The Lone Rancher - By Carol Finch Page 0,70

as Cahill amused himself temporarily—at her expense, she told herself. Cahill needed her to be his fast-talking champion this morning to spring him from jail, but any woman could satisfy him in bed. If he couldn’t love Adrianna for who and what she was, then she didn’t need him.

Men had wanted her for the wrong reasons all of her adult life. Quin Cahill was the only man she wanted to love her for all the right reasons. But if he couldn’t voice the heartfelt words she ached to hear she wouldn’t take the humiliating risk of baring her soul to him.

She had her new life in Texas and her unlimited independence, she consoled herself. It would have to be enough.

Chapter Twelve

Quin tossed, turned and cursed because he couldn’t fall asleep. He knew it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the long nap he’d had after he’d been released from jail.

She was leaving. The words took hold of his thoughts and twisted his heart out of shape. The only enjoyment he’d experienced the past two years was being with Boston. She’d touched off emotions he’d placed in cold storage after his traitorous family had walked out on him. Boston’s quick wit and courage impressed him. She brightened his life and touched his soul. Not to mention that she set his body on fire in the heat of passion.

And she was leaving.

Scowling, Quin rolled off the bed in the master suite and stared out the window. He considered traipsing downstairs to pour himself a drink, but he knew that wouldn’t appease him. What he wanted was sleeping in his former bedroom.

Admitting defeat, he wrapped a towel around his naked hips and headed for the door. He tiptoed down the hall to let himself into Boston’s room. He inwardly groaned when a shaft of moonlight slanted across the bed, illuminating her curly dark hair and enchanting face.

“Cahill? Are you all right? Is your head hurting again?”

“No, just the rest of me,” he murmured as he eased the door shut, locked it behind him, then went to stand over her.

“Is there something I can do to make you feel better?”

“Yes, you can give me you,” he whispered as he eased down on the edge of the bed.

Her soft snicker turned his heart wrong side out. The touch of her hand on his bare chest made him burn with feverish desire in the space of a breath. And when she levered herself up to press her lush lips to his, Quin drowned in the heady sensations she never failed to arouse in him.

“I’m gonna miss you like crazy, Boston,” he rumbled as he discarded the towel and stretched out beside her.

“But I’m here now,” she whispered throatily. “We have tonight.”

Yes, they did, Quin mused as he tunneled his hand beneath her silky nightgown. “One of Rosa’s creations?” he mumbled against her parted lips.

“Of course. One of a kind.”

“I’d like it even better if you weren’t wearing it,” he insisted as he drew the shimmering fabric over her head and tossed it in the same direction as the towel. “You look best wearing nothing but me….”

When he lowered his head to blaze a path of kisses down the slender curve of her throat to the beaded peaks of her breasts, she moaned softly. Quin loved that sound. He enjoyed pleasuring her and he ached to have her want him to the same mindless extreme that he wanted her.

When he teased her nipples with thumb and forefinger, he heard her breath catch and felt her body melt against him. A coil of heat scorched him as she brought his mouth back to hers. Her arms came around his neck and she kissed him as if the world was ending and they had only one breath left.

Quin swore his eyes had rolled back in his head and he was on the brink of passing out when her adventurous fingertips moved hither and yon, investigating the various textures of his flesh. He held his breath when her caresses descended across his belly, then stroked him from base to tip.

He lost the ability to breathe or think. He could do nothing more than feel the intense pleasure building with each unhurried caress of her hand. Pulsating awareness pelted him as she eased him onto his back, then hovered above him.

When she smiled down at him, her cedar-tree-green eyes sparkling in the shaft of moonlight, he marveled at her incredible beauty. He tried to conjure up the face of