Adrienne deWolfe by Texas Lover Page B

fumbling.
    "Need help?" he drawled.
    "I... uh... can manage, thank you. "
    She stole a glance upward—not at his eyes, for she wasn't quite nervy enough for that—but at his chest, the chiseled work of art that God himself had crafted. An auburn dusting of baby-fine hairs clung to the pale gold of his flesh. They curled enticingly over every ridge and plane of his chest. Never in her life had she seen anything so perfect—until her furtive gaze was arrested by the jagged, circular scar on his left shoulder.
    She caught her breath.
    Another scar, not far below it and ominously close to his heart, looked much fresher. She'd never seen a bullet hole before, but she knew with gut-wrenching certainty that these were gunshot wounds.
    Her gaze flew to his. "Wes, you could have been killed."
    He stared into her eyes for what seemed like forever. Only inches away, she could see all the shades of green in his eyes, from pine to jade, to emerald, bursting outward in concentric circles from their pitch-black center.
    That dark core of his gaze mesmerized her. It was the doorway to his secret self, a portal where shadows flitted past like phantoms fleeing the light. She thought he might be hiding some secret he didn't want her to know. When his red-gold lashes fanned downward like a veil, intuition told her she'd touched on truth.
    "Naw." His voice was husky. "No little bitty honeybee could send me to the boneyard."
    He hadn't come close to fooling her. She knew that he knew it too.
    "How did this happen?"
    With a will all their own, her fingers touched that second scar. She had never seen anything like it. Two odd triangular impressions, the lower one less distinct, angled outward from each other. They marred his perfect flesh like a cookie cutter might have marred soft dough. "This wound can't be more than a year old."
    "Eleven months," he corrected her in a strangely hushed voice. "I remember, because..."
    His voice trailed off.
    "Does it hurt to talk about it?" she asked gently.
    His heart jumped hard beneath her fingertips, its rhythm growing ragged. "A little," he admitted.
    His gaze moved beyond her, growing dark with some haunting memory. "A man doesn't forget being bushwhacked and left for buzzard bait. Or lying helpless, unable to stop a blood feud from becoming a family massacre," he added with uncharacteristic grimness.
    She swallowed, too shaken by his admission to press him further. Silence wrapped around them. He spared her the gruesome details of the nightmare he'd lived through, and yet his refusal to share his feelings and let her try to ease his hurt made her feel strangely shut out and alone.
    "Wes, don't take such risks anymore." The words blazed a path from her heart to her tongue; she couldn't have stopped them if she'd tried. "You're too young—"
    "I'm not that young."
    She caught her breath. His voice held a razor-keen edge, a stab of warning so sharp, one might have thought that she'd challenged him.
    "I'm sorry. I meant no offense."
    She retreated a step, retrieving her hand. When she reached for the lid, though, he caught her fingers, and she met his gaze uncertainly. His haunted expression was receding, leaving in its place something just as discomfiting. Those forest-green depths gleamed now with a primal intensity, one that he couldn't entirely hide behind his fallen-angel's smile.
    "I like when you touch me," he said, his voice deep and rumbly.
    He raised her hand to his lips, and her pulse leaped. She was so disconcerted by the moist connection of his flesh tasting hers, that for a moment she couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. He raised her hand higher, pressing a damp kiss into her palm, and her knees went dangerously weak.
    "Wes," she protested feebly.
    He wouldn't release her hand, though, or free her from the smoky promise in his eyes. Turning her arm over, he applied gentle pressure to her palm with his thumb. The tip of his mustache, so provocatively soft, followed the sinfully wet brush of his