Page 70 of Texas Honor

“No,” she pleaded, trying feebly to turn her head. “Oh, you mustn’t!”

He didn’t insist. His hand slid back up to her face, brushing away the damp hair, tilting her chin so that he could look into her misty, dazed eyes above a mouth that was parted and softly swollen from his kisses.

“Was he ever able to make you want him?” he whispered softly.

“No...oh, not ever like this,” she sobbed, hating her inability to lie to him.

His fingers caressed her face gently. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said, his voice deep and slow as he watched her. “You’re pretty much a novice, despite your marriage. An experienced man knows how to make himself acceptable to a woman.”

She was still trying to get her breath back, and his body against hers was warm and hard and welcome. “You’ve...had women,” she whispered, searching the eyes that weren’t so hard after all.

He nodded. He looked down at her yielding body, then back up at her parted lips. “And with very little effort, I could have you,” he said quietly. “But that isn’t what I want. This was a nonverbal apology, nothing more. I don’t need the practice.”

Before she could react to that, he eased her away, steadying her. “Want something to drink?” he asked then, as casually as if they’d just met.

“A...a brandy.”

“Sit down. I’ll get it.”

She curled up in an armchair, her heart beating wildly, her eyes like green saucers in a face flushed with unexpected pleasure.

He dashed brandy into two snifters, passed her one and perched on the arm of her chair while she sipped at it with jerky motions.

“I...should go home,” she burst out, thinking out loud.

“Why?” he asked. “I won’t seduce you.” He tilted her chin up and looked into her eyes, noting her scarlet blush, her quickened breathing. “More than likely, I’d get you pregnant,” he said with more amusement than irritation.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she replied, her voice still a trifle unsteady. “I’m on the pill. I had a slight female dysfunction, and the doctor put me on it to regulate me. So I’m not...vulnerable that way.”

His eyebrows arched and he smiled slowly. “Then suppose you come up to bed with me.”

“I don’t believe in that kind of thing,” she said quietly.

“No wedding ring, no sex?” he taunted. “How old-fashioned of you, Miss Margaret.”

“Anyway,” she countered, staring at her drink, “sex isn’t all that fabulous for women.”

“Think so?” Again he tilted her chin to force her eyes up to his. “I’ve had women claw my back raw, and it wasn’t because I was hurting them.”

She flushed to the roots of her hair, barely able to breathe at all.

“I could make you claw me, too,” he breathed at her lips. “I could make you writhe like a wild thing under my body and scream with the need to have me.”

“You shouldn’t...say things like that,” she said brokenly.

“You’re more a virgin than a divorced woman with a child,” he returned, searching her eyes. “Was there any other man?”

“No,” she whispered. “Only...him.”

“In the ways that count, you’re untouched,” he murmured. “A walking green-eyed challenge. Too bad, Margaret, that we didn’t ignore the obstacles all those years ago and take what we really wanted from each other. I might have broken your young heart, but I’d have made you whole in every other way. We have an unusually potent chemical reaction to each other. We always did.”

She knew that, but it didn’t make her feel particularly good to have it reduced to technical terms.

He threw down the rest of his brandy and stood up, his back to her. “You’d better get some rest, honey. We’ll have a long trip ahead of us.”

“Yes. Of course.” She finished her own brandy, put the snifter down and stood up.

He turned, towering over her. “He cowed you, didn’t he?” he asked unexpectedly, his eyes narrow, calculating. “You’re nothing like the woman I remember. All that sweet wildness I used to watch in you is gone.”

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