back, but as he climbed in beside her, she decided to let it slide. Then he started to kiss her again and she ignored that irrational need to be in control. She liked the feel of his weight pressing her into the mattress, his hands skimming her body, igniting a trail of fire across her skin. Then he began to kiss his way downward. It felt so good, and she wanted to relax and enjoy it, but as he reached the lowest part of her stomach, she automatically tensed.
Parker froze and lifted his head to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He frowned and pushed himself up on his elbows. “Don’t lie to me.”
Damn it. Why did he have to be so intuitive? So concerned about her needs and her weird hang-ups. He needed to stop being so wonderfully thoughtful. “It’s nothing.”
“The hell it is. Talk to me, Clare.”
The tone in his voice when he said her name sent shivers across her skin. After months of listening to the annoying nicknames he came up with for her, he had to choose now to start using her real name? When she was feeling most vulnerable? And did he have to say it with so much...feeling?
“What you’re doing, what you’re getting ready to do, it makes me feel very...”
“Vulnerable?”
“Yes. Very vulnerable.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes. And no. I don’t know, it’s weird. I’m weird.”
To his credit he didn’t ask why she felt that way, because that was one big ole can of worms she would rather not spill just yet. Or maybe ever. He was just so darned open and honest, it was difficult not to give him some sort of explanation.
“You’re not weird.” He kissed her stomach once more, then made his way back upward. “And I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable. This is supposed to be fun.”
“I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust you.”
“Clare, you barely know me. Trust is earned.” He kissed her so sweetly she could have cried, or punched him, then he rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him, grinning that devilish smile. “Better?”
“You don’t mind?”
“I get to lie here while a gorgeous woman rides me like I’m a rodeo bull. What do you think?”
She leaned down to kiss him, for fear that if she didn’t do something, she really would cry. Why did he have to be so wonderful? So understanding?
So damn hot.
He clearly had no reservations about being dominated, because she did ride him like a rodeo bull. He let her take the lead and set the pace, and even though he was on his back he didn’t just lie there. He kept his hands and his mouth and his hips plenty busy making her crazy, and when he cradled her face in his hands and gasped her name as he shattered, that sent her sailing. Her own release came on like a tsunami that set her soaring headlong into ecstasy.
And he wasn’t even through with her. He rolled her over and started from the top again. Her senses blurred and her body quaked and she forgot all about being in control, being nervous, and let him do his thing. And boy, did he do his thing. When she couldn’t take it any longer, he was still champing at the bit to pleasure her again.
She’d rediscovered muscles tonight that she hadn’t used in a long time, and it was way past time to take them out, dust them off and put them to good use. But she was going to pay for it tomorrow.
“I need to rest,” she told him, flopping down on her back.
“I’ve heard that more than once tonight,” he said with a grin, his hand teasing its way downward.
She intercepted it just above her navel. “I really mean it this time. I’m exhausted.”
Looking disappointed, he rolled onto his back beside her. She didn’t usually do the afterglow part, but as he took her hand, weaving their fingers together, she was too tired to move. Besides, it felt good to be near to him, their bodies close, their fingers intertwined. She liked it way too much.
“So what did my aunt say to you when you got here?” she asked him.
“She handed me the bag and said, ‘Clare is in her bedroom, go on up.’”
She and Aunt Kay were going to have to have a talk about boundaries. About how it was not okay to send sexy men up to her bedroom. Although in this particular case Clare was willing to overlook the transgression.
“Your aunt is tough,” he said. “But I think she likes me.”
She wouldn’t have sent him up here otherwise. “She has to be tough. She’s been on her own most of her life. At a time when women didn’t stay single and have careers instead of families.”
He pushed himself up on his elbow. “She’s never been married?”
“She was once, a really long time ago. But only for a few months.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“As a kid Kay hated farm life. Probably more than I do. She always dreamed of being a ‘sophisticated city slicker,’ as she put it. When she was seventeen she met a wealthy businessman from Tulsa. He was fifteen years older and worldly and she fell hard for him. Everyone loved him. He was charming and personable, and he showered her and her family with gifts. He took her to fancy restaurants and bought her nice clothes.
“I guess times were pretty hard and her parents were so happy to have a rich son-in-law, they didn’t bat an eyelash when she turned up pregnant. So they had a shotgun wedding, then he took her to his house in Tulsa. Everyone thought he was perfect, and that Kay was such a lucky girl.”
“No one is perfect.”
“Yeah. They were married about a week when he started beating her.”
Parker winced. “He was a predator.”
“A predator with a volatile temper. She said he was like Jekyll and Hyde. The first time he hit her it was over the grocery money. He got angry because she bought a magazine. She called him stingy, and he backhanded her.”
Parker cringed. “She didn’t leave?”
“She had nowhere to go. Her parents were too poor to take her and her baby in, and back then a pregnant woman couldn’t just go out and get a job, or even get a credit card without her husband’s signature. Plus, he’d been subsidizing her family’s farm. She knew that if she tried to leave, he would cut them off. Without that money, they would have fallen into poverty and lost everything. There would be no place for her parents and her five siblings to go. She was, as she puts it, in one hell of a pickle.”
“Did her parents know what was going on?”
“No, of course not. If they had they would have driven to Tulsa and taken her back home, even if it meant losing everything. But she said the guilt would have hurt far worse than his fists ever could.”
“That’s one hell of a sacrifice. But she obviously got away.”
“Yes, when he almost killed her. He came home from work angry and she said the wrong thing, so he used her as a punching bag. It was dumb luck that a neighbor had her window open and just happened to hear him screaming at her. When he stormed off the neighbor came by to see if she was okay. She found her bleeding and battered on the kitchen floor and called for help. Kay had internal injuries and would have bled to death if not for her. They got her to the hospital in time to save her life, but she lost the baby. And her uterus.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. Jesus.
“But she made sure it would never happen again. To her or anyone else.”
“How?”
“Long story short, the day she