The Woman for Dusty Conrad Read online

  Overly aware of his gaze on her, probing her, she forced herself to move. To busy herself. Prevent herself from responding to that gob-smacked expression on his too handsome face. Anything to stop herself from stepping toward him and gently easing the confused wrinkles from his forehead, running the pad of her thumb over his bottom lip. She opened the oven door and checked the meat loaf she’d put in earlier, though her mind lagged a split second behind her actions and it took her a moment to register what she was doing. Finally, she gauged the loaf done and placed the pan on the stovetop, then turned down the heat and placed a foil-wrapped baguette in to warm.

  She knew Dusty had moved to stand next to her without having to see his tall frame from the corner of her eye as he took the hand mixer out of the cabinet, then collected milk and butter from the refrigerator to make the mashed potatoes. Just like he always had.

  As impossible as it seemed, Jolie swore she could feel his heat bridge the few feet separating them. It swept over her skin like a caress, urging her closer to the man it seemed she’d always loved. A man who no longer loved her, despite the passion-filled kiss they’d shared that morning. The truth was, if he loved her, he’d never have left her.

  They moved around the kitchen like two ghosts, performing tasks they had hundreds of times before. But while their actions reflected their past familiarity, the differences loomed between them like so many un-spoken words. Words that crowded her throat now, choking her, and making her feel bound by yards of rope though she moved freely.

  As if through silent agreement, finally they sat down at the table, dinner covering the surface. Jolie felt as if she might jump out of her skin at any moment, the suspense of Dusty’s silence eating away at her quiet resolve to get through the meal without saying anything that might reveal how hurt she was. Expose how thickly her heart beat in her chest just being this near to him. Show him how much she wanted to explore all the explosive emotions his kiss had reawakened that morning.

  “Is that what you really thought, Jolie?” Dusty asked quietly, pushing away his plate. “That there was…that I was…involved with another woman?”

  She looked at him and she recognized the move for the mistake it was the instant she made it. He was hard enough to handle from across the room. In fact there was a time when she didn’t think the town of Old Orchard large enough to keep her away from him. But up this close, just an arm’s length away, he was devastatingly tempting. The rich Irish-coffee brown of his eyes, the strong shape of his jaw, the fresh, warm smell of his skin combined to make her stomach drop to somewhere in the vicinity of her feet.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Her palms dampened. And her stomach tightened in acute awareness. Her body betrayed her as surely as he had.

  She gave a wry smile. “Like, do you mean had I found any lipstick on your collar, any unexplained phone numbers on our bill?” Her attempt at humor fell well short of the mark, making her even more tense. “No,” she said, forcing her gaze away. “No, I didn’t really think there was someone else.” She bit her bottom lip as she collected their plates. “Even if there were…well, it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  Her gaze caught on the white of the divorce papers still sitting facedown on the corner of the table and her throat closed.

  He caught her arm when she would have dived for the sink, anywhere that required her to be at least a room’s length away from him. The mere feel of his skin against hers chased the breath from her lungs.

  “But it does matter, Jolie. Or else you wouldn’t have asked.”

  Jolie knew she should tug her arm from his. Walk away as though her entire body weren’t clamoring for his touch. Pretend she didn’t care one way or another if he’d been with someone else since he’d left her six months ago. But the truth was, she did care. Not a night went by that she didn’t long for him to be next to her in that big bed they’d picked out at the weekly flea market on Route 108. That she didn’t squeeze her thighs tightly together, needing him with an intensity that scared her. That she wasn’t forced to shove away her tears when she thought that at that very moment he might be sharing his heat with someone else.

  It was during those moments that she felt more alone than she ever had. Even after her parents had perished in that fire when she was six. Even in the days after Dusty had left and she’d existed in a befuddled haze, completely incapable of grasping the new reality.

  Just having him in the house, back in town, made her feel somehow alive again. Made her recognize that she’d been little more than half a person since he’d gone. And ignited a craving in her that set her body on fire.

  The plates clattered back to the table and she twisted her arm until she was grasping his forearm just as he was grasping hers. She met his gaze, not encouraged by the wary shadow in his eyes, but not repelled by it, either. She thought of their scorching kiss that morning. Wondered if he’d really wanted her as much as she’d wanted him. Or whether her imagination had cooked up his reaction, made her see things that she wished were true but really weren’t there.

  But most of all she felt the overwhelming desire not to be alone.

  He made a sound low in his throat then tugged her closer, until she was faced with the decision to either pull away or topple into his lap. She chose the latter, gripping his steely shoulders to anchor herself as her hair briefly swept between them then swayed away.

  He brushed his mouth against hers. Jolie’s breath snagged in her throat.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve wanted anyone but you, Jolie, I wouldn’t even recognize attraction to another woman,” he murmured against her cheek.

  She let her eyes flutter closed, drinking in his words, absorbing them, storing them away for some undefined time in the future when she might need them. When the loneliness grew unbearable. So she could dust them off and pull them back out, remember that at one time the man she loved had once loved her, too.

  Dusty was watching her too closely, too intensely, and she dropped her gaze to his chest. He caught her chin and forced her gaze to his again.

  “Damn, woman, but you confuse the living hell out of me.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but he trapped the words inside with his own mouth, claiming her lips with fevered intensity. Rendering her incapable of doing anything but receiving his hungry attentions.

  His hand dropped from her chin to her neck. She was afraid that he could feel the rapid beat of her pulse there, beneath her too hot skin. He slanted his mouth the other way, and she dragged in a deep breath, then launched an assault on his mouth that equaled the power of his. She boldly stroked his tongue with hers and hungrily pulled at his lips, relearning the taste of him. The feel.

  He groaned and threaded his fingers through her hair.

  Suddenly sitting across his lap wasn’t enough for Jolie. A ravenous, seemingly insatiable need to be closer yet consumed her. Keeping contact with his mouth, she awkwardly stood, then repositioned her legs and straddled him, not stopping until the juncture of her thighs rested solidly against the growing ridge in his jeans.

  “Oh, how I’ve missed you, Dusty,” she whispered, knowing somewhere deep in her mind that she shouldn’t have said the words but helpless to stop herself.

  She tugged mindfully away, feeling suddenly bare…exposed…all too vulnerable.

  But when she looked into his eyes, she saw exactly what she needed to see. Instead of wariness, she saw understanding. Rather than doubt, she saw compassion. In the place of indifference, she saw sheer passion.

  He tugged her mouth back down to his, slipping his hot tongue between her teeth and tangling it with hers. She moaned and melted against him again, uncaring of what she’d revealed. Right now, this moment, this is what she wanted…what she needed.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t surpass the dizzying heights merely kissing him induced, Dusty dropped a palm to her breast and squeezed the aching mound of flesh through the fabric of her sweater, and the pleasure principle heightened within her.


  “Tell me…what have you missed, Jolie?” he asked huskily, following the material of her sweater down to the hem, then trailing his fingers underneath. She shivered as he spanned her rib cage, then slipped his fingers under her bra and freed her left breast. “Did you miss this?” He feathered his thumb over the hard peak, sending a jolt of hot, searing heat straight to her stomach.

  She moaned and increased the tempo of her kiss, pulling his tongue deep into her mouth, running her own along the uneven ridge of his teeth, feeling as if she wanted to swallow him whole.

  The pressure of his fingers against the vee of her jeans nearly sent her leaping out of them. He easily found her trembling core through the thick material and pressed inward. “Or did you miss this?”

  She shuddered so violently she had to drag her mouth from his and grasp his shoulders to keep from sliding to the floor and dissolving into a puddle of unsatisfied lust.

  His groan sounded against her ear, then he drew the tip of his tongue down the sensitive shell. “It’s been so very long. Too long.”

  His vehement yet somehow reluctantly said words proved a catalyst, pushing her to the edge then over. Her muscles contracted and convulsed. She automatically clung to him, riding out the brief, delicious series of spasms even as he coaxed them further by making gentle circles around her throbbing womanhood through the denim of her jeans.

  Finally, she rested the temple of her forehead against his, her eyes closed, her lips parted as she drew in gulping breaths of air.

  Her position listing against him caused him to move his hand to her hip and he followed with his other hand on her other hip until he gripped her firmly, pressing her further against the hard ridge of his arousal. Her breath caught.

  “Is that what you missed, Jolie?” he rasped.

  She drew slowly back, holding his gaze with hers, all too willingly tumbling into the deep brown depths of his eyes. She reached between them, drawing her fingers along the length of him, then squeezing his erection through the thick denim. “This…is what I missed.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. She’d missed everything. The sound of him in the shower, the scent of his shaving cream every morning. She missed the rustling of the newspaper as he read every last word over breakfast, and the way he gulped his orange juice down in one long sip. She’d even missed the way he left his shoes sprawled across the entry hall so that she tripped over them every time she came through the door.

  She restlessly licked her lips. But most of all, she missed the way he used to love her. Unconditionally. Unabashedly. Shamelessly.

  She missed them.

  For a long moment she couldn’t breathe. She merely sat and stared at him, her heart thundering in her chest. Her throat tight with emotion and longing. He returned her gaze. As if he understood as well as she did that they were facing a momentous decision in that instant. Whether to take things further…or to stop right where they were.

  Chapter 5

  Dusty watched the way Jolie ran her pink tongue along the soft, swollen flesh of her lips and knew that the decision, no matter how weighty, had been effectively lifted from his hands.

  No matter the consequences, he wanted Jolie. The woman who was still his wife. Now. And that nothing short of the house being on fire would stop him from taking her.

  He felt the jutting of her hipbones under his fingers and strengthened his grip. She made a soft sound of protest deep in her throat. Leaning forward, he claimed her mouth even more possessively, drinking from her sweetness like a man starved for her taste.

  Six long, empty months separated now from the last time he’d sunk into Jolie’s hot flesh. Roughly one hundred and eighty nights when he’d rolled over looking to hold her, press himself against her, only to find her not there. And living with the knowledge that he had been the one who had been forced to leave had been sheer torture. Even toward the last days of their marriage, as the distance between them grew greater, they’d always come together at the end of the day, when the lights were out, their limbs entwined, their lovemaking sacred territory neither one of them was willing to sacrifice.

  Now he pressed himself against her and groaned. While he may have wickedly teased her with his words, all along he knew he’d been the one who had missed this…wordless coming together. This joining of him with Jolie that defied explanation and rationale. When they were together this way, the world looked different. He felt different. And the night before he’d left, he’d been afraid he’d never feel that way again.

  Apparently sensing the shift in his demeanor, Jolie fervently kissed him back, leaning back to allow him to tug off her sweater, then making the movements needed in order for him to strip off her jeans and panties.

  He visually devoured every precious inch of flesh he exposed, noticing the deepened hollows, the more pronounced ridge of her ribs. He noted yesterday that she had lost weight, but didn’t realize until this moment just how much. He pressed his mouth against the flesh between her breasts and closed his eyes, wondering what other changes the past six months had wrought on her. Whether the scar from the third-degree burn he knew covered her back from shoulder blade to hipbone had lessened.

  He didn’t get a chance to pursue the train of thought for long. Jolie was tugging and pulling at the waist of his jeans, freeing him, then taking the straining length in her hot palms. Caressing him in that way that had always driven him crazy with need.

  He grasped her hips and pulled her to straddle him once again, his gaze plastered to her heaving breasts, high and pert and hard, in perfect proportion with her narrow waist and curvy bottom. The tip of his erection rested against her moist entrance. He knew a moment of caution. They had never used protection. Not when they’d first made love, because their coming together had been hot and heavy and the thought of scrambling for a condom had never crossed his mind. And the topic of condoms had never been broached after they got married and they had wanted to get pregnant immediately. They hadn’t used them once in the five years they were married.

  Should they use protection now?

  He groaned. Even if the answer was yes, he didn’t have anything on him.

  He watched her closed eyes, knowing she was completely oblivious to his dilemma, as she gripped his shoulders. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she pressed against his erection, then her slick, hot flesh was sliding down over him, ripping the conflict straight from Dusty’s mind.

  Every last one of his muscles tensed as he strained up against her. She was so gloriously tight. So slick. So wonderfully warm and inviting. And he was so hungry for her he could have cried out.

  Clutching her hips, he guided her away, then down again, amazed by the myriad sensations pumping through his body. From the heart-pounding surge of his blood, to the heat covering his skin from neck to toe. His gaze was fastened on Jolie’s face…the way she pulled shallow breaths between her parted lips…the shadow of her lashes against her flushed cheeks….

  He thrust upward, filling her completely. But he yearned for more than her physical closeness. He wanted to know she was there with him fully…completely.

  “Open your eyes for me, Jolie,” he asked raggedly.

  He watched her close her eyelids even tighter, then drew her against him, reveling in the feel of her silken hot skin against his. She shivered as he dragged his fingers over her right breast and squeezed.

  “Please,” he murmured.

  She ground against him and he groaned.

  Finally, her eyelids cracked open and she gazed at him. Her blue eyes were nearly black with growing need as she tilted her hips forward, taking him in even deeper. He gripped her tightly, holding her still before he toppled over the edge he was perched on. Only when she began to murmur in protest did he plunge into her again. Then again. And again. He ran his fingers over her right breast, pausing to pinch the swollen peak, then dragged his fingertips down her stomach, holding her still as he plunged again.

  Her hair lay against her skin like silk; her eyes were filled
with passion and half-lidded; her pink, swollen lips parted as she made soft panting sounds. She was more beautiful than she’d ever been at that moment. Her every emotion displayed on her face for him to see.

  She’d been distant from him for so long, he knew what her exposing herself to him now was costing her. And he was glad for it.

  He withdrew from her, gritting his teeth with the effort it took not to ram into her like nobody’s business, make up for the six months they’d been apart in no time flat. But he knew she’d always liked to take things slow. That despite her brief climax earlier, he needed to stroke Jolie just right, touch her just so, to make her blow apart. And that watching her do so was more powerful, sexier, than even his own climax.

  He leaned into her, drawing a hardened nipple between his lips and nibbling on it. Then he pulled it into his mouth, rolling his tongue around the pale crest, before drawing her in deeper. She whimpered softly and arched against his mouth, grinding her pelvis need-fully against his.

  He dragged his tongue along her silken skin to her other breast, then laved that one with the same attention, suckling her until she made catlike mewling sounds and was clutching desperately at his shoulders, begging for him to continue his lovemaking.

  His blood roaring past his ears, he slipped his hands under her knees, then slid them up to support her lush bottom, holding her slightly aloft from him. Then he thrust hard upward, the position allowing him to go deeper and harder. Jolie cried out and her muscles contracted around him, drawing him in. He thrust into her again…then again…then again. Until she called out his name and stiffened in climax.

  Dusty braced himself to watch her. To drink in every wondrous shudder of her body. Watch the way her breasts shivered. The oval of her mouth as she cried out. But his own climax was too close…and ultimately too much for him to control. He finally allowed himself to tumble into that undulating inferno of bright color right after her.

  He dragged in thick gulps of air, his temple resting against hers, the thundering of his heartbeat pumping against hers. He drew his fingers down along her side, drinking in her shiver. Then he circled around to her back, feeling the sandpapery rough stretch of skin there. The burn that had nearly taken her life along with his brother’s.