Jennifer Greene - Tender Loving Care

“In other words, the bastard split on you.” Rafe couldn’t keep the sharp coldness from his tone.

“He wasn’t a bastard!”

He paid for hitting that nerve. Her eyes snapped open, and her shoulders grew tight; he had to work on those muscles all over again. In time, she calmed down…in direct proportion to his tensing up. Thigh-to-thigh contact had already contributed to an unavoidable male response, but now he found his jaw clenched and his arms and shoulders coiled as tightly as a bowstring. Leave it alone, he told himself. Only he couldn’t. “You still love him?”

She didn’t answer that.

“Look, Zoe. He was a damned fool. It’s not as if the two of you didn’t have any other options-like adopting kids if he was so hot on-Never mind, never mind! Forget I said anything.”

When her lips parted, he gently shoved her head down again, discovering he didn’t want to hear her defend the bastard. He also didn’t want her tense. When his fingers gently kneaded her scalp again, she arched like a kitten in the sun. That was how he wanted her. Free to be soft and lazy. Easy, sleepy, safe.

Out-of-control protective urges rushed through him. All he could think of was that her attitude toward kids made sense now. She felt she had to avoid men who liked children. The ability to have kids had been taken away from her, and that trauma had been followed by the emotional blow of rejection by a creep who had led her halfway to the altar and then ditched her as if he’d discovered she was a mutant.

He meant to shut up and stay shut up, but, dammit, he couldn’t. His tone had a gruff scrape to it that he just couldn’t help. “That bastard didn’t leave you with the idiotic notion that being unable to have kids meant no man would ever love you, did he?”

“Rafe, stop talking about him that way. Our breakup was as much my fault as his, and I…” When his hands stopped massaging, it was as if he’d broken a magic spell. She was barely aware of what she’d said or of why they’d been talking about Steven. Rafe’s touch had mesmerized and comforted her after a terrible day, but Zoe had never been one to allow herself the excuse of extenuating circumstances. She pushed back her tangled hair and gave a quick laugh. “Look, I’m sorry for bending your ear like this. Steven and I parted a long time ago; it’s not your problem, and-”

Rafe wasn’t listening. “He must have made you feel totally inadequate. No wonder you’re uptight on the subject of kids.”

“Of course he didn’t. I told you, it wasn’t all his fault. For heaven’s sake-”

Too fast, he swiveled her around so she was facing him. Not expecting the quick move, she felt suddenly disoriented, and a two-second glance at Rafe’s face was all it took to tell her he was angry. His brows formed a grooved furrow, and his eyes snapped like the facets of a sapphire. The fire illuminated his rigid jaw and the compressed line of his mouth, but his voice came out soft and husky. “You don’t still love him. But maybe we’d better make absolutely sure you know that.”

She knew what he intended. She saw his blue eyes coming for her, and she saw his lips parting to take hers. It was like watching an avalanche headed her way with all the escape routes blocked. When she tried to duck her head, his fingers anchored her chin. When she tried to rise, his arms surrounded her and the pressure of that first kiss scolded her for even trying to escape.

Her body had a small problem: It still felt like a marshmallow from all his soothing caresses. Limbs that normally obeyed mental commands simply didn’t want to work just now. Her common sense seemed suddenly to have taken a vacation to Tahiti. She knew better than to allow him to kiss her. She’d sampled Rafe’s kisses the night before, and her pulse rate signaled that she was in danger…only the danger tasted so delicious.

She stopped struggling, only because a temporary submission was better than an awkward argument. As it happened, the mental fib wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t a simple submission Rafe wanted at all. Kiss followed kiss until she was breathless, until the snap of the fire sounded like a roar in her ears, until her arms were tightly wrapped around him and her fingers were laced in his hair. Responding to him wasn’t a matter of choice. She only wished it were.

When he finally lifted his head, the anger had disappeared from his expression. His eyes intimately searched hers, and whatever he saw there aroused the trace of a smile. Still, his low voice had an edge. “Don’t ever peg me on the same hook with him, Zoe. Children don’t matter to me; they’ve never mattered to me. It’s damned hard to find someone to talk to, someone you want to wake up to in the morning, someone who’ll still be there if you make a mistake. If and when a man finds someone like that, he’d be a damn fool to let her go. Believe me, you don’t still love him.”

Loving Steven wasn’t an issue, and she would have told Rafe that if he’d give her the chance. He didn’t. When his hands slid under her shirt, she shuddered. His palm stroked one breast until the tip hardened and her eyes closed, and his lips labeled the pulse at her throat “his.” The hollow above her collarbone was treated to a similar branding.

Any minute now, her heart was going to stop quaking. Tenderness and excitement didn’t go together like this. A man couldn’t be both fierce and tender. And a woman couldn’t possibly feel both helpless and superlatively, powerfully, exultantly female.

“You felt like this with him? As though the whole world were burning up? Do you know how you make me feel when you respond like this?”

“Rafe, stop…” Talking. She didn’t want to hear; she didn’t want to think. If he was trying to tell her he wanted her, he was making himself crystal clear. If he was trying to banish the thought of any other man from her mind, he was doing a good job of that, too. Steven had taught her something about need; Rafe was teaching her about a maelstrom of need. He made her feel as if she’d just discovered desire. He could make a woman believe she would die if she didn’t have him.

When he eased her down to the carpet, she welcomed its cushioning support in a world that was rapidly becoming blurred, indistinct, without edges. Her whole body tightened when his thigh slid between hers. His tightened when he impatiently released the buttons of her shirt and discovered bare skin.

Obviously, she shouldn’t have let him discover bare skin. His breath was suddenly a hoarse rasp, his eyes blazed blue, and need shuddered through his body. Through the thin material of her bra, she felt his lips on her nipple, and then his tongue.

He was going too fast, much too fast. She knew every reason why this was wrong, and couldn’t care. Maybe for too long she’d refused to believe that a man could want just Zoe, just the woman, not for what she could give or produce but for who she was. Maybe it was different because he was Rafe-patient always, but not now. Easy and slow always, but not now. Logical and rational always, but at the moment he couldn’t seem to manage the simple catch of a bra, and he kissed her like he was damn-well starved.

“Touch me, Zoe. Do you want me to go crazy?”

Was that the question of a rational man? “Rafe.” She managed to capture both his hands before they burned her up with a touch that was hotter than fire. “If you give me a chance, I will,” she murmured softly.

He opened glazed eyes on her smile. Whatever he saw made him momentarily still. Her tumbled hair was catching the glow of firelight, and his fingers reached up to touch it, and while he was busy with that she raised her lips to his. She offered him a woman’s kiss, a woman’s wooing, soft, exploring, a sharing of promises. Her fingers strayed over his forehead, his cheekbones, the line of his jaw.