covering.
Her lemon meringue pie was gone; she washed the pie pan, then searched for her potato-salad dish. The potato salad, too, had been all but devoured. Just a tiny smidgen was left, a little hump in the corner that remarkably resembled a certain portion of the male anatomy…
She dropped the bowl and wearily brushed her fingertips against her temples.
Craig scanned the cluster of women by the pool, his eyes resting idly on the empty chaise longue when he failed to find Sonia. Some inner network inevitably broadcast an announcement when she wasn’t close by.
He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her all day. A dozen things had captivated him. First, the look of her long legs swinging around the poolside, then her laughter as she talked with people, and last the loving softness in her eyes as she played with the children.
He’d watched her moving through the pool, a graceful darting fish in the red maillot bathing suit, her hair sleek against her scalp, her face turned up to the sun. Later, in that quiet time after dinner, she’d moved ever so softly in the long skirt that swayed around her legs. She was always his softer, quieter Sonia when she dressed that way…
He was going to have to get over his habit of falling in love with his wife over and over again on a daily basis. In the meantime, he missed her. Excusing himself from the other ranchers, he wandered toward the house. The sun had just set, and a glow of scarlet and violet bathed the ranch yard and pool in a sensual glow.
He knew all about sensual glows. Sonia had been radiating them all day with that certain look in her eyes-like Eve, pelting him with apples. Like Adam, he could only be so strong.
Desire had been tearing through him for more than a month. He couldn’t think of a time in their marriage that they’d gone more than a few days without making love.
He was the reason for their abstinence; his physical health, Sonia believed. Only that wasn’t the reason at all.
Silently, he pulled open the screen door and let it close quietly behind him. No one was in the old ranch house; he wandered through the living room and hall, pausing only when he reached the doorway to the kitchen.
Her skin was slightly damp, glowing and golden from the heat; her camisole was molded to her high, firm breasts. The white skirt swayed around her hips as she fussed around the kitchen, her face still turned away from him. She’d lost her shoes somewhere, and her bare toes peeked out from beneath the skirt hem. She looked sensual and sexual and beautiful and totally touchable, every texture that was Sonia soft and vibrantly warm and all woman.
“Craig!” She flushed still deeper at the sight of him and then quickly turned her eyes away, as if embarrassed, as if afraid he might guess what she’d been thinking.
“Ready to go home?” he asked her. He knew exactly what she’d been thinking. And it was past time to go home and take care of his wife, in the way he knew she needed taking care of.
Chapter 7
“Didn’t think for a minute there.” Charlie’s voice came from an enormous distance. “You want me to help carry the gear into the house?”
“Thanks, Charlie, but it’ll all wait until morning.”
“Well. Sleep tight, then.”
Sonia half heard Charlie’s exaggerated yawn, then the door opening next to her ear. “Come on, little one,” coaxed Craig’s soft whisper.
Sleepily, Sonia opened her heavy eyes, and was immediately enfolded in strong arms pulling her out of the car. It was the same as sleep, that dark, still world. Her feet touched ground, but her head simply wanted to lie in that curve of his shoulder. “I didn’t really fall asleep. I’m just resting for a minute,” she murmured.
She heard his chuckle but didn’t pay any attention. Winding her arms around his waist, she nuzzled her head under his chin and closed her eyes again.
In her dream, she was in motion, cradled close and moving through darkness. Lips pressed on her forehead, warm and smooth, once, and then again. The swaying motion didn’t stop until her back sank onto a firm, cool surface. She was alone, bereft. Sliding sounds came from somewhere, then muted snaps, then…a zipper?…from a million miles away.
She forced her heavy eyes open, but that seemed to be part of the dream as well, because Craig was bending over her in that darkness, naked, his skin white in the moonlight. Only he couldn’t possibly be naked; they were still driving home.
Always, once Sonia had fallen asleep, she slept as if drugged, waking only slowly and with reluctance. Half smiling, Craig gently grazed her breasts with his knuckles, as one finger searched her camisole for a tiny pin. He found the pin and undid it, then silently pulled at the satin ribbons that held the camisole together. Her breasts strained free, all warm and heavy, pearl-smooth.
He sank down to the bed, leaning over her, his hands gently chasing up the material until the satiny flesh was freed for him. In slow, silent motion, his lips dipped down and rubbed velvet-soft kisses in that warm pocket between her breasts. She stirred restlessly. “Don’t wake,” he murmured soothingly. “Don’t wake, honey.”
He ached from just that touch of her. She stirred again as he pulled off the camisole. “Craig?”
“Everything’s fine,” he whispered, and heard a rush of a sigh escape her lungs. He had to lift her hips a little to slide down the skirt. Her panties were little wisps of silk, so fragile; his hands glided them down over long thighs and slim calves.
“Cold,” Sonia murmured.
He dropped the panties over the side of the bed, and when he turned back to her, she had rolled to her side, one leg bent at the knee, her arm unconsciously reaching for the empty spot on his side of the bed.
He didn’t move for a moment. Didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t think. He didn’t want to wake her. And he didn’t want to stop looking. Moonlight rubbed silver on her bare skin; his lover was sprawled wanton in innocence, lovely in vulnerability.
She couldn’t possibly know how much he loved her.
His heart ached with it; his head ached with it. His body, so aroused he felt on fire, burned with it. No one could ever understand what he’d felt when that slimy blond bastard had attacked her in Chicago. The explosive rage that anyone would dare hurt her…the splintering frustration that he couldn’t stop them…the searing guilt that he had been responsible…his failure as a man to protect his woman.
Somewhere, a long time back, he’d almost been amused at how hard love had hit him. For Sonia, he’d wanted to run rapids, climb mountains, battle foes, slay dragons.
Obviously, there were no dragons, and Craig had never considered himself a romantic man. He was a realist, a man of action, no poet. And in the darkness he reached for her, his touch so tender that at first she barely wakened.
Something smooth and warm and as light as a whisper brushed on the soles of her feet, then her ankles and calves. The very lightest pressure increased up the long expanse of her thighs. Lips trailed farther, furrowing sensual roads over the soft white flesh of her bottom, to the base of her spine and up her vertebrae, one by one. All nine million vertebrae. Fingers combed into her hair, followed by more kisses, and then the trail started down again.
Sonia stretched, murmuring sleepily. The lap of a tongue feathered down all those vertebrae again, such soft, secret licks that she felt all warm inside, warm and cuddly and sleepy. The faint dampness traced the curve of her hip with an intimacy that far surpassed any fantasy or any dream.
