Standoff at Mustang Ridge by Delores Fossen Page A

hardened him to the point of being painful.
    “Don’t think,” she mumbled.
    Bad advice. Real bad. It was that wet heat talking, and it wasn’t making any more sense than his own heat and need.
    Sophie made a sound so perfect, so feminine that it made his erection beg. Royce ignored it, again, and stroked her with his fingers. It was a special kind of torture for him, but Sophie’s reaction was worth any price. Her eyelids fluttered down, half closed. Her mouth slightly opened.
    She said his name. “Royce,” she purred.
    And she opened herself to him. She tore away from the grip he had on her wrists and latched on to the counter behind her, pushing her hips forward so that his fingers could go deeper, harder and faster.
    It didn’t take much so Royce didn’t have to keep up the sweet torture for long. She came in a flash, her body pulsing around his fingers. That didn’t help his erection, either, but Royce forced himself not to put his sex any closer to hers. He just put his arms around her and held her while her breath gutted and her body trembled.
    Her eyes opened slowly, and he could still see the heat there. Well, for a few second, anyway.
    And then the shock came, draining the color from her cheeks.
    Her breath stalled, and the heat was quickly replaced with the stark realization of what they’d just done.
    “No harm, no foul,” he managed to say. It was stupid. Yeah, there’d been no harm all right, but plenty of foul. He’d had no right to touch Sophie that way.
    “Oh, mercy,” she mumbled, and she kept repeating it.
    Fixing her clothes, she moved away from him and hurried to the sink to splash some water on her face. Her cheeks were flushed, and the glance she spared him was short and filled with regret.
    “It would have been worse if we’d had sex,” Royce assured her. His erection didn’t buy that, but that brainless part of him had no say in this.
    She glanced at the front of his jeans. Winced a little. “I’m sorry. I guess it won’t do any good to tell you again I don’t do this sort of thing.” She waved off any response he might have had to that. “But twice we’ve been together now, and twice we’ve ended up, well, here.” Sophie tipped her head to his zipper area.
    He had to do something to break this tension—she looked ready to burst into tears. “You think this qualifies as our first date?”
    She stared at him. Blinked. And then gave a dry laugh. “You don’t want to date me.” Any trace of the laugh faded just as quickly as it had come.
    He shrugged. Dating probably wasn’t the right word, but every inch of him wanted to haul her off to bed.
    She went to the fridge, far enough away from him that it should have helped. It didn’t. Because he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
    Sophie, on the other hand, was looking at everything but him. She reached to open the fridge, but her hand froze for a moment before it dropped to her stomach.
    “What’s wrong?” Royce hurried to her, and when he saw the stark look on her face, that took care of any remnants of what was going on behind his zipper.
    She shook her head and slapped her hand onto the fridge. “I’m just dizzy. And a little queasy.” As soon as she said that, her eyes widened, and her mouth didn’t drop open, but it was close.
    “Maybe you need to eat something?” he suggested.
    But judging from her reaction, that was the last thing she wanted. Another head shake. “What’s today’s date?”
    Hell.
    Royce didn’t want to jump to conclusions. There were plenty of reasons for a person to get dizzy and feel queasy. But it was the look of near shock on her face that had him wondering if these symptoms were caused by something else.
    “It’s the fourth,” he managed to say. And he waited, afraid to ask what he knew was on both their minds. It had been five weeks since the party at the Outlaw.
    “You said we didn’t have sex,” he reminded her.
    She leaned against the fridge and looked up at him.