her up this great sweep of stairs to the bedroom. And…well…” She paused, and he could feel his heartbeat tapping against her fingertips. His body-all of it-felt stretched and tight. His insides boiled sluggishly, like molten lava. “The way I figure, you’ve had plenty of practice.”
“One problem-” his lips were barely capable of movement “-no stairs here.”
“Then that should make it easier, shouldn’t it?”
Courage flooded through her. She felt lightened by it, buoyed up like a leaf in the wind. Catching her lower lip between her teeth to hold back laughter and excited breath, she stared intently at the indistinct blur where his smile would be, and then, impatient with her stubborn blindness, put her fingertips there and felt a shiver of happiness as it blossomed and grew beneath them. His lips were silky smooth, mobile and firm; her fingers tingled in the warm flow of his breath. And then, tilting his head slightly, he took them into his mouth, one by one. Desire fluttered in her belly. Her legs grew weak.
“I think,” she whispered brokenly, “you could do that Rhett Butler thing any time, now.”
His chuckle butted gently against her fingertips, and the burgeoning confidence in it bolstered her own. When, with a sudden, fierce movement, he turned his head and pressed his mouth into her palm, she gasped aloud, then slowly drew her hand and his mouth down to hers. When his lips slid from her palm to her mouth, her awakening vision failed her. She saw golden showers and rainbows, and then her eyelids came down and there was only lavender darkness filled with sweet sensation…his silky-firm lips gently massaging the inside of hers…tingling darts of cold fire shooting from there straight into distant throbbing places.
His hand kneaded her back between her shoulder blades, gathering the fabric of her shirt so that the other, sweeping down her spine, met only naked skin where it dipped beneath the waistband of her jeans. His tongue, impatient with teasing, drove deep; her hand skidded along his jaw and her fingers pushed into his hair, wildly clutching. His hand, pressing hard on the lower part of her spine, brought her hips against his, and she remembered his lean, wiry strength and the taut and quivering muscles of his belly.
His hand slipped farther down, under her bottom, and with that same sudden, savage motion, like a movement in a passionate dance, a tango, perhaps, lifted her up and drew her legs around his hips, locking her to him. And through the supple fabric of his jeans and hers, she felt
She felt a swaying, like the rocking of a boat, and knew that she was being carried. But there was something she wanted to say… Dizzy, she separated herself from the kiss, but before her swollen lips and passion-fogged mind could form words, C.J.’s voice came, raspy in her ear.
“Guess this probably isn’t the way Rhett Butler did it…”
Drunkenly she mumbled, “This is way better than Rhett,” but when she found his mouth again, for some reason she had begun to laugh.
And for some reason, so had he. Remembering how much she had wanted to laugh with him just this way, she clung to his shaking shoulders while he carried her to his bedroom, quivering and snickering and hiding spurting tears and breathless gusts in the warm hollow of his neck.
It’s too much, she thought. Too much stimulation, too much emotion. She wondered if the laughter was a kind of safety valve, like the steam shooting out of a pressure cooker or the teakettle’s whistle. Without it, maybe she would simply have to explode…fly apart in so many pieces, she would never find her way back together again.
“I’ve never been this way before,” she told him, the words sticking to her swollen tongue. Her feet felt pins and needles where they touched the floor. Under her sweatshirt, where C.J.’s hands were stroking the sides of her waist, her skin was afire with goose bumps.
“This way…how?”
He didn’t say anything, not at first. Lowering his head until his forehead touched hers, he brought his hands from under her shirt and, warm and moist from her body, placed them on the sides of her neck. He moved them upward until they formed a basket for her head, and gently tipped it back, a little at a time, so that his lips touched her eyelids first…then her nose…and finally her mouth.
They barely touched her at first-lightly, delicately, like the brush of flower petals-caressing with feather strokes while she held herself in a rapt and breathless stillness. Then, as he had in the woods, increasing the pressure so slowly he seemed to become a part of her…come inside her and fill her so completely she couldn’t imagine how it could ever end. And when it did end, she whimpered, as if a part of her had been wrested away.
“Neither have I…like this…” She felt his body tremble.
She understood, then, why he hadn’t spoken after
Her hands shook as she placed them on his sides and slowly, slowly lifted his shirt. Dazed, she thought how silky and fine his skin felt. She wanted it touching hers. Desire made her ache. Sick with it, she swayed forward and buried her face against his chest…her nose, first, then her mouth…her tongue. His skin smelled good, tasted good, felt good. It was smooth there, too; her exploring fingers found only a few hairs in the center of his chest and around his flat, hard nipples.
“You didn’t turn the light on?” She wanted to, oh, how she wished she could
“No.” His hands were sliding upward along her back, raising her shirt with their slow, massaging progress. She lifted her arms and let him pull it over her head. Her chest rose and her breasts hardened as cool air sifted over her fevered skin.
“You can,” she whispered. “I don’t mind if you do.”
“No,” he said as he nested her breasts in his palms and gently kissed her, “it’s not fair.”
“Not…fair?”
“For me to see you when you can’t see me.”
Her breath caught; her heart stumbled. Mind and emotions reeled in hopeless disarray, caught up in the whirlwind created by the collision of those two opposing forces, joy and despair.
Because…in that moment she knew that she loved him, with all her heart and soul and mind and strength. And in that same moment knew that what she was about to do might cause her to lose him forever.
Chapter 14
Her cry, like that of a small, wounded animal, wrenched his heart. His tenderness for her was like a fine sweet down, softening the ruthless edges of his passion. His hands were gentle and certain; all sense of urgency and amazement fled.
“There are other ways to see,” he murmured, smiling with his voice while his lips and fingertips traced smiles on her skin. “I can touch you…see you with my hands…”
At his first light touch her breasts felt small and virginal; his mind’s eye saw them firm and perfect as a classic sculpture, ivory warmed with the delicate blush of desire. But…they filled his palms with unexpected voluptuousness, and his senses with sheer delight. By contrast, though slender enough to encircle with his hands, the muscles in her torso were taut and supple. And he remembered, with a little kick of excitement under his ribs, her unexpected strength.
She was “seeing” him, too; he could feel her hands skimming over his ribs…his back. Everywhere they touched they left a fever in his skin, as if he’d been too long in the sun. His breathing grew choppy. His muscles tensed and quivered. Enveloped in the glow of his love for her, he could feel lust crouching like a tiger just beyond the edges of the light. His ability to focus on his finer senses was slipping away; the tiger’s growl was louder, and he needed all his concentration to keep it at bay.
He
“Cait,” he whispered. His hands were on her waist; he slipped his fingers into the top of her jeans and felt her
