A Love Like This Read online

  “Go ahead,” he murmured curtly, bending his head. “Lie to me. Tell me you don’t want this.”

  “What about...Bess?” she groaned, pushing at him.

  He said something harsh and explicit that she only half heard, and then his head was against her body, his mouth taking her breast inside the warm darkness, teasing it with his tongue.

  Her whimpers excited him. She didn’t know how to hold back, and that was delicious. He slid his hands under her, smoothing her soft skin, lifting her closer to his ardent mouth.

  She was trembling now, too far gone to protest anything he did to her. He moved one hand up her side to explore the exquisite softness of her breast while his mouth gently teased it. He lifted his head just enough to look, to watch his subtle tracing shatter her composure and bring a mist of tears to her blue eyes.

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered, bending to touch his mouth to her eyelids and taste the salty moisture there.

  “I hate you,” she whimpered huskily.

  He smiled indulgently. “No, you don’t. You hate being vulnerable. So do I. But we enjoy each other too much to deny ourselves this pleasure. And it is pleasure, isn’t it, Elissa?” he whispered over her mouth. “Such wild, sweet pleasure.”

  “But—”

  He covered the word with his lips, brushing her mouth open with lazy, expert movements that made her body burn. She tried to protest, but he kept at it, slowing his movements, deepening them, tormenting her with little shivers of sensation that made her wild. He’d never kissed her like this before. It was as intimate as lovemaking. More intimate. She moaned, the sound as intimate as the kiss, as revealing as her shudders.

  His free hand came up to her chin, cupping it, holding it firm. Above her, his body blocked out the sun, and his face was a stranger’s, hard and faintly flushed, his eyes almost frightening.

  “Yes,” he whispered gruffly, continuing the subtle torment of her mouth, watching it open, feeling its aching sensuality. “Yes, you’re ready for me, now, aren’t you? Soft and submissive...oh, baby...”

  His tongue penetrated her mouth in one slow, sharp thrust, his lips crushing down on hers.

  She cried out, her trembling hands clutching his hair, her nails digging into his nape. She arched, shuddering, her body in sweet anguish as he felt her need and answered it, his hand swallowing her breast, softly cradling it. Her tongue tangled with his; her breathing seemed to stop. It was the most incredible sensation she’d ever felt in her life. Like flying into fire. Burning up. She was trembling all over and she couldn’t stop, totally vulnerable and powerless to hide it from him.

  She began to cry, tears rolling down to their feverishly joined mouths, sobs tearing from her throat, and still she clung, arching her body toward his hand.

  “Elissa,” he whispered in a tone he’d never used—achingly tender, almost loving.

  He moved completely onto her shaking body, his weight exquisitely satisfying, his mouth tender now, his hands... He was doing something to her bodice, and then she felt his chest against her bare breasts, the hair on it tickling, the warm muscles gently spreading her swollen softness against them.

  “Hold on tight,” he whispered at her lips. “Hold me.”

  She couldn’t stop crying. She buried her lips in his hot throat, shuddering under his weight, devastated by the feel of his body in such intimacy. He was aroused, and she felt that, too, and moaned.

  “Sweet,” he whispered at her ear, his fingers biting into her back. “Sweet, sweet Elissa!”

  She bit his shoulder, a helpless reaction that she didn’t even understand, and made a sound in her throat that curled his toes.

  “Shh,” he murmured. His fingers came to her cheek and soothed it, smoothing back her damp hair. His hand slid down to her waist and caressed it gently, while he whispered to her, tender little encouragements to relax, to lie still, to be quiet.

  By the time she stopped shaking and could feel his taut body relaxing and losing its frightening hardness, her face was drenched in tears.

  He rolled beside her then, still holding her, and onto his back. He pillowed her head on his shoulder, his arms betraying a fine tremor, while he stared blankly up at the sky, where seagulls dived and called to each other against the gray clouds.

  “I have to leave,” he said after a minute, his voice harsh. “We can’t go on like this any longer.”

  She knew that instinctively. He’d gone almost too far to stop, and so had she. She wasn’t thinking anymore. Her body had a will of its own, too strong to fight. She closed her eyes and felt that she’d die if she couldn’t have him just once.

  “I know,” she whispered. She sat up, her breasts swollen and slightly red from the pressure of his lips.

  “Oh, baby,” he breathed, looking as she covered them, his eyes blazing. “I could look at you forever.”

  “Don’t.” She closed her eyes, and he sat up, too, fastening the straps for her with hands that were a little unsteady.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately,” he confessed, forcing her to look at him. “I want you to the point of madness. You, Elissa. Not Bess.” He looked down at her shoulders, delighting in their creamy perfection. “I don’t understand why I feel this way, but if I don’t have you, I think I’ll die.”

  She understood that, because she felt the same way. “I want you just as much,” she said quietly. “But afterward, I’ll hate you,” she added, looking up at him. “All those years of conditioning don’t just vanish. I’ll hate you, and myself, and I don’t know how I’ll live with it. But,” she confessed shyly, looking at his chest, “I don’t know how I’ll live without it.”

  He got to his feet, pulling her up with him. His face was serious now, intent. “Come back to Oklahoma with me.”

  She moved restlessly, frightened of what they were discussing.

  “Come with me,” he repeated gently. He tilted her eyes up to his. “I promise I won’t make you pregnant. I can’t stop what’s going to happen, but I’ll make sure you’re protected.”

  “No, I...I’ll do that,” she faltered. She looked toward the sea. “But how will we explain to my parents that I’m going back with you?”

  He sighed wearily and touched her hair. “If it’s any consolation, it bothers me, too.” His fingers trailed down her cheek to her mouth, and he stared at it until her lips parted. “We’ll tell them we may be getting engaged, and you’re to stay with my family.”

  She looked up at him with stunned delight in her eyes, and the sight of it made him suddenly possessive. He jerked her against him.

  “The hell with it—let’s get married,” he said suddenly. “I can’t have Bess, and I’ve got to have you. Let’s do it by the book.”

  She almost screamed “Yes!” at him, but she held back, sobered by the certainty that Bess would surely find some way to get to him eventually. It wouldn’t do for Elissa to marry him and create even more problems. No matter how much it hurt, she was going to have to sink her pride and principles and give him the physical ease they both ached for. She loved him. If she had nothing else, she could have this. She could belong to him for a few ecstatic days, and then she would have to pay the piper. Somehow she’d survive the future. She and her memories of him.

  “I won’t marry you,” she whispered gently. “But I’ll go with you.”

  He frowned. “I don’t mind—”

  She put her fingers against his mouth. “You would, someday. Marriage should be a total commitment, a sacred thing, not just a legalization of desire. I hate what I feel for you, I hate what I’m going to do, but I think we’d regret marriage a lot more.”

  “It would ease your conscience afterward,” he said tersely.

  “And destroy yours,” she countered. “Bess may...may be free someday. How would you feel if you were tied to me by then?”

  His grimace gave her the
answer. “It isn’t fair, asking this of you.”

  “Life isn’t fair sometimes,” she said with a sigh, fighting tears. She looked up at him with the anguish of love in every line of her face. “Oh, King,” she whispered softly, “I want you, too.”

  His hands tightened on her arms. “Come to see the ranch,” he said, feeling guilty but unable to stop himself. “Just that. Maybe we can fight it.”

  That gave her a little hope. It would make it easier to explain to her parents if she wasn’t definite about things. She smiled. “Okay.”

  He loved the way she smiled. Her eyes brightened, her face relaxed, she looked...beautiful. She was beautiful, inside and out. His body made an emphatic statement about its feelings for her, and he laughed in spite of himself.

  “I’d better get dressed,” he murmured drily, turning away. He hadn’t even been in the water, but he was drenched with sweat anyway.

  She found her patio skirt and put it on, watching him pull on his jeans. It didn’t embarrass her anymore when she knew he wanted her. It was so natural, as if she were already an extension of him, a physical part of him. She loved him to distraction.

  He glanced at her, frowning at that rapt expression. She didn’t seem to be afraid of him or nervous about giving herself to him. Why? Did she care for him? That made him tingle, and he turned to scoop up his shirt with a feeling he didn’t understand. When he was dressed again, he took her hand, clasping it close in his without a single twinge about Bess.

  “If it happens,” he said without looking at her, “I’ll make sure you never want to forget what we do together.”

  “I never would, whatever happened,” she said solemnly.

  He drew in a steadying breath and linked his fingers with hers. She made him feel ten feet tall. He couldn’t understand this compulsion to make love to her; it wasn’t only sex, but he couldn’t puzzle out what else it was. He glanced down at her slender body, already picturing the very fluid way it was going to become part of him. He felt a flush of warmth from head to toe, and it got worse when he happened to drop his gaze to her flat stomach and involuntarily wondered what she’d look like with a baby in there.

  His fingers clasped hers until they hurt, and she caught at them with curious laughter.

  “What is it?” she asked breathlessly, wondering if he was thinking about Bess.

  He searched her eyes. “Elissa... Do you like children?” he asked slowly.

  Inexplicably, she felt deliriously happy. He’d never asked a question like that. It gave her a little hope. She smiled, turning back toward the house. “Yes, of course. I’d like at least two someday. Why?”

  He didn’t answer her. His eyes were dark and troubled the rest of the way home. Bess said she didn’t want children. And he was shocked to discover that he did. But he wanted them with Elissa.

  He was totally withdrawn while he waited for the women to get supper together, electing to watch television with Mr. Dean. A telephone call he made a little later gave Tina the chance to ask Elissa what was wrong.

  “He’s asked me to his ranch,” Elissa said with a smile. “I think he’s worried about telling you and Dad.”

  Tina searched her daughter’s face. “You’re very much in love with him, aren’t you, darling?”

  Elissa sighed. “Yes. But he... I’m not sure he feels that way about me.”

  “He wants you.” Tina smiled, but her eyes were solemn. “Be sure, honey. It’s all too easy for a man to be physically infatuated, with no lasting emotion to hold him to a woman. I like your young man very much, but then, he’s no threat to me.”

  Elissa put her head in her hands and leaned over her coffee cup, feeling lost and miserable. “I don’t know what to do,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I can live without him now.”

  “My poor darling,” Tina said quietly. She leaned over and kissed her daughter’s forehead. “You have to find your own way, you know. I love you, and nothing you do will ever change that. I know your father and I must seem very old-fashioned to you, but we believe in what we do, and the way we live has to reflect that. Earthly pleasures are fleeting. Love is immortal, and it goes beyond satisfying some fleeting physical hunger. In other words, sweetheart,” she explained with a grin, “sex won’t make up for the lack of love, no matter how good it is.”

  “You hussy, talking like that,” Elissa teased.

  “That’s me,” Tina agreed. Her eyes twinkled. “You don’t realize how much the world has changed in recent years. When I was in high school, girls could get expelled for wearing a skirt an inch above the knee. That was considered vulgar.” She pursed her lips with a smile. “Life is so violent these days that I sometimes wish we were back in the Amazon,” she muttered. “I felt safe there.”

  “I can help you out,” Elissa said. “I’ll bring Warchief over here to live with us and he can make you feel you’re back in the jungle.”

  Tina, who’d heard volumes about the big parrot, frowned. “We have neighbors with sensitive ears.”

  “Our nearest neighbor is a mile down the beach,” Elissa pointed out.

  “That’s what I mean. Sound carries. Besides,” she groaned, “parrots fly. I have enough trouble with little bitty mosquitoes. Imagine something that has wings and bites and weighs a pound.”

  Elissa had never thought of him as a giant green mosquito. She laughed. She’d have to remember to tell King. King. Her gaze softened. What was she going to do?

  Tina patted her hand. “Life generally goes on,” she reminded her daughter. “And God loves us. Even when we’re naughty little girls and boys.”

  That was a comforting thought. Elissa got up and began to set the table.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ELISSA’S FIRST SIGHT of the Oklahoma plains drew a helpless sigh from her. Oklahoma City, where King had claimed his big gray Lincoln at the airport parking lot, was beautiful and intriguing for its rising oil derricks within the huge city itself. But the rolling plains, sweeping toward the horizon as far as the eye could see, brought tears to her eyes.

  “I’ve never, ever seen anything like it,” she breathed, her expression mirroring total delight.

  King swerved the car as he darted a glance at her, fascinated. “I thought you’d hate it,” he replied. “You live on the coast.”

  She wasn’t even listening. “The Plains Indians—did they come down this far? The Sioux and Cheyenne?”

  “Well, honey, Oklahoma was where they sent the Five Civilized Tribes back during the Trail of Tears, during the late 1830s and 1840s. Some of them fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War—a few were slaveholders, you see—and because of that, the government forced them to sell their western lands at a sacrifice. We have Chickasaws, Choctaws, Cherokees, Creek—and Seminoles,” he added after a pause.

  Her face brightened. “No wonder it seems like home. Don’t they say something about an ancestral memory? Perhaps some of my ancestors came here.”

  “The Seminoles were fierce warriors,” he agreed easily. “They fought the government to a standstill.”

  “The Apache were pretty fierce, too, I hear,” she murmured. She smiled at him and then turned her attention back to the undulating hills. “How beautiful. There’s so much space, King.”

  “That’s what I like about it. No crowding yet. Plenty of room. Oil and gas and cattle.”

  “The oil industry has been hard-hit, though.”

  “Bobby and I had to diversify,” he agreed. “But good business management will spare us too much grief. There it is.” He indicated a dirt road leading to a grove of trees and a sprawling white frame house with huge porches. There were outbuildings and endless fences and herds of white-and-red cattle everywhere.

  “The ranch?” she asked, excited.

  “The ranch.” He chuckled at her expression as he pulled off the main highway onto the winding dirt road. “Like it?
”

  “Oh, I love it,” she said softly, drinking in the lush greens and the wildflowers that seemed to be everywhere. “Those are sunflowers!” she exclaimed.

  “You’ll find a lot of unfamiliar vegetation,” he said. “We don’t have sea grapes and palms out here. We have water oaks and hickory trees... Of course, we have some fascinating animals here, too. I doubt you’ve ever seen a moose.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “You shouldn’t be this enthusiastic,” he murmured drily, remembering how much Bess had hated the ranch when she and Bobby married. Of course, Bess had grown up in dirt-poor surroundings, and he supposed she’d had her fill of roughing it. She’d probably longed for something completely different, more refined. But Bobby, like King, had loved the plains, loved walking the hills in search of arrowheads—one of King’s favorite childhood pastimes. “You’re a city girl, remember?”

  “I’m a country girl,” she argued. “Just because I work near Miami doesn’t make me citified. I like wide-open spaces, like the beach and hills. Can I go walking when I feel like it, or are there...”

  “Wild Indians?” he suggested with a wicked grin.

  She hit him. “Wolves,” she replied.

  “Only this one,” he murmured, winking at her.

  She gave up, shaking her head. She didn’t remember the reason he’d brought her here. The real reason. He still wanted her. It was in his eyes, in the way he smiled at her. And Bess was somewhere nearby...

  “Where does Bobby live?” she asked suddenly.

  The smile left his face. “There.” He indicated a modern split-level house in the distance. “Almost in Jack’s Corner. Bess used to spend a lot of time in Oklahoma City, but Bobby said she’s started getting interested in local society.” He frowned. “Too bad it’s only tea parties and such. She sure could do a lot of social work if she had a mind to.”

  He drove the Lincoln up to the front steps, and Elissa sighed over the big green rocking chairs and the porch swing. “I love it!” She grinned. “Can we sit in the swing?”

  “Presently,” he promised, climbing out to open her door and help her, with old-world courtesy, to the ground.