Free Love by Proxy by Diana Palmer Page B

control. His hands cupped hers, caressing them. “It’s all right,” he said. His mouth touched her forehead, as lightly as a breeze. They were standing close, touching, and she made no move away from him. He smiled against her eyebrow. “I can’t remember the last time I was this aroused.”
    She lifted her chin so that she could see his eyes. They were very dark, almost black. “Does it hurt you?” she asked softly.
    “A little. No, don’t move away,” he protested when she started to shift her feet. “Just stand still, and everything will be fine, eventually,” he added with black humor.
    Her fingers reached up to the dimple in his chin. Since he didn’t seem to mind that, they wandered farther afield. She explored his wide, sexy mouth, his big, straight nose, his broad forehead and thick eyebrows, to the ridge of his jutting brow, over his closed eyelids to thick short lashes.
    “I like your face,” she said. “It’s very strong, very definite.”
    “Not handsome,” he murmured.
    “No. But sexy,” she whispered, smiling.
    His eyes opened, and there was something like tenderness in them. They smiled at her. “So are you.”
    She let her eyes drop to the massive chest under her hands, and stared unashamedly at the ripple of muscle, the mat of hair that arrowed down to the belt at his narrow waist.
    “Have you ever decided?” he asked.
    “Decided what?” she asked blankly, glancing up.
    He chuckled. “Whether or not you like hairy men?”
    “If you want the absolute truth,” she confessed, “I’ve never been this close to a man who had his shirt off.”
    “What about that would-be fiancé?”
    “He wore an undershirt,” she told him, laughing because it was funny now, “and I never even saw him in bathing trunks. He’s as thin as a rail. I suppose he’s self-conscious, and I never even realized it.” She studied the set of Worth’s head, his broad shoulders, with intent interest. “But I’ve never in my life seen anyone like you, not even in magazines.”
    His jaw tautened, and the control he’d regained was rapidly going again. His fingers tilted her chin. “You’re setting matches in gasoline,” he murmured. “Watch out.”
    She drew in an aching breath, her eyes going helplessly to his mouth. “Wouldn’t you like to seduce me?” she asked. “I’m twenty-eight, you know. A dinosaur that’s outlived its time. I’ll die someday, and I’ll never have known what it was to be a woman.”
    His hands moved to her waist and pressed there so hard that she looked up. His face was rigid, his eyes sparkling with some dark emotion.
    “It would complicate things too much,” he said after a minute. “Grandmother needs you.
    If I let that happen, she could lose you. I meant it, Amy, about commitment. I don’t want it. And you would.”
    Swallowing down her pride and the faint hurt the words inflicted, she managed a smile. “Are you that good in bed?” she whispered wickedly.
    His fingers caressed her waist. “I’m experienced,” he corrected. “Sex is like eating potato chips,” he added quietly. “It’s damned hard to stop, once you start. We’d get addicted to each other. I’m not ready for addictions.”
    “You’re forty,” she reminded him, her voice quiet, soft.
    “So I’ll die an old maid,” he shrugged, and a corner of his mouth curved. “Amy,” he added, serious now, “there was a woman. I won’t go into details, but I took a pretty damned hard blow. I’m still raw about it.”
    “I understand,” she said. She knew it all, but she wasn’t letting on. She stared at her hands, so pale against the deep tan of his chest. “Your grandmother says that she’s spent her life being careful, and now she’s going to pull out all the stops and really start living. Aren’t you going the other way?”
    “Look who’s lecturing me on involvement,” he burst out laughing.
    She shrugged, smiling at her own folly. “Well, yes. But, you’re a man. You can go