He pulled her hands to the fastening of his slacks. “I can’t sleep in my best clothes,” he said gently. “Keep going.”

“Rourke…”

“Shhh,” he coaxed. His hands smoothed hers down on the fastenings. “Just a little more. That’s it. Now put your hands under the waistbands and pull. That’s all you have to do.”

His voice was seducing her. She shouldn’t. She should get up and run. She was embarrassed and nervous. Her hands were shaking.

“You can’t be…that drunk,” she began.

“Hold on to that,” he said softly, and he lifted his hips and pushed both waistbands down.

She was looking at him without realizing what she was seeing for several shocked seconds. During them, he slid out of his slacks and boxer shorts and lay back down on the bed, his eyes on her wide-eyed, shocked face as she looked and looked.

He laughed with pure delight. He was aroused. Very aroused, despite the liquor. Her eyes were enhancing what was already a magnificent hunger. He shifted on the clean sheets and groaned softly.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” he whispered huskily. “Of letting you look at me like this, feeling your eyes on me.”

She was too shocked to reply or even to try to leave.

“Tat, at your age, you’ve surely seen photographs of men like this, even if you haven’t seen the real thing,” he chided.

“Well…yes,” she said in a choked tone.

“But…?”

“None…none of them looked like…like that,” she whispered, fascinated. “You’re…you’re beautiful,” she blurted out.

His face changed. He shifted again on the sheets and shivered.

“I should…I should…go,” she choked.

One long arm snaked gently around her waist and pulled her across him and down on the bed beside him.

He wasn’t aggressive. He didn’t demand. He unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it aside. His fingers went to the front catch of the lacy little bra and unfastened it. He moved it away and looked at her beautiful, pink-tipped breasts, the crowns hard.

“You were beautiful at seventeen like this,” he said quietly. “But you’re more beautiful now.”

She couldn’t even manage words. Her heart was beating her to death.

“What…are you going to do?” she asked with helpless apprehension, because she knew that she couldn’t stop him, didn’t want to stop him. She was almost shivering with a hunger that had eight years of abstinence behind it.

“I’d very much like to put my mouth on your breast and suckle you until I made you come,” he whispered. “The way I did when you were seventeen. Remember, Tat?” His voice was soft and sensual as he looked at her bare breasts. “You were shocked at first, and after you went over the edge you cried. I kissed you and moved on top of you. I had your lacy little panties halfway down your legs and my pants unzipped. And we heard footsteps.”

She was trembling. “Yes.”

“I hurt like hell. I never thought I could stop, even then.” He drew in a long, unsteady breath. “I lived on that night for years.”

“Before or after you started going through beautiful women like tissues?” she asked with weary cynicism.

He wasn’t going to get into that. “You don’t understand what it was like,” he said quietly. “Have you ever wanted someone so much that it was like physical torture to be near them at all?”

Her head rocked on the mattress. “Not really,” she confessed.

“I wanted you to the point of madness, Tat,” he said softly. “And I couldn’t even touch you.” He smiled, but it was a hollow smile.

“So that was why…”

“That was why.” He drew in another breath. He stared down at her relaxed body, at the taut little breasts open to his eye. “So beautiful,” he whispered.

“You…haven’t touched me,” she said.

“I know. I’m not going to.”

Her expression wasn’t easily read. “Is it…because of the scars?”

His eye went to the scars, faint white lines where that butcher, Miguel, had cut her when she was a prisoner in Sapara’s jail. His face was dangerous. “I killed him, Tat. I wish I could have spared you what happened.”

Her fingers went up to his mouth and pressed there. They were cold.

He kissed them tenderly. “Those scars are marks of honor,” he whispered. “And I want very much to kiss them. But I can’t.”

“You…can’t?”

He moved away from her, just a little, and coaxed her eyes down to the raging masculinity below his belt line.

She flushed.

“I can’t,” he repeated. “Because our first time isn’t going to be when I’m too damned stinking drunk to do justice to you.”

He sat up, tugged her up and put her bra and blouse back on. He nuzzled his nose against hers, but he didn’t kiss her. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But get out of here.”

She got to her feet. He pulled the sheet across his hips and lay back with a smile.

She didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t offering anything but a sensual experience at some point in the future. He could take her and walk away. She would die a thousand deaths.

She bit her lip. “Stanton, I’m engaged…”

He studied her intently. “You want me,” he whispered. “I want you. How is the beloved physician going to feel when we go at each other like starving wolves?”

“That won’t happen,” she said, clenching her teeth.

The tension left his face. He looked at her quietly. “It will. And you know it. I can’t walk away from you again, Tat. I’m not even going to try. I’ll sober up in the morning.” It was almost a threat. His eye narrowed. “And when I do, there won’t be any place on earth you can go to get away from me.”

“I’m going…to be married,” she said harshly.

“To a man you neither love nor want,” he said. “You’ve never really seen how aggressive I can be when I want something. You’re going to find out.”

She flushed. The past few minutes had been entirely too stimulating. “I’m going home!”

He nodded slowly. “For now.”

She turned and almost ran from the room. He watched her, his eyes full of longing as she closed the door firmly behind her. He smiled to himself.

ISBN-13: 9781460389959

The Reluctant Father

Copyright © 2010 by Diana Palmer

First published as Reluctant Father by Silhouette Books in 1988

This edition published 2015

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