Explaining Herself by Yvonne Jocks Page A

be forced past almost inhuman control. Only after a brief forever did Ross turn his head, nuzzle into her hair. Victoria stretched into the sensation, lifted her face to better see him. His eyes were closed, his lashes two black smudges against his cheeks. His hold on her tightened until one of his shirt buttons dug against her bosom, until her hipbone bumped against his holster, through her petticoats.
    For once, she had nothing to say.
    Ross's eyes opened then, dark and hot, and when he covered her mouth with his, it wasn't like their other kiss at all. His hard lips had no caution to them, no wariness, just need. She didn't try to draw back — could she have?—so he kissed her mouth again, then her cheek, then her ear, then her jaw, then her throat, not stopping. ...
    Victoria sank into the sensation of it, of a man's mouth, this man's mouth, touching her where even his hand shouldn't. If he hadn't been holding her so tightly, she might have fallen. Instead, she slid her cheek across his own, marveled at the rasp of it, smiled at the cool vulnerability of his ear and then the thick softness of his freshly barbered hair.
    She could hear Ross's breath fight out of him in little gasps. Her hand slid down his back, his ribs. When she reached his waist, he gasped a little. Landing on something hard and smooth and cool, her fingers closed around it in inquiry. His hold on her eased, as he caught her hand by the wrist and drew it off of what she realized was his gun. But still he kissed her. His kisses seemed to be searching, desperate, needful. She wished she could sate such needs. And yet. . . this couldn't be right.
    She tried to draw breath to ask what was wrong, but he covered her parted lips with his own, kissing around the edges of her open mouth. He startled her with his tongue on her lower lip, hot and improper and wonderful.
    Now she had trouble breathing, trying not to remember why this wasn't right. She felt dizzy, confused, pleasured, frightened. He seemed to want this so badly. Moans ground out of him with each breath. He held her so tightly... .
    And she wanted this too. Didn't she? Even if she'd never known she did until now, how could she not?
    Victoria let Ross frame her face with kisses, bless her eyelids with kisses, trace a necklace of kisses across her throat. She savored the pressure of his fingertips against her scalp as he buried a hand deep into her hair. She liked the feel of his hair, thick and clean, when she mimicked the gesture. She held his head still so she could stretch upward on her toes to kiss his mouth some more, to see what it felt like to touch his mouth with her tongue.
    He tasted warm, and salty, and he shuddered against her. The hand at her waist slid behind her, lower, to where she should not have felt him through all her petticoats, but she did, and of course this was not right. Somehow, with more effort than she'd ever had to give a single word, she forced a question from her throat into his mouth. "Why?"
    And she wasn't even certain what she meant.
    The word he groaned back was "Please."
    He sank with her to his knees then, in the dirt and dry willow mulch. Trapped in his embrace, she sank with him, unable to fight, not wanting to. She ached to be whatever it was he needed, to do that, be that, dissolve into him.
    But she had an existence outside him, too.
    Her lips felt swollen under his greedy kisses; his cheek rasped against hers. And something else, something short and furry, bumped Victoria's elbow and whined.
    Ross drew his hand upward, toward other forbidden parts, and of course she wasn't him at all. She was Victoria Garrison. And no matter how good it felt, this was wrong.
    "Wait," she gasped, muffled from kissing Ross.
    He wasn't waiting. He was cupping the curve of her breast, over her white frock, and it should have frightened her. It didn't. How good it felt — that was what frightened her.
    She twisted her head sideways, to escape his kisses, and repeated more firmly,