Wild in the Moment

Eight

He wasn’t expecting the kiss, Daisy knew. He was exasperated with her. She knew that, too.

But she didn’t throw her arms around him because she wanted to. For damn sure, she would never have done an eyes-closed, mouth-open kiss-from-the-heart if she’d had any-any-other choice.

“Dais-”

“Shh!” she ordered him and resolved not to let him up for air ever again. Or at least for a while. A long while. She back-walked him down the hall, past the living room and den and bath. She walked, blind, her arms slung around his neck, fingers shivering in his scalp, lips clinging as if she were the glue and he was her only stamp.

Anxiety nipped at her conscience. This was such a bad idea-in principle. After the blizzard, she’d steered clear of Teague for an excellent reason. She knew she was vulnerable to him, and she wasn’t climbing into another relationship that couldn’t work out. If a woman quit trying to climb mountains, then she couldn’t fall off.

But damn Teague. Damn, damn, damn Teague. She kissed him again, harder, softer, deeper, wilder, loosening her arms from his neck so she could pull at his shirt. And once she’d peeled loose his shirt buttons, she yanked off her sweater-although the instant her mouth lifted from his, he tried to say, “Daisy-” again.

“Shh.” She had his bare chest now. She’d uncovered these treasures before. The slope of his shoulders. His upper arms, muscled as hard as sailor’s rope. Patches of chest hair, not soft, but as wiry as his temperament was. And an Adam’s apple that was throbbing, throbbing, for the lick of her tongue.

It was his fault-because of the dog. He’d broken her heart, seeing how much he’d obviously loved his dog. Teague sounded so tough, but she’d seen the collar, the pink-stuffed teddy bear with the eaten-off nose. The pink tennis balls peeking under the couches and chairs in the living room. The ceramic feeding bowl with Hussy engraved on it, clean, sitting on the counter, no food in it but somehow he hadn’t been able to face putting it away yet.

She was so touched, he’d almost made her cry. Made her afraid she might cry. Losing his dog had so clearly devastated him, and all for a mutt.

Obviously she had to kiss him.

And kiss him good.

In fact, as far as Daisy was concerned, she had no choice about making love with him, either.

And making love right.

“Um, Dais-” He didn’t seem to mind her unbuttoning his jeans, but his big callused hands suddenly, softly, framed her face. “I don’t know what pushed your on button-”

“You did.”

“Uh-huh. Well. I’m glad I did. But I could have sworn you said you had to be at the café-”

“I do. Later. We might have to hurry.”

“That, um, won’t be a problem. You want speed, trust me, I can give you speed. But-”

“No buts, tiger.” She lifted her head, eyes suddenly stricken. “Unless you don’t want to make love?”

“Trust me. I want this. I want you. Full-time, part-time, fast, slow. Any way you’re willing to do this.” While she had her hands on his jeans zipper, he handily slipped both his hands down her spine, down her back into the waistband of her pants. Somehow he started pushing her pants down at the same time he caressed her fanny, kneading and squeezing. His mouth was leveling hers at the same time.

Daisy intended to protest. She was the one in charge here, not Teague. She was going to remind him about that…in just a minute or two. Her slacks were trying to trip her. She stepped out of them. And while she was attempting to step out of them, Teague took the opportunity to lift her high-high enough to tongue-tease both her nipples, first one, then the other, taking his time…my, the man was strong…before lowering her onto his platform bed. Who knew they’d even made it all the distance to his bedroom?

It was downright impossible to get his jeans off when he was on top of her, but she was highly motivated…groaning under his weight, moaning under his touch, demanding more of both. His bed was another reason she’d felt forced into this drastic behavior choice. His whole house was so pure guy. The wood. The stone. A jar of mustard sat all by its lonesome on its own shelf in the fridge. His chest of drawers had a fork and a hammer and a tower of books and socks. His mattress was harder than concrete.

But then she’d seen that hedonist, floofy, fluffy comforter. And now she could feel it, soft against her naked skin, cushiony so that she felt she were sinking, sinking into a cloud…or maybe that was sinking into Teague. An ardent, wild Teague, who seemed to forget time, place, and the phone ringing somewhere in his house.

The comforter and dog were the only soft spots in Teague she’d found. The only hints that he was lonely. That he had needs. Wants. That he yearned…

And damn, so did she. He’d broken her down. It’s the only way she could think of it. She’d tried so hard to be mean. She’d tried to scare him, by driving his car in a way that had to turn him off. She’d barged in his business with his customer. She hadn’t come clean with him. And still he was good to her. Still, he seemed to want her.

Still, he touched her in ways-deeper, more worrisome ways-than any man ever had.

Those jeans of his-she finally won them. And one of his socks. The shadows in his bedroom seemed darker than smoke, yet there was nothing but searing bright sensations running through her. Greedily she touched, wooed, claimed. Her blood raced hotter and faster because of how fiercely he responded to anything she did. He just kept giving and giving and giving.

She reared her head up, eyes glazed and crazy with wanting. “Teague-I don’t love you,” she whispered urgently.

His mouth was wet from her kisses, his eyes as glazed and dark as her own, yet he responded easily, as if he were expecting the comment. “You think not?”

“All right. Maybe I do. But that’s just about loving you right now. It’s because these moments together are so good, so right. But it doesn’t mean ties or future or permanence or anything like that.”

“I know. You’re leaving town.”

“Yes.”

“As soon as you possibly can.”

“Yes.”

“So this is ideal, isn’t it? Exactly what you want. We can make love and make love and make love. And you can forget me as soon as you’re gone.”

She was about to say yes again, only that wasn’t what she’d said or even meant. She frowned, and then the chance to answer him disappeared. He swooped her around, pinned her beneath him, and in the darkening shadows pounced. Kisses dropped on her throat, between her breasts, on her navel, then on the swell of her abdomen. He was aiming…the wrong way.

She was going to tell him about that, mention that he’d lost his sense of direction entirely, except that he wrapped his arms around her thighs, pulling them up even as his head dipped down. All that urgent rushing, yet suddenly he moved slow. Slower than honey. Slower than shadows on a summer night. His cheek nuzzled the inside of her thighs. She felt his rough beard, felt his breath…lost her own.

Her sisters whispered about this. Women were supposed to love it. Not her. It always made her feel too vulnerable, too…naked. She was all about being wild, always had been, but not like this. Not. Like. This. It was uncomfortable and upsetting and…

“Sheesh, Dais, I’ll never stop if you respond like that. Come for me, love. Come. Give in, let it happen.” He wasn’t talking, wasn’t whispering. It was a croon to her, a promise.

“I don’t…I can’t…”

He chuckled, a soft earthy sound, a vibration low in his throat that he transferred to a kiss on that most intimate part of her. “Okay, then. Fight it. It’ll be fun.”

It wasn’t fun. She felt need tear through her like fire, burning, flames licking at her consciousness, blinding sharp. She tried to hold back. Tried to hide, but desire kept escalating, scaling that mountain of hungry, greedy need…until she tipped over the edge and soared.

He took his own good time about shifting, finally came up to smile wickedly at her in the darkness. “You’ll be sorry you showed me how much you liked that,” he promised. “You’d better believe I’ll remember the next time.”

She couldn’t answer him. He didn’t seem inclined to give her a chance to, anyway. He lifted her legs high and tight around his waist and then dove in, drove in, all at once. She felt a yielding of loneliness inside her, a keening to be like this, with him, forever, like this, but of course that was just her heart talking. How was she supposed to think? He was thick and hard. He was whispering wicked ideas to her. He was holding her, holding her, so she couldn’t escape yet another climb toward release, every muscle in her body straining for the next cliff edge, the next mountain top, and then there it was…another sensation, like flying free, flying through a silver wind, a flashing-soft sky, soaring…straight back into his arms.

“Oh, yeah,” he whispered exultantly, as if this were what he expected all along. As if he always made the world tilt when he made love. As if he always turned a woman into shambles when he made love.

As if he loved her.

Eventually she started breathing again. Eventually she even opened her eyes. She seemed to be wrapped around Teague’s naked body tighter than a present at Christmas, both of them smelling like sweat and sex, neither of them moving.

She wanted to move. She wanted to lift her head and stare at him. It’s not as if she hadn’t been married. It’s not as if she didn’t enjoy sex. But Teague…they’d made love in the blizzard, and she’d been so sure that was just a lost moment in time. Now she wanted to know where he got his Wheaties. Where he learned all that wicked stuff. How come he moved her to heights she’d never climbed before.

But she didn’t look at him, didn’t ask him. For just a moment more, she wanted to be nowhere else but right here, snugged in his arms, no reality intruding in any way.

But, of course, there was no escaping reality. An alarm clock ticked right next to her head. “I have to go. Close up the café.”

“Yeah, you do. But first you promised you’d tell me about your ex.”

“Now?”

A low chuckle came out of his throat. “Hey, you think I want to talk about another guy after we just made love? On the other hand, I don’t often have you naked and vulnerable. I figure I have to use this to my advantage while I can.”

“Idiot,” she murmured affectionately. He had to know that he wasn’t being manipulative at all, not when he told her exactly what he was doing. “I told you I’d tell you-”

“Yeah. So spill. Exactly why you’re so poor if your ex is supposedly so rich and successful. Exactly why didn’t you want your family to help you or know how much trouble you were in. Exactly why you got the divorce.”

“Sheesh. Could we work on one question at a time, tiger?”

“No. All at once. Let’s just get this conversation over with.”

She sighed, staring blindly at the moonlight shining in his bare windows. Rime decorated the panes in magical shapes, crystals and diamonds and jewels. The kind of diamonds you couldn’t touch, of course-the kind of diamonds that disappeared if you tried to touch them. She’d tried to touch the wrong kind of diamonds her whole life, but how could she explain that to Teague? “I don’t know where to start, except that…I always had a panic attack at the idea of being ordinary.”

“Since we’re pretty short on time, you don’t have to waste it telling me stuff I know.”

He forced her to grin. “I mean, a real panic attack, Teague. Maybe it started from being the only one in the family with the totally ordinary name. I swear I remember fighting it even way back in my sandbox days. I wanted to be different from everyone else. I wanted to see the world. Take big risks. Have a big life. Do exotic, romantic, wonderful things.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I thought I found it all in Jean-Luc. I thought he was exotic and romantic and wonderful.”

“And was he?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember the first time he sold a painting for big money-over a hundred thousand. He rented a yacht. With crew. We sailed with some friends, feasted for four days. He bought me a Hermes bag.”

“I don’t know about the bag, but the rest sounds romantic and generous and all.”

“Yup. Only, by the time we got back home, he’d spent every dime. We didn’t have money to pay the rent, much less to buy groceries. The car had already been repossessed. Not for the first time.” She turned her head. “Suddenly you’re real quiet. You getting the picture? Because that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Not good.”

“Not good,” she echoed dryly. “All the trunks that I shipped home were loaded with stuff. Stuff I could sell, but I just wouldn’t get much for it. I mean, it’s not like a Natori bra can be resold. And I’ve still got a few drops of LaMer moisturizer-the kind that goes for a thousand an ounce-but I can’t sell that. What it all amounts to is that I’m wearing good clothes because it’s what I have, not because I’m trying to impress anyone.”

“But you do care that people think you’re successful,” Teague said quietly.

She didn’t answer that. He already knew she had more pride than brains. Besides, he wanted the whole story-and she wanted to get it over with. “I sold plenty through the marriage. I sold yellow diamonds, black pearls from Polynesia. I’ve also washed dishes in a bar to pay the rent, and I’ve cleaned up messes after parties that you just couldn’t imagine. When Jean-Luc had money, he loved sharing it with the whole world. No one ever said he wasn’t generous.”

“He sounds as practical as a tree stump.”

Again she had to smile. His fingers were sieving through her hair, creating that light tickle sensation that made her want to curl up close-when she was already as close as a woman could get. “Yeah-and what kills me was that I never wanted to be the practical one. I wanted to be the wild, impulsive one. Everyone in White Hills knew I was born to be wild.”

“You are wild, babe.”

She closed her eyes, all too aware that she’d completely changed from the woman she once was. The woman she’d once wanted to be. And she still had to finish the story for Teague. “Jean-Luc was honestly a creative man, a talented artist who deserved all the glory he got. But he needs a harem to take care of him. At least three maids, then someone to work and actually bring in food and rent. And then a bodyguard to keep all comers away who’ll ask him for money-because for damn sure he’ll give it away.”

“Sounds like hell to live with.”

She whispered, “He was.” And suddenly she found it was easy to get out of bed. She wanted her clothes on. Wanted that reality she’d wanted to disappear minutes before. Didn’t want to look at Teague anymore at all if she could help it. At least until she had a better handle on control. For some stupid reason, she felt like crying.

“You stayed for so long because you loved him?”

She wasn’t a Vermonter for nothing. Her voice was as brisk as a sturdy wind. “Nope. I was wildly in love with him in the beginning, no question about that. But I think love started dying the first day I woke up hungry. I mean, seriously hungry. The thing was, we moved around so much that I couldn’t work-day-by-day jobs, sure, but nothing that could have given us some financial stability. We were all over the place. Living with friends one day, renting a cottage or a villa the next-wherever the spirit of painting took him. So…”

“So?” he prodded her when she didn’t immediately finish her thought.

In the dark, though, it was hard to find every sock and button…and somehow she didn’t want to turn around until she was fully dressed. “So…he gave me the yellow diamond one day-and we had to pawn it the next. That was the turning point for me. I didn’t give a hoot about the stone. It was just that I finally realized he wasn’t being impulsive and absentminded and a devil-may-care artist. He knew we couldn’t afford his grandiose gestures. He knew they were going to turn off the electricity. He just thought he could snow me, like he’d snowed me all the other times. He thought I’d be swayed into staying by the romance of the extravagant present. He loved me the same way. Hugely one day-and pawning me off the next.”

Teague still hadn’t moved from the bed. “Yet you stayed with him for a long time.”

“Yeah. Out of idiotic misplaced pride.” She lifted her hands in one of the Gallic gestures she’d picked up in that ghastly marriage. “I was just so ashamed to tell anyone. My family thought I had this jet-setting fabulous life. My sisters thought of me as a role model, the one they could always turn to for advice, to take charge. They were proud of me, for living my life my own way, for making it unconventionally. I knew famous people. I dressed in designer duds. I was traveling, seeing the world. Teague?”

“What?”

“I stole a loaf of bread one day.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I was hungry. But I wasn’t that hungry. And I can still remember thinking, how ashamed my mom and dad would have been if they’d known.”

“Well, hell. Let’s get a rope and hang you right now.” For a man who’d been so somnolently still, he suddenly bounded out of bed in one swift move and crossed the room stark naked. Suddenly he was an inch from her, his knuckles lifting her chin. Before she could breathe, his mouth came down on hers, soft, warm, firm. “I think you can probably let that guilt go,” he murmured.

“You’re making light of it. And maybe it was just a loaf of bread. But I wasn’t raised to take anything from anyone. I still don’t understand what made me do it.”

“You think you might have felt just a little bit desperate at how you were living? Not knowing where the next dime-or franc-was coming from? That sometimes scared people do scared things?”

“That’s not an excuse.” But she searched his eyes in the dark room, still felt the warmth of his kiss, of his body, of all they’d shared naked moments before. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” He didn’t answer, just stood there, his finger idly tracing her jawline. “I think I’m just trying to explain…why I kept it all from my family. From the people who knew me growing up.”

“You wanted them to think you lived a romantic, exciting life.”

“It sounds pretty shallow when you put it that way. I just mean…I hate coming home with my tail between my legs. I hate people thinking I’m a failure. Thinking that I was always a wild, irresponsible screw-up and the life I got was payback.”

He stood at the front window long after she’d left-taking his sacred Golf GTi-and he heard her moving to third gear before she’d reached the end of the road and the first stop sign.

His head was buzzing. He’d never dreamed, from the image she put on, that her ex had been such a selfish self-centered bastard. It changed things.

All this time he’d believed her about not wanting to stay in White Hills. Now he wasn’t so sure. She had plenty of pluck. She’d coped with a blizzard, coped broke, coped with a selfish liability like Jean-Luc for years. When it came down to it, she seemed to be inspired by adversity, not afraid of it. She’d pushed up her sleeves and become a cook. Made that horrible attic room into something artistic and personal and fun.

He got it. That she wanted people to think she wasn’t practical and responsible. She wanted people to think she was exotic and fun and romantic and wild. He didn’t understand it, but he did understand that the key to Daisy was her pride.

She said she was proud, but as far as Teague could tell, it was her pride that had taken a battering over the last years. In her own way, on her own terms, she needed to feel that fierce sense of pride again. Not fake pride. Not lying-to-everyone pride. But the kind of pride that made her feel good about herself inside.

She wanted to feel wild. She didn’t want to be ordinary. The more Teague repeated those concepts in his mind, the more a plan slowly started brewing. Possibly a goofy plan-but then any plan was better than desperation. Teague understood that Daisy intended to be gone as fast as she saved a down payment on a car and enough savings to take off. And that meant, if he had any way to influence her feelings, he had to move damn fast.

Because he was afraid he’d fallen. Hard and fast. He already knew the odds were against both of them-but a man didn’t feel this power of love very often, if ever, in a lifetime. He wasn’t throwing away a treasure if there was any chance he could woo Daisy into seeing herself as unique and wonderful and loving as he saw her.