Page 107 of The Honorable Texan
“I dated,” she replied.“I just couldn’t afford to get serious about anybody.My father scraped and begged and borrowed to get the money to finance my nursing education,” she told him.“Even Mike…contributed to it.”She drew in a steadying breath and locked her fingers together on her lap.“It would have been so pettyof me to throw all that up, just so I could go to parties and get drunk with the other students.”
“Surely there wasn’t much of that, at a community college?”
She laughed.“You’d be surprised.There was all too much, for my taste.But I didn’t live on campus.I lived at home and commuted.”She met his searching gaze.“That party I was at, when Leo was attacked—the woman who gave it was a college classmate who works for a doctor in our practice.I knew she sort of had a reputation.I guess I should have realized how wild things would get, but I was so depressed that I let her pressure me into going to the party.It was a mistake.”
“A lucky mistake, for my brother,” Rey said gently.“He might have been killed, if you hadn’t come along when you did.”He scowled.“You said, you ran at the attackers, waving your arms.”
She nodded.“Mike taught me about shock tactics,” she said sadly.“I was afraid it wouldn’t work, but I had no weapon, no other way of stopping them.So I took the risk.”
“I’m grateful that you did.”He shook his head slowly.“But it was an act of lunacy, Meredith.You could have been lying on the grass next to Leo.”
“But I wasn’t.”She hunched her shoulders as if she felt a chill.“I think there might be a force behind every single chain of events,” she said thoughtfully.“I don’t believe in chaos,” she elaborated.“The body is such a messy, beautiful miracle.A single cell has chemical processes that are so complex, so meticulously crafted, that I can’t believe life is an accident.If it isn’t accidental, it has to be planned.”She shrugged.“That’s simple logic.That’s why I don’t think God is a myth.”
They were silent for a moment.“You’re the most intriguing woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured, and his dark eyes fell to her soft, full mouth.
“Surely not?”she asked demurely.“I don’t have any secrets left.”
“That’s what you think,” he said in a soft, low tone.
She looked up and he moved toward her, one hand catching the wooden headboard as he levered his hard mouth down against her soft one.
Her hands instinctively went to his chest, but its muscular warmth was fascinating.She’d never done anything really intimate with her infrequent dates, having been completely turned off by men with fast reputations.She preferred gentlemen to rounders.She knew that Rey had been a rounder.She wanted to draw away.She really did.
But Rey Hart was completely out of her experience.He wasn’t aggressive and insistent, as one of Meredith’s rare dates had been.He didn’t rush at her.He didn’t insist.He wasn’t insulting with the speed of his advances.He simply bent and kissed her, slowly and gently, with nothing more intimate than his hard, tender lips touching hers.He nibbled her upper lip and lifted his mouth slowly.
“You’re doing a surfboard imitation,” he murmured.“There’s no need.I’m too good a cattleman to rush my fences.”
She was trying to understand the slow, sensuous speech when his lips came down on hers again and caressed her upper lip.Her hands pressed flat against his muscular chest.She liked the way he felt.She could feel the quick, strong pulse of his heart under her palms.She could feel the growing rise and fall of his breathing.
His teeth nibbled her lips again, tenderly, and shefound her hands moving under his arms and around him.She wanted to be held close, tight.She wanted him to envelop her against him.She wanted something more than this torturous teasing of his mouth on hers.
She made a husky, high-pitched little cry into his mouth and her nails bit into the solid muscles of his back.
“What do you want?”he whispered just above her lips.
“Kiss me,” she moaned huskily.
“Kisses are dangerous, didn’t you know?”he murmured, smiling against her responsive mouth.“They can be very addictive.”
She was following his lips mindlessly.Her body was on fire.She’d never felt such headlong desire.Belatedly she realized that his hands were at her rib cage.Whether by accident or design, they were moving slowly up and down, up and down, so that his long fingers just lightly brushed the underswell of her breasts.It was extremely provocative.It was arousing.
She caught her breath as they moved ever closer to entrapment, and her eyes locked into his.
“Don’t you like it this way?”he asked at her lips, brushing his mouth against them.
“Like…it?”she murmured mindlessly.Her body was reaching up toward those tormenting hands.She was shivering with every pulsating motion of her body, trembling with new and exciting surges of pleasure.
He laughed softly, sensuously.“Never mind.”He lifted a hand to her hair and tugged out the hairpins, so that her beautiful long hair fell down around her shoulders.He tugged aside the top she was wearing, so that her shoulder was bare.Then he bent to it with his mouth, and she felt the warm, moist press of his lips right in the hollow of her shoulder.
Her nails dug into him.She lifted toward his mouth with a hoarse moan as she felt the slow tracing of his tongue against skin that had never known a man’s touch.She was on fire.She was going to go up in flames right here.She didn’t want to think, see, hear anything.She only wanted Rey to keep on touching her, to keep on holding her, to never, never stop…!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Just when theworld was spinning away in a warm, pleasurable oblivion, the sound of loud, urgent footsteps echoed down the hall and brought Rey upright.
He looked at her with narrow, blank eyes as the sound grew louder.He cursed under his breath and got to his feet, keeping his back to her as he moved to the window, gripped the curtains and stared out at the pasture beyond.
Meredith dragged the bedspread up under her arms, over her clothes, and tried to steady her breathing.When she remembered what she and Rey had been doing, she blushed.
