Duncan's Bride Read online

  He slanted a warning look at her as he started up the stairs.

  “Men who use force against women are lower than slugs.”

  His arms tightened, but he kept a tight rein on his temper. He carried her into the bathroom and put her on her feet. As he opened the medicine cabinet she headed out the door, and he grabbed her with one hand, hauling her back. She tugged violently, trying to free her arm. “I said I’d do it myself!” she said, furious with him.

  He put the lid down on the toilet, sat down and pulled her onto his lap. “Be still and let me clean your hands. If you still want to fight after I’m finished, then I’ll be glad to oblige you.”

  Fuming, Madelyn sat on his lap while he dabbed the small wounds with an antiseptic that stung sharply. Then he smoothed antibiotic cream on them and put Band-Aids over the two worst breaks. His arms were still around her; he was holding her as a parent would a child, to soothe it and tend its hurts. She didn’t like the comparison, even if it was her own. She shifted restlessly, feeling his hard thighs under her bottom.

  His face was very close to hers. She could see all the different colored specks in his eyes, green and blue dominating, but shot through with black and white and a few glittering flecks of gold. Though he had shaved the night before, his beard had already grown enough to roughen his cheeks and chin. The brackets on each side of his mouth framed the beautiful cut of his lips, and suddenly she remembered the way he had closed those lips over her nipple, sucking her tender flesh into his mouth. She quivered, and the rigidity went out of her body.

  Reese closed the first-aid box and set it aside, then let his arm rest loosely across her thighs as he gave her a measuring look. “Your face is dirty.”

  “So let me up and I’ll wash it.”

  He didn’t. He washed it himself, slowly drawing a wet washcloth over her features, the fabric almost caressing her skin. He wiped her mouth with a touch so light she could barely feel it and watched the cloth tug slightly at her soft, enticing lower lip. Madelyn’s head tilted back, and her eyelids drooped. He drew the cloth down her neck, wiped it across her exposed collarbone, then dipped his hand down inside the loose neck of her top.

  She caught her breath at the damp coolness on her breasts. He drew the cloth back and forth, slowly rasping it across her nipples and bringing them to wet attention. Her breasts began to throb, and her back arched involuntarily, offering them for more. She could feel a hard ridge growing, pressing against her hip, and her blood moved heavily through her veins.

  He tossed the washcloth into the basin and took his hat off, dropping it onto the floor. The arm behind her back tightened and drew her in to him as he bent his head, and his mouth closed over hers.

  It was the same way he’d kissed her in the airport, the way he hadn’t kissed her since. His mouth was hard and hot, urgent in his demands. His tongue pushed into her mouth, and she met it with her own, welcoming, enticing, wanting more.

  She gave way beneath his onslaught, her head falling back against his shoulder. He pursued the advantage, taking her mouth again, putting his hand beneath her shirt and closing it over her breast. Gently he kneaded the firm mound, rubbing his rough palm over the nipple until she whimpered into his mouth from the exquisite pain of it. She turned toward him, lifting her arms around his neck. Excitement pounded in the pit of her stomach, tightening every muscle in her body and starting an aching tension between her legs.

  With a rough sound of passion he bent her back over his arm and shoved her top up, exposing her breasts. His warm breath feathered across them as he bent to her; then he extended the tip of his tongue and circled one pink nipple, making it constrict into a tightly puckered nub and turn reddish. He shifted her body, bringing her other breast closer to his mouth, and gave that nipple identical treatment, watching with pleasure as it, too, tightened.

  Madelyn clutched at him. “Reese,” she begged in a low, shaking voice. She needed him.

  This was the hot magic she had sensed about him from the beginning, the blatant sensuality. This was the warm promise she had felt lying beneath him at night, and she wanted more.

  He drew her nipple into his mouth with a strong, sucking pressure, and she arched again, her thighs shifting. She felt like a dessert offered up to him, lying across his lap with her body lifted to his mouth, glorying in the way his lips and teeth and tongue worked at her breast.

  “Reese,” she said again. It was little more than a moan, heavy with desire. Everything that was male in him responded to that female cry of need, urging him to surge deep within her and ease the empty ache that made her twist in his arms and cry out for him. His loins were throbbing, his body radiating heat. If she needed to be filled, he needed to fill her. The two restrained matings he’d had with her hadn’t been enough, would never satisfy the lust that intensified every time he looked at her.

  But if he ever let himself go with her, he’d never be able to get that control back. April had taught him a bitter lesson, one that he relearned every day when he worked on his diminished acres, or saw the paint peeling on his house. Madelyn might never turn on him, but he couldn’t take the chance and let his guard down.

  With an effort that brought sweat to his brow, he lifted his mouth from her maddeningly sweet flesh and shifted her to her feet. She swayed, her eyes dazed, her top twisted up under her arms and exposing those firm, round breasts. She didn’t understand and reached for him, offering a drugging sensuality that he wouldn’t let himself take.

  He caught her wrists and held her arms to her sides while he stood up, an action that brought their bodies together. He heard her moan softly again, and she let her head fall forward against his chest, where she rubbed her cheek back and forth in a subtle caress that made him curse his shirt for covering his bare skin.

  If he didn’t get out of here now, he wouldn’t go at all.

  “I have work to do.” His voice was hoarse with strain. She didn’t move. She was melting against him, her slim hips starting a drumbeat roll that rocked into his loins and made him feel as if his pants would split under the pressure.

  “Madelyn, stop it. I have to go.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, rising on tiptoe to brush her lips against his throat.

  His hands closed tightly on her hips, for one convulsive second pulling her into his pelvis as if he would grind himself into her; then he pushed her away. He picked up his hat and strode from the bathroom before she could recover and reach for him again, because he damn sure wouldn’t have the strength to stop this time.

  Madelyn stared after him, confused by his sudden departure and aching from the loss of contact. She swayed; then realization burst within her, and she gave a hoarse cry of mingled rage and pain, putting her hand out to catch the basin so she wouldn’t fall to her knees.

  Damn him, damn him, damn him! He’d brought her to fever pitch, then left her empty and aching. She knew he’d wanted her; she had felt his hardness, felt the tension in his corded muscles. He could have carried her to the bed or even had her right there in the bathroom, and she would have gloried in it, but instead he’d pushed her away.

  He’d been too close to losing control. Like a flash she knew what had happened, knew that at the last minute he’d had to prove to himself that he could still walk away from her, that he didn’t want her so much that he couldn’t master it. The sexuality of his nature was so strong that it kept burning through those walls he’d built around himself, but he was still fighting it, and so far he’d won.

  Slowly she went downstairs, holding the banister because her knees felt like overcooked noodles. If she were to have any chance with him at all, she would have to find some way to shatter that iron control, but she didn’t know if her nerves or self-esteem would hold out.

  He was already gone, the truck nowhere in sight. She looked around blankly, unable to think what she should do, and her eyes lit on the dead chicken lying on the floor.

  “I’ll get back at you for this,” she said with grim promise in her