CHAPTER SIX
It didn’t occur to her until she was out in the hall, barefooted, at Justin’s door, that three o’clock in the morning wasn’t the best time to share intimate secrets with a man who’d gone starving for physical satisfaction since his marriage. She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip. The light was still on in his room, but it was pretty quiet in there.
She frowned, wondering what to do, and brushed back her unruly hair with a sigh.
“He’s not in there,” came a soft, deeply amused voice at her back.
She whirled to find Justin behind her, holding a jigger of whiskey. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Watching you prowl the halls. What were you planning to do, go in there and rape me?”
She burst out laughing. It bubbled up from some unknown place, and her eyes twinkled up at him. “I don’t know how,” she confessed.
He actually smiled. She was pretty when she laughed. She was pretty any way at all. He lifted the whiskey ruefully. “I thought it might help me sleep,” he said.
“I’m afraid nothing’s going to help me,” she murmured. She shifted from one bare foot to the other, aware of his curious scrutiny and her own loud heartbeat.
“Do you want to sleep with me?” he asked.
She flushed. “That wasn’t the only reason I came.” She glanced up and then down again at his own bare, very big feet. “Did you know that nobody had ever kissed me intimately until you did?”
He blinked. “You came down the hall at three o’clock in the morning to tell me that?”
She shrugged. “It seemed pretty important at the time,” she said. She looked up at him sadly, her pale green eyes searching his lean, craggy face, his sensuous mouth, the firm, hair-roughened muscles of his chest and stomach. “It’s amazing,” she murmured, her eyes fascinated by the bare expanse of brown muscle.
“What is?” He frowned, watching the way her eyes went over him. It was disturbing. Surely she knew that.
“That you don’t have to chase women out of your room with a broom handle,” she murmured absently.
His eyebrows arched. “Have you been into my brandy snifter?”
“I guess it sounds that way, doesn’t it?” She raised her eyes to his. “Can I sleep with you, Justin? I’m still pretty shaky. If…” She cleared her throat and looked away. “If it won’t bother you too much, I mean. I don’t want to make things any worse for you than they already are.”
“I’m not sure they could get worse,” he said quietly. He searched her wide, soft eyes. “All right. Come on.”
She followed him inside. She’d never been in his room before, although she’d been by it a number of times and had peeked in curiously.
The furniture was old. Antique, like that in the house she’d grown up in. She wondered if it went far back in his family, if he’d inherited it from his parents. She smoothed her hand over a long bedpost, admiring the slickly polished wood of the four-poster and the beige and brown striped sheets on the bed.
“I didn’t think you liked colored sheets,” she said conversationally. “Maria said you didn’t.”
“I don’t,” he said curtly. “Maria does. She swears that she lost all the white sheets and had to replace them.”
“Well, these are nice,” she murmured.
“Climb in.”
He held the top sheet back and let her slide under it. “I’ll adjust the air-conditioning if it’s too cool in here to suit you,” he offered.
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I hate a hot bedroom, even in winter.”
He smiled faintly. “So do I.” He turned off the light and came back to the bed. The mattress lowered as he sat down, obviously finishing off his whiskey.
“You, uh, you do sleep in pajama bottoms?” she asked, grateful for the darkness that spared her blushes.
He actually laughed. “Oh, my God.”
“Well, you don’t have to make fun of me,” she muttered, fluffing the pillow before she laid her head on it.
“I always thought you were a sophisticated girl,” he said pleasantly. “You know, the liberated sort with a string of men on your sleeve and the kind of sophistication that goes with champagne and diamonds.”
“Boy, were you in for a shock,” she murmured. “Until you came along, I’d only dated one man, and the most he did was to make a grab for me and get himself slapped. My father was obsessed with keeping me innocent until he could sell me to someone who’d make him even richer. But you don’t know that, of course. You think he’s a saint.”
He switched on the light. His eyes were black and steady on hers, noticing the flush that covered her cheeks.
“Will you turn that off, please?” she asked tightly. “If I’m going to talk about such things, I can’t look at you and do it.”
“Prude,” he accused.
She glared at him. “Look who’s talking.”
He smiled ruefully. He cut off the lights, too. She felt the mattress shift as he lay back on it and pulled the sheet up over his hips.
“All right. If you want to talk, go ahead.”
“My father never wanted you to marry me, Justin, despite the show he put on for you,” she said shortly. “He wanted me to marry Tom Wheelor’s racing stables so that he could merge them with his and get out of debt.”
“That’s a hard pill to swallow, considering what I know about your father,” he said, remembering that it was her father’s money that had helped his family’s feedlot. He wondered if she’d ever found that out, and almost said so when he heard her sigh.
She shifted. “Nevertheless, it’s true. He was all set to ruin you if I hadn’t gone along with him when he cooked up that story about my marrying Tom.”
“You admitted that you’d slept with Tom,” he reminded her. His tone darkened. “And I know how little you wanted to sleep with me.”
“It wasn’t because I found you repulsive,” she said.
“Wasn’t it?”
Before she could say another word, he’d rolled over. One lean arm went across her body, dragging her against him. In the darkness, he sought her mouth with his and kissed her with rough abandon. Her hands went up against his hair-roughened chest, pushing at solid warm muscle, while his mouth demanded things that frightened her. His knee insinuated itself between both of hers, and she stiffened and pushed harder, fighting him.
He let her go without another word and got up. His hand flicked the light switch. When he turned toward her, his eyes were blazing like forest fires, his face livid with barely controlled rage.
“Get out!” he said in a biting fury.
She knew that she couldn’t say anything now that would calm him. If she tried to argue or smooth it over, she might unleash something physical that would scar her even more than his ardor had six years before.
She got out of the bed, her eyes apologetic and tearful, and did as he’d told her. She didn’t look back. She closed the door gently and, still crying, made her way down the long staircase.
Justin’s study was quiet. She turned on the light, went to the liquor cabinet, and with hands that shook, found a brandy snifter. She poured brandy into it and swished it around. She wanted to jump off the roof, but perhaps this would do instead.
The house was so quiet. So peaceful. But her mind was in turmoil. Why couldn’t he understand that violent lovemaking frightened her? Why wouldn’t he listen?
She’d pushed him away, that was why. She’d fought him. But if she hadn’t, and he’d lost control… Her eyes closed on a shudder. She couldn’t even bear the thought.
Her legs shook as she made her way to the sofa and sat down, her body bowed, her forehead resting on the rim of the glass. Tears blurred it. She sipped and sipped, until finally the sting of the liquor began to soothe her nerves.
When she realized that she was no longer alone, she didn’t even look up.
“I know you hate me,” she said numbly. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here to say it.”
Justin winced at the tears on her face, at the anguish in her soft voice. His pride was shattered all over again. But it hurt him to see her cry.
He poured himself another whiskey and sat down on the edge of the heavy coffee table in front of her. “I’ve been up there calling you names,” he said after a minute. “Until it suddenly got through to me what you’d said, about never letting another man kiss you intimately.”
“I’m a scarlet woman, though,” she said bitterly. “I slept with Tom. I even told you so.”
“You’ve just told me that your father lied about it.” His black eyes narrowed. He took a sip of the whiskey and put the glass down. He knelt just in front of her, not touching her, his eyes on a level with hers. “I remembered something else, too. Just after you wrecked the car, you kissed me. You weren’t afraid of me, and you weren’t repulsed, either, Shelby. But you were making all the moves, weren’t you?”
Her eyes lifted to his. So he’d made the connection. She sighed worriedly. “Yes,” she said finally. “I wasn’t afraid, you see.”
“But up until then,” he added, his shrewd eyes making lightning assessments, “I’d been pretty rough with you when we made love.”
She flushed, avoiding his gaze. “Yes.”
“And it wasn’t revulsion at all. It was fear. Not of getting pregnant. But of intimacy itself.”
“Give that man a cigar,” she murmured with forced humor.
He sighed, watching her fondle the brandy snifter. He took it out of her hands and put it on the coffee table. “Get up.”
Startled, she felt him lift her from the sofa. He put her to one side and stretched out on the cushions, moving toward the back. “Now sit down.”
She did, hesitantly, because she didn’t understand this approach.
He took one of her hands and drew it to his chest. “Think of me as a human sacrifice,” he murmured drily. “A stepping stone in the educational process.”
Her lips parted on a sudden gasp as she realized what he was doing. Her eyes darted up to his, curious, shy. “But you…you don’t like that,” she said perceptively, because in the past he’d always made the moves, he’d never encouraged her to.
“I’m going to learn to like it,” he said frankly. “If it takes this to get you close to me, I’m more than willing to give you the advantage, Shelby.”
Tears stung her eyes. She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling. “Oh, Justin,” she whispered shakily.
“Can you do it this way?” he asked softly, his eyes black and alive with tenderness. “If I let you, can you make love to me?”
The tears broke from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “I wanted to tell you,” she wept. “But I was too embarrassed.”
“It’s all right.” He put his big hand over hers and traced the tiny blue veins in it. “I should have realized it a long time ago. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never hurt you.”
She laughed through the tears. Amazing that he should puzzle it out for himself. She smiled and bent hesitantly to his warm mouth and touched it with her lips.
Justin felt as if his heart were about to burst. God only knew why he’d never understood before. Obviously Wheelor had hurt her, and she’d drawn away from any further intimacy. He hated knowing that the other man had been her first lover, but he couldn’t stand by any longer and watch Shelby beat herself to death emotionally over it. They had to start someplace to build a life together, and this was the very best way.
He felt her soft, shy mouth with a sense of wonder. She still didn’t know a lot about kissing, and he smiled under her searching lips. He’d been celibate for a long time, but in his younger days, his lack of looks hadn’t kept him from getting some experience. He knew what to do with a woman, even if discussing such things in public made him uncomfortable.
He didn’t touch her. As he’d promised, he lay there with his body keeping him on the rack and let her soft mouth toy with his.
“Come closer,” he breathed against her lips. “You’re as safe as you want to be.”
“It isn’t hurting you?” she asked worriedly.
“When it gets that bad, I’ll tell you,” he promised, lying through his teeth, because it was already that bad.
She smiled, moving so that her soft breasts rested fully on his chest, her legs chastely beside his and not over them. There was a fine tremor in his lips when she bent again, but he still hadn’t tried to pull her down or to make the kiss more intimate.
Her hands moved into his thick hair, ruffling it, and her lips traced patterns on his face, loving its strength. He was so sweet to kiss. She laughed with pure delight at the new freedom to touch him as she’d wanted to for so many lonely years.
His eyes opened and he studied her curiously. “What was that all about?”
“If you knew,” she said, “how long I’ve wanted to do this…”
His jaw clenched. “You might have told me.”
“I couldn’t.” She touched his broad chest. “It’s so intimate a thing to talk about.” Impulsively, she leaned down and brushed her mouth over the hard muscle of his breastbone. “Justin, I’ve missed you so much.”
His chest rose heavily under the tiny caress. “I’ve missed you, too,” he said huskily. “God, Shelby, I can’t…!” He clenched his teeth.
She looked up. “It isn’t enough for you, is it?” she asked hesitantly. “I guess I seem pretty green.”
His eyes darkened. “I want to touch you,” he breathed. “I want to put you on your back and slide that jacket out of my way.”
Her body trembled over his. “If you lost control, it would be just the way it was upstairs,” she ground out. “I get scared!”
“I swear to God I won’t lose it,” he said curtly. “Not if I have to run out into the night screaming.”
She believed him. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever done, to trust him now. But she swallowed hard and moved gently alongside him and onto her back, watching him shift so that he was poised over her.
“Trust comes hard, doesn’t it?” he asked softly.
“Yes.” She searched his face quietly. “I could have died this afternoon. I keep thinking about it, and how insignificant things seem at the point of death. All I thought about was you, and what a sad memory I’d left you with.”
“Is that what this is all about?” he asked with a smile.
“Not really.” She studied his hard mouth. “I was hungry for you when you let me kiss you. I wanted to know if I could stop being afraid. But upstairs, when you grabbed me, I just went to pieces.”
“I’m not going to grab you this time.” He bent, barely touching her mouth with his. He brushed it, bit at it, until her lips began slowly to follow his. He felt her breath quicken. And then his fingers began to trace patterns on the pajama jacket.
At first she stiffened, but his movements were very slow and undemanding, and his mouth was gentle. He lifted his head, feeling her begin to relax, and he smiled reassuringly. “Okay?” he whispered.
The tenderness was new. Her eyes smiled up at him. “Okay.”
He looked down at her breasts and saw hard peaks forming where his fingers teased. He put his thumb over a hard tip and heard her gasp and felt her body shudder. He liked that reaction, so he did it again, and this time she arched a little.
“I like that,” he said softly, holding her eyes. “Do it again.”
She did, but only because she couldn’t help it. “I feel…strange,” she whispered. “Shuddery.”
“So do I,” he whispered back, and brushed his mouth lazily over her lips until they parted. “Do you want me to tell you what I’m going to do now?”
Her heartbeat went wild. “Yes,” she said against his mouth.
He smiled. “I’m going to unbutton your jacket.”
Her breath sighed out quickly against his lips as she felt his hard fingers flicking buttons out of buttonholes. Then the fabric was open down the middle and he was slowly easing it away. He drew it just to the curve of her breasts and looked into her eyes, registering the faint shyness there and the excitement that she couldn’t hide.
“You’re small,” he whispered. His fingers drew along one smooth curve. “I like my women small.”
She trembled at the way he said it, at the knowledge in his black eyes, at the experience in the fingers that traced up and over and then stopped short of that hard, aching peak. She shuddered when he did that. He did it again, and she gasped.
His nose brushed against hers. His breath mingled with her own, tasting smoky and warm. “Yes, you want it, don’t you?” he mused softly. He traced her again and this time he didn’t stop. His hand smoothed over her and down, taking the hard tip into his moist palm and pressing down over it.
She cried out. The sound seemed to shock her because she swallowed, moistening her lips with her tongue.
“You act,” he whispered, moving the fabric aside sensually, “just like a virgin with her first man.” He peeled the satin away from her breasts and looked down. His breath caught, because the creamy mounds and their hard mauve tips were shaped so exquisitely that they took his breath.
“Do you really not mind…that I’m small?” she heard herself whisper.
“Oh, God, no,” he returned. His eyes held hers and his fingers traced her soft skin. “Will it shock you if I put my mouth on them?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
He smiled back and bent his head toward her body. She arched up at the first touch of his lips on her breasts, thinking that in all her life, she’d never dreamed there could be such pleasure in being touched. Her hands tangled in his thick hair and held him against her while his light, brushing caresses made her tremble. She moaned and tears sprung to her eyes.
He felt her body tremble and understood why. It was the advantage he’d been waiting for. His lean, callused hands smoothed down her hips, over her flat belly. They caressed the satin away so expertly that she didn’t mind, didn’t care. His hands touched her as if she’d always belonged to him, and she loved the touch, the slow tenderness of his rough hands on her skin.
His mouth opened, moist, the suction on her breast making her draw up with pleasure. She felt her hands helplessly gripping his muscular arms, pulling at him. She was whispering something that she didn’t understand, pleading with him for something she didn’t even know about. She needed…something.
Her mouth bit at his shoulder. When he lifted his head and looked down at her, she could barely see him through a red haze. She thought he smiled as his mouth fastened on hers. Then she felt his tongue go into her mouth in slow, exquisite thrusts and her body went wild under his.
She pulled at him, her arms around his neck. She felt him against her, felt the hard, warm contours of his body and the heat of his rough skin against her soft skin. She realized dimly that his pajama trousers were gone, but the touch of him against her was so exquisite that she didn’t really want him to stop.
“It’s going to happen now,” he whispered into her mouth as his knee eased between her long, trembling legs. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t rush you. You can still stop me in time, if you want to. We’re going to do this with such tenderness that you won’t be afraid of me. Now just lie still and trust me for another few…seconds…”
She was trembling and so was he, but she’d never wanted anything in her life the way she wanted to belong to him. This was Justin. He was her husband and she loved him more than her life. He’d been so patient, so tender, that she wanted to give him her body along with her heart.
“Justin,” she whispered achingly, watching his face harden. She felt the first touch of him and jerked a little.
“Shh,” he whispered back. He smiled at her, forcing himself to hold back. “I’m going to watch you,” he breathed huskily. “I’ll know the instant it happens if there’s the first hint of pain.”
It was incredibly intimate. The lights were on. But all she could see was his face. She could feel his breath, quick and hard on her face, she could see the pulse beating in his throat. But she wasn’t afraid, not even of his weight on her body, crushing her down into the cushions. He was hers, and she was going to take him…
She felt the pain like a hot knife. She clutched at him and her eyes got as big as saucers. She cried out and tears ran down her face.
Justin’s eyes darkened and the pupils grew and grew and she realized then that he was frozen like a statue over her. His lips parted. His breath blew out. He looked down at her incredulously. He moved again, and watched her clench her teeth even as he knew for certain why she was doing it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her hands reached up. “Don’t stop,” she said. “It’s all right, I think I can…bear it…!”
“My God!”
He drew back, struggling away from her to sit up with his back to her, bowed, his body shuddering wildly. “My God, Shelby!”
“Justin, you didn’t…you didn’t have to stop,” she whispered, biting her lip. “It would have been all right.”
He wasn’t listening. His head was in his hands and he shivered. He reached for the whiskey glass that still had a swallow of liquid in it, and his hands shook so badly that he almost spilled it before he got it to his mouth.
He stood up and Shelby flushed and averted her shocked eyes from his blatant masculinity.
“I’m sorry,” he said curtly. He reached for his pajama bottoms and got into them distractedly. Then he stood looking down at her until she went bloodred and tried to curl up.
But he wouldn’t let her. He reached down unsteadily to pick her up. He cradled her in his arms and sat down in his armchair, holding her with marvelous tenderness, whispering endearments into her dark hair, holding her while the tears came.
When she stopped, he mopped her eyes with a tissue. Her cheek was against his broad, shuddering chest, nestled against the thick hair, and her breasts were lying soft against his stomach. She shivered at the intimacy of it because she didn’t have a stitch on.
“You’re my wife,” he whispered when he saw her embarrassment. “It’s all right if I see you without your clothes.”
She curled closer. “Yes, I guess it is. It’s just…new.”
“My God, yes, I know.”
There was an unmistakable note in his voice. She looked up, giving him a sudden and total view of her pretty breasts. He had to drag his eyes back up to hers.
“My virgin bride,” he whispered huskily. His fingers touched her breasts hesitantly, with something like reverence. “Oh, Shelby. Shelby!”
“I…Dr. Sims made me have some minor surgery, but he muttered about it when I wouldn’t let him do a proper job,” she said, hiding her eyes from him. “I guess it wasn’t quite enough…” Her face went red.
“Why wouldn’t you let him do it properly?”
“So that I could prove that I hadn’t slept with Tom,” she said simply.
“You little fool!” He tilted her eyes up to his. “If I hadn’t stopped upstairs, or if I’d ever lost my head with you… God, it doesn’t even bear thinking about!”
She bit her lip, staring at his broad chest with its thick pelt of hair. “Justin…it would have stopped hurting,” she began shyly.
“Like hell it would.” He leaned back with a rough sigh. “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, honey, but you’re going to have to go back and have the rest of that surgery.”
“But…”
He tilted her eyes up to his. “A little pain is one thing, but you’ve got one hell of a lot of proof there,” he said curtly. He shifted restlessly, noting her embarrassment and feeling just a little of his own at trying to explain things to her. He drew her head against his chest and bent to brush his mouth softly over hers. “Put your clothes back on while I top off your brandy snifter. The feel of you is making me hurt.”
He got up and put her down on the sofa with only a cursory glance. While she fumbled her way back into her pajamas, he poured brandy into her glass and whiskey into his, and then went searching for a cigarette.
She knew her face was flaming. She’d never imagined that intimacy was so…intimate. But along with the shyness was a kind of excitement that went along with her new discoveries of Justin. He didn’t lose control and go wild and hurt her. He was slow and patient and considerate. That made her blush even more.
“Who told you that men go nuts and hurt women when they make love?” he asked conversationally. “Because you seemed to think that’s what was going to happen upstairs.”
She took the brandy snifter and watched him go back to the armchair, where he sat and pulled up an ashtray. “You did,” she said hesitantly. “The night we got engaged, and you lost control.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Did I lose it that badly?”
“I thought so.” She studied the snifter. “I knew I had this problem, you see, and I’d already been told about the surgery I’d have to have before my first time.” She shrugged. “I’ve been terrified of it ever since my fifteenth birthday, when the doctor examined me for a female dysfunction. Some girls have a little discomfort, but he told me it would be unbearable if I didn’t have the surgery. Then when you came on so strong, and I didn’t think I could stop you…”
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” he said quietly.
“How could I?” She sighed miserably. “Oh, Justin, I’m twenty-seven and as green as a preadolescent! I can’t even talk about it now without blushing!”
“I thought you were repulsed by me,” he said, his voice deep with remembered pain. “I never dreamed… And then you told me what you did about Wheelor, and my ego shattered.” His broad shoulders rose and fell. “I’ve been a lot rougher with you than I ever would have been if I’d known the truth. It hurt so damned bad to think that you’d been with someone else, and when you flinched away, it made me sick.”
“At least now you know why I flinched away,” she said with a sigh.
He took a draw from the cigarette. “I want you damned bad,” he said without preamble.
She lowered her eyes to the carpet. “I want you, too.”
“Then let’s do something about it. Go see Dr. Sims. Have the surgery. Let’s have a real marriage. The kind where two people sleep together, share together, make babies together.”
Her face flamed, but she looked up. “You really do want children, don’t you?”
“I want them with you,” he said simply. “I never wanted them with any other woman.”
“Then I won’t need to…to take anything.”
He smiled slowly. “No.”
She got up, nervous and shy all over again. “I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to sleep together?” she asked without realizing how wistful she sounded.
He got up, drawing her eyes as he towered over her. “Maybe it wouldn’t, but we’re going to. Even if we can’t make love, I can hold you.”
Her breath sighed out. “Justin, I’m sorry for so many things.”
“So am I, but we can’t go back.” He bent and brushed a gentle kiss across her mouth. “We’ll take it one day at a time. I won’t rush you again.”
She smiled at him. “Thank you.”
He smiled back, but he didn’t say anything. She watched him put everything away before he came back to her, turning out the light. He still had his cigarette in hand as they went upstairs together.
“Are you all right?” he asked her when they were in bed, and she was curled up beside him. “I didn’t hurt you badly?”
“No,” she whispered in the concealing darkness.
“I didn’t frighten you, either?” he persisted, as if it mattered.
“Not at all,” she assured him, going closer. He was warm and muscular and she loved the feel of him against her. “Not once.” She nuzzled her cheek against him. “You’re very tender.”
“That’s how lovemaking should be,” he said quietly. “But I’m rusty, Mrs. Ballenger. I’ve been celibate for quite a while.”
She held her breath. “A few months, you mean?”
“Um, not quite.” He brushed his mouth over her forehead. “For about six years, Shelby.”
She caught her breath. “My gosh! I didn’t dream…!”
“It’s a good thing,” he murmured. “I guess you’d have run from me screaming if you’d known, thinking that a man who’d gone hungry that long would be ravenous and uncontrollable.”
“But you weren’t.”
“You needed tenderness, so that’s what you got. You won’t always get it after we’ve had each other a few times,” he said flatly. “I don’t like it that way all the time.”
The mind boggled at what he did like and she realized that he’d been curbing his instincts, holding back to make things easier for her. “Justin…”
“Shhh.” He kissed her mouth softly. “Go to sleep. You’re arousing me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He kissed her again and rolled over onto his stomach with a long sigh. “Good night, baby doll.”
“Good night, Justin.”
But she didn’t sleep for a long time. There were a thousand questions buzzing around in her mind, and only a few answers. At least she’d gotten one big hurdle out of the way, and Justin still wanted her. That was something. Even if he couldn’t love her, he might grow to have some kind of affection for her again. He couldn’t blame her totally about the past, since he knew she was still innocent. Or could he? It occurred to her then that he might still want vengeance for the bitterness and humiliation he’d suffered. That was a sobering thought, and it kept her awake for a very long time.