Wild Child Read online

  Wildly unsteady, she placed her hand on his chest and held it there as though she wanted to reexperience the thundering rhythm of his heart.

  His nervous system registered her distress, the trembling hands, the ragged intake of air. He cupped her face and gazed down at her, surging with tenderness. She was wistful, beautiful in her anguish. He stroked her with his fingertips, caressing her downy jawline, her soft, burning mouth. He thought it was fear shaking her body. He was wrong.

  “Lift my skirt,” she said tremulously. “Make love to me.”

  She swayed against him, agonizingly wanton, and the shivery swing of her breasts was enough to ruin a saint’s resolution. Her skin was silk, her hair a fire storm. The good people of Cameron Bay called him a man with dreams. He sure as hell had a dream now, and it was her. Her, moaning under his hands. Her, hot and sweet beneath his body, wet and yielding, her.

  He tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her long and hard. Her mouth was a living, burning thing under his. Her body was meltingly urgent. Blake grasped the skirt of her dress, and by the time he had the silky material up to her thighs, he was so hard he was bursting.

  Cat moaned as he crushed her dress in his hands and drew it up her body. She wore only panties, a lacy garter belt, and nylons—and as he exposed her buttocks, she felt the cool night air ribbon through her legs. It touched the heat of her inner thighs and sent a painful shock of awareness through her. He meant to make love to her with all of the tenderness and savagery inside him. He meant to drag her to the ground and ravish her just as she’d fantasized. That realization flooded her body with waves of lush sexual stimulation. Her breasts tightened. Warmth and wetness welled between her legs.

  Blake dipped down and swept her into his arms, carrying her to a concealing thicket of shrubbery, lowering her to the ground. Within seconds of their lips touching, they were adrift in soft green grass, gloriously entangled, sweetly frantic. Cat was vaguely aware of clothing being dispensed with, panties, hooks, and zippers, and then all she knew was the torment of his hands as he opened her legs and caressed the silk of her thighs.

  She couldn’t bear the stimulation, and she cried out with dizzy pleasure as he caught her up in his arms. She felt herself being pulled with him to a sitting position, and then suddenly she was lifted over his legs.

  He settled her on his lap, straddling him. It was a position that made Cat instantly vulnerable—and available—to him. The awareness sent sweet shocks of desire through her. Heat rose from the tightening of her muscles. And then he touched her inner thigh and startled a gasp out of her. She convulsed as he caressed her gently, nearing the source of her excitement with every stroke of his fingers.

  The need rising inside Cat was riveting beyond anything she’d ever experienced. She was desperate to become part of him. She wanted his body inside hers, seeking, plunging. Recklessly she buried her hands in his hair and grasped urgent handfuls as she strained for that essential connection. His sex touched her, stroked against her opening, and she gave up a choked sound, arching her back.

  She ached for the potent force of his body, and he didn’t disappoint her. He gripped her by the waist and gently eased her down onto his rigid flesh, shuddering as she tightened with excitement.

  She shivered and cried, astonished at the sensations.

  “Easy, Cat, easy,” Blake rasped, fighting for control.

  But control was no longer possible. Racked with need, Cat was beyond constraints or caution. Heedless of the consequences, she drew her nails down his back and startled a growl of excitement out of him. He gripped her savagely and drove into her melting softness with a deep and merciless thrust. All the way in. Pleasure rocketed through her, vibrating clear up into her throat.

  Tears stung Cat’s eyes as a sudden brilliance flared inside her. She couldn’t stop crying as his lovemaking shook her body. She didn’t fully understand the depth of her emotion at that moment, or even the deeper meaning of the act. As a torch cauterizes wounds, their fiery coupling was sealing the emotional rift within her, a lifetime of warring emotions. Love and hatred were being fused by fire, healed by passion.

  But Cat was lost in the rising flurry of her own heartbeats, in the ragged sounds of Blake’s breathing. She only knew about the pleasure he was giving her at that moment—sweet, racking pleasure and heartbreaking joy.

  Moments later, using his powerful arms and thighs as leverage, Blake pulled her with him, and they rolled to their sides. “I need you underneath me,” he said, rising over her, “wrapped around me. I need to see the sweetness, Cat, to hear you whimper while I move inside you.”

  A sound of ecstasy came from deep within Cat as he reclaimed her, easing deeply into her body and flexing wondrously inside her. She caught hold of his hips as he thrilled her with another glorious stroke. His eyes were lightning, silver with heat and need. Choked cries rocked through her as he impaled himself in her softness again and again, driving deeply and powerfully.

  Fragrant grass cushioned their union, and the river below played tumultuous background music. Cat’s entire mind was drawn into the low, bursting life inside her. With every movement, every shiver and shake, her body surged and tightened. She felt the aching cry for release flare through her and knew that what was coming would be the deepest pleasure she would ever have.

  Blake groaned in surprise as her muscles quivered and tightened around him. He couldn’t catch his breath for a second. And then she began the cries of completion, and her abandon took him over the edge. He shuddered inside her, losing the rhythm of his thrusts, losing his mind. The hard heat in his groin burst into flame, immobilizing him. The blaze was ineffably beautiful, an inferno that threatened to consume him. All he could do against its roaring heat was to hang on to the woman in his arms and absorb her quaking cries.

  For a long time afterward, tangled in each other’s arms, Cat and Blake were oblivious of everything but their own perfection. Cool air surrounded them like a halo, its chill held back by the heat of their bodies.

  Cat’s first awareness was of the whispering sounds of the river. Listening to its tranquil murmurs, she curled up in Blake’s arms and welcomed the tenderness of his kisses as he brushed her closed eyelids and her forehead with his lips. For the first time in many years she felt at peace inside, as though she’d completed an arduous journey. Her heart was quiet, steeped in the wonder of its own completion.

  Beyond the physical pleasure, Blake felt a kind of absolution, as though he’d been temporarily cleansed of the driving ambitions and careless mistakes of the past. He also wondered at the absolute serenity of the woman in his arms. All the tension seemed to have gone out of her. She made him think of a violin string, strung tight for years and suddenly released. She seemed so transformed he wondered if the dark-eyed hellcat was gone forever, the anger spent with her physical passion. Her shiver told him she could still be affected by the elements.

  “Maybe we ought to go in search of warmth and shelter,” he suggested. “Cameron Bay isn’t known for its balmy nights.”

  “Not yet . . . I don’t want to leave this place yet.” Her uptilted head revealed the soft curve of her upper lip.

  The temptress has an angel’s smile, he thought.

  Moments later she acquiesced to letting him drape his jacket over her shoulders.

  “Did you ever do this in high school?” she asked him, snuggling into the enclosing warmth of his arms. “Did you ever stay out all night?”

  “I stayed out all night.” he said laughing, “but I never did this.”

  She laughed, too, and suddenly it was an inside joke. He loved the husky sound of her laughter, and the special intimacy that passion had created between them. He caught hold of her hands and tucked them under his shirt to warm them.

  His heart hesitated as she began to draw her nails through his body hair, combing it. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree behind him. It was about as sweet a feeling as a man could have, he decided. She placed her hand ove
r his heart, as though measuring the beats, and Blake thought he’d ascended into paradise. Her voice drifted up to him, soft, almost shy.

  “Did you know that I loved you once,” she said.

  Blake hesitated, not sure he’d heard her right. As the words gathered meaning, the heart she was warming with her hand nearly exploded inside him. “What?”

  He sat up to look at her.

  “It’s true.” She tried to shrug it off. “I was just a kid. You wouldn’t remember.”

  In love with him? Blake pressed his hand over hers. “Don’t be so sure. I remember the teenage bombshell who walked into my office like it was yesterday.”

  “Actually”—her voice softened, saddened—“I had a younger kid in mind, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she—if that teenage bombshell—was in love with you, too.”

  “I think I want to hear about this. All about it.”

  She smiled and sighed, obviously embarrassed. “It was so long ago, Blake. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Hey,” he said, “it matters.”

  Cat wondered if she ought to fill him in on the details of her childhood crush, then decided it couldn’t hurt. She’d already let it slip, and he would probably find it amusing.

  Blake found it anything but. Her voice was unsteady as she recounted the day he’d come to her house and given her mother the check, and he was immeasurably touched by the story.

  She was silent for a while afterward. “I was a weird little kid,” she said finally. “You probably didn’t know I existed.”

  She was slumped gracefully against him, and stroking her own arm, but not in any sensual way, more in the manner of a child seeking comfort.

  “I knew the D’Angelos had a child,” he said, sensing this wasn’t going to be the answer she wanted. “But I didn’t know she was a tender thirteen-year-old who thought I was descended from Olympus. Things might have been different if I had.”

  “How?”

  She wasn’t going to let him bluff his way through this, was she? He could see by her searching expressing that the question was crucial. “Cat, I didn’t know you then. I wish I had, but I didn’t. Can’t we start from here, from now?”

  She sat forward, pulling out of the circle of his arm. “No, I don’t think so . . . ”

  “Why not?”

  “There are things we have to talk about—”

  “I thought we just burned the past away.”

  “Not all of it, not my trial.” She took a protracted breath, then she looked up at him. “I didn’t steal the T-bird.”

  Blake was aware of a hot prickle of surprise in his jaw as he stared at her. He nodded slowly. It didn’t even occur to him to question her. He’d probably always known on some level. He’d certainly suspected it, right up until the moment that she’d become seductive.

  “You’re a couple of years too late with that information,” he said quietly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She began rubbing her arm again. “Would you have believed me then?”

  “No . . . probably not.” She was nailing him to the wall. One nail at a time.

  “I may have had lousy judgment at sixteen, but I did have a little pride left, even after that fiasco in your office. What was I supposed to do, Blake? Throw myself on your mercy? It would have destroyed every shred of self-respect I had.”

  In the moments that followed, Blake came face-to-face with the issues he’d rationalized away so many years ago. She was right. He wouldn’t have believed her innocent. He had needed her to be guilty. Perhaps to assuage his own guilt for his part in the seductive episode in his office. Or to justify his need to win his first case and rid the streets of “dangerous criminals” like Cat D’Angelo. God, what a hypocrite he was.

  Neither of them spoke as the river surged below them. There was a sound of wingbeats in the trees, and Blake remembered absently that a world still existed out there beyond the bubble of their immediate concerns.

  “Maybe there’s something I can do,” he said.

  A bittersweetness crept into her voice. “You’re a couple years too late.”

  “But if I could do something, would you want me to?” Something surged in Blake’s heart as he thought about announcing her innocence to the citizenry of Cameron Bay. The ultimate atonement. I wronged this blameless woman, folks.

  A smile twisted his lips as he caught himself. He wasn’t an aspiring politician for nothing. He was wringing every bit of drama out of the situation. The wronged woman, the repentant DA, the storybook love affair. That’s it, Wheeler, he thought, go for the glory.

  Cat was staring at the river as though she’d come to a decision. “No,” she said finally, releasing them both with her sigh. “I made the choice not to testify. It may have been the wrong choice at the time, but it was my decision then, and my responsibility now.”

  A winsome smile graced her face as she turned to him. “I was a pretty stubborn kid. I don’t think you could have changed my mind if you’d—”

  She broke off as though she’d heard something, then she jerked up, concerned. “I think there’s someone—”

  The words lodged in Cat’s throat as a beam of light flashed over her, blinding her.

  “Police,” a male voice barked. “What’s going on here?”

  Cat’s fear of the police was still instinctive. She clutched Blake’s coat around her. “Nothing! We were just talking.”

  “Officer—” Blake pushed to his feet and extended a hand to Cat, helping her up.

  The light flashed over Blake, illuminating him from head to toe. “Mr. Wheeler?” the man said. “Is that you?”

  Cat got the spotlight treatment next. A cold jolt of reality hit her as she became aware of the sorry condition that she and Blake were in. The officer’s imagination must be going wild, she thought. They were both disheveled and half-dressed. She was shoeless and bare-legged. Blake had grass stains all over his shirt.

  The light clicked off, and the officer exhaled heavily, apparently burdened by the struggle between duty and discretion. “Listen, Mr. Wheeler,” he said, “why don’t you take this, uh, young lady home now. You folks could get hurt out here this time of night.”

  Truer than he knows, Cat thought.

  “If anybody asks,” Blake told the officer, kneeling to pick up a shoe, “tell them we were mugged.”

  The man nodded at them and walked away, his expression hidden by the shadows. “Right, sir, I’ll do that.”

  “Where are we going?” Cat sat forward as Blake swung the Corvette off the main drag and headed for the bay area.

  “I’m taking you to my place.”

  “I’d rather not—”

  “We’ve got things to talk about, you said it yourself. At least we won’t be interrupted at the cabin.”

  “You’re taking me to the cabin to talk?”

  He drove for several seconds before glancing at her. “I don’t want this night to be over yet.” His gray eyes flickered over her. “Do you?”

  Cat turned to the darkness ahead. He knew the answer.

  They reached the cabin a short time later, but she didn’t wait for him to come around and let her out. She needed control at the moment, even over the little things. The incident with the officer had made her acutely aware of what she and Blake had just done. Passion in a park? A city park? With the district attorney?

  She’d spent ten years cleaning up her act, and now, when that bit of news got out—and it would—she knew exactly what the local folks were going to think. They’d say she tempted poor Blake Wheeler, drove the sweet boy right out of his mind.

  The hushed conversation between Sam Delahunt and his cronies came back to her, and she glanced at Blake as they walked toward the cabin. He was so handsome in his dishevelment, he made her throat ache. He looked strong, sure, incorruptible. But was he? Was she ruining Blake Wheeler? The irony of that possibility struck her immediately. They’d just made love in a park and she was worried about his reputation.

  The cabin
was spacious and impressively furnished with antiques and overstuffed couches in tweeds and plaids. The accents were nautical, a huge brass barometer and an open captain’s log. Set against the far wall, a lighted cabinet held some of loveliest myrtlewood carvings that Cat had ever seen.

  Taking it all in, her sense of irony darkened. The Wheeler compound was hallowed ground, native soil of the town’s most prominent citizens, home of the future governor, unless Blake decided to go for bigger things and run for sun god. The reasons she shouldn’t be there stacked up in her mind, and they were pervasive: emotional, social, professional. Even the Sinclair case could be jeopardized by a personal relationship between them.

  “This is crazy,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, it does feel that way, doesn’t it?”

  She turned to him. “Why am I here?”

  “So we can get to know each other? How does that sound?”

  “It sounds crazy.” She threw up her arms. “I come from the west side. Tonight was one thing, but we can’t be together, Blake, not in any long-term sense.”

  Blake looked at her steadily, thoroughly, taking in her dishabille and her spirited beauty. He needn’t have feared the premature demise of the hellcat. This was one woman who really knew how to create distance when she was threatened. “We can be anything we want, don’t you know that?”

  Cat couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “When did you become a romantic?” Traces of skepticism overrode the unsteadiness in her voice.

  “An hour ago in Mariner’s Park. I’m a late bloomer, but I have a feeling it’s a long-term condition, to use your phrase.”

  Cat shook her head. It was impossible to hold the line with this man. He didn’t play by the rules. He seemed to know what she wanted to hear. And then he said it. Just when she didn’t want to hear it. She responded with the first thing that came to mind. “What about sex then?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well. . . it’s certainly no basis for a relationship.”

  “No argument there.”

  “My point,” she said, “is that our relationship—if you can call it that—is based on sex. Besides, it’s all you ever talk about.”