“I might’ve been thinking about more than just your beauty mark,” he whispered. He shifted closer, covering half of her, and used his nose to nudge aside the collar of the tracksuit jacket so he could nibble her neck, then lowered his head and nuzzled her breast, rubbing his open mouth against the hard tip, taking love bites of it through her t-shirt, pushing at it with his tongue.
“You’d blush to know all the places my wandering mind has taken me. I’ve touched you, tasted you…” He wedged his hand down between them and cupped her sex. “…everywhere.”
Urged by gentle pressure, her thighs parted. She adjusted her hips to his advantage. He removed his hand only long enough to slide it into her waistband, over smooth skin and lace panties, then inside them where the hair was damp, and beneath it his fingers found her pliant and wet, more honeyed than she’d been in all his daydreams.
He slipped his thumb inside her. She arched up, inviting another stroke, and he obliged her, then he withdrew and with the slippery pad of his thumb traced small, teasing circles over the sensitive target. He kept that up, and sent two fingers deep, and God, she felt too incredible to be believed, so he tested just how good she felt by withdrawing his fingers before sliding them in again.
Her breath caught. His thumb added pressure. Another catchy breath, another clench around his fingers. She gasped his name.
“Wait. Don’t come yet.” He levered up and began working open the buttons of his fly.
To his utter shock, Kerra shoved him off her, kicked away the covers, and got up. She stood beside the bed, he lay sprawled on it on his back, and for the next several seconds, they just gaped at each other, breath rushing through open mouths, she looking as startled as he by her action.
Then he shouted, “What the fuck?”
Kerra yanked the sides of her jacket together and zipped it over her t-shirt so the damp spot molded to her nipple wouldn’t show. “I won’t be one of your ‘fuck anythings.’”
His eyes were blank, but when he realized what she was referring to, he got up and faced off with her. “That’s what this interruptus is about?” He flung his arm out to his side. “I only said that to make a point.”
“Oh, so it’s not true?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His arm dropped to his side.
She laughed softly, but there was no humor behind it.
He pushed his fingers up through his hair and walked a tight circle of frustration. He looked down at the bed. He looked at her breasts as though he could see the damp spot through the jacket. When his eyes lifted to hers, he said, “It’s not like that.”
“No?”
“No, dammit.”
“What sets me apart, Trapper? What makes me special?”
He copped an attitude. “I don’t know. Let’s see. Could it be your face? The silky hair I want to feel sliding across my belly? The hot body I want to finger paint? The way you move? Your voice? Name something. All I know is, ever since I laid eyes on you I’ve been one big boner.” He took a step toward her. “And forgive me for pointing out that you—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand, palm out. “Please don’t say something vulgar that’s going to make me angrier.”
“Hold on. You’re angry at me?”
“No, at myself.”
He smoldered, all six feet four of him rocking slightly, as he waited for her to elaborate.
“I saw how women react to you,” she said. “Furthermore, I saw how you know how they react to you. You’re everything bad-boy wrong, which makes you everything desirable, and, yes, even knowing better than to fall for the sexy charm, I did.” She gestured toward the bed. “But it wasn’t fair to you to let it go that far. I’m sorry.”
He folded his arms over his chest and cocked his hip, which was risky since his jeans remained unbuttoned and low-slung. He squinted one eye as he looked at her. “In addition to being bad-boy wrong, etcetera, know what else I am? Smart. And I have a built-in, fool-proof manure detector, and everything you just said is pure bullshit.”
She was about to deny it, but he overrode her.
“You wanted me moving inside you just as much as I wanted to be. You didn’t call it off because your better judgment suddenly asserted itself or you got turned off by my alley cat ways.
“No, you called it off because you still don’t trust me. You’re scared. You think I’m either a paranoid lunatic who dreams up conspiracy theories or an embittered son with so much pent-up rage against my famous father that I tried to kill him.”
“That’s not true!” she exclaimed.
“No?”
“If I didn’t trust you, if I was still afraid of you, would I be here?”
“Then what is it, Kerra?”
Matching him in angry volume, she said, “I don’t know how this is going to end.”
“This what? This quarrel? This—”
“This whole thing. The way you laid it out last night, we’re in a precarious situation. If it’s as dangerous as you indicate, the outcome could be that we both wind up dead.”
He dropped some of the attitude. “A valid concern. But you knew that last night. Before you made the choice to stick with me, I made it clear that if you did, you’d be taking a huge risk.”
With my life, yes, but not with my heart.
Those were the words in her mind, but she didn’t say them out loud.
Simply looking at him now in his dishevelment made her mouth water. She wanted badly to put her hands on him, pull him to her, feel him inside her and appease this craving that was as wonderful as it was terrible. If she thought that having sex would fix the problem, she would do it, and happily.
But along with the sexual yearning, she was also emotionally drawn to the man who’d had to live in the large shadow of his father.
Trapper didn’t whine about it. He didn’t tell a sob story to elicit pity. In fact, he rebuffed anything that smacked of compassion and sadness for him. Nor did he seem jealous of The Major. Trapper didn’t vie for his father’s celebrity. He did everything he could to avoid it.
So while he thumbed his nose at propriety and rebelled against authority, Kerra sensed that underneath the charm, and flippancy, and screw-you attitude, was a boy who’d been abandoned at age eleven. Young John Trapper had been unable to compete with the allure of fame, which his father had chosen over him.
She knew better than to open this up to discussion, of course. Wounded animals bit the tender hand extended to them. He would hate her for perceiving and exposing the anguish he suffered day after day.
He was in mourning, not over the loss of a dead parent, but a living one.
If she were foolish enough to let her heart get entangled with Trapper, he would break it. That’s what she didn’t want to risk.
They both reacted to the sudden knock on the door, but in different ways. Trapper lunged across the bed, grabbed his pistol, and made it to the window in the same wink of time that Kerra took a startled breath and slapped her hand over her jumping heart.
“It’s Carson.” Trapper let the curtain fall back into place, slid the chain free, and unlocked the door.
The lawyer, whom Kerra had met the night before, came in carrying two sacks from a fast food chain in one hand. In the other he had a grip on a pair of plastic shopping bags. He took in the rumpled bed, Trapper’s open jeans, and her dishabille.