CHAPTER SEVEN

“Oh!” Arabella gasped. She scrambled into a sitting position, painfully aware of how much cleavage she was showing, not to mention the liquid way the satin adhered to her slender curves.

Ethan slammed the door behind him, his face unreadable. He was bareheaded and he looked very tired and worn, but the light in his eyes was fascinating. He stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman’s body before, lingering on the thrust of her breasts under the satin with its exquisite, lacy trim.

“My God,” he breathed finally. “You could bring a man to his knees.”

It wasn’t what she’d expected him to say, but it made her efforts with her appearance worthwhile. “I could?” she echoed blankly as delight made her face radiant.

He moved toward her. His shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and he looked rough and dangerous and very sexy with his hair disheveled and that faint growth of beard on his deeply tanned face.

“Is the bra really necessary, or couldn’t you get it off?” he asked as he sat down beside her on the coverlet.

She smiled shyly. “I couldn’t get it off,” she admitted, lifting the cast. “I still can’t use these fingers.”

He smiled gently. “Come here.” He tugged her forward and reached around her, his lean, rough-skinned hands pushing the straps down over her arms to give him access to the fastening. But the bodice was loose and it fell to her waist, giving him a total view of her breasts in their brief, lacy covering.

He caught his breath. His body made a quick, emphatic statement about what her curves did to it and he laughed even through the discomfort. “My God,” he said, chuckling deeply.

“What is it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Don’t ask.” He reached behind her and unfastened the bra, amused at her efforts to catch the front as it fell. She held it against her, but one of his hands went to her smooth, bare back and began to caress it gently.

“Let it fall,” he whispered against her lips as he took them.

It was the most erotic experience of her life, even more than the interlude by the swimming hole, because she was a woman now and her love for him had grown. She released the fabric and her good arm went up around his neck, lifting her breasts.

He drew back to look down at them with pure male appreciation. His fingers touched her, and he looked into her eyes, watching the pupils dilate as he teased the soft contour of her breast and brushed his forefinger tenderly over the taut nipple. She bit back a moan and his free hand lanced into the thick hair at her nape and contracted. He held her prisoner with delicious sensuality while his other hand snaked to her waist and around her, lifting her body in a delicate arch.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he said, lowering his eyes and then his hard, warm mouth to the swollen softness of her breast.

She watched his mouth open as it settled on her, felt the soft, warm suction, felt the rough drag of his tongue, the faint threat of his teeth and a sound she’d never made pushed out of her throat.

He heard it. His arousal grew by the second, until he was shaking with the force of it. She was everything he’d ever wanted. Young, virginal, achingly receptive to his advances, glorying in his need of her, giving of herself without reservation. He could barely believe what was happening.

His dark eyebrows drew together in harsh pleasure as he increased the pressure of his mouth, feeling her shiver as the intensity of the caress grew. He felt her nails digging into his back and he groaned, his lean hand sweeping down her waist to her hip, edging the fabric up until he could touch her soft, bare thigh.

“Ethan, no…!” she whispered frantically, but his head lifted from her breast and he eased her back onto the coverlet, knowing she was helpless now, totally at his mercy in a sensual limbo.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gently, bending over her. “Unbutton my shirt.” His fingers slid between her legs, tenderly separating them, and he watched her face waver between acceptance and fear of the unknown. He bent to her lips, brushing them with soft reassurance. “I want to make love to you,” he whispered. “We don’t have to go all the way.”

“I don’t understand,” she choked.

He kissed her accusing eyes shut. “I’ll teach you. One way or another, I’m going to be your lover. It might as well begin now. Get my shirt out of the way, sweet,” he breathed into her open mouth. “And then lift your body against mine and let me feel your breasts against my skin.”

She’d never dreamed that men said things like that to women, but it had an incredible effect on her emotions. She cried out, her hands fumbling buttons out of buttonholes, and then she arched up, pulling him down on her with the one good arm she had. The experience was staggering. She shuddered as his hair-roughened skin dragged against hers in a terribly arousing caress, weeping helplessly in his arms.

He groaned. All his dreams were coming true. This was his Arabella, and she wanted him. She wanted him!

He eased one powerful leg between hers, and he caught her hand without lifting his mouth and pulled it up against his taut stomach.

“I can’t!” she protested wildly.

“You can, sweetheart,” he said against her mouth. “Touch me like this,” he whispered, opening her clenched fingers and splaying them against his body. “Arabella. Arabella, I need you so!” he ground out. His fingers trembled as they guided hers. “Don’t stop,” he groaned harshly, dragging in an audible breath as his teeth clenched.

She watched his face with astonished awe. He let her watch, glorying in the forbidden pleasure of her touch, aching to tell her how incredible this was for him, but he couldn’t get words out.

The sudden opening of the door was a cruel, vicious shock.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Miriam exclaimed, horrified. She went out again, slamming the door, her furious voice echoing down the hall along with her running feet.

Ethan shuddered helplessly above Arabella. He rolled over onto his back, groaning.

She sat up, her breasts still bare, her eyes apprehensive. “Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly.

“Not really,” he managed with a rueful smile. He laughed in spite of the throbbing ache in his body. “But, oh, God, what a beautiful ache it is, little one.”

She tugged the gown up over her breasts, frowning slightly. “I don’t understand, Ethan,” she said.

He laughed, keeping his secret to himself. “It’s just as well that you don’t. Not yet, anyway.” He lay breathing deeply until he could control it, until the ache began to subside, and all the while his silver eyes lanced over her face and her body with tender delight.

“Miriam saw us,” she said uncomfortably.

“Wasn’t that the whole idea?” he asked.

“Well, yes. But…” She colored and averted her eyes.

He sat up, stretching lazily before he brought her face up to his and began to press soft, undemanding kisses over it. “Women have been touching men like that since the beginning of time,” he whispered at her closed eyelids. “I’ll bet most of your girlfriends at school indulged, including Mary.”

“But she wouldn’t…!”

“If she was in love, why not?” He lifted his head and searched her worried face. “Arabella, it’s not a sin to want someone. Especially not when you care deeply for them. It’s a physical expression of something intangible.”

“I have a lot of hang-ups…” she began.

He brushed back her damp, disheveled hair. “You have principles. I can understand that. I’m not going to seduce you in my own bed, in case you were wondering.” His pale eyes twinkled with humor. He felt alive as never before, masculine, capable of anything. He brushed his mouth lazily over her nose. “We’ll save sex for our wedding night.”

She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Marriage is inevitable,” he said. “Miriam isn’t going to go away, not if you spend every night in here to keep her out. She’s the kind of woman who doesn’t understand rejection. She’s got her mind made up that she’s back to stay, and she thinks she can bulldoze me into it.”

“She should know better.”

“Oh, but she thinks she has an edge,” he murmured. He looked down at her hand, clutching the gown to her body. “Let go of that,” he murmured. “I love looking at you.”

“Ethan!”

He chuckled. “You love letting me, so you can stop pretending. I’ve spent a lot of years being convinced that I wasn’t a man anymore, so you’ll have to forgive me for sounding a little arrogant right now. I’ve just learned something shocking about myself.”

“What?” she asked breathlessly.

“That I’m not impotent,” he said simply.

She frowned. Didn’t that mean that a man couldn’t…? Her eyes widened. “That was what Miriam meant when she taunted you!”

“You’ve got it,” he agreed. “She couldn’t arouse me with all her tricks. It was why I was able to get her to leave. But she wouldn’t give me a divorce. She was sure she could get me back under her spell. What she didn’t realize was that I was never really under it in the first place. I was briefly infatuated in a purely physical sense. But a craving, once indulged, is usually satisfied. Mine was.”

“I guessed she’d know what to do in bed,” she sighed. “I’m such a coward….”

He drew her face into his warm, damp throat and smoothed her dark hair gently. “Intimacy is hard, even for men, the first time, Arabella,” he said at her ear. “You’ll get used to it. I’ll never hurt you.”

“I know that.” And she did. But would he ever be able to love her? That was what she wanted most in the world. She clung to him with a long sigh. “You really don’t feel that with Miriam?” she asked lazily. “She’s so beautiful and experienced.”

His hands hardened on her bare back. “She isn’t a patch on you,” he said huskily. “She never was.”

But you married her, she wanted to say. You loved her, and tonight at supper, you were so gentle with her. But she never got the words out. His hands had tugged the fabric away from her breasts while she was busy thinking, and he wrapped her up against his bare chest with slow expertise, his fingers warm on her rib cage as he traced it.

She moaned and he smiled against her forehead.

“I’d had women by the time you were eighteen,” he whispered. “But I felt more with you that day by the swimming hole than I’d ever felt with any of the others, and we did less than I’d ever done with a woman. I’ve dreamed about that day ever since.”

“But you married Miriam,” she said quietly. She closed her eyes, unaware of Ethan’s expression. “And that says it all, doesn’t it? You never loved me. You just wanted me. That’s all it’s ever going to be. Oh, let me go, Ethan!” She wept, pushing at his shoulders.

But he tightened his hold, easing her down on the bed with him. “It isn’t just wanting,” he said gently. “Don’t fight me,” he breathed, settling his mouth on hers. “Don’t fight me, honey.”

Tears rolled down her face into his hard mouth, but he didn’t stop until she was pliant and moaning under the crush of his long, powerful body. Only then did he lift his head and look down at her soft, enraptured face.

His silver eyes searched hers. “If desire was all I felt, do you think I’d spare your chastity?”

She swallowed. “I don’t guess you would.”

“A man in the throes of passion doesn’t usually give a damn what he says or does to get a woman’s cooperation,” he replied. “I could have had you this afternoon. I could have had you just now. But I stopped.”

That could also mean that he didn’t want her enough to press his advantage, but she didn’t say it.

He sat up, his eyes skimming with warm appreciation over her breasts before he covered them himself, pulling the straps of her gown back up her arms. “You don’t have much self-confidence, do you?” he asked when she was standing again. He got to his own feet, towering over her, deliciously sensuous with his chest bare and his mouth faintly swollen from her kisses. “I’ll have to work on that.”

“It’s just to keep Miriam at bay, or so you said,” she reminded him shakily.

“Yes, I did say that.” He ran his forefinger down her nose. “But in order to do this properly, you’re going to have to marry me.” He grinned. “It won’t be that bad. You can sleep with me and we’ll make babies. We’ll have a good life together, even if that hand won’t let you do anything except give piano lessons.”

“And you think that would be enough to satisfy me?” she asked sadly.

The smile left his face. He thought she loved him. She’d acted as if she had. Was she telling him that marriage wouldn’t be enough, that she wanted her career instead? He scowled.

“Don’t you think you could be happy here?” he asked.

She shifted restlessly. “I’m tired, Ethan. I don’t want to talk about marriage tonight. All right?”

He drew a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, still frowning down at her. “All right. But sooner or later you and I are going to have a showdown.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll do everything I can to help you send Miriam off. If you’re sure you want to,” she added hesitantly.

“You can’t think I want her back?” he demanded.

“Can’t you?” she asked sadly, her heart in her soft green eyes.

“Didn’t you hear what I told you earlier? Do you know what impotent means?” he added angrily, and gave her the slang for it, watching her face color.

“I—I—know what it means!” she stammered. She moved away from him. “I don’t know that I like being a catalyst in that way. Maybe you really want Miriam but you’re too afraid of losing her again to…to be capable with her. She betrayed you once….”

“Oh, hell.” He took a draw from his cigarette and sighed angrily. He couldn’t get through to her what he felt, and he was too tired to try tonight, anyway. There was time. He hoped there was enough. “You’d better get back to your own room before Miriam drags my mother up here and gives her the shock of her life.”

“She wouldn’t be shocked,” she said absently.

“What makes you think so?”

She lifted her eyes. “Because this was her idea. She even gave me the negligee.”

“My God! Women!” he burst out.

“We were saving you from Miriam.”

“Fair enough. Who’s going to save you from me?” he asked, his hands catching her waist and holding fast as he bent toward her mouth. “I want you. Take off your gown and get into bed. I’ll love you up to the ceiling.”

She tingled all over. “It isn’t me you want, it’s Miriam!” she sputtered, pulling away from him.

“You blind little bat,” he said, shaking his head. “All right, run. But I’ll be two steps behind you from now on. I let you get away once. Never again.”

She didn’t understand that, either. He was saying a lot of strange things. She colored, wondering at his response to her when he said it didn’t happen with Miriam. But she was still certain that it had some psychological basis, that inability, and probably it had been triggered by the fear that Miriam would take his heart and betray him again. She didn’t want to think about it. It hurt too much. Ethan’s ardor had uplifted and upset her, all at once. She’d have the memory of it, but it would be a bittersweet one. She’d always feel that she was nothing more than a physical substitute for the woman he loved.

“I’ll lead my own life, thank you,” she said, moving toward the door. “I haven’t forgotten what you said to me when you told me not to come back to the ranch all those years ago, Ethan.”

“You will,” he replied, opening the door for her. “You don’t know why I said it.”

She looked up at him. “But I do. You wanted me out of the way.”

“So that I could marry Miriam,” he suggested.

“Yes.”

He sighed, letting the cigarette dangle in his hand while he searched Arabella’s soft eyes. “There are none so blind as those who will not see,” he murmured. “You were eighteen,” he said quietly. “You were your father’s emotional slave, a talented novice with an incredible career potential and infatuated for the first time in your innocent life. You’re almost the age I was then. Think about how it would be for you, if our positions were reversed. Think about what you’d feel, and what you’d think, and what you might do about it.”

She stared up at him helplessly. “What did my age have to do with it?” she faltered.

“Everything.” His face hardened. “My God, don’t you see? Arabella, what if I’d made you pregnant that day by the swimming hole?”

Her face went white. She could imagine the horror her father would have felt. She knew what he’d have done, too. She’d never have been allowed to have a child out of wedlock. Ethan might have insisted on marrying her, if he’d known, but he’d have been forced into it.

“I might not have gotten pregnant,” she said hesitantly. “Some women never do.”

“A few can’t, that’s so,” he replied. “But the majority of women can and do. I wasn’t prepared that day, and I can’t for one minute imagine holding back long enough to protect you. There’s every chance that we’d have created a child together.” His eyes grew darker, warmer. “I’d like that,” he said huskily. “Oh, God, I’d like making you pregnant, Arabella.”

She felt hot all over. She managed to get her fingers on the doorknob. “I’d better…go to bed, Ethan,” she managed unsteadily.

“You’d like it, too, wouldn’t you?” he asked knowingly, smiling in a way that made her toes curl.

“We aren’t married,” she said, trying to hold on to her sanity.

“We will be.” He leaned against the door facing her, his eyes possessive on her satin-and-lace-clad body. “I won’t mind changing diapers and giving bottles, just for the record. I’m not one of those Neanderthal men who think anything short of football and beer is woman’s work.”

She stared up at him with a soft glow in her face, giving in despite her misgivings. “What if I couldn’t give you a baby?” she whispered softly.

He smiled tenderly and touched her mouth with his fingertips. “Then you and I would become closer than most couples do, I suppose,” he said, his voice deep and gentle. “We’d be inseparable. We could adopt a child, or maybe several of them, or we could do volunteer work that involved children.” He bent and kissed her eyes closed. “Don’t ever think that you’re only of value to me because of your potential as a mother. Children are, and should be, a precious fringe benefit of marriage. They shouldn’t be the only reason for it.”

She’d never dreamed of hearing Ethan say such a thing to her. Tears ran down her cheeks and she began to sob.

“Oh, for God’s sake…!” He bent and picked her up in his arms, shaken by her reaction. “Arabella, don’t,” he whispered. His mouth covered hers, faintly tremulous as he savored the tear-wet softness of it, the kiss absolutely beyond his experience as he held her, rocking her in his arms. His head began to spin. Her good arm was around his neck, and she was kissing him back, moaning softly under the crush of his lips, trembling in his protective embrace.

“Now, now, I’m all for the spirit of the thing, but let’s not carry it to extremes,” Coreen Hardeman murmured dryly.

Ethan lifted his head and stared blankly at his mother. She was leaning against the wall, her gray eyes so smugly pleased that Ethan actually flushed.