LITMIR.BIZ

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made that clear long ago, so she didn’t take offense. She looked down at her feet, her expression faintly defeated. “I know that already,” she said. There was simply no fight in her, and that bothered him most of all. She was so damned vulnerable.

      She looked up at him then with soft brown eyes that shot every scruple he had. The look burned between them like fire, ripping away his will, his restraint. All at once his hand shot out to catch her arm. He swung her around, right up against him, so that she could feel the warmth of his hard, fit body and see the faint beads of sweat clinging to the thick dark hair on his chest.

      “Is that your best offer?” he asked deeply, and his eyes at close range were dynamite. He saw the puzzled look in her eyes and cursed himself for saying such a thing to her. She was so damned green, she didn’t even know what he was talking about.

      “You mean the pearls?” she got out. “Well, everything else is gone already, except for some of Mama’s jewelry...”

      He stared at her with unbridled contempt. “And of course, Mama won’t give up her jewels, even to pay a debt, isn’t that right?”

      She felt herself going limp, feeling weary of defending her mother to him. “Cade, can’t you find it in your heart to talk to me without making horribly sarcastic remarks about my mother?” Her big eyes pleaded with him.

      He saw the tiredness then. Saw how the funeral had affected her. She was becoming far too pale, too thin, too worn for a woman her age. Like a leech, her mother had sapped her, robbed her of a normal girlhood. His dark eyes narrowed. He wondered if she’d ever realized that his sarcasm was more defensive than offensive.

      His dark eyes moved over her like hands, exploring the roundness of her breasts and hips and her small waist. He knew what she felt. Even now she was almost trembling as he looked at her. She wanted him.

      But wanting wouldn’t be enough. There was still Gussie and Bess’s lost lifestyle and her own inability to stand up to her own problems. In her present state he’d walk all over her because she had hardly any spirit. That hurt him, to think that he could do even more damage to her spirit than Gussie had. He had a quick, hot temper that he wasn’t shy about losing. Bess would knuckle under. The woman she could be would be submerged in his own strength.

      There was a hunger in her soft brown eyes that he felt an urgent need to satisfy. He had to get her out of here, and quick.

      But she smelled of gardenias and she looked as if he was every dream of perfection she’d ever had. Her eyes were making love to his, soft and hungry. Virgin eyes.

      He touched a loose strand of Bess’s soft hair and brushed it back from her long neck. Even the black suit she was wearing with that stark white blouse didn’t detract from her appeal. If she’d worked at it, she could have been beautiful. But Mama wouldn’t like the competition, so naturally Bess wasn’t encouraged to dress up or fix her face and hair to her best advantage. He knew that, even if Bess didn’t.

      Her lips parted at the light touch on her hair. She stared up at him with eyes that were wide and excited.

      “You want me like hell, don’t you?” he asked quietly, his dark eyes holding hers.

      She felt the ground moving under her feet. It was like having every dream of him she’d ever had come true. The look in his dark eyes, the feel of his hand in her hair, the way his gaze dropped suddenly to her soft mouth. She knew her legs were trembling. He already knew how affected she was, and she wondered if she could bear the humiliation.

      “Cade...don’t do this to me,” she whispered shakily as his fingers moved to her mouth and touched it, making it tremble.

      “What am I doing to you, Bess?” he asked deeply, not quite in control anymore. The scent of her body was in his nostrils, drugging him, and he was more aware of her by the minute. He toyed with her collar, his knuckles brushing lazily against the soft skin of her throat, making her tremble with an avalanche of new sensations.

      “I can’t help what I feel,” she whispered brokenly.

      His eyes caressed the soft perfection of her mouth. Her lips were parted, a little swollen with passion. Her eyes were drowsy-looking despite their excitement. He saw her tongue brush her lips, and his breath caught.

      He turned his hand so that his fingers could brush softly up and down the line of her throat. Her skin was like satin. It intoxicated him. He moved closer, towering over her, so close that the tips of her breasts touched him.

      Bess looked up at him with all her untried dreams in her eyes. She was on fire for him. She wanted his hard mouth with a passion that was already white-hot, and he’d barely touched her. She was surprised and frightened by the intensity of emotion he aroused in her.

      His dark head bent a little. “What would you give for my mouth right now, Bess?” he asked in a voice she didn’t recognize, deep and slow and silky.

      She felt his breath on her lips, and her restraint went flying. Damn her pride, she needed him...!

      “Any...thing,” she whispered shamelessly, her voice breaking on the word. “Don’t you know already? Anything, Cade...”

      Her slender hands were on his arms, her nails digging into him, her body swaying against him. He couldn’t help it. Years of suppressed hunger were overflowing inside him. His narrowed eyes fell to her mouth. He could bend his head a fraction of an inch and make all her dreams come true. He could take her mouth and taste its warm softness under the hard crush of his own. He could hold her and touch her, and for a space of seconds she could belong to him. He could feed on the soft, sweet desire that she’d saved up all these years for him. Only for him.

      He was actually bending toward her, her breath mingling with his, her body begging to be held by him. And then he felt the weight of responsibility fall on him.

      Bess was still a child emotionally, her mother’s child.

      That was what brought him to his senses. Bess wanted him, but that was all it was. The newness of desire and the illusion of hero worship were driving her. He could make her dreams come true, all right, but his would turn to nightmares because it was too soon. Perhaps years too soon.

      He lifted his dark head and dropped his hand from her soft neck. “No,” he said. He didn’t say it in a rough way. It was only the one word, but firm enough to make her step away from him and blush.

      She had to catch her breath audibly, because the feel of that powerful body so close to hers had made it almost impossible to breathe at all. Her soft brown eyes searched his dark ones as she pushed back an unruly strand of honey-brown hair. She looked and felt ashamed, especially when she remembered that she’d practically begged him to make love to her.

      “You’re too young and too green for me, Bess,” he said coolly, forcing the words out. “Go home to Mama.”

      He reached behind him, picking up the jewelry case and tossing it to her with as little care for what was inside as if he’d been throwing pebbles.

      She caught it in her trembling hands. He didn’t want her. Well, she knew that already, didn’t she? He’d only been playing with her, taunting her. It was like what he’d done to her when she was twenty, rejecting her, throwing her away. Only this was more cruel, because he’d tempted her first, made her show him how badly she wanted him.

      Her eyes closed on a wave of pain and shame. “If you won’t take the pearls, you’ll only get fifty cents on the dollar like the other investors,” she said in a ghost of her normal tone.

      “I’ve already torn up that agreement your father signed with me,” he said shortly. “You could have saved yourself the trip.”

      “That and the humiliation,” she said huskily.

      “What humiliation?” he asked quietly. “I know that you want me. I’ve always known.”

      She turned away with tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’ll get your money back, Cade. All of it,

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