stop!” she wailed. “You cannibal...!”
“How does it feel to be back?” he asked, walking back the way they came in.
“Nice,” she admitted. She tucked her cold hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I’d forgotten how big this country is, how unspoiled and underpopulated. It’s a wonderful change from a crowded, polluted city, although I do love New York,” she added, trying to convince him she meant it.
“New York,” he reminded her, “is a dangerous place.”
She stiffened again, turning to study his face, but she couldn’t read anything in that bland expression. Cade let nothing show—unless he wanted it to. He’d had years of practice at camouflaging his emotions.
“Most cities are,” she agreed. “The country can be dangerous, too.”
“It depends on your definition of danger,” he returned. He looked down at her with glittering eyes. “You’re safe as long as I’m alive. Nothing and no one will hurt you on this ranch.”
Tears suddenly misted her eyes, burning like fire. She swallowed and looked away. “Do I look as if I need protection?” She tried to laugh.
“Not especially,” he said coolly. “But you seemed threatened for an instant. I just wanted to make the point. I’ll protect you from mountain lions and falling buildings, Abby,” he added with a hint of a smile.
“But who’ll protect me from you, you cannibal?” she asked with a pointed stare, her old sense of humor returning to save her from the embarrassment of tears.
“You’re just as safe with me as you want to be,” he replied.
She looked into his eyes, and for an instant they were four years in the past, when a young girl stood poised at the edge of a swimming pool and offered her heart and her body to a man she worshipped.
Without another word, she turned around and started back out into the snow.
As she walked toward the truck, huddled against the wind, her mind suddenly went backward in time. And for an instant, it was summer, and she was swimming alone in the pool at Cade’s house one night when her father was in the hospital.
She’d been eighteen, a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Her father, far too ill during that period of her life to give her much counsel, hadn’t noticed that she was beginning to dress in a way that caught a lot of male attention. But Cade had, and he’d had a talk with her. She’d marched off in a huff, hating his big-brother attitude, and had defiantly gone for a swim that night in his own pool. There was no one around, so she had quickly stripped off her clothes and dived in. That was against the rules, but Abby was good at breaking them. Especially when they were made by Cade McLaren. She wanted him to look at her the way other men did. She wanted more than a condescending lecture from him, but she was too young and far too naive to put her growing infatuation into words.
She’d been in the pool barely five minutes when she’d heard the truck pull up at the back of the house. Before she had time to do any more than scramble out of the pool and pull on her jeans, she heard Cade come around the corner.
She was totally unprepared for what happened next. She turned and Cade’s dark eyes dropped to her high, bare breasts with a wild, reckless look in them that made her breath catch in her throat. He just stood there, frozen, staring at her, and she didn’t make a move to cover herself or turn away. She let him look his fill, feeling her heart trying to tear out of her chest when he finally began to move toward her.
His shirt was open that night, because he’d just come in from the corral, and the mat of thick black hair over the bronzed muscles of his chest was damp with sweat. He stopped a foot in front of her and looked down, and she knew that all the unspoken hunger she’d begun to feel for him was plain in her wide, pale brown eyes.
Without a word, he bent and lifted her. Very, very gently, he brought her body to his and drew her taut breasts against his chest, letting her feel the rough hair against her soft, sensitive skin in a caress that made her moan and cling to him, while her eyes looked straight into his and saw the flash of triumph in them.
He turned and carried her into the house, up the stairs and into his own bedroom, and laid her down on the bed. And then he sat there, with one hand on the bed beside her to support his weight, and looked at her again, letting his dark eyes feast on the soft, pink bareness of her body. She wasn’t even aware of being wet, of her body soaking the coverlet. All she saw, all she knew, was Cade’s hard, dark face and his eyes.
Finally, he moved and his fingers traced a pattern from her shoulder down over her collarbone. She held her breath as they kept going down, and she felt the slow, sweet tracing of them on the curve of her breasts—exploring, tantalizing with the light pressure—until they reached the burgeoning peak and caught it lightly between them.
She gasped, arching at the unexpected surge of pleasure, and his eyes looked straight down into hers.
“Hush,” he whispered then. “You know I won’t hurt you.”
“Yes,” she whispered back, as if the walls could hear them, her eyes wide with unexpected pleasure. “I...I want you...to touch me.”
“I know.” He bent, one hand still cupping her, and she lifted her arms hesitantly until they were around his neck. He looked into her eyes as his warm, hard mouth brushed hers, so that he could see the reaction in them. “Open your mouth for me, Abby,” he breathed, moving his hand to tip up her chin, “just a little more....”
She obeyed him mindlessly and felt the delicious probing of his tongue between her lips, working its way slowly, sensuously, into her mouth. She gasped, moaning, and he eased down so that she could feel his bare chest against her breasts. She lifted herself, clinging, and for one long, unbearably sweet moment she felt his warmth and weight and the fierce adult passion of a man’s kiss.
She thought she imagined a tremor in his hard arms before he suddenly released her, but when he sat up again he was as calm outwardly as if he’d been for a quiet walk. His eyes went down to her breasts and drank in the sight of them one last time before his big hand caught the coverlet and tossed it carelessly over her bareness.
“You wanted to know,” he said gently, holding her hand tightly in his as if to soften the rejection, “and I’ve shown you. But this is as far as it goes. I care too much to seduce you just for an hour of pleasure.”
She swallowed, studying his hard face, her body still tingling from the touch of his fingers, her mouth warm from the long, hungry kiss they’d shared. “Should I be ashamed, Cade?” she asked.
He brushed the damp hair away from her face. “Of what?” he asked tenderly. “Of wanting to know how it felt to be touched and kissed by a man?”
She drew in a deep, slow breath. “Not...by a man,” she corrected. “By you.”
The impact of that nervous confession was evident on his face. He hesitated, as if he wanted desperately to say something but thought better of it. His jaw tautened.
“Abby,” he said, choosing the words carefully, “you’re eighteen years old. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, a lot of the world to see, before
