the building pressure. Heat flamed through him. He knew he could easily take her over the brink right now. But it was too soon.
While he still could, Sebastian pulled away and worked to even his breathing. His glance lingered on her parted lips, then lifted to her dark eyes, heavy-lidded with desire.
“And, of course,” He ran a hand down her leg, letting his gaze follow it, “there are those who prefer to start at the bottom.”
As he shifted to focus his attention on her feet, she murmured, “God, but you are a horrible tease.” Mixed in with her frustrated tone was amusement and a touch of curiosity.
The narrow heel, the delicate arch, the ball of her foot, and each individual toe, his mouth wandered over all of them before it began the upward journey to her slender ankle and the curve of her calf.
As he nuzzled the back of her knee, the bedside telephone rang. “Feel free to answer that,” he told her while lightly rubbing his mouth along her inner thigh.
“Oh no, I’m not,” Laura rejected his suggestion out of hand, unwilling to allow anything to intrude on this new, exciting seduction and the desire that swirled around her. “It’s probably a wrong number. If not, they can leave a message.”
“Whatever you say,” he murmured, continuing his leisurely ascent.
She dug her nails into the bedsheet, gripped by an ache that was more intense than any she had ever known. His teasing foreplay was fast becoming more than she could stand.
In a voice tight and throbbing with that need, she said, “I have one question.”
“What’s that?” His mouth brushed across her pubic hair onto her lower stomach, his moist breath warming her skin that already felt feverishly hot. The intimate touch only intensified the powerful need. Her voice shook with it. “When do we . . . meet in the middle?”
“Do you think it’s time?” Sebastian countered on a dryly teasing note.
“Past time.” Laura replied with impatience, aware she had never before been aroused like this—not with this driving need to possess and be possessed. In open demand, she reached for him. “No more.”
Hot with his own throbbing need, Sebastian needed no second urging and levered himself up and onto her. The driving pressure of his claiming kiss forced her lips apart even as his hand slipped under her, lifting her hips, arching in eagerness for his entry.
When he slid into the tight opening, her astonished groan of pleasure nearly had him exploding on contact. For a moment he went rigid to check it. She shifted under him in grinding urgency.
Exerting every ounce of control he could summon, he gripped her hips and held them still as he moved slowly against them. But the pressure grew. Soon she was all motion under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from him. He drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both take over. The tempo increased, sensation kicking through them in a golden and violent storm.
The lingering dampness of perspiration clung to her skin as Laura lay, arms and legs still tangled with Sebastian, her body tingling with those delicious aftershocks. She had never felt so gloriously spent or so incredibly energized in her life.
Reaching up, she lifted a lock of auburn hair off his forehead and idly curled it around her finger. “You lied to me.”
“When was that?” His head faced hers on the pillow, his mouth quirking in a lazy smile.
“When you claimed to be Sebastian Dunshill. That’s merely an identity you have assumed.”
“Really? And just how did you come to that conclusion?” Amusement gleamed in his eyes.
“I deduced it.” Laura replied, stretching and curling catlike against him. “You have such a mastery of the art of lovemaking, it’s obvious that you must be James Bond in disguise.” The impossibly beautiful thrill she had felt still flowed through her. Lying there beside him, Laura had a moment’s regret that he hadn’t been her first man—although her mind told her it was best that he hadn’t been or she might have become his slave.
“I hate to disillusion you, but 0-0-7 I am not.”
“What a pity,” she declared and released an exaggerated sigh.
“It is, isn’t it?” he murmured and bent his head to nuzzle the rounded point of her shoulder. “How did I overlook such a delectable shoulder?”
She felt that familiar shiver of pleasure dance over her skin and closed her eyes to focus solely on the sensation. “You seem to be making up for—” She broke off the sentence, startled by a sudden series of hard, insistent raps. It took her a full second to realize that someone was knocking on the door to her suite.
The sharp
rap, rap, rap
was repeated again. This time followed by a muffled female voice calling, “Laura, are you in there?”
“It’s Tara,” she murmured in recognition, unable to recall a single other time when Tara had knocked on her door in the middle of the night. “I’d better see what she wants.”
Laura quickly untangled herself from Sebastian and rolled out of bed. On her way out of the room, she grabbed the robe the night maid had left lying on a corner of the bed and pulled it on.
“Just a minute,” she called when the rapping came again. Hurriedly she knotted the sash and pulled the door open.
“You are here,” Tara stated the obvious as her glance made a rapid survey of Laura’s tousled appearance. “I’m sorry to waken you, but your brother just called my room.”
“Trey?” Laura said with some surprise. “Why did he call you?”
“Evidently he has been trying to reach you, but you haven’t answered your phone, so he called to see if I knew where you were,” Tara explained. “He wants you to call him right away. He said it was important, but he wouldn’t tell me why.” Which clearly irritated her.
Laura dismissed the possibility his reason was anything earthshaking. “Knowing Trey, he probably took first place at some roping contest. I might as well call him, though. Thanks,” she said and closed the door before Tara could invite herself in. As she started back to the bedroom, the telephone rang. Laura picked up the extension in the sitting room. “Hello.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Trey’s familiar voice responded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. I couldn’t even get you on your cell phone.”
“I didn’t take it with me tonight.” Aware that Trey had absolutely no understanding of fashion, Laura didn’t even attempt to explain that the cell phone added too much bulk to her evening bag, ruining its line. “Why are you calling at this hour? Do you have any idea what time it is here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe two or three o’clock.” His tone made it clear that he didn’t know and didn’t care. He had something else on his mind. “Mom will call you tomorrow, I imagine, but . . .”
He paused, and in that hesitation, Laura knew immediately that something bad happened. “Trey, what’s wrong? It’s Granddad, isn’t it,” she guessed, tension knotting her stomach muscles.
“No. No, he’s fine. It’s Quint,” he said, referring to their older cousin, Quint Echohawk, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a Treasury agent right out of college.
“What about Quint?” She clutched the receiver a little tighter, bracing herself for bad news.
“He got shot in the leg. It broke one of the bones.” After a barely perceptible pause, Trey added, “He’s going to be worthless as a team-roping partner for a while.”
Laura sensed his attempt to make light of the incident, but she knew this had hit him hard. He and Quint had always been as close as brothers. Taking Trey’s cue, Laura searched for a light retort.
“What do you want to bet that when they hauled him off in the ambulance, the only thing he wanted to know was whether they got the bad guys.”
“Yeah, that would be Quint,” Trey agreed with a smile in his voice. “He always wants to finish anything he starts. It makes him real mule-headed sometimes.”
“Where is he now?” She heard faint stirrings of movement coming from the bedroom.
“In a Detroit hospital.”
“Aunt Cat must be worried sick about him.”
“She and Logan took off about an hour ago to fly there. According to Logan, Quint and his partner had gone to a farmhouse, following a lead they had on some guy suspected of illegally selling firearms. I guess they no more than got out of the car when somebody in the house opened fire on them.”
“At least he’s going to be all right.” Laura chose to dwell on the positive aspect.
“Yeah.” But the flatness of his voice revealed the apparent lack of comfort he took in that.
Sebastian emerged from the bedroom, fully clothed. “Just a sec,” Laura said into the phone and promptly covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s my brother,” she said to Sebastian as he moved toward her.
“I suspected as much,” he murmured and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it to press a warm kiss on her lips. “See you in England,” he said and crossed to the door.
The life seemed to go out of the room when he went, leaving it feeling empty and alien—something Laura had never experienced before. Suddenly she was very, very glad Trey was on the other end of the phone.
“Sorry,” she said into it.
“I guess Tara was there,” Trey guessed. “I should have known she’d hang around to find out why I was calling.”
Laura chose not to correct him. “Phone calls in the middle of the night generally bring bad news. Where’s Mother?”
“She and Laredo went into town for supper. Did I tell you Harry’s is up for sale?” Harry’s was the sole eating and drinking establishment in the small town of Blue Moon, located some fifty miles from the headquarters of the Triple C Ranch.
“I can’t imagine anyone buying that old place.” Laura sank onto a nearby chair and curled her legs under her, oddly eager to hear a bit of local gossip; gossip she wouldn’t have cared a whit about an hour ago.
“Neither can I,” Trey agreed. “Ever since Dy-Corp shut down the coal mine, Blue Moon has practically become a ghost town.” They talked a while longer, with Trey filling her in on the latest happenings in and around the ranch. “When are you coming home, Laura?” he asked at last.
“Not for a while yet. We’re flying to England the end of this week.” Laura smiled, anticipating seeing Sebastian again and launched into an explanation of meeting Sebastian, his acquaintance with the earl of Crawford and subsequent invitation to visit the manor house.
Trey’s only reply to that was, “You will be home in time for the big horse sale the first of June, won’t you? Mom’s counting on you to help with it.”
“I’d forgotten all about it.” The sale marked only the second time horses bred on the ranch had been sold separately from the biennial livestock auction. Just like the livestock auction, the horse sale was as much a large-scale social event as it was an auction. And the lone bright spot in the usual monotony of ranch life, as far as Laura was concerned. “I’ll be home in time for that,” she promised.
After an exchange of good-byes, Trey hung up and rocked back in an oversized swivel chair behind the den’s massive desk, his thoughts still troubled by the news about Quint. His glance drifted idly to the wide sweep of horns mounted above the fireplace’s mantelpiece.
The sound of shuffling footsteps pulled his attention from the old stone fireplace and swung it toward the den’s open door into the hall as his grandfather, Chase Calder, paused outside it. Age had stooped his tall frame and turned his dark hair an iron gray. There was a sagging of the skin across his hard and angular features, the cracked and weathered texture of it resembling old saddle leather. At first glance, his grandfather looked every bit of his eighty-plus years, but there was a vitality burning in his dark eyes that couldn’t be ignored.