God’s sake,” he groaned. “Let’s get out of here.”
Her gaze searched his hard, dark face, the eyes that blazed down into hers. He looked impossibly mature and experienced, and she knew she was out of her league. But she wanted to lie in his arms and let him love her. She wanted nothing in life more than to be alone with him now.
“I…” She swallowed. “I don’t know how…I’ve never had to…about precautions, I mean…”
He bent, brushing his hard mouth against her soft one briefly, silencing her. “Are you scared?”
“Yes.”
His nose nuzzled hers. “But you’d give yourself to me anyway.”
She clenched her teeth. “Yes.”
“And hate me afterward.”
Her slender shoulders lifted and fell. “No.”
Her expression touched him. “Do you love me that much?”
She lowered her eyes, but he tilted her chin up again and there was something new in his look, in his scrutiny of her face.
“Do you love me that much?” he whispered again.
Her eyes closed. “Yes!” she breathed.
His hand slid up her back into her long, thick hair and pulled her forehead against him, pressed it there as they moved to the rhythm of the music. “Precious,” he said in a tone that could have burned water. She hardly heard him over the wild beating of her heart. His lips smoothed her forehead, brushing it tenderly.
“I won’t make you pregnant,” he whispered. “Come with me.”
As if she had a choice, she thought shakily as she let him lead her off the dance floor. She’d never been so helpless in her life. All she could do was look at him with helpless need, love radiating from her oval face like fire from an open hearth.
He paid the bill and drew her out into the cold night air, tucked her in the car and drove across town without saying a single word.
Calhoun had a penthouse apartment with a private elevator and a view of Houston that was breathtaking. It was furnished in tans and browns, with African carvings and weavings mingled with Western paintings and Indian rugs. It was an apartment that was welcoming despite its purely masculine ambience.
“Do you like it?” Calhoun asked, watching her from the closed door.
“Very much,” she said, smiling. “It suits you.”
He came into the room, his eyes never leaving her face. “How about something to drink? I can make coffee.”
She shifted her eyebrows. “Coffee?”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Just because you got drunk with Justin doesn’t mean you can expect the same courtesy here.”
She shifted restlessly, her purse clutched against her waist. “Well, I didn’t mean to get drunk with Justin.”
“I’ll bet the pair of you could hardly walk the next morning.”
“We sort of leaned on each other,” she confessed. She searched his hard face. “He was afraid you were going to use your experience to take Shelby away from him. He didn’t come right out and say so, but it was implied.”
“As if I could hurt him like that,” he said curtly. His dark eyes wandered quietly over her face, tracing every soft line. “Did you care that I danced with her?”
She turned toward the window. “I like the scenery,” she said, trying to change the subject, trying to breathe normally.
“Yes, I like it, too,” he said finally. “I wanted something with a view of the city. And I have to spend a lot of time here on business, so that makes it a good investment.”
She heard his steps coming closer, and she could feel his warmth at her back, smell the clean, spicy scent of him.
Her pulse jumped as his lean hands caught her waist and pulled her against his big body. She heard his breath and felt it in her hair as he wrapped her up in his arms from behind, rocking her lazily as they watched the city lights spread out below them.
He inhaled the floral scent of her body and the clean, shampooed softness of her hair all at the same time. He bent his head and brushed his mouth against her neck through her silky hair.
“I miss you,” he said softly. “You haunt me.”
“You’ll get used to not having me around,” she said sadly. “After all, up until five and a half years ago, you and Justin had the house all to yourselves.”
“And then you moved in,” he mused, linking his lean hands in front of her. “We got used to running feet and laughter, to music in the living room and movies on television and teenage girls in and out and hot-rodding young men speeding up the driveway.”
“You were both very tolerant for old bachelors,” she said. “Looking back, I guess I really cramped your style.”
He stiffened a little, because it was true. She had at first. But now it hurt to look back, to remember his furtive affairs, his hidden amours. It hurt to think that there’d ever been a woman in his arms except Abby.
“A woman in the dark is just a body,” he said softly. “And I never gave my heart, Abby.”
“Do you have one?” she asked.
He turned her gently, putting her hand on his chest, over his white silk shirt, against hard, warm muscle and thick hair. “Feel it beat,” he whispered.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” He looked down at her hand, feeling his body tauten at the light touch. He moved her fingers across his chest to a hard male nipple and held her palm there, letting her feel.
She glanced up at him, her blue-gray eyes wide and searching as he stroked her hand against the hardness.
“That happens to women,” she whispered.
“And to men.” He gently pulled her closer, his hands moving into her hair as he bent his head. “Unbutton my shirt. I’m going to show you how to touch me.”
Her heartbeat sounded and felt unnaturally loud in the stillness of the room. But she didn’t protest. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons, and eventually she had the shirt out of his slacks and away from his broad, bronzed chest with its thick covering of hair.
He smiled at her faint embarrassment. “Here. Like this.” He pulled her hands against him in long, sensual strokes and watched their slender gracefulness as he drew them down to the wide belt around his slender hips. But when he tried to move them past it, she froze.
He searched her soft eyes quietly, sensing the turmoil in
