LITMIR.BIZ

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she could easily imagine how good it would feel if he took her in his arms—only she didn’t want it to be that good. It had to be impersonal, unpleasurable, simply the means to an end. “It’s okay. It happened a long time ago.”

      “What about the rest of your family? Do they live in Jerome, too?”

      Delaney knew he was trying to put her at ease, and she appreciated the effort. Having this man so close and so nearly naked was certainly unsettling, but she didn’t want to talk about her personal history. It wasn’t a pleasant topic. She’d been foisted on the community at large, and the people of Dundee had been kind enough to look after her, to care about her. Which made her feel like she had to make it up to them somehow. She’d spent the whole of her adult life trying to repay a debt she could never completely discharge, and didn’t want to be reminded of it now. Particularly since she felt she was betraying the same people she owed by doing something so far from what they’d expect of her, so far from what was right.

      She opened her mouth to tell Conner she didn’t want to talk about herself. But the tequila was finally siphoning off the tension in her body and making her a little dizzy at the same time, so she lay back on the bed and pretended she’d had the childhood she’d always wanted. What did it matter what kind of picture she painted for Conner? Their paths were never going to cross again.

      She told him a fantastic tale about the wonderful father who’d raised her and six other siblings, the sisters who’d married and had children but were still close, the younger brothers who were going to high school. She told him she grew up on a farm with fresh fruit and vegetables and long days spent playing in the barn. She even told him she milked cows in the morning before school.

      “I thought you said your mother moved around a lot.”

      “Oh, that was before,” she said quickly, cursing the tequila for making her so fuzzy-headed. “After she passed away, I went to live with my father and his wife.”

      “I see. Sounds like, from that point on, you had the perfect childhood,” he said. He was now lying on his side next to her, his head propped on one hand as he gazed down at her. They were close but not touching. He’d been listening—perhaps a little too carefully—and smiling and commenting, and surprisingly enough Delaney felt almost comfortable with him. She’d thought the tall tales she was spinning would push him away, keep him from glimpsing the real Delaney, but they’d done just the opposite because they’d revealed her most secret desires. She’d never revealed how badly she’d always wanted these things to Rebecca, nor certainly to anyone else. She occasionally dated in Dundee, but it was mostly group stuff—bowling league, softball league, weekends at the Honky Tonk. She generally preferred Billy Joe’s company to that of most of her male friends. They always had a good time at the Honky Tonk, but he’d never made her stomach flutter, not like this.

      “What about you?” she asked, trying to ignore the way Conner was looking at her, the fact that his gaze kept dropping to her lips as though he was waiting for the right moment to lean forward and kiss her. “What about your childhood?”

      “Mine? Oh, it was perfect, too,” he said. She thought she heard a trace of sarcasm in his voice, but her confusion was deepening because he’d started trailing one finger down the side of her face and over her lips, which she instinctively parted.

      “Are you okay with this, Delaney?”

      Was she okay? His touch made shivers shoot through her entire body. But wait—wasn’t there some reason she shouldn’t be doing this?

      One night, one baby. The thought floated through her mind, but its meaning had changed completely. At this point, that one night hardly seemed like much of a sacrifice….

      “I’m okay,” she murmured.

      “Good. Because I think this is going to be great. Better than I ever imagined,” he said, and then he kissed her. It was a perfect kiss, a long, slow “I’m not going anywhere” kind of kiss, and it nearly melted Delaney’s bones. Her eyelids drifted shut as his tongue met hers, and she flattened her hands against the hard muscles of his chest. He no longer reminded her of any movie star. But something warned her not to think of him as Conner, because women fell in love with men over less than he was doing to her now. She’d assumed that he’d be quick, abrupt and selfish, but he was just the opposite. He was taking his time, touching her, caressing her, kissing her.

      By the time she felt his hand on her leg, moving slowly up her inner thigh, her head was spinning. Her body instinctively arched toward him, but he didn’t hurry his pace. He seemed intent on going by degrees, almost painful degrees that nearly consumed her with need.

      “Conner,” she whispered, feeling as though she was hanging on to sanity by a very thin thread. She’d told herself not to use his name, to not even think it, but what could she do? It was printed across her closed eyelids like fireworks in the sky. She’d tried to distance herself by pretending he was Hugh Jackman, by telling herself that she was experiencing every woman’s fantasy, nothing real, but it wasn’t working. Even though she’d met him only an hour and a half earlier, Conner was Conner, and he was as real as a man could get.

      “Let’s do it now,” she whispered, her voice throaty, almost hoarse.

      He said something against her mouth about not fighting him, about letting it happen naturally, and started lifting her dress. She helped him by wriggling out of it, then tossed it onto the floor, focused on removing his clothes, as well. He stopped her long enough to let his gaze sweep over what he’d revealed, and his smile of satisfaction made heady pleasure course through Delaney, obliterating the shyness she’d expected. Conner made her feel so incredibly sexy, so desirable and yet safe, accepted. She wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this but, heaven help her, she was. She’d never enjoyed anything more. She knew she’d pay in guilt come morning, but that didn’t seem to matter, at least not now. Such realities hovered somewhere beyond her immediate thoughts, out on the fringes of her consciousness, and were completely forgotten when Conner finished taking off his pants and covered her with his naked body. Then, after a brief flash of pain, Delaney felt what she’d never experienced before—a man joined with her—and it was a reverent, powerful moment. The orphan was at last connected to another human being, physically and emotionally, and somehow she knew nothing would ever be the same again.

      IT WAS CLOSE TO MORNING. Conner wasn’t sure what had pulled him from sleep, but he certainly wasn’t opposed to waking up, not with Delaney still in his bed and not when he felt so completely boneless, weightless and relaxed.

      Delaney was lying on her side facing away from him, her breathing steady and even, and he was cradling her with his body, enjoying the feel of her backside pressed against him. He’d known when he invited her to his room that he wasn’t doing it for the altruistic motives he’d kidded himself about in the bar, but he hadn’t expected anything like the kind of emotionally charged hours they’d shared. Last night had not been a casual one-night stand. Conner wasn’t sure if it was her innocence or her vulnerability or even something else, but Delaney had touched him deeply. She’d taken what they’d done far beyond the physical. And he had enough experience with women to know the difference.

      Angling his head to see her face in the light that was just starting to creep through the crack in the draperies, Conner couldn’t help smiling. He must have been blind not to think her absolutely stunning the moment she entered the bar last night. The more he stared at her, the more he liked what he saw. He loved the way her eyes closed and her lips parted when he caressed her, the dimple that flashed at him when she smiled, the swollen look of her mouth after he kissed her. And he liked a lot of other things—the sounds she made when he touched her, the tenderness she showed when they curled up together, the dreaminess in her voice when she talked about her family. Last night he’d been fully prepared to get up and head over to the Running Y Ranch and never see her again, but somewhere along the line, he’d changed his mind. Now he thought that letting her go too easily would be an unnecessary loss. Certainly he could find Jerome and take her out on occasion. Maybe she could even come up to Dundee once in a while. It would help pass the time until he returned to California.

      He

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