Beauty's Beast Read online

  "Yes," she growled back, and he had to chuckle.

  His hands at the small of her back kept her still as he indulged himself a bit, rubbing his not inconsiderable self blatantly against her.

  "I want you," he rasped into her ear, on his way to claim her lips again.

  The infuriating little pain had the audacity to say, just before his lips closed over hers, "No, you don't."

  As if to prove her wrong, he kissed her very thoroughly, to the point where he would have been only too happy to take her over the hood of her car, or even stretched out over those hellishly small front seats or, God help him, on the ground, if he had something to lay beneath her, which he didn't.

  He eyed her pashmina for a moment, then dismissed the idea. He'd have to have her naked beneath him, and that thing wasn't nearly enough of a cover to protect her delicate skin from getting rubbed raw in the dirt as he had her.

  But, while he was barely able to contain himself enough to still consider himself a gentleman and think of things like that, she was standing there cool as a cucumber, as if she was wholly unaffected by him.

  Bruce tilted her chin back experimentally and nibbled his way down her throat, from just beneath her jaw to the very top of her delicate clavicle, and he had his answer before he'd made it half way.

  There was no way she could have suppressed the shudder that his lips – and the very slight edges of his teeth – provoked from within the depths of her body.

  She wanted him. She might be better at hiding it than he was, but she most definitely did. He knew he should have been satisfied by that knowledge, but he wanted more. Much, much more, but he also knew that wasn't going to happen tonight. Soon, but not now. He would endeavor to content himself by a small, intimate exploration that would give him a more definitive answer to – what was for him – a very urgent question.

  Taren was surprised, and even stumbled a bit when he loosened his hold on her, knowing she should have been better prepared to break away from him when he did. But she was still reeling from him kissing her neck, which was a huge erogenous zone for her, although as she chided herself that broad hand that still rested on her back let her know that he wasn't going to let her go anywhere he didn't want her to.

  His other hand landed quite deliberately on her hip, then – because there was more space between them then there had been before – he was able to drag it to claim her very lower belly, fingertips resting millimeters from very intimate territory.

  "Bruce…"

  Was that her voice sounding all breathy like that?

  He brought his lips to her temple and his hand down to cup her at the same time, smooth as silk, and, considering how he was making her feel, she might as well have been naked in his arms. Her lower body – beneath his hand – contracted once, strongly, and she could only hope that he couldn't feel it.

  But, of course, he had, and she could tell he was smiling against the side of her face.

  "If I slip my hand into your panties, are you going to be wet for me, Taren?" he whispered, moving to put action to words before she could even begin to form any kind of answer.

  What he was doing to her was well on its way to robbing her completely of the ability to process language – hell, to process anything except the way his pure sex voice brought her nipples to firm, agonized peaks. And just how completely feminine he was making her feel, somehow, merely by holding those parts of her that were most female, rubbing his fingers very gently back and forth, not pressing hard, not insistent, yet somehow still firm and determined.

  But he stopped before he'd really gotten anywhere as if he'd had an inspiration.

  A very, very wicked one.

  "Put my hand in the front of your panties, love, right tight up against you."

  His suggestion – which she had more than an inkling that he didn't mean her to think as being anywhere near that casual a request, or, come to think of it, a request at all – had her groaning, but she was also trying to squirm out of his hold anyway and, as always, not getting anywhere.

  "Bruce!" she panted, her hand resting on his chest where she was pushing futilely against it, not wanting to comply but still pretty deeply under the spell of those magic fingers of his, even though there were two layers of cloth between them and her demise as it stood. But he wanted her to…to…

  She couldn't!

  Could she?

  "Do it, Taren," his deep rumble reverberated into her ear. "I want to feel you. Don't you want to feel my fingers on your bare skin?"

  Christ almighty, this man was going to be the death of her in so many ways!

  Taren couldn't believe it, but the hand that had been tucked under his jacket, somehow, began to move down of its own volition, finding his arm and following its beefy trail down to where he was cupping her intimately.

  "That's it, love," he encouraged, his whiskey coffee breath blowing over her. She was delighted to hear that she wasn't the only one who was breathing heavily as he pressed his lips to her ear.

  Her fingers closed around his, but even crumpling them together, she could barely get hers around his. Bruce's other hand reached around her and down to the hem of her dress. She danced a bit as he began to raise it, but he was still holding her right where he wanted her as more and more of her lower body was exposed.

  Both her gathered dress and his hand lay on her tummy, just at her navel, and she squeezed his fingers nervously as she brought them to the top of her panties and left him there.

  "No, Taren."

  He heard her gasp.

  "That's cheating. You wouldn't want me to have to spank you again, would you?"

  "Bruce, no!"

  "You know what I asked you to do. I want you to put yourself into my hand." He smiled and continued, "In more ways than one, I want you to know, but I'll start with this."

  Holy mother of…

  If she did as he asked, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would be incinerated completely and crumple to the ground in a cloud of ash.

  She couldn't.

  And yet, she did.

  Her hand was back on top of his, pausing there while she gathered her nerve, and he was busy trying to give her the courage to do as he asked, kissing her so passionately that she couldn't imagine him not touching her there.

  Bruce could hardly believe it as she tucked his fingertips beneath the waistband of her panties then slowly – more slowly than he thought he could live through – she tugged it down so that his fingers curved along her ever so slightly.

  But that still wasn't enough for him.

  When she would have snatched her hand back, he turned his and held hers in place, whispering raggedly, "Spread your legs a bit, honey. I'm not quite where I want to be."

  Her whimper almost made it game over for him, but he managed to forestall the end by the skin of his teeth.

  "No, Bruce…" she breathed, almost falling against him as his sharp teeth nipped at her neck.

  "Yes, Taren." He took a chance and said, his tone calculatedly deep and imposing, "Do as you're told, little girl."

  There was no mistaking her sharply indrawn breath for anything other than what it was – an admission that being spoken to like that, that those words in that tone – pushed her buttons in just the manner he intended to in a few seconds.

  And the proof was in the way her feet began to creep apart.

  She was surprised – and impressed, if she was willing to admit it – when he stopped her well before the length she would have gone to for him, when her ballet-slipper-styled shoes were only a bit more than a foot and a half apart.

  "That's enough – for now. Now put me where you know I want to be," came his husky command, his voice tight and tense, nearly breaking on the last four words.

  Taren had never had a man ask her to do this before, not that she'd been with a slew of men, not hardly. But every bit of what he was asking her to do – and how he was asking her to do it – had her knowing that as she settled his fingers right there, that
they were going to be instantly christened.

  And his nearly agonized groan only confirmed what she already knew.

  "Christ, Taren – is this all for me?" he asked on an incredulous breath.

  She still couldn't get away from him, so she settled for burying her face into his jacket, although neither the material nor the man beneath yielded much comfort or solace.

  Bruce didn't think that he'd ever felt quite so much honey from a woman, and they were standing in the middle of a driveway, which was a far cry from the nice comfortable bed he would have preferred. But he felt as if he wanted to press his advantage, such as it was, while he could, so he'd take here and now to not touching her at all.

  "Oh, my God, woman. You're going to kill me with this. I am not joking!"

  He heard her chuckle softly, which was at least part of what he had been trying to get her to do.

  "I'm very proud and honored by this, I want you to know." His other hand tipped her chin back and he kissed her, probably the most tender, gentle kiss she'd ever experienced in her life. She could feel the truth of his words in it.

  When he slipped a slathered finger up a bit, to find her clit and flick experimentally over it, the keening sound she made was nearly his undoing. But in her unexpected pleasure – and his – she found a burst of energy, and he had let his arm go just lax enough that she was able to burst away from his hold. Her mind wanted her to run up to her room, but her body let her know that her knees were much too weak to carry her more than a few steps. So she stumbled not far away at all – nowhere near far enough, she knew – and bent over, then finally squatted down, pressing her thighs and her knees together and hugging her arms around them as she folded herself over. Feeling herself right at that peak, feeling every ounce of blood rushing to the spot he'd just been caressing, feeling herself swelling and aching and yearning…

  All from one slight touch.

  "Are you all right?" After a very short delay, during which he struggled to get himself under control, too, he came to hunch down next to her, his hand out, but not really daring to touch her.

  Bruce heard her draw a very deep breath, after which she popped up and said determinedly, "I'm going up to my room."

  It was a firm, stalwart statement that did not encourage contradiction.

  "Alone."

  As was that.

  Although, he certainly would have loved to have joined her, he recognized that would be for the best. He had no doubt she would be his in the relatively near future, and for as long as he could manage to keep her bound to his side. But just now wasn't the right time, not that he regretted what he – what they'd – just done in the least. It wasn't in his nature to agonize over something so delicious. He hoped it wasn't in hers, either, but he had his doubts.

  He was just determined that she would feel freer in coming to him, in being with him, and he knew she still felt all bound up inside about how she looked. He was going to do his best to convince her that she was unbelievably beautiful to him, one way or the other.

  Chapter Three

  Taren successfully avoided him over the next few days. Sam was keeping him busy getting ready for roundup, and when Sam didn't have something for him to do, Luke did, since Luke was helping him learn to ride better.

  She'd been amazed when Sam had told her that 'The Bruce' was coming to stay with them, to learn how to be a rancher for a part he was going to be playing in his next movie. She had kind of assumed that he was quitting the movies and was going buy a ranch or at least invest in one, perhaps, but she had been quite surprised when she'd learned the truth.

  Sam had been hoping to get them to diversify into something that would be a good, lucrative backup for the Circle Star Ranch, and he'd had some help from a friend in Texas who was doing the same thing. They were going to do their level best to help him – in the space of a couple of weeks – to become at least passably familiar with the basic tenets of ranching, working with the horses, working with the cattle, the financial background, routines, patterns, etc.

  Taren had snorted her disbelief, asserting that he was going to sleep until noon. She figured he would chase all the women, probably fall off the first horse he mounted, bring drugs into their house and want her to be at his beck and call, since she was the one who was home most of the time, working in their office as well as cooking and taking care of the house. Not that she couldn't be out with the cattle, she'd certainly done enough of it while their parents had been alive, but she was the one with the degree who had taken over the books and brought them forcibly into the twentieth century in regard to their financial management as they eased their father into retirement. She also excelled at organizing and taking care of the home they had grown up in, and they were both quite happy with the arrangement, as it had evolved.

  Her brother, of course, had balked at her depiction of what having a star in their home would be like and had proceeded to tell her just how wrong she was. The great man had apparently been quite firm with Sam, who sounded as if he'd developed a sizeable man crush on the guy, which had his sister giving him a kind of pitying look that said she seriously questioned his I.Q. He said that he wanted absolutely no special treatment whatsoever. If they got up at five – and they both did – she was often up at four-thirty – then that was exactly what he would do. If they ate haggis – he'd joked – then that's what he'd eat.

  Taren rolled her eyes at her brother, who seemed much more star-struck than she would have thought he'd have been.

  Of course, everyone else was busy when it came time to pick their guest up from the airport. He certainly could have rented a car and come out, or even had a limo – or probably a helicopter – bring him out, she'd pointed out. But Sam had told him that he'd be picked up by someone from the ranch, so Taren had been volunteered. Not that she hadn't tried just about everything she could to squeak out from under it, but no amount of wheedling or blackmail got her anywhere with anyone.

  Lovely. The last thing she wanted to do was to spend Lord knew how long with some pampered, spoiled rotten Hollywood-by-way-of-Edinburgh asshole who could probably barely string two words of more than one syllable together, especially if the conversation didn't have anything to do with himself.

  Hell, she had planned to avoid this guy as much was politely possible – he'd be out with Sam the majority of the time, anyway – there was little need for her to see him beyond the pleasantries.

  Right?

  Wrong, apparently.

  Not only was he to spend time with her, seeing how things were organized on the computer, which was her wheelhouse, but he was also going to be joining them for dinner. The meal was usually eaten en famille every evening with Luke, as well as Cahill, who was Luke's right hand man, and Cahill's wife, Lynette, who did most of the cleaning around the big house, as well as some of the cooking.

  Sam had wanted her to rent a Caddy or a Lincoln and bring a sign welcoming him so he'd know who'd come to pick him up, and Taren had nodded as if she was agreeing, but she knew even then that she wasn't about to do that.

  She already wore reminders of who she was, and she wasn't going to pander to any kind of Hollywood type. It was bad enough that he was even going to be there, as much as she already had a bit of a crush on him from his last part as a gritty Scottish Highland warrior who had fallen for a spying, conniving English noblewoman he could never have – or could he? – to see her scars in person. She wasn't going to wear or carry anything that would call attention to herself in that way.

  And she wasn't going to spend the money to rent a fancy car, despite the hefty fee he was paying them for the privilege of being pretty much worked to death, just for him.

  In revenge – petty as it was – she had driven the long way to Albuquerque, all hour and a half of it, in the oldest truck they owned that she thought would survive the journey. It was thirty years old if it was a day, had crank windows and no air conditioning, and it was a hundred and four that day. It had a radio and a cassette player, into whic
h she plugged one of those converter things that allowed her to play her music from her iPhone on the truck's speakers, such as they were.

  She parked the car in the short term lot, made her way into the airport and went to wait in the arrivals area, but his flight came and went and no Bruce.

  Just when she was about to go see about where the fuck it was that he had ended up – Nova Scotia, she thought hopefully – a shadow fell over her.

  "Miss Cavanaugh, I presume?"

  When she stood, she found herself next to the biggest man she'd ever seen – and she'd been around big men all her life. Her father had been six-two or so and a good two hundred-and-twenty-five pounds or so. Her brother was no slouch at six-feet and probably pushing two-fifty, but this guy was positively enormous, broad as well as tall, in the classic Y-shape that literally had her mouth watering.

  He was so big he made her feel small, and that was a distinct novelty, one she instantly found she enjoyed.

  "I'm Bruce McCullough." His hand was out, and she put hers in it to shake it, but he turned it over and kissed the back of it. "Sam didn't mention that he was sending a ravishing angel to pick me up."

  She couldn't help it. The snort was automatic. She wasn't beautiful, she knew she wasn't, and she didn't tolerate being called it as a result.

  For a moment, when she tugged at her hand, he didn't let it go, and she looked up at him. He was smiling beatifically down at her. In a voice like liquid sex, he asserted, "You are very beautiful, Miss Cavanaugh. Surely you know that."

  Taren knew she was blushing, but there was nothing she could do about it. So she simply began walking as she muttered under her breath, "I think baggage claim is this way."

  He fell into step next to her, and as she snuck a look at his disgustingly affable self, she realized he was consciously shortening his strides to accommodate her. Damned if he didn't smell amazing, too.