Heartless. Diana Palmer

wrecker will be right behind us. It’s going slower than we were. I told him to tow it up here and bill the ranch. Come on, baby. I’ve got more work to do before I can call it a night.” He sighed. “I was out looking for mired cattle, supervising two new cowboys who don’t know a bull from a steer, when a fence went down under a wash in the rain, and cattle scattered to hell and gone. I’ve got a full crew out trying to round them all back up. But the new hands need watching.”

      “You hire men to work cattle and then you get out and do it yourself.”

      He shrugged. “I’m not a desk sort of man.”

      “I noticed.”

      He reached in and slid his arms under her knees and her back and swung her out of the truck as if she was light as a feather. “You’re such a cat, Gracie,” he mused. “All sleek lines and light weight. You don’t eat enough.”

      “I’m never hungry.”

      “You run it all off.” He turned toward the house.

      A huge flash of jagged lightning split the rainy, dark sky, startling Gracie, who suddenly clung to him and hid her face in his throat, shivering. “Oh, I hate lightning!” she moaned as the thunder rolled and rumbled around them. Her face moved again, just as his head turned, and her mouth brushed over his with the action. It was so perfectly synchronized that it seemed as if she’d timed the turning of her own head, to produce that sweet little caress to tempt him.

      Jason’s tall, fit body contracted violently and he stopped in his tracks. He didn’t say a word, but Gracie could feel his breathing quicken. The soft contact had flamed through her young body. She wondered if it affected him the same way.

      It became quickly apparent that it had. In the light of the wide porch, he looked down at her with pure heat in his black eyes. They narrowed as they fell to her mouth.

      The lightning came again, and the thunder, but Gracie didn’t see it. She only saw Jason’s face as he stared at her with growing intensity. She could feel his broad chest against her breasts, moving roughly, as if he had trouble keeping his breath steady. Her heart ran away. The silken touch of her mouth on his had acted as a spark to dry wood.

      “Jason?” she whispered, disconcerted by the harsh look on his face. He seemed angry out of all proportion to what had happened. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

      “Didn’t you?” he asked through his teeth as he stared right into her eyes.

      His arms, steely and warm, contracted fiercely around her body. His teeth clenched as his gaze fell to her soft mouth. He hesitated, as if he were fighting a battle with his own instincts. But he lost it. Gracie saw with dawning shock the aching hunger in the black eyes that began to narrow and glitter as the storm broke around them.

      “What the hell,” he muttered as he suddenly bent his head. “I’m already damned, anyway!” His mouth suddenly ground down into hers, parting her lips, as urgent as the lightning, as frightening as the storm as he gave in to a surge of desire so hot that he couldn’t breathe through it. His arms contracted hungrily, grinding Gracie’s slight breasts into the firm, muscular wall of his chest. He groaned against her lips and crushed her even closer, his brows drawn together in an agony of visible need as his mouth moved insistently on her lips, parting them.

      She couldn’t believe it was happening. She loved Jason. She’d always loved him. But this was a side of him that she’d never seen before. The passion and expertise of the kiss were worlds away from her mother’s frightening lectures about how it was between men and women. Involuntarily her body reacted to the feel of him; her mouth warmed to the furious need in his kisses. She felt a shock of pleasure beyond anything she’d ever known as his mouth grew more demanding.

      But she fought it. This was only how it began, her mother had told her, with fierce need that blinded a woman to the reality of a man’s desires. It began like this, but it ended in pain and humiliation and, ultimately, tragedy. Tragedy. Gunshots and the metallic taste of blood…

      And then, quite suddenly, Jason’s hard, warm mouth slid down her neck and right onto the fullness of her breast, pressing so hungrily that she panicked.

      Memories from the past surged up in her mind, frightened her. His mouth was insistent on her breast, twisting. In a few seconds, she knew, his teeth would bite into her, and she would look like her mother had, bleeding…!

      She pushed at Jason’s broad chest, fighting the images in her mind as certainly as she fought this unexpected loss of control in a man whose place in her life had been tempered with iron control. She didn’t know Jason like this. His arms were contracting, and his mouth was opening, as she knew it would…! She pushed harder.

      Jason realized, belatedly, what he was doing and he lifted his head. A shudder ran through him as he felt her body move frantically against him. But she wasn’t trying to get closer. She was fighting to get away from him.

      “Jason, no! Put…me down! Please!” she cried, panic in her face, in her choked voice. She pushed harder. “Let me go! Let me go!”

      “Damn you! You started it,” he ground out, as shocked by his own feverish lack of control as by her rejection of him as a man.

      “I know. But I…I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want…that! I’m sorry!” she sobbed.

      He put her back on her feet abruptly and let her go. She looked up at him with shocked, anguished eyes. He stepped back, his jaw clenched. He looked down at her with smoldering black eyes in a face harder than rock. There was violence and barely leashed passion in his expression. He looked at her as if he hated her. A harsh sob burst from her lips. She had started it, even if accidentally, and now he was angry again. It was her fault. He hated her for tempting him…!

      Before he could speak, she was gone, into the house, running like a madwoman for the staircase. He stared after her with turbulent emotions, his eyes blazing, his body tense and aching. Desire evaporated slowly out of him, to be replaced with embarrassment at his lapse, with Gracie of all people. He was furious with himself. Then he was furious with her, for the teasing that aroused him and the deliberate touch of her mouth on his that had kindled his passion and made him cross the line. She’d permitted the intimacy at first, and then, when he turned up the heat just a little, she’d pushed him away as if she found him utterly repulsive. He replayed the episode in his mind, and anger grew from the embarrassment, along with rejection and humiliation and wounded pride. He’d betrayed his desire for her, and she’d been…disgusted. He’d seen it in her face.

      The pain hit him like a flood. At first he was hurt. And then he was enraged. Damn her! Why tempt him into indiscretion and then behave as if he was totally responsible for it?

      He turned on his heel and stalked back out to the truck. At that moment, he didn’t care if he ever saw her again as long as he lived. He cursed her every mile of the way back to Comanche Wells, so unsettled that he didn’t even see the wrecker pass him on its way to San Antonio. He’d never had anything hurt so much. Gracie didn’t want him. She was afraid of him now, running scared. He would never be able to erase this painful episode from both their minds. In a heartbeat, they had become enemies.

      He stepped down hard on the accelerator. He didn’t care if he got a speeding ticket. Nothing mattered anymore. Not now.

      

      UP IN HER ROOM, Gracie stood in the darkness, shivering. Hateful memories flooded her mind. Screams from the bedroom. Tears. Bruises and fear and blood, staining the bodice of her mother’s nightgown. Her mother, crying. Her father scathing, brutal, accusing. Other memories; of the boy who’d brought Gracie home, far too late because of a flat tire. Her father, snatching her up in his arms and throwing her at the wall with all his might. She’d fallen, dazed, bruised and terrified, only to have him come at her with a doubled-up belt. He’d snapped it on the way to her. The sound, loud even above the thunder of the storm outside; the horror of the blows, the blood…

      She turned on the light and went to look in her mirror. Her face, like her mother’s had been,