But Liz should never have made the mistake of hassling Bett.
Very complicated issues had been reduced to utter simplicity. As simple as breakfast. Twenty minutes later, he had a small fire going at the edge of the woods by the pond. Bett was staring at him with increasingly bewildered eyes, her soft hair fluffed around her face in a haphazard halo. Wearing yellow inevitably made her appear as fragile as a daisy. Bett was, at times, very fragile. Scrambled eggs were cooking in the iron frying pan; Bett was curled up on the sleeping bag with an old blanket around her shoulders; and dawn’s pale, silvery colors were peeking through the woods.
“So.” Bett was groping for conversation. “You just suddenly felt like a picnic at five o’clock in the morning.”
Zach spooned eggs onto a paper plate and handed it to her, along with a plastic spoon. Finding plastic forks had proved difficult. “You’re going to need this energy,” he commented.
“I am?”
His eyes flickered to hers. “When you’re all done, I’m going to make love to you so long and so hard you won’t know what hit you.” He frowned, staring at her. “Hard isn’t the right word. I don’t want you to misunderstand. I want an hour with you, in complete silence. I want you open for me. I want to bury myself inside your softness.”
Her lips formed a startled O that never materialized aloud. A moment ago, they’d been talking about breakfast. She tried to swallow a bite of food, staring at her husband.
Zach looked the same. His brown hair was still the color of chestnuts, all disheveled, his sideburns getting a little long. His skin still had the whole summer’s sheen of bronze in it. He was moving casually, his walk lithe and easy, to the pond, where he crouched on his haunches to rinse out the frying pan.
Maybe he hadn’t just said all that, she thought fleetingly. Maybe she’d imagined it. Because there was nothing specifically different in the way he looked that could account for an instant, vibrant, delicious tingling in every erotic nerve ending in her body. As he strode back toward her, his eyes seemed to burn into hers with an intense, deliberate flame.
“Eat,” he scolded.
Ah, yes. For that energy she was going to need. She took another bite, not the least interested in food. Zach kicked sand on the embers of the fire with the side of his boot, served her the last of the coffee from the thermos and took the few items involved in his cooking project to the back of the pickup.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon; the smell of dew surrounded them; the pond waters, pearl gray, were like glass. It was a silent world. She watched Zach as he moved about soundlessly, strong and tall and very, very male. Zach smiled so readily. But Zach was not smiling when he looked her way.
“Bett?” His voice was curiously gentle. He took the half-eaten breakfast from her hand. When he scooped her up, yellow blanket and all, she was not surprised. Zach was doing an unforgivably good job of making her feel like a princess, a princess captured by a pirate. Not that she really believed that, but she gave in to the odd, vulnerable feelings inside, that fragile, trembly rush. She nestled her cheek against his chest as he climbed into the cover of the trees.
“Are you angry?” she whispered suddenly.
His lips fleetingly brushed her forehead. “No.”
“You are,” she said hesitantly.
“Not,” he promised, “with you. And you are the only one on my mind at the moment, Bett.”
He stopped walking at the crest of the hill, where in spring there was a bed of wood violets and the sun shone down in long, dusty ribbons through the leaves. In early fall, there were no flowers, just the bed of green like a spongy cushion beneath the blanket as he laid her down. She could smell the fresh dampness of morning, the promise of a sultry Indian summer day that hadn’t yet arrived. A golden leaf fluttered down here and there in the stillness. The shade was dark and private.
A cool flush touched her skin as Zach knelt beside her, his fingers threading through her hair as he drew her face close, close enough to lower his lips to hers. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me,” he murmured. “I don’t like that, two bits. I don’t like that at all.”
“What secrets?”
His lips swept over hers again, denying her question, his tongue probing between her parted lips, stirring a crazy flurry of emotions. His mouth left hers at the very instant she’d become addicted. He trailed kisses along her profile, so fragile and light she might have imagined them. His fingers were just as gentle untying the sash of her robe, parting the lapels, slipping inside. “When you’re unhappy,” he murmured, “I want to know about it. Some problems are solvable and some aren’t, sweet. I don’t give a damn. I want to know.”
“Zach, I don’t have the least idea what you’re ta-”
His blue eyes blazed into hers. “After all this time, if you really think there’s something you can’t tell me, Bett, you’ve got a long lesson coming to you.”
“But I never-”
Zach was too intent on engraining the lesson to explain. Her robe was in the way. It had to go. He could feel the shiver vibrate through her body when it was gone. She wore some kind of nylon nightgown that crinkled in his fingers as he swept it up and off, baring her sweet ivory flesh to the morning coolness. She needed warming. He had no intention of letting her catch cold.
He reveled the feel of her bare skin against his sweatshirt and jeans, the tease of clothes between them. His hands swept up and down her flesh, searing in warmth wherever he touched, creating fire with the friction of his hands that were never still. “Don’t you ever hold out on me,” he murmured. “You don’t wear a mask, not around me. You put on coverings for the rest of the world, but not for me.”
“Zach-”
“I want you like hell,” he whispered. “Open, Bett. All of you.”
His lips trailed down her body until his teeth could gently pull at the taut pink centers of her breasts. Her hands were fluttering aimlessly at her sides, but already her body was flushing with warmth, exactly what he wanted. Part of her so obviously wanted to talk, to understand where he was coming from; and yet her pulse was already racing. Zach, too, was communicating on the two levels, but he had no problem defining his priorities. He carried her hand to the growing hardness in his jeans and held it there.
Her breath locked in her lungs for a moment, and then her palm rubbed, over and over, that warm hardness encased in denim. His desire was clear. His need for her was just as clear. If she wanted to talk, that wasn’t solely for the purpose of hearing words said out loud. One could start communication in other ways; Zach had taught her that a long time ago. And her response was from the heart, as primal as his, her instincts just as strong.
Her lips were suddenly hot and wild, molding themselves against his. Her fingers fumbled for the zipper of his jeans. Why on earth did he have so many clothes on? Her heart kept beating harder, terribly uneven. Was he actually doubting how much she loved him; was that what his enigmatic anger was about? How could he be such a fool?
Zach pushed her hand away. Once his jeans were gone, he knew he wouldn’t last long. His patience was forced, but he was determined to try. His palm took a long, lazy path, between and around Bett’s breasts, over the satin flesh of her abdomen, finally slipping between her thighs. Her whole body arched against the shelf of his palms, and a silver mist of wanting filled his head, his blood, his body. Bett’s lips were suddenly moist and sweet and warm, seeking his, demanding his. His tongue invaded the hollow of her mouth.
She was on fire. It wasn’t enough. “
Her fingers pushed up his sweatshirt. He let her strip the soft fabric over his head; he let her fingertips slide over his smoothly muscled chest; she loved to do that. Her hands trailed up, curled around his neck, got lost in his hair. He turned and shifted both of them. With her weight on top of him, he spread his legs, pinning her, loving the imprint of her tiny, taut nipples on his bare chest, loving the ache in his loins as he pressed against her abdomen. Her hair swept down, all in a tangle, strands of sun-touched silk that tickled his cheek as her lips sought his again. Dawn had turned into day. Sunlight filtered down, catching in her hair. Her eyes were never more blue than when she was blind with loving, caught up in the sweetest of senses. She thought herself such a seductress.
She so very much was. He slowed the pace she didn’t want slowed, but with a terrible effort. He had to bat her fingers away from his zipper again. He turned so that he was next to her and half on top, and then shifted his body
