The Traveling Kind by Janet Dailey Page A

to his tactile explorations.
    Jealous of the liberties he enjoyed, her fingers tugged at the buttons of his shirt. When the last one was unfastened, Shad aided her by pulling his shirt free of his waistband. She moaned softly as she felt the heat of his flesh beneath her hands. Her fingers ran eagerly over his flexed and rippling muscles, excited and stimulated by this freedom to touch and caress.
    Forsaking the passion of her lips, his mouth began a downward path. Delighted quivers erupted through her skin as he explored the sensitive cord in her neck and drank from the hollow of her throat. Her fingernails dug into his flesh when his mouth grazed along the slope of her breast, its point hardening with desire, eventually luring his attention to it. Charley shuddered with uninhibited longing under the arousing manipulation of his tongue.
    When she was weak with need, he returned to bruise her lips with his kisses. “Tell me you want me, Charley,” he urged. “I’ve been haunted by your voice saying those words. I want to hear them again.”
    “I want you, Shad,” she whispered against his skin. “More than that, I love you.”
    “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman in my life,” he told her roughly.
    “I want you to stay with me tonight, Shad,” Charley murmured. “Tonight and tomorrow night and every night of my life. I don’t want you to leave me.”
    “You know I can’t promise that, Charley,” he muttered thickly, rubbing his mouth over her cheek.
    She knew. Her arms curved more tightly around him, fusing the warmth of his bare flesh against her own. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Don’t ever let me go.” Her eyes were tightly closed, but a tear squeezed its way through her lashes. It was followed by more until Shad tasted the salty moisture on her skin.
    “Don’t cry, Charley.” The roughness of his calloused hand was on her cheek, wiping them away. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.” His voice held no anger, only a kind of anguished regret.
    “I can’t help it.” She honestly tried to check the flow of tears but it was unstoppable.
    With a heavy sigh he eased his weight from her and sat up. She blinked and felt the touch of his hands as he folded the front of her robe shut. Then he was leaning his elbows on his knees and raking his fingers through his hair to rub the back of his neck. Charley sat up, a hand unconsciously holding the front of her robe. She touched his shoulder, tentative, uncertain.
    “No, Charley,” he said, then turned his head to look at her. A dark, troubled light was in his eyes. “I swear to God I never meant to hurt you.”
    “I know,” she murmured gently and a little sadly. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask me to fall in love with you. Maybe if you had, I’d be able to hate you, but I don’t.”
    She swung her feet to the floor and slowly walked to the stairs, leaving Shad sitting there alone on the couch. It was almost an hour later before she heard him come upstairs. He paused at the top of the stairs and Charley held her breath. Finally the door to his bedroom opened and closed. The tears started again.
     
    Sleep became something that eluded Charley. The hours that she didn’t spend staring at the ceiling, she tossed and turned fitfully. By Wednesday morning the lack of rest began to paint faint shadows below her eyes. They didn’t go unnoticed by her brother.
    “Aren’t you feeling well, Charley?” he asked at the breakfast table Wednesday morning, eyeing her critically.
    “I’m fine,” she insisted.
    “Well, you don’t look so good,” he concluded bluntly.
    “Thanks,” she snapped and paled under Shad’s scrutiny.
    Gary noticed the exchange and his eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he made no comment. Charley knew that her brother had probably guessed the cause for her sleeplessness, but there was nothing he could do about it.
    When she crawled into bed that night, she expected it to be a repeat of the previous