The Millionaires' Club: Ryan, Alex and Darin

And then she just drove.

Wanting to deny what she’d just seen… even considering turning around and letting Nathan make his explanation.

And then she got a clue.

There was no explaining… no matter that Nathan had snagged her arm and begged her to let him.

What was there to explain? He’d just gotten out of bed. With his nurse… Mary somebody. Maid… Mary. Made… Mary. A hysterical laugh burst out. Mary made quite a statement standing there in nothing but her bed-mussed hair and Nathan’s rumpled shirt.

“What, do I have a sign on my back, or something?” she asked skyward. “Humiliate me. Lie to me. Fool me. I love the abuse. Pile it on. I can take it.”

And then she wasn’t laughing anymore. She was crying. Damn it, she was crying again! Like she never cried. Like she hadn’t cried since that awful time when her parents had died. Huge, racking sobs flooded her vision and made her throat ache and made her feel spineless and pathetic. Because she couldn’t take it. Didn’t understand why she had to.

He’d been right. Ry had been right. Nathan was a loser. He’d just been… what? Using her?

She wiped the back of her wrist over her cheek and under her nose. “But why? To what purpose?

“And why me,” she demanded bitterly. Or maybe the questions was, Why not me? Why, just once, couldn’t something work out for her in the love department?

All she wanted was someone special. All she wanted was someone to love. To make a life with. To make babies with. To replace the family she’d lost when she’d been little more than a baby herself.

And all she’d ever gotten was interference from her brother and now Ry… and from fools who either ran or didn’t care enough to make a difference in her life.

Hours later she’d left the city lights behind and was cruising down miles of empty highway. She wasn’t even aware when she’d crossed the Royal city limits. Wasn’t conscious of the fact that she’d taken the old Cattle Trail Road. She’d just driven. Mile after mile after mile.

It was after midnight when she pulled into the main drive of the Dusty E. And it wasn’t really a surprise, when five minutes later, she cruised to a stop in front of the Evans’s ranch house.

She might not have deliberately set out for the Dusty E, but her subconscious had led her to the one place she’d always felt safe. Home.

Yeah. She’d come home, she realized as she cut the motor and killed the lights. Then she just sat there and let the darkness and the sense of open arms settle around her like a warm, cuddly blanket. She’d been an orphan when Ry’s mom had welcomed her into the rambling tan stucco house with its graceful, open veranda and endless banks of arched windows. She’d been brokenhearted then. She was brokenhearted now.

And this place—filled with fond memories that had become her safe haven all those years ago—had drawn her like a combat-weary soldier was drawn to home.

She let out an exhausted breath and, leaning forward, pressed her forehead against the back of her hands, which were gripped around the top of the steering wheel.

And felt another overwhelming wave of grief wash over her.

She’d come home to lick her wounds…and yet the man who had caused the deepest cut to her pride was even now, sleeping in the bedroom behind the fourth window to the right of the entryway.

Tired to the bone, she sat there for several moments…then lifted her head and squinted toward the house when the porch light flicked on.

The front door eased opened and Shamu tiptoed out. The big coward, she thought, finally managing a watery grin. This was no watchdog, cautiously sniffing the air. Clearly, he was hoping his master was going to handle whatever critter had decided to risk life and limb to trespass on hallowed Evans ground.

And then Ry stepped outside. She wasn’t grinning anymore.

He was shirtless, barefoot and barely tucked into a pair of work-and wash-faded jeans that hung precariously low on his lean hips.

Without her sanction, her heart skipped several beats, and she accepted that it wasn’t only home, but Ry who had drawn her here.

He was, she told herself bleakly, the most beautiful man in Texas, with his dark hair mussed and falling over his brow, his brown eyes piercing hers with concern and questions as he walked slowly toward her car.

“Bear? What’s up, sweetie?”

She just couldn’t help it. When he leaned down, a concerned and sober scowl on his face, she started crying again. Hot, silent tears that trailed down her face and tracked under her chin, and ran, like a salty river, over the convulsing cords at her throat to wet her blouse.

She cried for all the things she’d lost when her parents died. She cried for all she’d lost when she’d finally accepted Ry didn’t love her. She cried for her lost pride and Nathan Beldon’s betrayal.

When Ry opened the driver’s-side door and, without a word, lifted her out of her car, she wrapped her arms around his warm, strong neck and took solace in his softly murmured, “Shh. Shush now. Don’t cry, bear. Don’t cry, baby. I’ve got you.”

And she kept right on crying.

It was killing him.

Ry couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to see her in this much pain and know he was probably the cause of it. The Carrie he knew was strong. The little girl who had mourned for her parents had grown into a self-contained woman who would feel diminished and embarrassed by giving in to tears. She’d consider it a weakness. Unlike some women he knew, she would never resort to weeping to manipulate a man or get her way. If she cried, then she was hurting. Hurting bad. It took him back to that horrible time when the only thing he could do to help her was be someone for her to hold on to in return.

Wincing as a bare foot met with a piece of gravel, he carried her into the house, kicked the front door closed behind him and headed for the living room.

Still holding her in his arms, he sat down on the sofa, then settled her onto his lap as her long, sleek body curled into his and clung.

And felt his guilt over the scene at her apartment settle like a festering thorn.

Only the full moon peaking through the huge picture window to the west illuminated the room, casting them in soft shadows and cocooning them in the intimacy of the night. Despite feeling like the horse’s ass he was, he was very aware of her slim hip nestled into his lap, far too aware of her warm breast pressing against his chest through the thin red silk of her blouse. But most of all, he was conscious of how badly she needed the very person who had driven her to this state to be her friend right now. A friend…not a man whose first and basic instinct was to comfort her in the most elemental and pleasurable of ways.

It broke his heart to feel her slim shoulders tremble, to feel the warmth of her silent tears on his skin. So he just hung on tighter. Pressing his lips to the top of her head, he combed his fingers through her silky hair and made soothing sounds to settle her.

Her eyes were red and swollen when she finally lifted her head and pressed the heels of her hands to her eye sockets. He watched in silence as her throat convulsed and she made a concentrated effort to pull out of her funk.

“Hold on a sec,” he said and, easing her off his lap, walked out of the room. When he returned, she’d done when he’d known she would do, what he’d known she needed a moment alone to do. She’d used the time to compose herself.

He handed her a glass of water and a box of tissue.

“I am too—” a hiccupy shudder broke up her words “—too pathetic to draw breath.”

Despite her misery, he smiled. “And you’ve reached this conclusion all by yourself? Or did someone or something nudge you in that direction?”

She sniffed, then blinked and after a long drink of water, tugged a tissue from the box and blew. “Someone and something,” she said, mopping up the beautiful mess she’d made of her face and reaching for another tissue.

He didn’t even hesitate. He sat back down beside her and drew her onto his lap again. She snuggled into him like a sleepy kitten, looping her arms around his neck and nestling her head under his chin. Her breath was warm against his chest, her fingers cool where they linked together on his bare shoulder.

He circled her hips with his arms and propped his chin on the top of her head. “Want to just hit me and get it over with?”

“Hit you?”

“For being such an ass.”

“Well, you can’t help what you are.”

“Um…ouch.” But he was grinning at the return of her spunk as he rubbed a hand up and down her arm. “I’m sorry for making you cry like this.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t about you.”

He didn’t know which emotion was stronger. Relief or bafflement. “So…you wanna tell me about it?”

“What? So you can say I told you so?”

There was more resignation than anger in her words. And suddenly he knew. Beldon.

“What did he do to you?” he asked with barely leashed rage. “If that rat bastard so much as laid a finger on you against your will, I will personally see to it that for the foreseeable future, the good doctor won’t be able to manage even simple daily tasks—such as blinking, breathing, or eating—without the aid of a professional health care specialist.”

She sniffed out a little laugh. “Relax, Rambo,” she said quietly. “He did nothing to me…but by the way his nurse looked when she came slithering out of his bedroom, I’d say he managed to do plenty to her.”

He only heard one word. “Bedroom? What were you doing in Beldon’s bedroom?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Nothing. I did nothing in his bedroom. After you left, I went over to his apartment with every intention of going to bed with him…but there wasn’t any room for me there. It seems that ‘Nelson’ Beldon had a very packed schedule today,” she added acidly. “Seduce the town virgin in the afternoon, take his nurse to bed at night.”

Ry opened his mouth. Closed it. What would have come out was a short, concise expletive that would have succinctly summed up his opinion of Beldon but would have shocked her virgin ears.

“What’s wrong with me?” she began, with such a puzzled, pained look his heart did a little more breaking. “What’s wrong with me that I can’t attract a man who will stand up to Travis or even have enough strength of character to—”

“Hey,” he said, cutting her off. “There is nothing wrong with you. Absolutely nothing.”

The breath she let out was long and heavy. It nestled her left breast deeper into his ribs, made the fine hair dusting his pecs flutter, made his skin burn.

“Then why can’t I find someone to love me?”

Oh, God. He closed his eyes, felt the liquid warmth of a single tear spill onto his chest then trickle down to catch on his nipple. Despite her misery, he flashed on an image of her mouth lapping against his skin, licking that tear away.

He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to force the image from his mind…fought not to think about how lush and soft she was, how the only thing separating her skin from his was a layer of silk and a thin thread of common sense that was unraveling with the same speed as the blood rushing to pool at his lap.

“Is it…is it that I’m not pretty enough—”

“Stop,” he interrupted hoarsely. Then dug deep for the right things to say, the right thing to do, when every red blood cell in his body screamed at him to show her right here, right now, just how pretty she was. Just how pretty he could make her feel. And how good he could make both of them feel.

“Beldon’s a jerk, all right? Don’t let what he did or didn’t do diminish the person you are. If a man loves a woman, how she looks is not what’s important. It’s who she is. It’s her mind. Her heart. It’s how she lives her life.”

She sat up slowly, met his eyes with a slow blink of uncertainty, then smiled sadly. “I get it. What you’re saying is that I’m the quintessential blind date. ‘I’ll set you up with Carrie. She’s got a great personality. So, she’s a little too tall. A little too thin. Her breasts aren’t—”’

“Stop it. You are not too tall or too thin. You are perfect. Your breasts are beyond perfect,” he said without thinking…then couldn’t help himself and lowered his gaze to the front of her blouse where the plump fullness of the breasts in question pressed against red silk. And then he couldn’t stop looking as he gave in to a moment of intense, uncontrollable madness. “Your breasts are…dream worthy. Do you have any idea how many nights I’ve dreamed about—” He stopped abruptly, a weak wave of sanity returning with the thimbleful of blood that found its way back to his brain.

He closed his eyes. Let his head fall against the back of the sofa. Swallowing convulsively, he mentally kicked himself for his stupidity.

“You…you’ve dreamed about my…breasts?” she whispered breathlessly.

He made himself open his eyes and look at her. “Lord, yes,” he confessed, the line between lucidity and lunacy growing blurry.

Her eyes were alert now…and a little misty. With excitement, with surprise…with a stunned expectancy that suddenly made her bold and her voice as seductive as velvet. “What did you dream, Ry?”

Slowly he shook his head. Tried…really tried…to bring his libido back to heel. “Not a good idea, bear.”

“What did you dream?” she insisted in a voice made soft by wonder and by a woman’s deadly keen insight that evidently told her he was weakening and fading fast.

Then he was no longer fading. He was gone. Beyond gone…and he didn’t even try to resist. Not the hungry look in her eyes, not the element of suspense that with one thought warned him this was wrong, but tempted him beyond reason with another.

In a hushed and raspy voice, he surrendered. “I dreamed about watching you unbutton your blouse for me.”

He watched her face, watched the hesitant longing darken her eyes… then held his breath when she lifted her hands and with trembling fingers, started undoing the buttons.

He should stop her. He knew he should stop her. But he was only so strong. And he’d been fighting the good fight where this woman was concerned for what seemed like a millennium.

Her head was down when she reached the last button… so were the last of his defenses. She slowly lifted her gaze to his. “What else did you dream, Ry?”

Her voice was as hushed as a sigh, but there was a boldness in her eyes that promised him everything… if only he’d ask.

And there was another problem.

Asking was beyond him now, too.

“Take it off,” he ordered on a harsh whisper.

Seven

She’d been wrong about so many things lately, Carrie thought as she sat on the lap of the man she had loved for so long. She’d been wrong about Nathan Beldon. She’d been wrong about her feelings for him. She’d never come close to loving him. Never come close to this breathless anticipation she felt as Ry’s chocolate-brown eyes fired beyond warm to barely banked desire.

And she’d been wrong, she realized with a victorious sense of wonder, about the effect she had on him.

He wanted her.

He was dying to have her.

And she’d never been so glad to be wrong about anything in her life.

Riding on a surge of power the knowledge fostered, her gaze locked on his face as he watched her peel back the sides of her blouse then slowly shrug it off her shoulders.

Beneath the red silk she wore a black satin demibra edged in delicate lace. Her breasts spilled over the top of the cups with every deep breath she drew. Just below her left breast, she could feel the elevated beat of her heart. She wondered if he could see it hammering there. Wondered if he knew what his thrilling order had done to her.

His throat worked hard as his gaze shifted from her face then back to her breasts again. “Now the bra.”

The dark intensity of his command sent a shiver of anticipation eddying through her body, heating her blood, but not once did she consider denying him. She reached behind her back for the clasp, unintentionally arching and thrusting her breasts toward him.

He sucked in a slow breath, and she felt his hands on her hips, felt his fingers digging into her flesh…as if he was fighting to anchor his hands there when he wanted them somewhere else.

She felt shy suddenly as the clasp gave and she slowly lowered the bra away from her body. Shy and brazen and…oh, my…beautiful as she read the heated reaction in his eyes.

It was so much suddenly…so much sensation, so much sensitivity. She couldn’t filter it all. Her skin felt flushed and on fire beneath his adoring gaze. Her nipples tightened painfully.

Too fast, she thought as sensations assaulted her with the speed and strength of a lightning strike. And too late to do anything but hang on for the ride, she realized as he stole her ability to breathe, let alone think, when he lifted her until she straddled his lap.

Her hands involuntarily clutched the hot, bare breadth of this shoulders. Her knees dug into the sofa on either side of his hips. The most feminine part of her pressed against the very solid evidence of his desire. Her bare breasts were on a level with his mouth…she could feel the warmth of his breath pulse in an irregular rhythm against her.

And it made her ache.

It made her burn.

Endlessly.

So did his hands, as he slid them up her ribs to cup and adore and stroke her swollen nipples with a caress so tender, yet so needy, a soft plea escaped her parted lips.

“Please,” she heard herself whisper just as he bent his head and surrounded her with the hot, wet pleasure that was his mouth.

The first touch of his tongue stole her breath. The gentle suction of his lips made her moan. And the sight of his dark head bent to her breast in the moonlight made every part of her that was woman appreciate the elemental and incredible mystery that was man.

Oh. Oh how she’d wondered. How she’d yearned and ached with the need to know, firsthand, what it felt like to have a man’s mouth touch her there…how she’d imagined what it felt like when her nipple changed from velvet soft to diamond hard. And always it had been Ry’s mouth she’d fantasized about. Ry’s dark hair shifting between her fingers as she held him to her breast, let him suckle and feast and feed on the insatiable hunger he seemed to have for the taste of her.

It was so good. So incredibly good to hear his gruff sounds of pleasure, to watch his mouth open wide and take her in as he went wild for her…so wild his fingers bit into her hips and he pulled her closer, needing more of her.

“You…make…me…crazy.” His voice was a low growl against the inside of one breast as he kissed and licked his way to the other. “You…taste…like…heaven,” he murmured and bit her lightly before licking away the sting then rimming her areola with his tongue.

It all became a lovely, thrilling, and wondrous blur after that. She was aware only of sensations, was steeped in them, lost in him…in the feel of his mouth touching her everywhere, coasting from breast to breast, racing along the line of her throat, tracking kisses across her jaw, then moving to her mouth to kiss her deeply and sweetly. All the while his big, working man’s hands moved gently over her body, unzipping her slacks, sliding them and her panties down her hips.

“Beautiful,” he murmured as he laid her back on the sofa and settled his long length beside her. His fingers brushed lightly over her curls, stirring lush longings, awakening carnal cravings she’d never known were a part of her. More than a part of her. They were driving her now. She couldn’t help herself…she arched into his touch not knowing what she was asking for…only knowing that she needed.

He knew. He knew exactly what she needed, she realized as he deftly found the center of her, delved deeply with his fingers and made them both moan. She was wet and swollen and the way he touched her…with reverence and desire and such gentle skill…had his name breaking from her lips on a sob.

It was everything she’d ever imagined, things she’d never dreamed, when he finally rose above her, guided himself to her opening and slowly pushed inside her. The pain was sharp, brief, then gone as he filled her where she hadn’t before realized she felt so empty.

In that one amazing moment, she knew she was everything to him and that knowledge almost…almost…transcended the exquisite pleasure of his slow and luxurious glide in and out of her body.

Nothing had ever felt so right. Nothing had ever felt so good. With instincts as old as time, as natural as the moonlight spilling through the windows, she wrapped her ankles around his hips and rode with him toward everything wonderful in the night. A building urgency boiled up inside her, then raced on a deliciously sharp edge of heightening sensation.

He’d led her sweetly to this moment, led her expertly and unerringly toward release. Yet when the climax ripped through her, she was unprepared. Like the tributaries of a flood-swollen river that gathered at one predestined point to spill into the sea, a thousand little pleasures peaked and swelled then met with the force of a storm at the spot where their bodies joined.

“R-R-Ryannnn.” His name eddied out on a stunned and amazed rush. She clung to him for dear life while her world exploded on a maelstrom of bliss she’d never known, never dreamed existed.

Ry had lost all power of reason the moment she’d brazenly reached behind her back, unclasped her bra and her breasts had spilled from black silk into the shadowy darkness of the moon-drenched night. Had hadn’t had a rational thought since. And when she clenched around him, cried his name on a jagged spill of breath, he’d never heard anything so honest or erotic in his life.

With her long legs clasped around his hips and her internal muscles gripping him from within, he drove deep one last time, then rode with her on the most incredible rush he’d ever experienced.

He gritted his teeth, buried himself deeper, utterly spent, completely wasted and inexorably humbled by her unbridled and unrestrained passion. She’d offered him everything. Held back nothing. And given him the world.

He closed his eyes and savored the aftermath. She was so soft. Her hair. Her sighs. Her beautiful breasts. The delicate skin of her belly, where even now she held the weight of his hips without complaint and ran her fingers in a lazy, exhausted caress up and down his spine.

As they lay in the dark, their heartbeats settling, their breaths evening out, he knew there were a lot of things he should be feeling. At the top of the list was guilt. He’d just stolen the innocence of someone he cared about; he’d just betrayed his best friend’s trust.

But the damage was already done.

And he hadn’t had his fill of her yet.

If the soft, kitten sounds she made when he finally hauled himself off her, then lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bed were any indication, she hadn’t had her fill of him, either.

There would be time…lots of time, for guilt in the morning. But there were only so many hours left in this night. He intended to spend every one of them giving her pleasure.

Carrie lay on her back and grinned at the ceiling of Ry’s bedroom. She couldn’t quit smiling. She’d lost her virginity. Finally.

And it had been—she gave an all-over body stretch—heaven.

It had been…life altering.

It had been…Ry who had made it so wonderful.

Twice.

She turned her head on the pillow. Beside her, in the deepest part of a night that the moon had drenched in golden light, he slept. Sprawled spread-eagle on his stomach, the sheet riding low around his hips, he looked the picture of hedonistic indulgence. And, oh…had he indulged. Mostly he’d indulged her.

She clamped her legs together as a now-familiar ache—an ache his passionate loving had created—pulsed there. She supposed she should be exhausted. Instead she felt energized. From everything she’d read, she should be sore. And she was…a little. But not enough to keep her body from quickening with renewed desire and wanting to experience more, needing to learn more…like what pleased him, what excited him. Although, it seemed all she had to do was breathe and maybe stretch her arms over her head and that was enough to make his eyes darken to midnight and his hands grow rough and needy.