Into His Keeping (11 page)

Coates gave Holdin no chance to respond as he went on. “I was part of the national fencing team while at Harvard. A large part of that was appreciating the standards gentlemen used to be judged by. Your generosity is a credit to your profession, Mr. Powell.”

Holdin sucked in a silent snarl at that obvious dumb jock insult that was meant to put him in his place. Apparently Coates wanted him to feel that
place
was considerably down the ladder from his own. Not likely. Also the reference to the fencing team was a male jab at proving he was as macho as any football jock but much more classy.

“Oh I agree,” Holdin concurred in a silky smooth tone. “There’s a lot to be said for a time when physical competition put an end to conflict between gentlemen. Pity we’re not so civilized today. However, I can’t imagine you, the surgeon, need to concern yourself with your patient’s finances. But since you have, be assured Jill’s expenses are covered. It’s not charity when it’s family. Thank you for your concern. I look forward to meeting you Monday, if not before.”

“Indeed,” Coates responded in as confident a tone as Holdin had used. There was not even a flicker of intimidation in it at the reference to physical competition. “Jill is an unusual woman. I take an interest in everything she needs. Right now she needs to be in the hospital. The sooner the better.”

“Thank you. I’ll see what I can do about that.”

“I’ll expect you then,” Coates acknowledged.

Holdin dropped the phone in its cradle and eased back in his chair to scowl at the door across from him. The doctor was an irritating wrinkle. The man apparently wanted Jill and wasn’t backing off. Holdin could smell competitive drive flowing through the phone when the bastard grasped the fact that Jill was neither charity nor an unwanted responsibility.

So his competition was a brain surgeon? Could have been worse, could have been a “rocket scientist”. Holdin grinned harshly at his own joke. Didn’t matter, Jill had been his long before the
king of the bastard nerds
had seen her. She’d be his long after too.

His smile turned into pure animal bared teeth after several more calls. He had a very clear picture of the fact that Dr. Coates was one of the finest neurosurgeons in the country. The bastard was extremely well respected and a bunch of other smack that made his reputation impeccable. This paragon had made it clear that his medical recommendation was to get Jill back in the hospital as soon as possible. Holdin couldn’t ignore that. He hated it because it fucking scared him to death. The bastard might have made it plain that he had a personal interest but he still was her doctor and it was unlikely a man with his reputation would treat her medical condition lightly.

Holdin’s problem was how to get her to consent to returning to Dallas right away. He wasn’t in any position to order her back. He’d like to be in several positions with her, but not that one. Jesus! Anger rolled through him and he exploded out of his chair, sending it crashing to the floor. Pacing over to the fireplace and back across the large showplace study, he wanted to rip something apart.

There was also the publicity crap to consider. As soon as he showed up at the hospital in Dallas, someone would call the press. From there things would probably get wild if there was no information on why he was there. Even if the press were restricted from the hospital grounds, someone would pay an employee to get information.

His publicist would have to put out a statement explaining his involvement with Jill and Drifter. The thought of being forced to explain himself and invade his son’s privacy like that, not to mention Jill’s, caused bile to rise in his throat. If he said nothing, it would be worse. The press would make up explanations, printing them as if they were fact. After those were out, it was almost impossible to correct them. Pacing furiously back to the fireplace, he swore viciously.

Holdin’s hand closed on some nonsensical item the decorator had carefully placed on the mantel when the study door opened and shut quietly. There was no need to turn around. She was in the room with him. The wild creature who’d been looking for her these last fifteen years felt her every breath. He would have known she entered the room even if it were full of people.

Chapter Five

“You’re upset,” Jill stated calmly as she stood in front of the closed door and looked at his big back. His head was bent and his arm resting on the mantel was tensed as he gripped the base of a heavy candlestick. He vibrated with energy and she wouldn’t have been surprised if her hair suddenly stood on end in response to the static electricity snapping through the room.

Both she and his mother had heard a muffled crash then silence a few minutes ago. Carol had sighed and shook her head. Jill had chosen to investigate even though Carol had advised against it. Now in the huge, perfectly appointed office, she understood Carol’s comment about letting the beast wind down first.

Here, in an overwhelming atmosphere of sophistication, hardwood panels and soft leather chairs, was the wild. It lived in the man as surely as it did in any remote wilderness den.

“Yes,” Holdin answered in a quiet hiss. It was pointless to lie. He didn’t want lies between them, not even small ones.

“Are you going to throw that?” Jill spoke softly as she would to calm any wild creature she couldn’t avoid.

“I was thinking about it.”

“It’s a childish way to express emotions,” Jill commented as if they were discussing the weather.

“Yes,” he agreed with no excuses.

“I’d rather you didn’t. It’s a bit frightening to see you like this.”

“I wouldn’t throw it at you.”

“No. I didn’t think you would. It’s still frightening. What has you this out of control?”

Holdin slowly released the candlestick. Turning to face her across the room, he shoved his hands in his pockets. Somehow he wasn’t expecting the sight of her to still have gut-kicking strength. Maybe it was the situation that made looking at her so desperate. Pain knotted his stomach and he had to grit his teeth not to gasp as he looked at her calmly standing there. Her hands were clasped in front of her, her lush body tense as she watched him.

His eyes drank her in and he had to breathe deeply again to absorb the singular pain of looking at Jill. Fragile, precious and so possibly fleeting.

“I just spoke with Dr. Coates,” Holdin told her with very deliberate calm.

Jill’s head tilted as she regarded him. “So you need to smash something now? Is this a male thing that I’ll never understand? Or can you explain it to me?”

“His medical recommendation is for you to get back in the hospital as soon as possible,” Holdin told her flatly.

“Yes. He’s an overly cautious sort,” Jill agreed, and a little smile played around her mouth.

“It’s not just caution, baby girl. He’s your doctor.” Holdin hated her smile when she mentioned the arrogant doctor. He had no right to ask her what it meant.

“Uh-huh. What does that have to do with your need to get violent?”

“I’m not violent. My reactions are magnified because of you. You make everything
more
—more important, more dangerous, more urgent.” Holden walked slowly toward Jill.

The plush carpet completely muffled his steps as he moved across the room. Jill had the impression of a large golden cat stalking her as he moved. He flowed with silent power that rippled just beneath his skin. It was in the sensuous flex of perfectly honed muscles and nimble coordination that made him poetry in motion. Even just walking he was beautiful and now slightly dangerous. The edge of his emotional turmoil made him fascinating and frightening.

“What?” Jill nearly stuttered as he prowled into her personal space. Big, lean and intense, he was intimidating and exciting. Her lower body clenched as he rested a forearm on either side of her head against the door. His body felt hot as it pressed into hers, pinning her against the hard panels behind her. He had eased into her, slowly pressing himself up her. The controlled tension of his movements made them a caress.

Jill’s hands fluttered to his hips, lightly resting on his belt as she sucked in air. He was looming over her, pressing into her and it became impossible to breathe as those unblinking eyes drilled into her. At last his head bent and he brushed his lips along hers.

Male lips nuzzled hers and the cat metaphor came back to mind. She opened to him with a soft moan. His arms left the door to move down her body as their mouths merged in a slow surrender to decadence. His tongue licked its way into her mouth while his large hands cupped her bottom, pulling her hips away from the door. She almost heard her nerves sizzle with each touch as they lit up like sparklers under his fingertips. His hands slid down the back of her thighs as the kiss deepened, his mouth molding hers in growing intensity. Very slowly he pulled her legs up around his hips.

Jill smoldered with his every move. His touch burned though their clothes as her V’d hips settled on the branding iron beneath his jeans. He was stealing her soul with the deep kiss. The gentle, insistent touch to her body was not exactly a request. It was more an acknowledgment of how much she wanted to give to him. He wasn’t rushing, but he wasn’t stopping. His command of her need and control of his own seduced her to the edge of surrender. She wanted to give up all thought and just feel. The hard evidence of his attention held in such tantalizing control was intoxicating.

Her back was pressed to the door as her legs locked around him and Holdin lifted his mouth from hers. His hands moved over her ass in firm caresses as he looked down into her face.

“Do you feel what you do to me? Every time I look at you, this is what I want,” Holdin crooned into her ear as his mouth moved across her cheek and down to the soft spot just below her earlobe. “You go to my head and I can’t keep you out.” The deep timbre of his voice whispered around them between kisses down her neck.

“Perfect. So perfect. You fit my hands, Jill. You flow over my resistance with less than a glance.” His hands moved up to the small of her back and slid around to her hips while tunneling under the loose polo shirt she was wearing. She wore it outside her pants to cover the curves she thought were too round.

His hard palms pressed into yielding flesh at her rib cage and kept moving up. The skin-on-skin touch made her gasp and his mouth was there to drink it in. He sucked her tongue into the hot depths of his mouth and explored it with his own. His palms moved over the stiff sides of her bone-reinforced bra and stopped. Not really cupping her, the heels of both hands pressed into the give of her breasts, pressing them together. His mouth lifted off her again.

“I need to touch you.” His mouth moved down her neck again.

Jill leaned her head back on the door. She was sinking into the world he created and she had no intention of fighting it. He was magnificent, sexy and said he couldn’t get enough of her. She wasn’t stupid. He’d had the facts placed in his face as clearly as she could make them. Sexy beast was damn well able to make his own choices. If her choices were to get another taste of paradise in Holdin’s arms…or do some idiot noble thing and “save” him from himself, well, noble was overrated.

“If you think this is fighting you, we need to talk about your life experiences,” Jill panted.

Holdin smiled into her neck as his hands moved under her restrained breasts and lifted the weight of them. His mouth ate her lips again as he held those two heavy globes while his thumbs caressed cloth-covered nipples.

“How does that feel?” he asked softly.

“Mmmm. How do you know that feels so good?” Jill wanted to know. “Taking the weight off my body is almost as good as…well, it’s better than chocolate.” Jill’s fingers dug into his shoulders as she arched into his hands. The arch pushed her pelvis into him as well. Damp heat rubbed up against hard flame and two zippers scraped together. Lifting and caressing her breasts at the same time was a sneaky move that she’d have to thank some brilliant woman for teaching him.

Holdin was smiling as they nibbled around each other’s mouths, talking softly and touching. “I read about it once,” he confessed. “Besides, the girls are so well strapped in, who could miss the bones required to support them?”

“Are you complaining about my bra?” Jill sank her fingers into his hair and pulled his head back so she could see his face. At the same time she flexed her hips and dug her heels into his ass to make sure the maypole in his pants would feel the damp heat her body was dying to drench him with.

“I’m admiring the enviable job it does,” he insisted. His heavy-lidded eyes couldn’t stay on her face and sank to the image of his hands moving under her shirt. “I’d like to admire it more closely.”

Jill laughed. “I’m pinned to the door. No way this shirt is coming off.”

One of Holdin’s hands shot down to cup her sweet, generous ass again and support most of her weight. The other was suddenly around her shoulders, his palm cradling the back of her head in a firm grip as he swung them away from the door.

He carried her smoothly to the wide leather sofa that faced the enormous hearth. In slow motion he lowered her body so her upper back and head were supported by a pillow and the overstuffed sofa arm. Her legs were still wrapped around his waist as he lowered her. One of his knees deeply indented the leather seat while the other braced him on the floor.

When he was sure she was relaxed into the sofa, his hands went to the hem of the polo shirt and pulled it up to her armpits. Facing him was a blindingly white monument to modern engineering in all its boned and ribbed stiffness, thoroughly imprisoning the soft flesh he needed to touch. He gazed at it a minute.

“Whatcha gonna do now, bad boy?” Jill chuckled.

“Help myself to the goods,” he answered, never taking his eyes off it.

“Holdin. Anyone could walk in the door. I can’t get back into this thing fast enough to avoid serious embarrassment.”

Holdin reached over her head to the end table on the other side of the sofa arm and picked up a cordless phone. He punched three numbers in with his thumb and put it to his ear, still studying the bra.

“Hey. How’s the brake job coming?” he asked into the phone. “Really. Shit. Do me a favor, Dad. Insist on taking a look at the transmission while you have the car up. Yeah. None of your business. Make sure it takes at least another hour. Thanks.” Holdin hung up and grinned.

His hands went to the shoulder strap clamps and flipped the little tabs up. A quick pull on the straps and both of them came free. He grabbed the tops of the cups and began peeling them down.

“Damn! Someone taught you that.” Jill gasped as he slowly exposed her heaving breasts. “No one writes an article on the quickest way to get into an industrial bra.”

“It’s obvious,” Holdin murmured distractedly as severe cotton gave way to pink, pouty nipples. He stopped peeling the cups down and let them hold her up for him from just under those enticing tips. “Jesus! Oh damn,” Holdin breathed as reverently as a prayer while staring down at the amazing woman beneath him.

Her excited breathing made the generous mounds tremble. Their puckered tips danced brazenly before him. She was half propped up so the heavy globes seemed to strain over the peeled-down cups. Her legs, though still jean-clad, were spread wide to wrap loosely around his hips as he braced over her and she was once again his angel face with her sin-inducing body spread for his pleasure.

Jill looked into his glazed eyes and let the flames of his desire lick over every inch of her. He made her beautiful with his gaze. It was as if he invented the squirming wench who slowly lifted her arms and clasped hands over her head while arching her back to thrust nearly naked breasts up at him. The rumbling growl that moved up his chest as his body tensed above her was too gratifying. She drank it in and became what he saw when he looked at her.

He’d always done this to her. His hedonistic approval of her was like sinking into an enveloping chocolate-cream bath. Holdin’s eyes on her was a richly wicked pleasure that painted a normally conservative woman in lavish excess. Heat gushed over her and need for his touch pierced her most private flesh with painful desperation. Watching this huge male tremble as he drank her with his eyes was almost more stimulation than she could take and it seemed she’d already passed the point where she’d refuse him nothing. It hadn’t even been a speed bump.

“Holdin,” Jill murmured softly. “I need you.”

“Right here, baby girl. I’m here. There’s got to be a few rules. We’re not doing anything that endangers you. Understand?” He looked into her eyes and waited for compliance.

Jill regarded his stiff form braced with one arm clutching the back of the sofa and the other hand fisted beside her rib cage. He was very deliberately holding himself off her and not touching. “Tell me what you mean.”