by Nancy Warren
His gaze strayed to hers while they ate, and each time she recalled his words about seeing her naked.
The man was a stranger with no memory who appeared to be a criminal. And she’d never, ever been so hot for any man in her entire life.
Maybe that was why she’d driven an extra ten minutes to a drugstore she never frequented to buy condoms. Even knowing they were tucked into her bedside table underneath the novel she was reading, she grew warm every time she thought of what she was contemplating.
But why shouldn’t she, for once in her life, throw caution to the wind? She’d lived with caution too long and it had turned out to be a lousy roommate. With her long-term relationship over and a break from her workaholic ways, she felt as alive as a young tree in springtime. Damn it, her sap was rising.
In fact, her sap wasn’t just rising, it was heating, simmering, settling in her breasts and her womb, hot and heavy. She felt bold and alive and more womanly than ever before.
For some reason, this rough, scary stranger made her feel things she’d never felt in five years with Peter, who scheduled sex into his smart phone along with all the other obligations of his busy life.
“Nell, go get mystery boy here his pills,” Gertie said, breaking into her reverie. “Then he ought to take a nap.”
“His name’s Wes,” she replied, knowing her aunt hadn’t yet recovered from having four gang members tramp through her house without a single one of them removing his boots.
She fetched the pills and without much protest they did get him up for a nap.
* * *
Nell glanced at her bedside clock as she leaned over to turn out the light. It was after eleven.
She was physically tired, but mentally jittery. Her book hadn’t been able to hold her attention, and as she settled under the covers she found herself practically vibrating with tension.
Downstairs, in her own room, Gertie, whose farmer’s genes had her rising with the crows and bedding down by nine, slept like the dead, but Nell hadn’t yet reverted from an LA night owl to a Kansas early bird.
As she turned grumpily in bed, she accepted it wasn’t simply the early hours she was keeping that were affecting her like this. It was the thinly veiled threat of the gang member, Louie.
She thumped her pillow, knowing she was still lying to herself. She felt as though her body were crying out for fulfillment. Out here, in the middle of Hicksville, where she’d come to get away from all the pressures and demands of her former life, her body suddenly craved sex.
She throbbed with unfulfilled needs, right to the end of her fingertips.
She flipped to her side facing the window, trying to find a comfortable spot. Moonlight filtered between a gap in the curtains upping her irritation a notch. Moonlight meant romance and romance made her starved body think of sex and sex made her think of…
The man in bed across the hall. Oh, how she wished she’d bought him a pair of pajamas. He hadn’t struck her as the pajama type, but at least she could have imagined him in them. As it was, she pictured him naked.
Naked and fully aroused.
She tossed and turned some more, cursing her vivid imagination, wondering if she should go downstairs for a glass of milk. Or an ice pack for certain overheated body parts.
A board creaked in the hallway and she held her breath, listening. She’d left her bedroom door ajar, refusing to think about why, and she heard the quiet shush as it opened into the room.
She didn’t turn her head, or make a sound, simply waited, her body all but wriggling with anticipation while her conscious mind was appalled at what she was contemplating.
Even though she’d expected it, her body quivered with shock when he touched her. It was only a hand on her shoulder, but she felt it, warm and tingling, all the way to her toes.
The leathery pads of his fingertips traced the scoop neck of the stretchy cotton designer nightshirt that clung to her curves. She hadn’t let herself ponder why she’d slipped it on earlier, or the number of times she’d run the brush through her hair, or the tiny dab of perfume she’d touched behind her ears and between her breasts.
A woman was allowed to look nice and smell nice simply for her own company wasn’t she? She was certain she’d read that in a magazine article. Making herself pretty and scented for bed wasn’t about a man. It was about self-love.
Except it wasn’t self-love she craved tonight.
It wasn’t even love she wanted, it was pure, uncomplicated down and dirty sex, and she had her sights on a prime specimen. He might be a criminal, but he was sexy and earthy and everything her previous men were not. Besides, whatever her mind thought, her body was in charge tonight. Perhaps if they didn’t speak she could pass it off as a dream.
Dreamlike was exactly how it felt when his fingers reached the vee between her breasts. She trembled at their slight roughness against the sensitive spot, and the way he took brazen ownership of her body.
There was no conversation, no “do you feel like it tonight,” no hurrying because of an early morning meeting. There were just the two of them, two bodies as highly tuned to each other as the people inhabiting them were worlds apart.
He turned her so she was flat on her back and she gazed up at him, so very foreign and yet somehow so familiar. He wore nothing but the new white briefs she’d bought him, and in the near dark he seemed both sinister and exciting. His hair hung free to just past his shoulders, shadowing his face so all she could see was the predatory gleam of his eyes.
She looked into them and began to tremble.
With one knee on the bed, he knelt over her and, when his mouth was only a breath away, whispered, “I forgot to kiss you good night.”
A tiny sound broke from her throat, part acceptance, part plea as her lips opened in anticipation. The second their mouths met she felt his passion and hunger. This was no gentle caress but a fierce and hungry possession of her mouth. She tasted frustration and felt his desire keen and barely restrained as his tongue delved into her mouth as though ready to drag forth a response. He’d been thinking about this all day, she realized with a dash of smug vanity, holding himself in check until nighttime.
Then all thoughts, smug and otherwise, flew out of her head as he shucked his briefs and climbed into bed.
He went back to her mouth, but with the impatience of a man who wants everything at once, broke off to trail kisses down her throat. He traced the edge of her nightshirt with his tongue, then breathed warm, moist air through the cotton onto her nipples. She gasped at the sensation, feeling the tingle as her nipples tightened beneath the now damp cotton. His palms followed his mouth to brush over the sensitive peaks until she was squirming.
Where moments before he’d seemed almost beyond control, he’d now reined himself in, although the tension in every line of his moonlit body told her how tenuous that control was. She wanted to cry out to him to let himself go and at the same time wanted this slow caress to go on forever. Her breathing was nothing more than choppy sighs when he slipped his hands down the sides of her breasts and molded the curves of her ribs, waist and hip as intimately as the clinging cotton.
He got to the midthigh hem and paused to trace the edge of the fabric, just as he’d done with the neckline. She tried not to moan or beg, when he got to the seam of her thighs, but eased them apart for him in a silent plea. Either he didn’t notice, or chose to ignore her body’s invitation; instead he raised his gaze until it locked with hers.
Then he grasped the hem of her nightshirt and slowly drew it up over her body. His gaze followed the same path and she thought no one had ever looked at her with such focused passion. “How could I forget?” he whispered in amazement.
She sighed, and raised her arms so he could pull the garment over her head until she lay before him, stretched out, naked.
“Don’t move,” he ordered, and, striding to the window, he pulled the curtains wide so her body was bathed in moonlight.
Was he trying to kill her?
S
he fought the urge to cover herself with her hands. He’d think she was nuts. He didn’t know this was the first time they’d made love, that they were strangers and that she was shy with him, so she tried to pretend it was fine, even though nerves skittered in her stomach and her heart pounded.
She only hoped the moonlight was pale enough to disguise the head-to-toe blush that suffused her. Her whole body wanted to roll into itself and hide from this inquisitive predator, but once more she called on her self-control. She couldn’t seem to control her toes, however. They curled tightly, preserving the modesty of all ten toe pads.
He was a dark silhouette as he moved with easy grace toward her, but that silhouette was tall, broad shouldered, and narrow hipped. And when he turned to face her, and the moonlight gilded him, she forgot about herself and sucked in a breath at the sheer beauty of his body.
She’d never thought a lot about the penis. It was an appendage with a job to do and frankly she thought men spent far too much time and energy obsessing over what was, proportionately, a pretty small piece of their anatomy. But Wes’s cock, all silvery gold in the moonlight seemed both mysterious and imbued with energy. She couldn’t resist the impulse to reach out and touch it.
It was warm and hard, heavy in her hand as she wrapped her fingers around the shaft and squeezed. Now it was his turn to suck in a breath as she explored him, tormented him a little, and then slid her hand beneath him to cup the heavy sac, already tight against his body.
Aching with the need to feel him inside her, she released him and reached for her bedside table, pulling out a couple of the condoms she just happened to have handy. He took one and sheathed himself before covering her body with his own.
Oh, the slide of warm flesh against warm flesh, the feel of his lips against hers and his hands on her body, exploring and exciting. While he kissed and licked her breasts he trailed a hand down her belly and between her thighs.
She swallowed her cry when he touched her.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered hoarsely. “Are you wet for me?”
She might be ready to weep with wanting, but such arrogance could not go unpunished. She wrapped her hand around his erection. “You’re so hard,” she taunted him right back. “Are you hard for me?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said through his teeth.
She thought he’d take her then. Pound into her with all the suppressed tension she felt vibrating beneath his flesh. Again he surprised her. He reached for her sex, stroked her with a light touch that kept her on simmer without letting her boil over. As her excitement built she hardly realized her hand was tightening on his shaft until he gave a harsh groan and pulled her away.
“Oh, I’m so—” Then she cried out as he pushed her knees apart and thrust inside her in one long, smooth stroke.
Her cry ended on a gasp as he filled her, more than filled her, so she felt the delicious stretch and tug of her inner muscles accommodating his length and thickness. Hell, they weren’t just accommodating him. They were hugging and kissing him in gratitude for the pleasure that was already zinging through her system.
She clutched at Wes’s sweat-slick shoulders, fisted her hands in his thick silky hair, grasped his straining biceps as he thrust, deep and hard and steady, while she wrapped her legs around his waist and rose to meet each thrust.
“I can’t—” She gasped, twisting against him. “I need…”
He lifted her hips and changed the angle slightly so he was hitting her hot spot and then there was no stopping the wave that built, crested, and crashed. Her body spasmed and her throat clutched, strangling her own cries as he dropped his head, biting softly into her shoulder as he groaned his own release.
He collapsed at her side, one arm thrown possessively over her, his breath warm against her hair while she tried to regain her own breath. Not to mention her wits.
She’d just had the best sex of her life with a guy whose last name she didn’t even know. This from a girl with two university degrees and a professional designation behind her name.
She couldn’t stop the grin from stealing over her face.
“You know what’s great about having amnesia?” he asked several minutes later.
“What?” She felt smug and sleepy and ridiculously happy.
“That felt like the first time with you.”
She turned to kiss him softly on the lips, noting the uneven stubble where he’d had to use her razor. She’d have to remember to get him one of his own in the morning, otherwise whisker burn was going to be a big part of her immediate future.
“Is our sex always this good?” he asked, stroking her breast idly.
She nipped his jaw gently. “Every single time,” she assured him.
Chapter Four
Wes woke with a jerk from another nightmare. He reached automatically for Nell’s warm body and encountered the edge of his own single bed. He couldn’t believe he’d let her boot him out of her room after they’d made love.
She claimed he was getting the heave-ho out of consideration for Gertie, but he was getting the uncomfortable feeling he was pussy-whipped.
In fact, the more he learned about himself, the less he approved. He was most likely some kind of petty criminal. He shoved a stray hair off his face and wondered what had possessed him to grow his hair as long as a girl’s so it was always in the way or tickling his neck. How could falling on his head have made him hate his hair and his lifestyle?
He’d searched his body carefully after bathing yesterday and been relieved to find that while he had some colorful bruises, he sported no tattoos. There was an indentation in one earlobe that suggested he’d pierced his ear at one point, but luckily there were no other puncture marks. No needle marks either and he didn’t crave anything but coffee and sex so presumably he wasn’t a drug addict.
He did discover a couple of old wounds. A jagged curve with bumpy scar tissue in his leg that he suspected was caused by a knife and another on his shoulder that looked like a bullet wound. So, he liked to fight, did he? When he recalled the burn of possessive anger he’d experienced when the other gang members checked Nell out, he wasn’t surprised.
The only thing he liked about his pre-accident choices was Nell. Of everything in his life, she was the one thing that felt right. Except that she obviously henpecked him, not letting him stay in her bed all night because of that sour old biddy downstairs.
Wes stacked his hands under his head and stared up at the white ceiling as dawn poked its head in the window. He had to face facts.
He was a putz.
He was also having some disturbing dreams. Breathing slowly, he tried to capture the images that had awakened him, sensing that his unconscious was trying to tell him what his conscious mind had forgotten.
In his mind he saw a back-country road that wound around a fenced field with a row of tall trees out front. Poplar? Birch? He heard the hum of his own motorcycle engine and was conscious of feelings of dread and excitement in his gut. There was a farmhouse ahead of him, but that was not where the wavy dream road took him. Behind the farmhouse, at least he thought it was behind, hard to tell with a dream, he noted a derelict barn. His heart rate increased and his hands clenched, though he had no idea why.
That was it. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t raise any more images from his dream.
It looked like a perfectly normal, everyday farmhouse with a derelict barn. Not exactly an uncommon sight in this part of the world. So why did it wake him every night? What was his subconscious trying to tell him?
Then a slow grin lit his face. Maybe he woke with a pounding heart not because he associated that barn with something bad, but something good. Maybe he and Nell had found a place where they could be alone, away from the prying eyes of her aunt and his associates.
He shifted, realizing how helpless he felt without any memories. Did he have parents? A job? He’d gauged his age to be mid thirties when he looked in the mirror, but the guy with the long hair and no tattoos was a stranger.
The only person he trusted was Nell. He was disappointed that making love with her last night hadn’t brought his memory back. How could a man forget being with a woman like her?
He felt as though he’d stumbled into the wrong body. He was definitely a putz.
For some reason, when she saw him at breakfast, Nell blushed.
He was wrong, he realized. Knowing what she looked like naked hadn’t eased his mind, it merely increased the urge to get her naked again.
He shot her a wolfish grin that made her blush even deeper.
He waved away the painkillers, feeling better than he’d ever felt. Of course, given that his memory only stretched back two days, that wasn’t saying much. Still, he felt damn good. They’d loved far into the night and still he wanted her again with a fierceness that surprised him.
“If you’re feeling so good,” Gertie’s voice intruded on his lascivious thoughts, “there’s some fencing out back needs fixing.”
“Gertie!” Nell protested. “I’m sure Wes isn’t well enough to—”
“Sure I am,” he interrupted. “Some fresh air and exercise will be good for me.” The sex had taken it out of him some, but his aches and pains were a lot milder today. He must be a fast healer.
Nell stared at him over her coffee. “Do you know how to fix a fence?”
He thought about that for a second. “No idea. I guess we’ll find out.”
“It’s not brain surgery,” Gertie reminded them both. And, as it turned out, whether or not he’d ever done it before, he found there wasn’t much science in nailing up broken fence boards and replacing the rotting ones. Painting them all would be a bitch, but from his short acquaintance with Gertie, he figured that was next on his handyman agenda.
Fine with him. It kept him occupied and the task left his mind free to wander. He was hoping it would find its way home, real soon. He couldn’t rid himself of the notion that there was something important he had to do.
