experienced. More moving than a kiss. More arousing than the most intimate commingling of flesh between a man and a woman. And not nearly enough to satisfy the surge of desire boiling through his blood.
Decency be damned! If she’d let him, he’d have taken her with all the speed and fervour at his command. Locked himself deep inside her and let the devil take the hindmost. Sold his soul for the thrill of bringing her to orgasm, and then, when she was helpless and liquid around him, filling her with the rush of his own release.
He didn’t because, even as he rose up and over her in the dark, she said in a small, sad voice, “I know. And we can’t.”
Defeated, he fell back to the hay, the explosive hiss of his escaping breath betraying more eloquently than words what it cost him to ignore the rapacious demands of a body never more vibrantly alive, and submit instead to the belated tug of conscience.
“No,” he said glumly. “We can’t. But if we could, I’d love you all night long. And the next time someone asked if there’s a special man in your life, you wouldn’t say you’re still waiting for him to show up, because—”
“Leo, please! I’m so confused…so tired….”
“Yeah, me, too.” He expelled another breath and felt it balloon above his face in chilly condensation. Now that the heat of the moment had passed, the air was penetratingly cold. Sliding his arm over her waist, he tugged her close enough that she was molded against him, thigh to thigh, hip to hip, breast to chest.
She burrowed her head against his shoulder and uttered a little moan. Of protest? Misery? He couldn’t be sure. The only certainty was that it was colder than a witch’s thorax in that room, and horse blankets and hay alone weren’t enough to ward off the creeping chill of winter.
“Your virtue’s safe,” he said, “but if we don’t conserve body heat, we’ll both wind up dead before morning. Cuddle up, sweetheart, and try to get some sleep or you’ll look like hell tomorrow.”
She supposed she did—get some sleep, that was—because after some initial skittishness, a great feeling of calm overtook her and the next time she became aware of her surroundings, a pale, cold light filtered through the square of window on the far wall. The second thing she noticed was that her legs were snugly pinned by Leo’s, and his blue eyes were watching her with the shuttered expression of a man not about to reveal a hint of what he was thinking.
But if the workings of his mind remained a mystery, she was left in little doubt about her own. Embarrassment and guilt swept over her in equal measure. How could she have allowed him to kiss her—to come disgracefully close to making love to her? And how would she ever again face Deenie without cringing?
“No need to look so stricken, Ava,” Leo said. “Neither of us surrendered to our baser instincts in sleep. If anyone asks, you can truthfully say you upheld your scruples in the face of adversity.”
“And what will you say, should anyone ask you?” she retorted, immeasurably ticked off that he sounded so unruffled when she was all of a-dither at finding his thigh flung over her hip and the lovely warm length of his torso pressed up against hers.
“That you snore,” he said blandly.
“I certainly do not!”
“How do you know? Did you ask the last man you slept with?”
“That’s none of your business,” she said, not about to admit that the closest she’d come to “sleeping” with anyone was in the back seat of her prom date’s car when she was eighteen—a disastrous, fumbling affair which had ended when he’d suffered the humiliation of premature ejaculation before he’d divested her of her bra—and a couple of semi-hot dates with an ambulance driver when she was in nursing school.
“No,” Leo said. “I guess it’s not.” He lifted the blankets and let a gust of cold air sweep away the cosy warmth between their bodies. “And lying here speculating won’t get my vehicle out of the ditch.”
He rolled cautiously to his feet, stretched guardedly, and reached for his sheepskin jacket. “You planning to spend the day down there, Ava?” he inquired, when she didn’t rush to join him.
“No,” she said, eyeing her pantyhose which sprawled wantonly over a saddle rack. “I’m waiting for you to leave so that I can dress without an audience.”
“Dress?” To her horror, he picked up her stockings and dangled them from one hand the way a husband might. With intimate familiarity. “If you’re talking about climbing into these, you might as well forget it. They’re still soaking wet. And your shoes,” he added, peering at the pitiful things which lay side by side on the floor like two drowned rats, “aren’t any better. You’ll have to throw yourself on the mercy of the lady of the house—always assuming she’s more charitably disposed toward us this morning than she was last night.”
The lady of the house proved more than accommodating, as did her husband. She sent a pair of socks, boots a size too large, and an invitation to breakfast, while he hooked a tractor to Leo’s vehicle and hauled it out of the ditch. By ten o’clock, Ava and Leo were on their way, fortified with home-cured ham and farm fresh eggs, and with nothing to show for their overnight mishap but the faint whiff of horses clinging to their clothing.
That, and a smothering air of disquiet.
CHAPTER THREE
“ASI understand it, coming home for the holidays is supposed to be a happy time,” Leo observed acidly, as they approached the outskirts of Owen’s Lake. “Unless you want to arouse the suspicions of everyone from the family dog to the town mayor, I recommend you trade in the look of long-suffering misery for something a little more cheerful and upbeat.”
Ava shot him a poisonous glare. “Forgive me if I’m not as adept at covering up my sins as you appear to be!”
“A minor indiscretion hardly amounts to sin, Ava. Stop blowing last night out of proportion and focus on today. If anyone’s to blame for what happened back there in the stable, I am. So leave me to deal with it.”
Easy for him to say! He didn’t harbour a secret passion for someone who was strictly off limits. He wasn’t the one who’d been ready to abandon his scruples and betray his best friend for the dubious pleasure of one night of illicit love. “And if I can’t?”
“You will if you concentrate on enjoying the kind of good, old-fashioned Christmas you’ve been missing for the last three years.”
It wasn’t fair that, despite having spent the night on the floor in a stable, he managed to exude an aura of masculine sexuality so appealing that she went weak at the knees. Turning to stare out of the window before she forgot herself so far as to start drooling, Ava saw that he had a point. Owen’s Lake was decked out with a vengeance for the season. Last night’s blizzard had given way to blue skies and the cold clear brilliance of a northern winter sun, as different from Africa’s molten heat as diamonds from rubies.
Platinum glittered from icicles draping the eaves of the grand Victorian homes typical of Owen Heights, the exclusive neighborhood where she’d been born. Huge holly wreaths hung on wrought-iron gates. Illuminated reindeer pulling sleighs romped across lawns buried under a thick quilting of snow. Lampposts sported miniature fir trees draped in sparkling lights.
Half a mile farther along the boulevard, Leo turned the Expedition
