True Colors. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ smiled, unblinking. “I offered it to you six years ago and you didn’t want it.”

      “Now I do.”

      “Then ask your mother,” she said. “Ask Myrna Harden for it.”

      “You won’t get anywhere by trying to drag my mother into this,” he said. “We both know she disapproved of you.”

      “She hated me,” she corrected. “I have Indian relatives, remember? I come from poor people, from ordinary stock. My parents had a very small farm until they died, and I can remember needing shoes and having to wear secondhand ones before my great-aunt and great-uncle took me in. But even afterward, I didn’t have social status or money, and that’s what your mother wanted for you. I wasn’t good enough. It had to be a blue blood.”

      He turned into the street that led past her great-aunt’s house. His face was rigid with pent-up emotions. “Most mothers want what’s best for their children.”

      She thought of Blake and nodded. “Yes. But all mothers don’t interfere to the point of making decisions for them. I never would,” she added.

      He pulled into her driveway and turned off the engine and the lights, turning to look at her in the porch light.

      “Why are you still here?” he asked quietly. “If there’s a man waiting in Chicago, why haven’t you gone back to him?”

      She looked into his face, and all the anguish came flooding back, all the rejection, all the love. “I have my reasons,” she said.

      He slid his arm over the back of the seat, tugging the fabric of his gray jacket closer to his muscular body. He smelled of spice and soap. Meredith remembered how it had felt to lie in his arms with nothing between them except the beads of sweat they generated as they melded together in passion.

      He seemed to sense those memories. His voice was husky when he spoke. “The first time was under a tree by the lake on my ranch,” he recalled quietly, as if he’d read her mind. “We’d gone riding, but by then, we were both burning with need of each other. I pulled off your top and you let me. I put you down on the grass and you let me. I undressed you, and myself, and I couldn’t even wait long enough to arouse you. I had you—” his voice deepened as he moved closer “—in one long, hard thrust.”

      She flushed. “Don’t!”

      “Does it embarrass you?” he asked. He jerked her against him, imprisoning her against his chest. “You were tight and afraid, and when I started convulsing, you asked if I was hurt.” He bent and whispered into her ear, then her mouth. “But the second time, I kissed you from head to toe and bit the inside of your thighs and your nipples, and when I took you, you were ready for me. We were all over the ground that second time, thrashing, shaking. We came apart because I was too explosive, and you came after me, sitting over me to finish it. I watched you,” he breathed into her, his tongue following the words into the soft darkness.

      Meredith’s eyes stung with tears as she reached up to him, her arms clinging. Vivid memories flashed through her mind.

      “Yes,” he groaned. His mouth opened, insistent, while his hands fought under her blouse and bra to find the soft warmth of her body.

      She didn’t think about the changes he was sure to find. He knew her body as well as she did in the old days. It was inevitable that her maturity would be noticeable.

      His fingers pushed softly at one breast before his palm slid under it, lifting it. He raised his head, and his eyes burned into hers. “You’re bigger.”

      “I’m older,” she said huskily.

      He moved, and before she realized what he meant to do, he had the blouse and bra up past her collarbone, and he was looking at her. His breath caught at her soft firmness, at her delicate color.

      “Oh, baby,” he breathed.

      Her lips parted at the reverence in his tone. “I’m not…a girl anymore,” she whispered, trying to divert his curiosity.

      “My God, I know that.” His eyes lifted back to hers. “You became a woman in my arms. Did you really think I could ever forget?” His thumbs rubbed down against her nipples as he spoke, and she shivered.

      “Meredith,” he whispered hoarsely. He bent his head, his mouth poised over one taut nipple, his breath warming it.

      The glare of headlights and the roar of an engine caused his head to jerk up. Meredith took advantage of his diversion to tug her clothing down and pull out of his arms. By the time the passing vehicle was out of sight, she was out of the car.

      Cy managed to catch her as she reached the porch, his lean hands insistent as they turned her to him. “I want you,” he said, his voice ragged.

      “I know that,” she replied tersely. “I’m just as vulnerable as I was at eighteen, and apparently every bit as stupid when I get close to you. But that won’t work twice. I’m not going to be your mistress a second time. I learned my lesson the hard way.”

      He was breathing hard, his eyes still faintly glazed with desire. Her gaze fell and she could see the blatant evidence of his frustration.

      “You still want me,” he said. “I could take away every choice you have. I could make you get on your knees and beg me for it.” He smiled contemptuously. “In fact, I did. Do you remember?”

      She did. It had been just before his mother had filled his head with lies about Tony, that last wild loving—before the confrontation with his mother. He’d humbled and exalted her, and she’d been too much in love and too weak to resist him. She hadn’t known that Tony and Myrna had sold her out. She’d given in because she loved him, because she thought he was in love with her, too. But he hadn’t been. Ever. It had all been a means to an end. He’d only wanted her.

      “I remember,” she said, stiffening as he drew her against his body. “Let go of me.”

      His voice deepened. “That isn’t what you want.”

      “It’s what your mother wants,” she replied, playing the only card she had left. She hoped that it would divert him, because her body was betraying her. It had been so many years since she’d been with Cy. She wanted him until it hurt, but she didn’t dare give in.

      He hesitated, and she pulled back.

      “Remember your mother, Cy?” she asked coldly. “Nothing’s changed. She still hates me.”

      “She doesn’t have to love a woman I sleep with,” he said, resorting to cruelty as frustration and pain gnawed at him.

      “But I’m not sleeping with you, Cy,” she said, holding her purse protectively over her sensitive breasts.

      He stood there, towering over her, struggling to breathe normally. It was just like before, just like old times. He was falling headlong into her web, and he wanted her so much that he couldn’t even save himself. He looked at her and ached like a boy.

      “Tell me you don’t want me, Meredith,” he said mockingly.

      She moved toward her door, fumbling in her purse for the key. “What I want doesn’t enter into it,” СКАЧАТЬ