His Virgin Wife: The Wedding in White / Caught in the Crossfire / The Virgin's Secret Marriage. Diana Palmer
were going to the senior prom together,” she said huskily, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “This morning, I was deciding what sort of dress to wear and how I was going to fix my hair…and he’s dead.”
“People die, Nat,” he said, his voice deep and quiet and comforting at her ear. “But I’m sorry he did.”
“You didn’t know him, did you?”
“I’d spoken to him a time or two,” he said with deliberate carelessness.
“He was so handsome,” she said with a ragged sigh. “He was smart and brave and everybody loved him.”
“Of course.”
She shifted into a more comfortable position on his lap, and as she did, her hand accidentally slid under the fabric of his cotton shirt, to lie half buried in thick hair. Odd, how his powerful body tensed when it happened, she thought with confusion. She was aware of other things, too. He smelled of horses and soap and leather. His breath pulsed out just above her nose, and she could smell coffee on it. Her robe was open, and the tiny straps that held her gown up had slipped in her relaxed position. One of her breasts was pressed against Mack’s chest, and she could feel warm muscle and prickly hair against it just above the nipple. Her body felt funny. She wanted to pull the gown away and press herself closer, so that his skin and hers would touch. She frowned, shocked by the longing she felt to be held hungrily by him.
She tensed a little. “You’re still wearing your work clothes,” she said. Her voice sounded as odd as she felt. “Why?”
“We had a fence down and we didn’t know it until the sheriff called and said we had cattle strung up and down the highway,” he told her. “It’s taken two hours to get them back in and fix the fence. That’s why it took me so long to get here. Vivian had been calling me on my cell phone since dark, but I was out of the truck.”
“Don’t you have a flip phone as well as the one installed in your truck?” she wondered aloud.
He chuckled. “Sure. It’s at home recharging.”
She smiled drowsily. “Thank you for coming over. I’m sure you didn’t feel like it after all that.”
His broad shoulders lifted and fell. “I couldn’t leave you here alone,” he said simply. “And Vivian was in no sort of shape to come.” His lean hand smoothed her wavy dark hair. “She thinks you cut her out with Carl, but that’s just the way she is.”
“I know.” She sighed. “She’s so pretty that she takes it for granted that the boys all want her. Most of them do, too.”
“She’s spoiled,” he replied. “I was hard on Bob and Charles, but I’ve made a lot of allowances for Viv, simply because she was the only girl in the family. Maybe that was a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake to care for people,” she pointed out.
“So they say.” His fingers tangled in her soft hair. “Want something to drink?”
“No, thanks,” she replied. Her fingers spread involuntarily in the thick hair over his breastbone, and his intake of breath was sharp and audible.
His body tensed again. She and Carl had kissed, but she’d been careful not to let things go very far. In fact, she hadn’t felt any sort of strong physical attraction to the football star, which was strange, considering how much he meant to her. With Mack, she experienced sensations she’d never felt before. She felt hot and swollen in the most unusual places, and it puzzled her. The sudden tension she noticed in the man holding her puzzled her, as well. Mack didn’t say a word, but she could feel his heartbeat increase, hear the rough sound of his breathing.
She let her face slide down his muscular arm, and her curious eyes met his good one. It was narrow and unblinking and vaguely intimidating. Even as she watched, his gaze went to where her robe was open and one of her breasts in its lace-trimmed satin lay soft and warm against his chest.
Involuntarily, she followed his intense scrutiny and saw what she hadn’t realized before—the gown had slipped so far down that her nipple, hard and tight, was visibly pressing into the thick hair over his chest.
He looked into her stunned eyes, and the hand in her hair tightened. “Didn’t you do this with your boyfriend?” he asked bluntly.
“No,” she said shakily.
“Why not, if you loved him?” he persisted.
She frowned worriedly. It was becoming increasingly hard to think at all. “I didn’t feel like this with him,” she confessed in a whisper.
Mack’s face changed. His hand in her hair arched her face to his and tugged it into the crook of his arm. He shifted, so that the bodice came completely away from one pert little breast, and his arm tightened, moving her skin sensuously against him.
She gasped. Her nails bit into his chest, and her lips parted in shock and delight. Involuntarily, she arched closer, so that her breast dragged roughly against his skin.
The hand in her hair began to hurt. His body tensed, and a faint shudder rippled through him.
His jaw clenched, and he fought his hunger. She realized that he wanted to feel her against him without the fabric between them, and it was what she wanted, as well. She forgot about wrong and right, about decency, about everything except the pleasure they were giving each other here, in the quiet room with the silence only broken by the sound of the rain outside the window and their breathing.
“I should be shot for doing this, and you should be shot for letting me,” he said through his teeth. But even as he spoke, his free hand was stripping the robe and gown to her waist. His gaze fell to her naked breasts, and he shuddered again, violently, as his arm suddenly tightened and dragged her breasts against his hair-roughened chest in a feverish caress.
She moaned harshly. Her nails bit into the hard muscles of his upper arms as he crushed her against him and buried his face in the thick hair at her ear. He held her, rocked her, in an aching excess of desire.
Both arms were around her now. She slid her arms around his neck and clung for dear life. She couldn’t catch her breath at all. It was the most intense pleasure she’d ever known. She trembled with desire.
The embrace was fierce. They held each other in a tense silence that seemed to throb with need. Her fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his strong neck, and her eyes closed as she lay against him, unafraid and unashamed of the growing intimacy of the embrace.
He could feel his body growing harder by the second. If he moved her any closer, she’d be able to feel it. He didn’t want that. It was years too soon for the sort of intimacy they were leading up to. He could barely think at all, but the part of his brain that still worked was flashing with red warning lights. She was seventeen, just barely, and he was twenty-three. She wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to know what was about to happen. He was. He couldn’t take advantage of her like this. He had to pull away and stop while he still could.
Abruptly, he shot to his feet, taking her with him. He held her, swaying on her feet, just in front of him. For one long, tense moment, his gaze went to her taut, bare breasts and his face seemed to clench. Then he pulled the straps up and replaced them on her shoulders, easing the robe into place. He tied it with swift, sharp movements of his big hands.
She stared at him, too overwhelmed by the intimacy and its abrupt end to think clearly. “Why did you stop?” she asked softly. “Did I do something wrong?”
Her pale green eyes made him ache as they searched his face. He caught her by the waist and took a slow, deliberate breath before he spoke. “Didn’t they teach sex education at the orphanage?” he asked bluntly.
Her face flamed scarlet. Her eyes, like saucers, seemed to widen endlessly.
He shook his head. She was so deliciously naïve. He felt a generation apart from her instead of only six years. “A man can’t take much of that without doing something about it, Nat,”