Princes of the Outback: The Rugged Loner / The Rich Stranger / The Ruthless Groom

And then he caught a flutter of movement, a reflection in the glass before him, and his shoulders bunched in instant reaction. She’d exited the bedroom wearing one of the hotel’s white robes, and he tracked her path across the room, saw her stop, heard the rattle of ice as she lifted the bottle.

“Can I get you a glass of champagne?” she asked. “Or would you prefer something else? I imagine there’s anything you want here…”

Plus a whole lot he didn’t want to want, either, he thought grimly as he turned to face her. All wrapped up in a fluffy bathrobe, dark hair gathered in a tousled ponytail on top of her head, brows arched in silent query, she stood waiting for his response.

Tomas shook his head. He’d had enough to drink downstairs. Just enough to numb the edges of his fear, but not enough to lose sight of what tonight was about.

Apparently Angie had no such reservations. He watched her pour a glass from the near-empty bottle, felt himself tense even more as she padded toward him, her bare feet noiseless on the plush claret carpet. Fine gold glinted at one ankle, and as she bent to adjust the stereo volume the chain at her neck swung forward in a slow-motion arc, then back again to settle between her breasts. A for abundant.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

Frowning, he forced his attention away from the deep vee of her robe. Away from the exposed slope of one breast, from the disorienting speed of blood rushing south and to the swirl of classical piano notes that seemed such an unlikely Angie-choice. “I don’t mind, although that doesn’t sound like your kind of music.”

“Relaxation therapy, along with this—” she lifted her glass in a silent salute “—and the spa. Which, I must say, was a treat and a half.”

“You needed to relax?”

“A little.” The corners of her mouth quirked. “Okay, more than a little. Although I figure I now have the advantage over you, in the relaxation stakes.”

“That’s not saying much,” Tomas admitted, and their eyes met and held in a moment of shared honesty. This wasn’t going to be easy—they both knew it, they both acknowledged it.

And being Angie, she also had to try to find a way to fix it. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Or the bathroom’s free and I can really, really recommend the spa. No?”

She must have gleaned that answer from his expression, because he hadn’t said a word or moved a muscle. He’d just stood there, growing more tense and rigid while she strolled right up to him. Was it his imagination or did her eyes glint with wicked purpose?

“Okay, then take off your shirt.”

What?

She pushed her glass into his hand and somehow wrapped his stiff fingers around the stem. Apparently because she needed to flex her fingers, then shake them, as if limbering up. To do what? All that southward-rushing blood congregated in very unlimber anticipation of those fingers reaching, touching, closing around him.

“If you don’t want to bother with the spa—” Angie wriggled those damn fingers some more “—then how about I give you a massage?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“Rubbish! You look tense enough to snap and I’ve been told I have magic hands.” Turning to leave, she cut him a trust-me look across her shoulder. “I’ll just go fetch some oil from the bathroom and then—”

“No.”

“No oil?”

No oil, no magic hands stroking his shoulders, no naked thighs straddling his back. “No massage. No spa. No drinks.” With subtle emphasis he placed her glass on the sill at his back, right out of her reach. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“No, but—”

“No buts.”

Their eyes met, held, locked, the air charged with the knowledge of why they were here. Sex. Not for pleasure, but for a purpose. A trial. Angie’s throat moved as she swallowed, and he noticed that one hand had come up to twist at the chain at her throat. “I had this notion that we might…I don’t know…sit around and talk for a bit to ease the awkwardness. Maybe order up dinner and a bottle of wine.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Then why order dinner? This isn’t a date, Angie.”

Her gaze darkened, maybe hurt, maybe a little shocked at the harshness of his tone. But, in typical Angie fashion, she lifted her chin and fired right back at him. “That’s it then? You just want to do it?”

“Yes.” That’s exactly what he wanted—to do it. No fancy trimmings, no window-dressing, no talk. And, dammit, he shouldn’t feel bad about wanting what they’d both agreed on, just because she was doing him the favor. Just because she was standing there twisting that chain, looking for all the world like—

“Are you nervous?”

Probably he shouldn’t have barked the question, but he couldn’t contain the surly flanks of his mood. And it seemed so unlikely that confident, unflappable, in-your-face Angie could be suffering a case of the jitters.

“Of course I’m nervous,” she answered. “Aren’t you?”

“Why ‘of course’? You said it was ‘only sex.’”

Shaking her head, she released a soft breath of laughter. “Trust you to remember that!”

“You didn’t mean it?”

“Of course I didn’t mean it. Saying ‘it’s only sex’ is like saying this is only a hotel room, and Dom Pérignon is only a sparkling wine, and this—” she tugged at her lapel “—is only a bathrobe.”

He could have asked why in blue blazes women didn’t say what they meant, but that would be like asking why the wet season followed the dry. It simply was. But Angie? He’d always thought her a straight-shooter, and what her heated words implied sent a paradoxical chill through his blood.

“Why are you here? Why did you agree to do this?”

“I told you—because I can.”

“The truth, Angie.” He met her eyes, held her gaze. “No bull.”

Angie stared back at him, taking in the uncompromising set of his jaw, the icy chill in eyes she’d always thought of as hot summer-blue, and her stomach swam with anxiety. Everything rested on her answer…yet if she told him her expectations, her belief that she could heal his wounded heart if he only gave her the chance, she wouldn’t see him for dust.

Yet she couldn’t lie. Not to him and not to herself.

“Well, there is the fact I’ve always wanted to sleep with you,” she said slowly. Truthfully. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. I told you that last week, at the waterhole. When I first suggested having your baby.”

“That was hypothetical.”

“Maybe you thought so. I didn’t. I had a crush on you as a teenager, not that you noticed, but that’s the truth. Do you remember my eighteenth?”

“The party at Shardays?”

Stupid question. Of course he remembered, since he’d met Brooke that night. But he’d asked for the truth and, painful topic or not, she couldn’t stop midstory. “I remember going shopping and picking out the sexiest dress I could find for that party. It was white, this real slippery fabric that clung in all the right places.” She shaped her hands over her body as she talked, remembering how excited she’d been to see herself in that dress, how keen her anticipation when she walked into the nightclub. She’d been humming with it, buzzing, singing. “I picked it out thinking about you, Tomas. I had this fantasy going that you’d see me in it and that would be it.”

“You had a boyfriend.”

“Yes, but he was a boy.” She shrugged. “You were a man.”

He made a rough sound, of disbelief or rejection or both. “That was seven years ago.”

“And I’ve always wondered what it would be like, you and me.”

“You mean you and me scr—”

“Yes.” She spoke over the top of him, blocking out the harsh word he’d chosen. Deliberately, she knew, to shock her.

“Because that’s all it can be,” he said tightly, as if he needed to drive the point home. “Only sex.”

“I hear you, although I think you should know for me it’s never ‘only sex,’ not with any man. I’m a woman, in case I need to point that out.”

“You don’t.”

For a long moment she stared back at him, her annoy-

ance at his stubborn stance yielding to those two little words. He’d noticed her as a woman. And he could talk until he was blue-faced about “only sex” but her heart swelled with the knowledge that it would be so much more. If he would only give her the chance. The chance she may have blown with the honesty of her confession.

Moistening her dry lips, she concentrated on what mattered to Tomas—the reason he’d agreed to “only sex” in the first place.

“You know that book I’ve been reading?” She waited for his nod of acknowledgment, for him to remember the title and make the mental switch from sex-with-Angie to the end result. “Well, I’ve read all about fertility and conception and, frankly, you couldn’t get a better candidate if you advertised. My cycle is regular as a twenty-eight-day clock, which the book says is pretty rare. I’ve never had any gyno problems. I’m strong and I’m healthy and I’m at my prime.”

“You’ve thought about this. You really want to have a baby?”

“Several, eventually. All perfect angels who don’t cry or give their mother a minute’s grief.”

She smiled. He didn’t. And she sensed that she’d taken this one step too far. That perhaps she should never have admitted to nerves and thus diverted his focus back at “just do it.” But, with all that had been said in the interim, how could she get back to that point?

Perhaps she did need to remind him about being a woman…a naked woman who’d agreed to have sex with him.

Slowly she closed the space between them, releasing her hair so it tumbled down past her shoulders. As she came up beside him she raked a hand through the thick tresses, no longer slick and straight but rendered thick and curly by the bathroom steam. She leaned down to recover her glass from the windowsill and her arm brushed against his in a slow heated slide. And again as she straightened.

“Have to enjoy this while I can,” she said, taking a long sip of champagne. Their gazes connected over the rim of her glass. “If I do fall pregnant, I’ll not have the opportunity much longer.”

Something shifted in his eyes, sharpening their focus to a hard glitter for a split second before he turned abruptly to stare out the window. “There’ll be a lot you have to give up.”

“There’ll be a lot to gain.”

“What about your job?”

“It’s only temporary. I’m replacing somebody on maternity leave. There’s a certain irony in that, don’t you think?”

He didn’t answer, and Angie’s confidence gave a nervy little jitter. She didn’t think it possible that he could look any tenser than when she’d first come out of the bathroom, but he did. Because it was time to get down to it, to just do it, and that was easier said than done.

She took another sip of champagne but all she tasted was her own anxiety. “Awkward, huh?” she said into the lengthening silence. “This. Us. Standing here wondering what to do next.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“How about we go into the bedroom? At least that’s a first step.” When he didn’t answer, she turned and started to walk in that direction.

“Angie.”

She whipped back around, caught him watching her in a way that made her heart thunder like a bronco let loose on the northern plains. Heat and fear; fear and heat.

“Don’t expect too much,” he said stiffly.

“I never do.”

That was a straight-out lie. Seven years she’d been waiting, wondering, ever since her coming-of-age party. Tonight she had expectations, and Tomas had no one to blame but himself.

He’d asked about her nerves. He’d insisted on the truth. No bull, he’d said, and wasn’t that a load of it!

Disgusted in himself, he dragged a hand through his hair. She even remembered the damn dress, when all he remembered about that night was meeting Brooke. The only woman he’d ever loved; the only woman he would ever love. The only woman he’d ever taken to bed.

How the hell was he going to do this? How was he going to walk through that door and take off his clothes and lay down with another woman? What in blue blazes had made him think that doing it with Angie would be easier than with a nameless, faceless stranger?

And if he wanted honest, no-bull truth between them, why hadn’t he told her about his lack of sexual experience?

Jaw set, he fought to contain the icy spread of fear through his tense body. Struggled to take the first steps toward the bedroom door, left open like an invitation to sin.

Only sex, he reminded himself. Sex with a lush, sensual woman who kissed like she loved everything about the whole man-woman intimacy thing. He imagined she wouldn’t be too shy to use that mouth in all manner of ways. He imagined she wouldn’t be afraid to take the initiative once he walked through that door. Maybe he should just take her advice: Lie back, close your eyes and think of Kameruka.

How hard could that be?

About as hard as the pounding of his pulse, he thought ruefully. And like a nagging toothache it would only get worse the longer he stood here thinking about it. Better to suck up the fear and dread of the dentist’s chair and march right in there and get it over with.

If he didn’t think about the intimacy, if he just concentrated on the mechanics of undoing buttons and stripping off clothes, if he focused on the part of him that cried out for a woman’s slick warmth in the dead of night, the part of him that was sick of his hand providing its only satisfaction, then he could do this.

As long as she didn’t expect too much.

On the threshold he paused, eyes fixed on the king-size bed that half-filled the room, covers turned back to reveal an expanse of pure white sheets. Twin bedside lamps cast a pale glow that did nothing to warm the starkness of that bed or to prevent the breakout of sweat, cold and sudden on his skin.

And Angie? His gaze swept beyond the bed and found her standing in front of the dresser, stalled in the act of brushing her hair. Their eyes locked in the mirror, as she slowly lowered her arms and put down the brush. The soft clunk sounded preternaturally loud in the stillness and he realized that her music had stopped. That the silence was so intense he could hear the thick thud of his heartbeat. Too loud, too hard.

“Damn moisture,” she said, turning to face him. “Once it gets a sniff of steam, I can’t do a thing to contain it.”

Her hair. She meant her hair. But stupidly it took him a moment to get past the reference to moisture and steam and containing it.

“I like your hair like that.” His voice sounded gruff and rusty, his compliment about as stiff as his body. “The other way, this afternoon, it was too…sleek.”

“Really?” She paused in smoothing the thick mass be-

hind her ears—a pointless task since the curls sprang free as soon as her hand dropped away. “You don’t think sleek is a good look?”

“Hell, no.”

“You prefer the wild look then?”

“On you,” he said simply and her lips tilted at the corners in the tiniest hint of a smile. That probably would have relaxed him a notch, that connection, if her gaze hadn’t drifted off to the bed—that endless stretch of cold, clinical white—before slowly returning to meet his.

“I intended taking off the robe and being all laid out on the bed waiting,” she said softly. “But I couldn’t do it.”

“You could have left the robe on.”

“I could have, if being naked was a problem.” Three slow steps, three thick pulses of blood in his lower body, and she stopped in front of him. “Being naked alone was.”

“You want me to get undressed?”

Dark and luminous eyes lifted from his chest to his eyes. She moistened her lips. “Do you mind if I do it?”

Not if you do it real quick.

That answer lodged in his throat when her silky female knuckles grazed his abdomen. When he sucked in hard, she got a firmer grip on his shirt and pulled it free of his trousers. Before he could think holymotherofmercy she’d unthreaded every button and pushed the sides of his shirt apart.

Maybe it was his vision, his thoughts, his whole body that trembled…or maybe it was her hands as they slowly traversed his bare chest, grazing his nipples, fingering the thick growth of hair, tracing the line of his collarbone. With growing confidence, her palms slid over his shoulders and down his biceps in a long, slow caress that peeled his shirt away until it dropped to the floor at their feet.

“Undo my robe,” she whispered, so close that her breath sloughed over his skin and seeped into his blood. He watched her lean forward and kiss his chest. Watched her eyelids flutter shut and that sight—soft and engrossed and sensual—brought on a surge of lust so intense his knees all but buckled.

He needed something to hold on to, to ground him against the dizzying roar of heat, and he found her robe, her sash, and a simple knot that came apart in his hands. She made a husky sound of approval as the thick toweling fell open. He made a rough sound of unscripted awe as her breasts came into view.

Full, luscious female things of beauty, with wide tawny aureoles and tips that seemed to tighten and darken as he watched—and, hell, he couldn’t stop watching until he feared his mouth was watering, until he had to swallow to stop from drowning. Behind his fly, his body pulsed with an ache to reach for her, to drop to his knees and draw those distended nipples into his mouth, to take her down onto the bed and bury himself without preliminary.

Except he’d be lucky to last a minute and he owed Angie better than that. Only sex, he told himself, didn’t mean it had to be bad sex.

The hands that itched to shape her body lifted instead to cup her face and he leaned down to take her lips, closing his eyes to shut out the lush appeal of her body. Their thighs brushed and her nipples grazed his chest as she came up onto her toes to meet his kiss. Restless, impatient, her hands shimmied over his ribs and sides before settling against his back and drawing their bodies into perfect alignment.

Heat billowed, a furnace of desire in his chest and his thighs and everywhere in between. Especially in between. In a slow, deep sweep his tongue stroked over hers and retreated. Her complaint was a rough sound that vibrated low in her throat and her hands tightened their grip on his back, forcing him to take notice, driving him past the edge of his control.

He kissed her harder, tasting her lips, drawing on her tongue, forcing himself to ease off when he wanted to devour. Only sex, he told himself, only lust, and that was okay. It had been so long, too long, since he’d indulged his male nature. It was understandable that he should feel so primitive, so carnal, so desperate.

Especially when she met him kiss for kiss, biting at his chin when he drew back for breath, sliding her hard-tipped breasts down his chest as she dipped lower and reached for his trousers. He sucked in another quick ragged breath but that oxygen didn’t make a lick of difference when she undid the waist button and started on his fly.

The accidental brush of her fingers against his erection completely zapped his synapses, and before the red-fire haze cleared she was ducking lower, her hair a dark whisper of sensation across his stomach. For one gasp of a moment he thought she was going to take him into her mouth, and in his explosive state that would have been too much, too soon.

Thinking about that hot, moist suction was damn near enough to bring him to embarrassment.

He backed away abruptly, and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Sorry.” In the low light her eyes gleamed dark and hot. “I was just helping with your trousers.”

The way she was looking at him didn’t help a bit. Especially with his trousers. Finally he managed to extricate himself from the rest of his clothing, and she was still watching him with a powerful hungry intensity.

“I bought condoms,” he managed to say, amazed that he remembered the earlier shopping expedition. “I’ll get them.”

Something in her eyes darkened, as if with a sense of purpose, and through the shimmering haze of lust Tomas felt a pang of misgiving.

“You could,” she said, her gaze not leaving his. “Or we could leave them right where they are and try to make a baby.”

Six

“According to the book, this is my prime conception time.” Sure and steady and dark as the night, Angie’s eyes held his. “Do you really want to waste this chance?”

Deep inside Tomas felt a keening cry of resistance. No, he couldn’t do this wholly naked. He needed protection, a barrier in any shape or form, some sense that he could hold himself apart from the intimacy of their bodies joining.

And how will you make a baby then? How will you keep Kameruka Downs?

His heart raced erratically, sweat sheened cold on his skin, and without a word he stood and stalked from the bedroom. Halfway across the sitting room he stopped suddenly, and for one numb second he couldn’t think what he was doing or why he’d come out here.

The condoms.

His gaze closed on the box he’d tossed onto the bureau earlier, when he’d come through the door and heard the music and realized that she was here. When it really struck home that sex with Angie was going to happen.

Do you need birth control? Do you really need this bedroom session as a trial?

Obviously he wasn’t going to have any trouble functionally. Obviously Angie had made up her mind about having a baby. He could get this over with now. If luck was on his side he wouldn’t have to go through this feverish ordeal of wanting and not-wanting-to-want ever again.

All you have to do is go back in that bedroom, shut down your mind and follow the lead of your body. It knows what it wants. It’s not having any problem with intimacy. It wants inside Angie, naked, now.

With a grim grunt of determination, he turned and followed where that leading part of his body pointed.

Several things hit him right in the face when he walked back into the bedroom. The shapeless form of her discarded robe, stark against the wine-red carpet. How the white sheets no longer looked cold and clinical, not with Angie’s darkly sensual beauty spread across them. And the fact that no amount of rubber or latex or reinforced steel could have protected him from the impact of her lying there naked.

Sucker-punched, he watched her roll up onto her knees, all tumbled black hair and perfect smooth skin and wildly generous curves. Her gaze had fixed on the highly functional and grossly underprotected body part that had lead him right back to her. He felt it thicken and pulse. Saw her moisten her lips and then move on to study his empty hands.

“You couldn’t find the condoms?”

“I found them.” Slowly he walked to the bed. Her eyes arrowed back for another up-close look, probably to see what he was wearing. Or not. “I left them where they were.”

Heavy-lidded eyes slid up to his. Something flickered in their dark chocolate depths. “Are you sure?”

“That I left them there? Yes. That I should have? No,” he admitted, honest for once.

“If that’s because we haven’t talked about STDs and such…I want you to know that I’m good. I had tests done when I last gave blood, and I haven’t been with anyone since.”

He swallowed the spontaneous question—how long since someone else?—and looked away. Irrelevant. Too personal. None of your business. And in his mind that justified not telling how long he’d been without. Instead he just nodded and said, “I’m clean.”

There was an uncomfortable moment as their gazes connected and a measure of the unasked personal and intimate shivered between them. She made a rueful sound, half sigh, half laughter. “Okay, and now we’re back at the awkward stage.”

“Us, standing here wondering what to do next.”

She smiled, appreciating his recall of their earlier conversation. “Except this time we’re already in the bedroom.”