The Rogue (The Moorehouse Legacy #4)(25)

He ended the kiss by shifting away just a little. His cheeks were flushed, his skin heated, his lower body…aroused. She could feel his need against her and was dizzy from the promise of that hard rope of his.

“Don’t stop,” she said, slipping her arms around his neck and bringing him back down.

They kissed forever, bodies melding, mouths moving, hands touching. At some indefinable point, the tenor of it all changed from exploration to a restless, growing hunger.

“Mad…” Spike broke off the kiss and buried his face in her neck. Without warning, his teeth bit down on her a little, then he licked where he’d nipped her. His breath was hot on her skin, his big body straining with need.

But he was reining himself in for her. In this pause, he was controlling himself.

“Mad, just how far do you want this to go?”

She eyed the bed from over his shoulder, wanting to be in it with him. And yet fearing that, too. He was a man to get lost in and even professional sailors couldn’t always save themselves from drowning.

“I don’t know.”

“Then I need to stop now.”

He stepped back and shook his head as if trying to clear it. Then he turned, did something to the front of his sweatpants, and faced her again with a rueful smile.

“Actually, Mad, it’s better we don’t…go there. Honestly, I didn’t come here for that, in spite of what just happened. All I want to do is help you through the weekend.”

Mad dragged in a deep breath and told herself he was right. What was she doing, thinking of having sex with a man she barely knew? For the very first time in her life?

And yet somehow the he’s-just-a-stranger rationale didn’t hold water. She felt like she knew him right through his skin, down to his heart.

Spike kissed his forefinger and placed it on her lips. “Don’t worry, Mad. We’re going to get you to Monday without any more complications than absolutely necessary.”

After he left and the door shut, Mad walked around, feeling like the bedroom was a very well-decorated hamster cage. Eventually, she stopped in front of a window.

The air-conditioning was on in the house, but she desperately needed some fresh air. Flipping the sash’s lock, she threw her shoulder into the effort of getting the thing open, and finally it popped and squeaked. Real air poured into the room, smelling like the night-blooming roses in the garden below.

Getting down on her knees, she propped her forearms on the sill, put her chin on her wrists, and wished he had stayed.

She was twenty-five years old, for God’s sake. Twenty-five, not fifteen. Which meant if she found a man she wanted as a lover, she could have him if he wanted her. And Spike had very definitely wanted her.

So why shouldn’t they be together?

Mad blew out her breath.

Well, for one thing, he’d said he hadn’t come for any kind of quick affair—good Lord, was he with someone already?

No, she thought. Sean would know that and Sean would have told her. Besides, Spike hadn’t seemed as if he were dating anyone when the Doublemint Twins had been on his lap at that party.

So if he didn’t have a woman in his life, why—

Oh, what was she thinking. Even if he were free as a jaybird, she didn’t imagine he’d be in any hurry to get horizontal if he knew she was a virgin. Virginity in a woman, like physical strength, tended to make men a little jumpy. And not in a good way. Hell, maybe Spike would think she’d stalk him like some lovelorn teenager when he left at the end of the weekend.

Shoot, she probably would be tempted to do that already. There was something about that man that made her want to be as close to him as the very clothes he wore. It was those dangerous, dark looks of his. And the fact that over dinner he’d seemed ready to take Richard out back when the man had insulted her. And it was the way Spike had handled that Harley.

But mostly it was the look in his eyes when they met hers. There was kindness in him, deep reserves of kindness.

And that kindness meant she could trust him.





Chapter Six




Thank God for this pool, Spike thought the next morning.

As he stroked through the water, he was working off the burn from an entire night of erotic dreams. Some had been conscious, playing on the ceiling above him as he stared up sightlessly, his hips throbbing with the need to release. But the worst of them had come after he’d slid into an agitated sleep. In those, he could actually feel the heat of her body against his own.

Man, this whole thing with Madeline Maguire was trouble.

Sure, he’d always liked women, had had some pretty heavy-duty sexual needs. Except nothing came close to what he felt like with Mad. During that one kiss with her, he’d become all instinct, nothing but rank male starvation. Holding her, pushing his body against hers, straining like he was lifting a car off the ground, he’d felt as if he’d never had a woman before and would never have one again.

So this was not good. Desperation was no one’s friend in this world and that’s what he’d been. Desperate. Half insane. Needy and out of control.

And the effect had lingered. Was still with him.

When he was finished with his last lap, he shot out of the pool and dried off, feeling the coming warmth of the day already. Linking the towel around his neck, he stared past the pool at a spread right out of House & Garden. The acreage behind the mansion was landscaped to within an inch of its life: carefully selected bushes were clipped into precise shapes, fancy blooming flowers were corralled into beds, lawn was clipped tight as a beard, as if someone had taken a buzz razor to it instead of a mower.