Friends and Lovers. Diana Palmer

those days. It seemed so long ago, when she was sole reporter and photographer for a small-town weekly newspaper. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to go back to it. It was so uncomplicated, compared to what I do now, so cut and dried. I didn’t have to create the news, only report it.”

      “I shouldn’t think it was so hard finding new ways to kill people,” he said with a teasing glance.

      She laughed. “You’d be surprised. Competition is fierce, you know, and I’m the new kid on the block. I’ve got to be the best I can be, or I’ll go on unemployment in no time.”

      “I liked The Grinding Tower,” he remarked.

      “Thank you.”

      He grinned. “The hero had some…familiar characteristics.”

      She felt herself flushing as she recalled her detective: tall, broad-shouldered, with a mustache, a taste for Scotch whiskey and a habit of forcing his equipment to go more than the last mile. Yes, she’d patterned him after John, but she hadn’t expected…

      “Want to sue me?” she asked with a shy glance.

      “I’m too flattered to sue you.” He tilted his hat lower across his eyes. They narrowed, running down the length of her body and back up again. “The heroine sounded a little like you,” he remarked.

      She met his eyes and felt her pulse leap wildly. She hadn’t realized that. “Did she?” she murmured.

      The dark, intent look on his face made her nervous. “Why did you run away from me, just before those tourists showed up? Was it what I said about being without sleep? Did you think I’d spent the night with Melody?”

      Her breath caught in her throat. How well he read her! She swallowed. “I…I just wanted to ride a little faster, that’s all.”

      “Was it?” He reached out, tucking a careless finger into the V-neck of her blouse to tug her gently toward him. But he didn’t release his hold on her. That long, maddening finger slowly traced the beginning slope of her breasts under the thin fabric. She was suddenly and shyly aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra. And judging by the look on his dark, taut face, he’d just discovered that as well.

      The effect of the light, disturbing caress was beginning to be very visible, especially to the silver eyes that dropped pointedly to the thrust of her high, small breasts against the thin cotton.

      His eyes moved back up to capture hers, to watch the nervous excitement sparkle in them. She tried to back away from that tantalizing finger, but he slid a rough hand around to her back and caught her, forcing her slender body against the long, powerful lines of his own.

      “Oh, no, you don’t, honey,” he murmured, and his hand spread out at her throat, so big that it almost covered the tops of her breasts in a contact that wasn’t really intimate but had the full effect of intimacy.

      “John, what are you doing?” she squeaked, her fingers clutching at his big arms to push him away.

      “What do you think I’m doing?” he growled. “I’m making a pass at you. What does it feel like?”

      She gaped up at him, fascinated, frightened, her body trembling as if he’d stripped her and was stroking her naked skin. “You’ve never touched me…” she whispered.

      “You’ve never wanted me to,” he reminded her. His hands slid down her body to her buttocks, pressing her hips into his in an intimacy that she should have protested, but didn’t—couldn’t. “Until last night.”

      “I didn’t,” she protested weakly.

      “You were so jealous of Melody, you could hardly see straight,” he accused tautly. His hands pressed her closer to his blatant masculinity. “As if you had a damned thing to be jealous of…come here!”

      Even as he spoke he bent his head and for the first time she felt the hard, warm crush of his mouth over hers. The mustache tickled and his lips were roughly insistent, forcing her mouth to open, to admit the sharp, deep penetration of his tongue. She felt it teasing hers as his hands moved up, sliding under the blouse to caress the softness of her bare back.

      She gasped and a long, shuddering moan slipped from her throat as her fingernails involuntarily dug into his big arms. He smelled of smoke and saddle leather and expensive cologne, and his big body was damp where she was riveted to it. It was incredible, to be making love in broad daylight, to be kissed so passionately, held so intimately, by John….

      “Kiss me back,” he ground out against her trembling lips. “You wanted to touch me earlier, do it now. Stop holding back, damn it!”

      The words were like a dash of cold water, penetrating the fiery mist of passion. She looked up into a face hard with passion, into silvery eyes that glittered with new, barely leashed hunger.

      She shook her head as if to clear it. “No,” she whispered, disbelieving. Her mouth hurt from the hungry pressure of his, her knees felt like rubber. “No, we’re…just friends….”

      He took her hand and pressed it, palm flat against the furious shudder of his heart, breathing heavily as he watched her face. “Feel what you do to me,” he growled, “what you’ve always done to me. Just friends? Like sweet hell, we are!”

      “No!” She dragged herself out of his arms, her eyes as wild as her hair as she moved out of his reach and stood trying to catch her breath. “I won’t let it happen, I won’t!”

      “It already has,” he said curtly. His eyes slid over her rigid body, up over the pointed tautness of her breasts, taking in the accelerated breathing that caused her chest to rise and fall unevenly.

      With a cry of mingled shock and outrage, she turned and ran for her horse. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be, not with John; not with the only man she trusted. What he was offering was too sudden, too unexpected.

      “Madeline!” he shot at her.

      She was already astride the little mare, her eyes wild as she looked at him.

      “It’s too late to run from it,” he said quietly, his gaze dark and steady.

      “Oh, no, it isn’t,” she said in a choked voice. “I won’t see you again, John.”

      “You will,” he said softly. “Because what we just had wasn’t enough—for either of us.”

      With a muffled curse, she whirled the mare and urged her quickly into a gallop, the wind tearing through her hair. Never, she thought wildly, never, John Durango! She closed her eyes against the memory of his hard, expert mouth, against remembered pleasure. The horrible thing was that he was right, it hadn’t been enough….