Teresa Hill - The Texan's Diamond Bride

“I’m saying I’m willing to try, that I’d certainly give it my best shot. I mean…I managed to distract you for the last few moments, didn’t I?”

“I—I—I can’t believe you—”

“You haven’t flinched over the last two lightning strikes, in case you didn’t notice. So from where I sit, it seems to be working.”

From where he sat!

Well, from where she sat, she was…She was on top of him, all lean muscles and heat and…and…

She had pushed herself upright at one point, wasn’t snuggled against him as she had been at first, but she was still sitting on his lap, her hands pressed against his chest for balance and to keep her from getting any closer.

“I don’t…I just…I don’t do this.”

“Do what? Snuggle? Kiss? Play around a little?”

Play around a little?

“That’s what you’re offering to do?” she asked.

He shrugged easily. “I’m saying I’m open to the possibilities.”

He made it sound so innocent, like nothing of consequence at all. Like passing the time in casual conversation or something.

“Actually,” he said. “Now that I think about it, not absolutely anything. We couldn’t actually have sex. No condoms. I don’t generally ride around the ranch prepared in that particular way.”

“Not an opportunity that normally presents itself during a normal workday at the ranch?” she quipped.

“No, Red. I have to say, it just doesn’t happen. Damned shame, don’t you think? I love working this ranch. Something like that happened every now and then…Well, I’d have to say the job would be just about perfect then.”

“Get lonely out here, Cowboy?”

He nodded.

She shook her head. “I can’t decide what to make of you. If you were half-serious about that or just…just—”

“I was going to kiss you,” he admitted, laughing beautifully, that rich, deep voice of his wrapping around her like a spell in the dark. “Although I am up for just about anything you’d like. I mean…a man needs to take care of a woman. It’s just…what a man does.”

“Make the sacrifice? Since I’m afraid and everything?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is this some cowboy code you live by? You’re honor bound to offer your body to a woman in distress—”

“That’s just what a man does.”

Paige didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or charmed.

Both, probably.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.

“You don’t have to say anything. I was just letting you know you had options.”

“Oh, well. Options. Okay.”

“But really, why don’t you just stay here with me, lean down against me.” He eased her down against his chest. “There you go. And let your head go right here.” Against that warm, inviting curve of his shoulder and his neck. “That’s it. Close your eyes.”

He spread the blanket over her and him. She could feel him breathing deeply and easily, feel the heat of his body, his heartbeat beneath one of her palms.

He put one of his hands over her ear, and with the other ear buried against his chest, it blocked out a lot of the sound, making a little cocoon of safety for her.

It was nice.

Really nice.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered. “You’ll be fine.”

She tried.

She really did.

But the storm kept going. She’d be nearly asleep, then find herself jerked out of that half sleep by lightning, feel his arms tighten around her to let her know she wasn’t alone, feel the glorious heat of his big, hard body, and then find herself thinking of what he’d offered.

It was just a night.

Just a little comfort in the dark on a big, scary night.

She knew lightning wasn’t going to come snaking inside the rock overhang and get her. It wasn’t chasing after her.

But an irrational fear was just that—an irrational fear.

And she’d been battling this one since she was a little girl and had gotten caught in her tree house during a big storm. No one had known she was there, and she’d stayed well hidden inside of it, huddled into a little ball, shaking and crying like she never had in her life. Her mother’s face had gone absolutely white when she realized her daughter had been in a tree during a lightning storm. To Paige, it had seemed like it had gone on forever, like no one would ever come and save her, that the lightning would surely reach out and get her at any moment.

“I was playing outside when I was five or six, and a storm came, and I took shelter at the closest spot, which turned out to be my tree house,” she finally admitted.

“Oooh,” her cowboy sympathized.

“Yeah, not the best place to be during a storm. It was awful, and it seemed like forever before anyone found me.”

He held her tight as she lay draped over him, bracing for the next boom of thunder. His hands moved gently over her shoulders, trying to soothe and work out some of the tension there. She snuggled closer, her face pressed as far into the curve of his neck as she could get it, the reassuring rise and fall of his chest beneath her, the beat of his heart, steady as could be, thumping against one of her ears.

“I could tell you a story,” he whispered.

And she grinned despite her fears. “Thank you, but I’m not five years old anymore. Besides, I never got bedtime stories. I got songs. My mother used to sing us to sleep.”

“Okay, I’m definitely not singing. You don’t want me to sing.”

“Then…I guess there’s not much else you could do,” she said, thinking it came out sounding like an invitation more than anything else.

Oops.

She didn’t mean it that way.

Honestly, she didn’t.

So what if he was here? She was here. The storm was here. And it was going to be a long night.

He took her face in his hand, eased back away from her, just enough that he could look her in the eye and said, “Let’s just try one kiss, Red. Okay? One. And we’ll see how it goes from there.”

Well, if he thought she was going to fight him off…

No, he knew she wasn’t going to do that.

Just let go, she told herself. It’s just one night, just one kiss.

He let his mouth settle over hers, firm and sure, insistent and yet moving like a man who had all the time in the world. She opened herself up to the kiss, to him. To the heat and the pleasure, falling into it.

Some men just knew how to touch a woman, when to linger, when to blaze forward, when to tease and when to take.

He knew.

He devoured her, and she let him, helped him as best she could, with long, hungry kisses and hands that roamed restlessly across his chest, his shoulders, his back, into his hair, trying to get even closer.

She wasn’t altogether sure how she got there, but she ended up straddling his lap, her hips in his hands, her breasts crushed against his chest, wishing she didn’t have a stitch on.

And it all happened as fast as a fire roaring out of control.

“Damn, Red,” he said, lifting his mouth from hers long enough to catch a ragged breath.

“I know.”

Maybe she’d just been alone too long, gotten too caught up with her work and her family and all of its craziness. Had forgotten to make time for Paige, the woman, with all a woman’s needs.

Because this felt very much like need.

He kissed her again, used his hands on her hips to draw her into a rhythm against him that was both arousing and maddening through their clothes.

If he’d laid her down on the hard ground right then and started stripping her clothes off, she didn’t think she could have stopped him. She was so aroused already he might not even have to take her clothes off her. If he just kept doing what he was doing, which now included a hand slipping beneath her sweater and her shirt and that little nothing camisole of a bra to her breast, his mouth on her neck…