Part of the Bargain Read online

  Libby’s skin prickled as she recalled the way Aaron would ignore her for long weeks and then pounce on her with a vicious and alarming sort of determination, tearing her clothes, sometimes bruising her.

  In retrospect, Libby realized that Aaron must have been trying to prove something to himself concerning his identity as a man, but at the time she had known only that sex, much touted in books and movies, was something to be feared.

  Not once had Libby achieved any sort of satisfaction with Aaron—she had only endured. Now, painfully conscious of the blatantly masculine, near-naked cowboy swimming in the pool nearby, Libby wondered if lovemaking would be different with Jess.

  The way that her body had blossomed beneath his seemed adequate proof that it would be different indeed, but there was always the possibility that she would be disappointed in the ultimate act. Probably she had been aroused only because Jess had taken the time to offer her at least a taste of pleasure. Aaron had never done that, never shown any sensitivity at all.

  Shutting out all sight and sound, Libby mentally decried her lack of experience. If only she’d been with even one man besides Aaron, she would have had some frame of reference, some inkling of whether or not the soaring releases she’d read about really existed.

  The knowledge that so many people thought she had been carrying on a torrid affair with Stacey brought a wry smile to her lips. If only they knew.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  The voice jolted Libby back to the here and now with a thump. Jess had joined her in the hot tub at some point; indeed, he was standing only inches away.

  Startled, Libby stared at him for a moment, then looked wildly around for Cathy and the elegant Ms. Summers.

  “They went in to have lunch,” Jess informed her, his eyes twinkling. Beads of water sparkled in the dark down that matted his muscular chest, and his hair had been towel-rubbed into an appealing disarray.

  “I’ll join them,” said Libby in a frantic whisper, but the simple mechanics of turning away and climbing out of the hot tub eluded her.

  Smelling pleasantly of chlorine, Jess came nearer. “Don’t go,” he said softly. “Lunch will wait.”

  Anger at Cathy surged through Libby. Why had she gone off and left her here?

  Jess seemed to read the question in her face, and it made him laugh. The sound was soft—sensuously, wholly male. Overhead, spring thunder crashed in a gray sky.

  Libby trembled, pressing back against the edge of the hot tub with such force that her shoulder blades ached. “Stay away from me,” she breathed.

  “Not on your life,” he answered, and then he was so near that she could feel the hard length of his thighs against her own. The soft dark hair on his chest tickled her bare shoulders and the suddenly alive flesh above her swimsuit top. “I intend to finish what we started yesterday beside the pond.”

  Libby gasped as his moist lips came down to taste hers, to tame and finally part them for a tender invasion. Her hands went up, of their own accord, to rest on his hips.

  He was naked. The discovery rocked Libby, made her try to twist away from him, but his kiss deepened and subdued her struggles. With his hands, he lifted her legs, draped them around the rock-hard hips she had just explored.

  The imposing, heated length of his desire, now pressed intimately against her, was powerful proof that he meant to take her.

  Chapter 5

  Libby felt as though her body had dissolved, become part of the warm, bubbling water filling the hot tub. When Jess drew back from his soft conquering of her mouth, his hands rose gently to draw down the modest top of her swimsuit, revealing the pulsing fullness of her breasts to his gaze.

  It was not in Libby to protest: she was transfixed, caught up in primal responses that had no relation to good sense or even sanity. She let her head fall back, saw through the transparent ceiling that gray clouds had darkened the sky, promising a storm that wouldn’t begin to rival the one brewing inside Libby herself.

  Jess bent his head, nipped at one exposed, aching nipple with cautious teeth.

  Libby drew in a sharp breath as a shaft of searing pleasure went through her, so powerful that she was nearly convulsed by it. A soft moan escaped her, and she tilted her head even further back, so that her breasts were still more vulnerable to the plundering of his mouth.

  Inside Libby’s swirling mind, a steady voice chanted a litany of logic: she was behaving in a wanton way— Jess didn’t really care for her, he was only trying to prove that he could conquer her whenever he desired—this place was not private, and there was a very real danger that someone would walk in at any moment and see what was happening.

  Thunder reverberated in the sky, shaking heaven and earth. And none of the arguments Libby’s reason was offering had any effect on her rising need to join herself with this impossible, overbearing man feasting so brazenly on her breast.

  With an unerring hand, Jess found the crux of her passion, and through the fabric of her swimsuit he stroked it to a wanting Libby had never experienced before. Then, still greedy at the nipple he was attending, he deftly worked aside the bit of cloth separating Libby’s womanhood from total exposure.

  She gasped as he caught the hidden nubbin between his fingers and began, rhythmically, to soothe it. Or was he tormenting it? Libby didn’t know, didn’t care.

  Jess left her breast to nibble at her earlobe, chuckled hoarsely when the tender invasion of his fingers elicited a throaty cry of welcome.

  “Go with it, Libby,” he whispered. “Let it carry you high…higher….”

  Libby was already soaring, sightless, mindless, conscious only of the fiery marauding of his fingers and the strange force inside her that was building toward something she had only imagined before. “Oh,” she gasped as he worked this new and fierce magic. “Oh, Jess…”

  Mercilessly he intensified her pleasure by whispering outrageously erotic promises, by pressing her legs wide of each other with one knee, by caressing her breast with his other hand.

  A savage trembling began deep within Libby, causing her breath to quicken to a soft, lusty whine.

  “Meet it, Libby,” Jess urged. “Rise to meet it.”

  Suddenly Libby’s entire being buckled in some ancient, inescapable response. The thunder in the distant skies covered her final cry of release, and she convulsed again and again, helpless in the throes of her body’s savage victory.

  When at last the ferocious clenching and unclenching had ceased, Libby’s reason gradually returned. Forcing wide eyes to Jess’s face, she saw no demand there, no mockery or revulsion. Instead, he was grinning at her, as pleased as if he’d been sated himself.

  Wild embarrassment surged through Libby in the wake of her passion. She tried to avert her face, but Jess caught her chin in his hand and made her look at him.

  “Don’t,” he said gruffly. “Don’t look that way. It wasn’t wrong, Libby.”

  His ability to read her thoughts so easily was as unsettling as the knowledge that she’d just allowed this man unconscionable liberties in a hot tub. “I suppose you think… I suppose you want…”

  Jess withdrew his conquering hand, tugged her swimsuit back into place. “I think you’re beautiful,” he supplied, “and I want you—that’s true. But for now, watching you respond like that was enough.”

  Libby blushed again. She was still confused by the power of her release, and she had expected Jess to demand his own satisfaction. She was stunned that he could give such fierce fulfillment and ask nothing for himself.

  “You’ve never been with any man besides your husband, have you, Libby?”

  The outrageous bluntness of that question solidified Libby’s jellylike muscles, and she reached furiously for one of the towels Mrs. Bradshaw had set nearby on a low shelf. “I’ve been with a thousand men!” she snapped in a harsh whisper. “Why, one word from any man, and I let him… I let him…”

  Jess grinned again. “You’ve never had a climax before,” he observed.

>   How could he guess a thing like that? It was uncanny. Libby knew that the hot color in her face belied her sharp answer. “Of course I have! I’ve been married—did you think I was celibate?”

  The rapid-fire hysteria of her words only served to amuse Jess, it seemed. “We both know, Libby Kincaid, that you are, for all practical intents and purposes, a virgin. You may have lain beneath that ex-husband of yours and wished to God that he would leave you alone, but until a few minutes ago you had never even guessed what it means to be a woman.”

  Libby wouldn’t have thought it possible to be as murderously angry as she was at that moment. “Why, you arrogant, insufferable…”

  He caught her hand at the wrist before it could make the intended contact with his face. “You haven’t seen anything yet, princess,” he vowed with gentle force. “When I take you to bed—and I assure you that I will— I’ll prove that everything I’ve said is true.”

  While Libby herself was outraged, her traitorous body yearned to lie in his bed, bend to his will. Having reached the edges of passion, it wanted to go beyond, into the molten core. “You egotistical bastard!” Libby hissed, breaking away from him to lift herself out of the hot tub and land on its edge with an inelegant, squishy plop, “You act as if you’d invented sex!”

  “As far as you’re concerned, little virgin, I did. But have no fear— I intend to deflower you at the first opportunity.”

  Libby stood up, wrapped her shaky, nerveless form in a towel the size of a bedsheet. “Go to hell!”

  Jess rose out of the water, not the least bit self-conscious of his nakedness. The magnitude of his desire for her was all too obvious.

  “The next few hours will be just that,” he said, reaching for a towel of his own. Naturally, the one he selected barely covered him.

  Speechless, Libby imagined the thrust of his manhood, imagined her back arching to receive him, imagined a savage renewal of the passion she had felt only minutes before.

  Jess gave her an amused sidelong glance, as though he knew what she was thinking, and intoned, “Don’t worry, princess. I’ll court you if that’s what you want. But I’ll have you, too. And thoroughly.”

  Having made this incredible vow, he calmly walked out of the room, leaving Libby alone with a clamoring flock of strange emotions and unmet needs.

  The moment Jess was gone, she stumbled to the nearest lounge chair and sank onto it, her knees too weak to support her. Well, Kincaid, she reflected wryly, now you know. Satisfied?

  Libby winced at the last word. Though she might have wished otherwise, given the identity of the man involved, she was just that.

  With carefully maintained dignity, Jess Barlowe strode into the shower room adjoining the pool and wrenched on one spigot. As he stepped under the biting, sleetlike spray, he gritted his teeth.

  Gradually his body stopped screaming and the stubborn evidence of his passion faded. With relief, Jess dived out of the shower stall and grabbed a fresh towel.

  A hoarse chuckle escaped him as he dried himself with brisk motions. Good God, if he didn’t have Libby Kincaid soon, he was going to die of pneumonia. A man could stand only so many plunges into icy ponds, only so many cold showers.

  A spare set of clothes—jeans and a white pullover shirt—awaited Jess in a cupboard. He donned them quickly, casting one disdainful look at the three-piece suit he had shed earlier. His circulation restored, to some degree at least, he toweled his hair and then combed it with the splayed fingers of his left hand.

  A sweet anguish swept through him as he remembered the magic he had glimpsed in Libby’s beautiful face during that moment of full surrender. My father was right, Jess thought as he pulled on socks and old, comfortable boots. I love you, Libby Kincaid. I love you.

  Jess was not surprised to find that Libby wasn’t with Cathy and Monica in the kitchen—she had probably made some excuse to get out of joining them for lunch and gone off to gather her thoughts. God knew, she had to be every bit as undone and confused as he was.

  Mostly to avoid the sad speculation in Monica’s eyes, Jess glanced toward the kitchen windows. They were already sheeted with rain.

  A crash of thunder jolted him out of the strange inertia that had possessed him. He glanced at Cathy, saw an impish light dancing in her eyes.

  “You can catch her if you hurry,” she signed, cocking her head to one side and grinning at him.

  Did she know what had happened in the hot tub? Some of the heat lingering in Jess’s loins rose to his face as he bolted out of the room and through the rest of the house.

  His truck, an eyesore among the other cars parked in front of the house, patently refused to start. Annoyed, Jess “borrowed” Monica’s sleek green Porsche without a moment’s hesitation, and his aggravation grew as he left the driveway and pulled out onto the main road.

  What the hell did Libby think she was doing, walking in this rain? And why had Cathy let her go?

  He found Libby near the mailboxes, slogging despondently along, soaked to the skin.

  “Get in!” he barked, furious in his concern.

  Libby lifted her chin and kept walking. Her turquoise shirt was plastered to her chest, revealing the outlines of her bra, and her hair hung in dripping tendrils.

  “Now!” Jess roared through the window he had rolled down halfway.

  She stopped, faced him with indigo fury sparking in her eyes. “Why?” she yelled over the combined roars of the deluge and Monica’s car engine. “Is it time to teach me what it means to be a woman?”

  “How the hell would I know what it means to be a woman?” he shouted back. “Get in this car!”

  Libby told him to do something that was anatomically impossible and then went splashing off down the road again, ignoring the driving rain.

  Rasping a swearword, Jess slipped the Porsche out of gear and wrenched the emergency brake into place. Then he shoved open the door and bounded through the downpour to catch up with Libby, grasp her by the shoulders and whirl her around to face him.

  “If you don’t get your backside into that car right now,” he bellowed, “I swear to God I’ll throw you in!”

  She assessed the Porsche. “Monica’s car?”

  Furious, Jess nodded. Christ, it was raining so hard that his clothes were already saturated and she was standing there talking details!

  An evil smile curved Libby’s lips and she stalked toward the automobile, purposely stepping in every mud puddle along the way. Jess could have sworn that she enjoyed sinking, sopping wet, onto the heretofore spotless suede seat.

  “Home, James,” she said smugly, folding her arms and grinding her mud-caked boots into the lush carpeting on the floorboard.

  Jess had no intention of taking Libby to Ken’s place, but he said nothing. Envisioning her lying in some hospital bed, wasted away by a case of rain-induced pneumonia, he ground the car savagely back into gear and gunned the engine.

  When they didn’t take the road Libby expected, the smug look faded from her face and she stared at Jess with wide, wary eyes. “Wait a minute…”

  Jess flung an impudent grin at her and saluted with one hand. “Yes?” he drawled, deliberately baiting her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place,” he answered, still angry. “It’s the classic situation, isn’t it? I’ll insist you get out of those wet clothes, then I’ll toss you one of my bathrobes and pour brandy for us both. After that, lady, I’ll make mad love to you.”

  Libby paled, though there was a defiant light in her eyes. “On a fur rug in front of your fireplace, no doubt!”

  “No doubt,” Jess snapped, wondering why he found it impossible to deal with this woman in a sane and reasonable way. It would be so much simpler just to tell her straight out that he loved her, that he needed her. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that, not just yet, and he was still mad as hell that she would walk in the pouring rain like that.

  “Suppose I tell you that I don’t want you to ‘make mad love’ to
me, as you so crudely put it? Suppose I tell you that I won’t give in to you until the first Tuesday after doomsday, if then, brandy and fur rugs notwithstanding?”

  “The way you didn’t give in in the hot tub?” he gibed, scowling.

  Libby blushed. “That was different!”

  “How so?”

  “You…you cornered me, that’s how.”

  His next words were out of his mouth before he could call them back. “I know about your ex-husband, Libby.”

  She winced, fixed her attention on the overworked windshield wipers. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  Jess shifted to a lower gear as he reached the road leading to his house and turned onto it. “Stacey told me about the women.”

  The high color drained from Libby’s face and she would not look at him. She appeared ready, in fact, to thrust open the door on her side of the car and leap out. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said after an interval long enough to bring them to Jess’s driveway.

  “Why not, Libby?” he asked, and his voice was gentle, if a bit gruff.

  One tear rolled over the wet sheen on her defiant rain-polished face, and Libby’s chin jutted out in a way that was familiar to him, at once maddening and appealing. “Why do you want to talk about Aaron?” she countered in low, ragged tones. “So you can sit there and feel superior?”

  “You know better.”

  She glared at him, her bruised heart in her eyes, and Jess ached for her. She’d been through so much, and he wished that he could have taken that visible, pounding pain from inside her and borne it himself.

  “I don’t know better, Jess,” she said quietly. “We haven’t exactly been kindred spirits, you and I. For all I know, you just want to torture me. To throw all my mistakes in my face and watch me squirm.”

  Jess’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. It took great effort to reach down and shut off the Porsche’s engine. “It’s cold out here,” he said evenly, “and we’re both wet to the skin. Let’s go inside.”