She swallowed. Her eyes shone nervously; her cheeks blazed a brighter hue, but for once, she didn’t try to run.
Suddenly his breathing was fast and irregular. “Why? Why do you always goad me? Why do you always have to push?”
“I—I don’t know. I-it’s just the way I am with you. I don’t like it that I do it, either. North—”
“Shut up,” he said silkily.
Then he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, ran it along her throat. Her skin was smooth and soft. Womanly soft. And hot. So hot. She was burning up just like he was.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
He stroked her hair. “Not just yet. You touched me. You led me on.”
“You’re too easy.”
He grinned. “If only you were as easy.”
She shut her eyes as if to shut him out.
“Your desires are every bit as deep and dark as mine,” he murmured. “Have you found someone else to satisfy them?” Just asking her drove him crazy.
Her lashes fluttered. Her smoky eyes darkened. “No…”
“How long…since you’ve been held? Kissed?”
“Not since…that night.” She turned deep red.
“Me, either.”
Why the hell had he admitted that? Unwanted desire for her wound him tighter. When she tried to run, he seized her arm again. “Not yet, darlin’. You’re not going anywhere. Not just yet. Not till I’ve had a final taste.”
Melody was tall, but he dwarfed her. Easily he scooped her closer. When he snugged her hips against his, she quivered, and even the slight response on her part that warred with the wild panic in her eyes made him explosively needy. Always, always she drove him past the limits of his careful control.
“Why do you always bully me?” she whispered.
“Sometimes I think because you want me to.”
“Don’t say that.”
“What do you want, Melody? What’s so wrong—”
An electric silence hummed between them. She was nervy, yet secretly thrilled and eager, too.
“You scare me,” she said breathily.
“You scare you. You ought to know by now I would never hurt you. Or force you—”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“I just want to touch you.” He wanted to slide his fingers inside her again, to know she was wet as she’d been that night, despite all her puritanical and hung-up assertions to the contrary.
She shut her eyes, half opened her mouth and sank back against the wall. “If only—”
God, it had been so long. Six months since that wonderful, awful night. He had told himself, never, ever again—not with her. Then the minute he set eyes on her, the minute she touched him, she had him again. More than anything he craved to kiss her, to run his hands through her long, soft hair, to do all the things she’d forbidden him to do.
What would she do this time if he tried? What would she say? What would he do if she ever let him? He’d wanted her so damn much. He’d waited so long.
Maybe he would have held himself in check if Melody hadn’t reached up and brushed her fingertips against the crisp black hair above his white collar. Maybe. But even though her touch was light and tentative, he felt her feverish response behind it, and that alone set him off.
He seized her shoulders to pull her toward him, wondering if this time she’d—
His head came down. Her lips pursed eagerly as she lifted them. In the fraction of a second before their mouths touched, he thought she whispered, “I’m sorry, North. So, sorry.”
But before he could deepen their kiss, he heard the brisk patter of Dee Dee’s footsteps. Quickly he straightened, and Melody twisted her crimson face away, so her mother couldn’t read her.
“Is that you, North!” Dee Dee shrieked from the other end of the hall as she rushed down the hall that was papered to look like a voluptuous garden gone wild in spring.
He froze.
Melody jumped free and began smoothing her hair.
“North…Melody…”
Dee Dee, who was golden and gorgeous and looked years younger than she was, smiled as they hastily backed away from each other and began to fidget—Melody with her sash after she’d finished on her hair and he with his tight collar.
“It’s so good to see you, dear.” Dee Dee smiled knowingly as she came forward and stretched on tiptoes as if to peck his dark cheek. All he felt when her glossy lips hovered close was the stir of her warm breath against his skin. “I’m the chairman of the charity ball, so I was on the phone and couldn’t get the door.”
“You said Melody was in Austin.”
“Did I?” Dee Dee smiled up at him artlessly. “You know Melody. She’s as fickle as Texas weather, and I suppose we’re about due for a norther.”
“After this hellish summer, something a little cool…and frosty might be a welcome change,” he agreed thickly, his eyes on Melody.
“Sam’s out back,” Dee Dee said. When an alarm buzzed in her kitchen, she started. “Why don’t you join him, dear? And while you’re outside, make sure he doesn’t burn up my rib eyes. Meanwhile, I’ll go get you a beer out of the fridge.” Then she flew to the kitchen to check on whatever she had in the oven.
“It’s only one evening together,” North muttered in a hoarse whisper to Melody. “Surely we can be civil and behave ourselves in front of your parents for a few hours—for their sake. For ours, too.”
“Only one night?” Melody looked a little strained as she smiled up at him. “Oh, no, North. I quit my job. I’m home to stay. Or at least I’ll be at Nana’s. You and I could see each other anytime—that is, if we wanted to.”
“Which we don’t.”
“Speak for yourself. The last thing I intend to do where you’re concerned—is behave myself.”
Nana was her grandmother.
“I thought south Texas bored you.”
“I was wrong…about a lot of things.”
He remembered her apology right before their kiss. “What things? What do you mean?”
“I’ll be around. That’s all.”
“You said you loved Austin because it was wild. That south Texas and I bored—”
Her parting shots had cut him to the quick. At one point she’d said he was so ultraconservative that she felt stifled and dead anytime she was anywhere near him.
“Well—” She paused. “I’m here for a while. Not because of you, but because I’m going back to school. To get a masters and a teaching certificate.”
“Teaching? You said you didn’t want to settle for any sort of traditional roles like wife or teacher that women used to be forced into by macho men.”
“I was a child. Naturally I wanted to be glamorous and special.” She paused. “I guess I figured out I like kids. I figured out some other stuff…that I like, too.”
Like men? Like sex? Like me?
As if she read his mind, Melody notched her chin upward a bit defiantly, and he found himself drinking in the beauty of her long slender neck and wondering