Feeling hot and wild, free beyond belief, she ran her fingers around his waist until she touched the hard ridge of his backbone. It was both sheltered and surrounded by muscle and flesh and hers to explore. Simply searching that part of him dug a molten path through her.
Words flitted through her, questions, a promise freely given that tonight meant as much to him as it did to her. She opened her mouth to ask him to gift her with that, spotted the moon cradled between great tree shadows, lost the ability to speak.
When he ran his thumb along her collarbone, she again leaned forward, twisting her head at the same time. She took his right nipple between her teeth.
She felt his shudder, heard the rumble of his groan. Accepted when he freed himself.
Quickly, gently, almost tentatively, he concentrated on her blouse buttons. She worked with him as he slid the garment off her shoulders. She felt a cool rush of air at the base of her throat and across her back, but he must have known that was going to happen because before the cold could distract her, he pulled her against him. She thought he might want to stop with yet another embrace and wondered how long she could keep her body still, but he soon let her know that his needs went beyond that-matched hers.
He unfastened her bra with an ease that made a lie of the last seven years. With the heels of his hands brushing, always brushing against her, he pulled the garment off and dropped it on top of her blouse. Through eyes that wouldn’t focus, she stared at the moon and stars. The points of light blurred, came together.
Together. Like her and Cord.
Alive. The word, the emotion, melted through her. She lapped at his breast and then quivered when he held her in his strong hands so he could do the same to her. She felt her breasts swell and the tips harden, felt him draw her breast into his mouth as she would soon…soon take him into her.
When he pulled back, leaving her dampened flesh vulnerable to the air, she moaned. Then, with indistinct vision, she watched as he spread their shirts out on the ground. She trembled, feeling like a sixteen-year-old virgin. He touched the base of her throat; it was the touch of a sixteen-year-old boy bombarded by emotions beyond his comprehension.
Then he leaned into her, eased her onto her back, and followed her down.
With one hand bracing himself, he worked at her jeans’ zipper. She arched her hips upward, helping. When her jeans caught around her hips and he had to work at pulling the denim off her, she whimpered at the delay. Night air found her newly naked thighs; the heat in her body surged to the surface, kept her hot.
The sound of a zipper slicing downward caught her attention. While she’d been lost in what he’d already done to her, he had stood and stepped out of his jeans. He started to reach for his briefs, but she reared up and grabbed his hands, stopping him. She needed his help to reach a kneeling position, then she finished the act of disrobing him while he stood with the night surrounding him and his eyes staring down at her, dark as midnight. He was a mountain, part of their untamed surroundings.
He knelt in front of her, thighs and hands and breasts touching. Then he gripped the fragile elastic that held her panties in place and began a slow downward journey. When he could go no further, he stretched her out on their shirts and lifted first one leg and then the other, the gesture both practiced and new.
She lay naked beneath him, no longer existing anywhere else. The breeze, now like cool lace, brushed against flesh that felt touched by moonlight and lightning and, most of all, by Cord.
He seemed to hesitate. Could he, a man who saw the vast wilderness as his home, be afraid of making love with his wife? What little remained of her rational mind knew she hadn’t been his wife for a long, long time, but that didn’t matter.
Tonight they were right for each other, or if not right, beyond caring.
She held out her hands, accepted the swirling ball of heat deep inside her, and issued a silent invitation.
He heard, came, slowly at first, then with a sense of urgency that matched hers. There was no more foreplay, no more time wasted erasing the years.
She spread herself for him, took him into her. Lost herself against him.
And she cried, tears without meaning or understanding.
Sometime during the night, they left where they’d made love and, shivering a little, returned to their sleeping bags. She started to lower herself to her bed, but he stopped her with a touch and she responded. They made love again, just as silent and frenzied.
In the morning, she woke with the weight of his arm over her breast.
She opened her eyes to look at him. In the newborn day, she saw that he was already gazing at her. His eyes asked if she had any regrets, and because she couldn’t answer him or herself, she didn’t speak.
Instead she kissed his powerful shoulder, the tanned hollow at the base of his throat, answered his silent kiss, and then, because he’d already taken too much of her, she slid away from him.
Now he was getting dressed and she was trying to remember how to braid her hair and regret swirled around her like a free-moving river.
She’d spent so many years and so much energy getting to that hard-won place where she believed she no longer loved Cord and couldn’t be hurt by him. Last night, twice, he’d made a lie of that belief and it would take years to undo two acts of lovemaking.
But he wasn’t the only one responsible for the way her heart felt this morning; she couldn’t blame him for that. She’d let it out of its quiet, cushioned prison and learned that the years had changed nothing of what she felt for him after all.
The realization terrified her.
“Shannon, there’s a small elk herd around here. We aren’t that far from a spring they’ve been using. If Matt finds it, he might follow it down.”
Although she wasn’t ready for this or any other conversation, she agreed that what he said made sense and should make sense to Matt, too-if the boy had given up on his goal of making it to the top of the mountain. She asked if that meant he intended to stop following their son’s tracks.
“No. That’s the last thing I’d do. His footprints are our only tie to him.”
He kicked into his boot and stepped closer to her. She thought she read the slightest hint of fear in his eyes, but couldn’t begin to comprehend its source. Not once during the hard past few days had he truly given her access to what was going on inside him. She’d come to expect that curtain to remain in place and could only guess at the changes inside him that had allowed it to momentarily slip away.
If he was afraid for Matt, she didn’t want to hear about it. If what happened between them last night had changed him in some way he had no control over and left him vulnerable, honest about Matt’s chances, she didn’t want to know that, either.
Cord was the mountain. Strong, invincible, the man she’d charged with bringing her son back to her.
Not a frail, insecure, sometimes helpless human being.
Like her.
“I don’t want you to be scared. If I could, I’d take you out of here so you wouldn’t have to go through this.”
“I wish you could, too, but the only way I’ll leave is when we find Matt.”
“I know. And we will.”
When? she wanted to shout at him, but didn’t ask, just as she hadn’t pushed for the reason behind what lurked in his eyes. As she watched him turn his attention to what little needed to be done before they could get going, she struggled for a memory of anything that had happened in her life before coming here with him. Nothing surfaced and after a minute she gave up the search.
Her body needed his touch. If he reached for her, the gesture might put an end to the unease that flowed through her. But he, like she, must have decided that reaching for any more of what they’d experienced last night would only throw them into more turmoil.
She took a handful of nuts and dried fruit and began chewing. Neither had any flavor. When Cord approached,
