Calder Pride by Janet Dailey Page A

tipped it back, a rueful laugh slipping out.
    “My legs suddenly feel so rubbery,” she admitted, a faintly bemused light flickering in her green eyes.
    From other women, such a remark would have been a plea to be carried, but not her. Instead, she gathered herself and started up the stairs again on clearly unsteady legs. He stayed with her for two more steps, then scooped her into his arms.
    After a startled gasp, she looped her arms around his neck and murmured, “I probably should object, but I’m too tired and this is too comfortable.”
    “Good, because I wouldn’t pay any attention to you anyway.”
    As he took the next step, she rested her head on his shoulder.
    “I’ve never been carried before, not since I was a little girl, when my daddy would carry me upstairs and tuck me into bed.”
    The idea of tucking her into bed was a tantalizing thought, conjuring up images that were far from the innocent ones she recalled. It was a woman’s body in his arms, not a child’s.
    “It makes me feel safe,” she murmured. “Safe and protected.”
    Something strong and fiercely tender surged through him. Logan subtly shifted his grip, gathering her closer. At the same time, he was disturbed by his reaction, and oddly irritated as well. He was a man, pushed by the same lusts as other men. Alcohol had lowered her defenses, but only by the law’s definition was she drunk. With her guard down, it wouldn’t be that difficult to work his way into her bed, and he knew it. If she had been like other women he had met in bars, none of this would be bothering him. But she wasn’t. She was a different breed entirely.
    She snuggled closer and nuzzled his neck. “You smell good, do you know that?”
    “Probably the aftershave I used,” he replied as heat curled through him, triggered by the warmth of her lips against his skin. He saw, with a bedeviling mix of relief and regret, that he was nearly to the top of the stairs.
    “I like it,” she murmured. “It reminds me of the tall grass plains in summer—with a storm coming.”
    As far as he was concerned, the storm had already arrived. The charged tension of it licked through his nerve ends and sharpened all his senses, making him aware of the curve of her hips and the firmness of her breasts. It was an easy step to remember the taste ofher kiss and the way her body molded itself so naturally to his. Much too easy.
    By the time he reached the door to her room, her nuzzling had turned into a provocative nibbling, and his breathing had roughened.
    He let her feet sink to the floor, her body sliding over his and making him harder than he already was. Her hands remained around his neck, her face upturned and her lips softly parted in a woman’s age-old signal of invitation.
    But he didn’t trust himself to accept, didn’t trust that he would stop with a kiss. “I need the room key.”
    “I need to be kissed again.”
    Everything tightened to control the needs that churned inside him. He moved his hands up the sides of her rib cage, intending to unlink the fingers clasped around his neck, but they stopped when his thumbs encountered the underswell of her breasts. He went still for an instant, his teeth gritted against the groan rising in his throat.
    But the tempting softness of her lips pulled at him. Dipping his head, he drove his mouth against them. His intention was twofold—to satisfy the rawness of his hungers and to frighten her with the brutality of them. She stiffened under the roughness of his assault, then came back at him with equal fierceness.
    A breath away from losing the last vestige of control, he ripped his mouth from hers and pushed her at arm’s length. Slower to recover, she stared at him with wide, wondering eyes.
    “That’s the way it can be, isn’t it?” She breathed in amazement.
    His fingers itched to grab her—whether to shake some sense into her or drag her back to him, he didn’t know. The uncertainty stopped him.
    “Give me the damned