Whitney My Love Read online

  As if he didn’t hear her, he flung his riding gloves to the grass and jerked off his jacket. He sat down with his back against the tree and drew one leg up at the knee, resting his arm across it. In a voice like the crack of a whiplash, he said, “I told you to get down off that horse.”

  Whitney reluctantly did as she was bidden and slid awkwardly down from Khan, stepped onto the boulder next to her, then gingerly to the ground. She waited there beside her horse, enduring the icy blast of his gaze. It dawned on her that he was striving for control of his anger, and Whitney prayed he would gain it. His eyes raked over her, riveting on a spot just below her right hand. Following his stare, Whitney realized she still held the crop. It slid from her numbed fingers.

  “I believe there are several things which you enjoy as much as riding,” he remarked with scathing sarcasm.

  Whitney nervously clenched and unclenched her hands.

  “Come, come, don’t be shy,” he prodded in a soft, menacing voice. “You’re a young woman of many pleasures—you enjoyed humbling me into an apology, did you not?”

  Whitney nodded, then winced at the blaze of fury her answer ignited in his hard features. Quickly she tried to shake her head to cover the admission she’d just made.

  “No, don’t deny it. You enjoyed it tremendously. And I think we can assume that besides riding and apologies, you also enjoy using the crop. Correct?”

  How could she answer these questions? Whitney thought frantically. She flicked a glance at Khan, longing to flee.

  In a silky, dangerous voice, he warned, “Don’t try it.”

  Whitney stayed where she was. She didn’t think she could get away, knew, in fact, that if she tried, she’d only enrage him further. Besides, if she didn’t let him vent his wrath now, he’d undoubtedly go to her father. She steeled herself to endure the rest of his verbal assault.

  “You wanted us to have something in common if we were going to be friends. You wanted us to enjoy the same things, didn’t you?”

  Whitney swallowed convulsively and nodded.

  “Pick up the crop!” he clipped.

  Cold fear raced down Whitney’s spine, and her pulse accelerated wildly. In all her life, she’d never encountered such controlled, purposeful rage. She bent down and picked up the crop with shaking fingers.

  “Bring it to me,” he rapped. Whitney froze at the sudden, blinding realization of what he intended.

  She frantically considered her choice: physical punishment meted out by this man whom she despised, or the mental anguish of reopening old hostilities with her father. Her choice was really no choice at all.

  Rather than give her tormentor the satisfaction of seeing her quaking fear, Whitney reverted to an old girlhood habit of putting her chin up and assuming an appearance of aloof indifference. Haughtily, she walked over and held the crop out to him like a queen bestowing the sword of knighthood, her disdainful green eyes clashing with his glacial gray ones.

  “Since you enjoy apologies and using the crop,” he snapped, “we’ll share those amusements, only I will use the crop this time, and you will do the apologizing.” He nodded curtly at his lap.

  Whitney’s gaze slid unwillingly to the black riding crop in his hand, then jerked back to his tanned face, but she did not deign to reply. Glaring at him in stiff hatred, she lowered herself into the humiliating position. His hard thighs pressed against her churning stomach; a beetle scurried through the blades of grass inches from her nose, and she wondered wildly how much protection her riding habit would afford.

  “I will stop when you apologize. Not before,” Clayton warned, and waited for her to blurt out an apology. Instead, she said nothing, and Clayton became so incensed by her stubborn silence and haughty indifference that he actually raised his arm. The crop whined through the air before he realized what he was doing, and he flung it away at the last possible moment, but not before her body tensed for the blow and a strangled cry wrenched from her throat. Disgusted with himself and with her, he grasped her roughly by the shoulders and turned her in his arms to sit across his lap.

  Whitney glared at him through a haze of wrathful tears, furious for having revealed those small, humiliating signs of fear a moment before he threw the crop aside. “I hate you!” she choked.

  “For what?” he demanded tersely.

  Unable to conjure an instantaneous and suitably scathing reply at that moment, Whitney tore her eyes from his. She stared fixedly at Dangerous Crossing, whose satin blackness was now splashed with huge, sweaty white patches, and guilt began to overcome her self-righteous fury. It was a miracle that the horse hadn’t injured himself, that the rider had been expert enough to stay on him, and wise enough to continue riding him instead of returning him to the stable. It was a double miracle that both horse and rider hadn’t been seriously injured. Tears of shame and relief gathered at the corners of her eyes, and she swiped them away, but he saw the gesture and knew what she was doing.

  “Look at me,” he ordered in a far gentler tone.

  “No!” Whitney retorted. “If I do, I’ll scratch your eyes out, so help me!” Despite her bravado, she realized that Clayton wasn’t going to let her go until she apologized, and since she wanted nothing more than to get away from him, she said tonelessly, “I never meant to hit the horse, I meant to hit you. But either way, it was an irresponsible and dangerous act, as well as a childish one.”

  “Thank you for that,” he said quietly.

  It registered on Whitney that there was neither triumph nor satisfaction in his tone, and she glanced at him in disbelief. Whenever she had apologized to her father, he had listened and then launched into a fresh tirade about her misconduct, and for some reason, she had expected much the same from Clayton. “Thank you for the apology,” he said again, as if he sensed her confusion.

  To be guilty of a grave wrong, to feel remorse and then be forgiven, was a sequence of events totally missing from Whitney’s childhood experience. Shaken by the strange poignancy of the moment, she searched his face, and then she looked away. But his understanding and forgiveness had already accomplished what his threats and intimidation had failed to do: Tears of shame and remorse were sliding down her cheeks in a hot, steady stream that couldn’t be hidden or stopped.

  She tried to pull away and get up, but his arms tightened, and his hand lifted to hold her face pressed to his chest. As if he were soothing a child, he began to stroke her hair, and the unexpected tenderness of that gesture made her cry even harder. She cried until her tears had soaked the front of his shirt and she finally got her wayward emotions under control. “Why do you hate me, little one?” he asked gently.

  Caught off balance by the endearment as well as his tone, Whitney gave a blunt, teary answer. “Because there’s something about you that makes me behave like a raving lunatic.”

  To her amazement, he muffled a laugh, then his hand touched her chin, tipping her face up to his. His gray eyes were warm with approval as they smiled into hers, and suddenly, unaccountably, Whitney felt as if they were the best, the closest, of friends—as if there was some special bond between them now. The feeling stunned her, then surged through her, sweeping everything away in its path. “I’m terribly sorry for coercing you into riding Dangerous Crossing and for . . .”

  “No more,” he interrupted softly. “It’s forgotten.”

  Whitney knew, as he slowly bent his head to her, that he was going to kiss her, but instead of drawing away she shyly lifted her face and met him halfway, somehow seeking proof of forgiveness. His lips came down to caress hers in a long, tender, undemanding kiss.

  Even when the kiss deepened and her lips were being sensually molded to his, Whitney knew he would let her pull away if she tried. Without realizing what she was doing, her hands crept up his chest, twining around his neck, and everything changed.

  His hands tugged the scarf loose from her hair and tangled in the luxuriant tresses. Tenderly cupping her face between both his hands, he gazed down into her melting green e