“Have you got something to use, or are you on the pill?” he’d demanded, his voice deeper, his eyes dark with passion as he fought to maintain control.
Her face had gone scarlet. “Ryder, I’m... I’m a virgin,” she’d whispered. “I don’t know how to...to...I mean, I’m not on the pill.”
His dark brows had drawn together. “You’re a what?”
She’d swallowed, because he looked frightening. “I’ve never done this before,” she whispered.
He’d said something that she’d never heard from a man’s lips before he dragged himself away from her and got to his feet, glaring down at her as if he hated her. “Damn you,” he’d sworn huskily, the very softness of his voice more intimidating than shouting would have been. “You vicious little tease!” He’d added some other insults to that one, words she’d spent years trying to forget, explicit things that she couldn’t have imagined Ryder saying to any woman. He’d left her, but she hadn’t heard him go. She’d cried all night long, deceiving Eve when she returned with the pretence of a migraine. And she’d never again spent a night at the Calaway house, despite all Eve’s invitations. Only she and Ryder knew why, and until now, they’d never mentioned the subject.
It had left scars on Ivy’s emotions. The experience had made her feel cheap, somehow. Also, it had shown her how vulnerable she was, and how skillful Ryder was at seduction. Eve had talked occasionally about Ryder’s women and his love of freedom, so she knew it had only been an impulse with him, a momentary yielding to desire.
But she’d given him her heart that night. Afterward, she’d found reasons not to go to the Calaway house overnight again. And, indeed, during those two years before Ben came into her life, Ryder had seemed to avoid Ivy as well. But about the time Ben started noticing her, Ryder had come back into her life and casually invited her to dinner one night. Frightened of herself, and of the look in his eyes when he watched her, she’d invented a date with Ben. When she’d confessed what she’d done to Ben, he’d made the date real. Weeks later, while Ryder was out of the country, she and Ben were quietly married.
“Yes, you remember, don’t you?” he asked. “I made the mistake of my life that night. The next day I went to Toronto, and I avoided you like the plague after that, or didn’t you notice?” he asked on a rueful laugh. “And from that day on, if you spent the night with Eve, it was at your house, not mine.”
“It wasn’t what you thought,” she began. “I honestly didn’t know you were in the house.”
His face contorted and he looked away. “Oh, God, don’t you think I finally realized that? But the damage was done. The only reparation I could make was to keep out of your way. I’d made you afraid of me. I didn’t want to do any worse damage. But in the end it wasn’t necessary. You ran straight to Ben the first time I asked you out on a date.”
Her shoulders lifted and fell in a helpless little gesture. “I thought you might still think I was a...tease and...” She swallowed. Her fears sounded juvenile now. She wrapped her arms around her. “I couldn’t be sure that you might not be in the mood for a little revenge. You seemed to hate me that night. You said...” She laughed brokenly. “You said I was too small-breasted to appeal to any real adult male, and that it was just proximity that had made you touch me at all.”
His eyes closed on a heavy sigh. He turned toward the horizon again and rammed his hand into his pocket. “Men... say things when they’re frustrated,” he murmured uneasily. “I’m sure you know that now. I didn’t mean any of the things I said to you that night. I was hurting pretty bad.”
She stared at the ground. She’d managed to work that out, over the years. It didn’t help very much. She’d loved him, and he’d savaged her fragile ego. “I’m sorry,” she said helplessly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he replied curtly. “I should have walked away, but I couldn’t. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.” He glanced at her, his face rigid when he read the doubt in her dark eyes.
She felt warm all over at the softness in his deep voice. She couldn’t quite manage to meet his eyes, though, and it sounded more like an apology than praise. “Thank you, but you don’t have to pretend,” she said, her eyes staring blankly toward the distant trees. “Ben thought I was...too small, too—Ryder!”
He took her by the arms, his steely grip unconsciously bruising as he jerked her up against him. “I lied,” he said huskily, eyes blazing. “Can’t you get it through your head that I lied? I wanted you almost enough to force you, damn it! I had to get out of there, I had to hurt you so that you wouldn’t reach out to me when I let you go!” His tall, powerful frame seemed to vibrate with passion. “Oh, God, Ivy, you don’t know how that night has haunted me over the years. You don’t know...!”
She recognized the unholy torment in his face without understanding what was causing it. Without thinking, she reached up to his lean cheek and touched it gently. He actually flinched, but when she started to draw her hand back, he pressed it, palm flat, to his jaw.
“It’s all right,” she faltered. “It was years ago.”
“It was yesterday.” He looked older suddenly. Bone-weary. His eyes darkened as they searched her face. “You ran from me,” he said huskily.
Her eyes fell. “I didn’t know what else to do. I could never talk to Mama about things like that.”
He pulled her against him and held her gently, his eyes staring blankly toward the auction platform. “Maybe it was a good thing to get it out in the open, to talk about it.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes. It was heaven to stand in his arms, to be close to him like this. She shivered with pleasure.
Ryder felt the trembling and went rigid. She was afraid of him. He’d thought the fear was because she wanted him. But was he only deluding himself, again? His big hand slid slowly down her back, bringing her even closer. He could feel her breath sighing out quickly at his throat, an erotic little sigh that made him feel hot all over. He liked the feel of her so close. It brought back memories of that night long ago when he’d tasted her, when she’d been everything in the world to him. She still was, but over the years the feeling had grown and ripened, until now what he felt for her was a raging fever that all the oceans on earth couldn’t have put out. He wanted her, but not just physically. He wanted her like a thirsting man wants water, all of her, just for him.
“I used to wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t lost my head with you,” he said under his breath, folding her even closer. “We were friends. Over the years I hoped that we could regain that closeness.”
“I...thought we had,” she said, trying to make her voice steadier, to calm her screaming pulse. The feel of all that masculine strength so close to her was doing impossible things to her. She wanted to reach up and hold him, to bury her face against his bare skin and feel him wanting her....
“Not quite,” he said huskily. He drew in a ragged sigh. “But maybe if we work at it, Ivy, we might manage friendship again. What do you think?”
She closed her eyes. “I think we might, too,” she whispered.
His heart raced wildly in his chest. He lifted his head and tilted her face up to him. “So beautiful,” he said deeply. “Every man’s dream.”
Except yours. She almost said the words aloud. She smiled a little sadly and pulled away. “Not quite,” she replied, laughing nervously. “Shouldn’t we get back?” she said evasively, noticing the crowd gathering around the auction platform. “I think they’re starting.”
“What?” He had to force his mind to work. The scent of her was in his nostrils, the feel of her... He glanced where she was staring. “Oh. The auction. Yes, we’d better get back.”
Back to reality, that was. He took her arm and guided her through the crowd, still savoring