moved out of the stables, heard her close the door. Head down, he’d taken a half-dozen steps when she called out.
“Daniel. I want you to know, I’m happy staying here,” she told him as he turned around. “Sometimes it’s a little … inconvenient. But I’ve come to see this ranch is my future.”
“That’s fine.” Totally her business. He tipped his head. “Good night.”
He’d begun to turn away when she interrupted again.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It shouldn’t matter what I believe.”
“It’s only until I turn thirty.”
By thirty he’d been well on his way to being successful, and happy, in his own right. But, again, not his concern.
“You don’t have to convince me.”
“I don’t want you to leave feeling sorry for me,” she pointed out. “I have everything any person could want or need.”
“Just make sure you don’t include freedom on that list.”
She growled, “It’s not a restriction.”
“No?”
“No.”
As she stood before him, defiant in the moonlight, his skin heated, muscles clenched, and as his gaze held hers, a dark, deep urge overwhelmed him, a primitive impulse that set his heart pumping all the more. She didn’t want his pity and, God save him, he didn’t want to show her any. But she wanted him to believe she wasn’t interested in too much beyond this parcel of land?
Miss Milton was a liar.
Prepared to tell her just that, he moved forward. He stopped an arm’s length away, searched her questioning eyes but then, rather than speak, he acted, circling her waist and bringing her mercilessly close. At the same time he pressed her in and her mouth opened to protest, his head came down, lowering, determined, over hers.
While her hands bunched and pushed against his chest, he held her. When muffled, incensed noises vibrated from her throat, he didn’t relent. Damn it, if he was going, he wanted to leave them both with at least a taste of what he’d felt bubbling and fermenting between them. He needed to show this woman what she already knew.
There was more to life than two months a year.
And gradually, as he’d known she would, Elizabeth came around to his way of thinking. Her fists loosened against his shirt until her fingertips were clinging rather than pushing him away. Her body, instead of objecting, relaxed and, bit by bit, dissolved. Best of all, her lips grew supple and parted, no longer refusing but inviting him in. Daniel smiled to himself.
Damn, it was good to be right.
But at the same moment his palms sculpted over and winged her shoulders in, Daniel also recognized a sliver of concern.
He couldn’t get involved like this with Elizabeth Milton, particularly now.
What the hell had he begun?
As Elizabeth melted against that amazing wall of heat, she couldn’t hold on to a thought, other than to know that this caress went above and beyond any she’d ever experienced, in real life or in dreams.
As Daniel’s strong arms urged her closer and her palms filed up beneath his coat and over the solid scope of his chest, she absorbed every ounce of the magic. Her heart beat so fast she feared it would burst any moment. He’d unleashed such a torrent of emotion from so deep inside she could barely get enough air.
Elizabeth sighed in her throat.
Daniel Warren kissed like a god.
As hot fingertips massaged her nape, with a teasing lack of speed, his mouth gradually left hers. Now was the time she should open her eyes, demand to know what the hell he thought he was doing, pouncing on her like that, forcing her to succumb. But that delicious syrupy feeling humming through veins was just so fine. She felt as if she were floating two feet off the ground. As if her blood were singing. That Daniel Warren was practically a stranger, as well as someone who could never empathize with her situation, didn’t quite register through the haze.
She only wanted him to kiss her again.
“Elizabeth?”
His voice was a husky whisper at her ear. The slide of his palm around her cheek left her trembling and leaning more into his touch. She felt the warmth of his breath on her forehead, on her temple. On reflex, her lips parted again and her face tipped toward his.
“Elizabeth, I can’t say I didn’t want to do that,” he murmured in a drugging, deep voice. “Doesn’t mean I should have.”
His words swirled around through her mind until, little by little, their meaning took hold. Then, all at once, her chest squeezed and eyes snapped open. He was looking at her, gaze dark with regret. In that moment, the reality of what he’d done, what she’d let him do, flooded Elizabeth’s senses until she prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her whole.
Good Lord, what must he think of her? One minute they were enmeshed in a heated discussion, the next she was twining herself around him like a clingy summer vine. Like a teenager her first time out necking. Elizabeth Milton was known not only for her spirit but also her decorum, and yet this man ignited fires within her that had reduced her to little more than a puddle. She’d never felt more vulnerable.
More alive.
Sucking in a breath, she dropped her arms, which had remained around his neck, and took an awkward step back. As his heat receded, the cool of the shadowed night enveloped her. Trembling, she drew her coat close.
“No need to apologize,” she said in a thick voice. Avoiding his gaze, she shrugged. “Sometimes, when emotions run high, things happen.”
“I want you to know, I don’t make a habit of dragging women into my arms like that.” He ran a hand through his hair, looked around. Out the corner of her eye, she saw him crack a lame smile. “Must be something in the air.”
She closed her eyes and withered. If she could turn back time and wipe out these past few moments, she’d do it in a blink. That she’d surrendered so completely was bad enough. Did he need to rub in the fact that he regretted it, too?
“Daniel, please don’t worry that I’ll give another moment’s thought to it.” She tilted her head and drawled, “I have been kissed before.”
He didn’t reply, didn’t move. Only his eyes glittered in the moonlight as time stretched out and, growing increasingly edgy, she wondered whether he would ever leave or call her bluff and announce she might have been kissed, but never like that.
But then he exhaled, took a look back over his shoulder toward the house and nodded once before he walked away. “Take care.”
Her pulse beating in her ears, Elizabeth watched Daniel
