“Oh, I’m pretty normal, honey. Can’t you tell?”
What she could tell was that he was enormously aroused and not a bit averse to letting her know. It was a frustrating moment for Cass. Lying beneath him, feeling every contour of his body pressing into hers, her own hormones were beginning to misbehave.
“If friendship is what you want between us, you’re going at it in a mighty strange way,” she said sharply, denying the throbbing that had started at intimate points of her body. “Tripping me was abominable. So is holding me down this way. Don’t you have any scruples at all?”
“Since paddling your behind would probably cause a ruckus we might never get over, how about going with the second item on my list and kissing each other senseless?”
She turned her gaze to give him a murderous look. He was having entirely too much fun at her expense. “You’re already minus the sense God gave that tree over there. Let go of my hands!”
“So you can scratch out my eyes? That’s what you said, honey, that you’d scratch the eyes right out of my arrogant head.”
“This conversation is over. Let me up!”
“Not until you kiss me.”
Cass gulped. The silky tone in his teasing voice was much too reminiscent of that night at the dunes. “You don’t have the morals of an alley cat. I see it all now. This is the only reason you put on that big act of needing to inspect Whitfield land before making that decision, you...you...”
“Don’t start with the name-calling again, Sassy, or I swear I’ll hold you here for the rest of the day.”
“You always were a damned bully,” she said, fuming.
“I was never a bully and you know it. I did a lot of things I wish I hadn’t, but bullying people wasn’t one of them. If anything, I was too easygoing. I picked the wrong friends, or they picked me. Anyway, there was always someone around wanting to party, and I fully admit to acting like a jackass in my younger days.”
“You’re still acting like a jackass. Gard, this has gone far enough. Let me up!”
“After you kiss me.”
“I am not going to kiss you!”
“Then how about just lying still and letting me kiss you?”
“Could I stop you?” she said angrily. Could she stop him from doing anything he wanted? Her face flamed at the thought. He wouldn’t dare do more than kiss her, would he?
Gard brought his head down until his lips were almost touching hers. “You won’t let yourself like me, and I want to know why.”
“What you’re doing right now is reason enough, don’t you think?”
“I’m talking about before today. The afternoon you walked into that room at the Plantation, you were all bristled up like a little porcupine.”
“That’s a lie.” She could feel his breath on her mouth and smell his after-shave, and worse, much worse, she was unable to ignore the blatant evidence of his manhood pressing into her abdomen. She wanted to stay angry, to remain furious and spiteful, but a languor was spreading throughout her body.
His gaze flicked over her face, feature by feature. His hold on her relaxed. She could easily elude him now if she wanted to. “You are a seriously beautiful woman, Cassandra Whitfield.” Elation darted through him; she hadn’t moved an inch. He placed his mouth tenderly on hers, and at just about the same moment, he wedged his legs in between hers and adjusted his position so that his arousal was firmly resting against her most private and sensitive spot.
Cass’s brain seemed to divide, one portion suddenly aching with passion and the other trying desperately to cling to common sense. It would be so easy to get carried away, to just let go and kiss him back. He had succeeded in making her want him, in stirring up all of the eroticism she possessed, and the commonsense portion of herself was losing ground. His lips felt delectably sensual on hers, warm and tender, demanding and giving, all at the same time. Instead of feeling the substantial weight of his body, she felt its remarkable composition, his chest, his thighs, and most disturbing of all, his sex subtly moving against hers.
She was getting sweaty and weak, and her mouth had become yielding and soft under his, molding at his direction, opening for his tongue.
“Sassy,” he whispered huskily.
Oh, God, she thought. She couldn’t let this happen again, not when their first time had meant so little to him he had no memory of it. Her wounds from that episode had gone so deep she still felt them. Rebel Sterling wasn’t the man for her to be fooling around with, however persuasive were his kisses and hard body.
With her hands freed, she laid them on either side of his head and pushed. Their mouths separated, and he looked at her with surprise in his eyes. Cass could almost see the protests lining up in his head, so she spoke first, hoarsely but fiercely. “Are you planning to take advantage of me again?”
Gard froze, his expression, his hands, his body, every inch of him. “What did you say?”
Already she wished she hadn’t said it. It wasn’t the truth, not the whole truth, and she could see what her accusation had done to him.
But neither could she take back the question. “I think you heard me.”
“All right, I heard you, but why did you say something like that?” His voice was controlled only through intense effort. He’d taken advantage of her? When? Where? As the questions mounted in his mind, he could feel all traces of desire deserting his system.
But then a horrifying thought struck him: was it true? Was that why Cassandra had been so distant and unfriendly? Was that the event nagging at his flawed memory? Had he forced her into something sexual?
Abruptly he rolled away from her, ending up on his back, his face tense, his eyes shadowed with confusion. Cass sat up slowly, almost afraid to look at him. She never should have said such a thing. He hadn’t taken advantage of her; he’d just made giving in to his charm seem natural and sensible, and while it had felt perfectly natural at the time, it certainly hadn’t been sensible.
She sent him a quick, uneasy glance, wondering how to undo the damage she had just inflicted without getting into a detailed discussion of that night and its painful aftermath. There were some things she would never be able to tell him, such as the nights of crying herself to sleep because she’d seen him at some point of that day and he hadn’t noticed her. Certainly he had never called or come to the house to see her. It was as though that night at the dunes had happened only in her own mind, and she’d been so hurt by his avoidance that nothing else in life held any meaning.
That was when she had made the decision to leave Montana. Her parents agreed on the further education she’d chosen, a small, well-respected art school in San Francisco, and she had packed and left, praying that time and distance would allow her to forget Gard Sterling.
She pushed herself to her feet and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I’m sorry I said that.”
Gard sat up. Something hurt in his stomach. Not a pain, exactly, more like a tearing, ripping sensation. He spoke raggedly. “Is it true?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.” Nervous and trying not to show it, Cass started for her horse.
Gard jumped to his feet and rushed after her. He grabbed her by the arm, and not gently, either. “Is it true?”
She tried to wrench her arm free. “I said I don’t want to talk about it!”
Gard’s eyes were blazing. “That’s just too damned bad! You’re not leaving until you explain yourself. What you said is either a stupefying, deplorable fact or the most despicable lie I’ve