Slender fingers moved over Wolfe’s chest, kneading the pads of muscle, praising his strength in silence, enjoying the midnight swirls of hair, circling without touching the sensitive nipples. Then her head bent, sending a wave of rose-scented hair over him. Just before her lips touched him, he saw the tip of her tongue. With the delicate curiosity of a kitten, she tasted his nipple. His fingers speared through her hair, holding her close. Her tongue flicked over him again.
“Remember how I kissed you?” he asked almost roughly.
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
Her laugh was as sensual as the heat of her tongue. “Are you saying you would like to be kissed that way?”
“Only if you want.”
Jessica’s answer was a change in the caress, her lips opening over him, teasing and pleasing him with the shifting pressures of her mouth. Her teeth closed gently on him. The tightening of his body was both a reward and a lure. She covered his nipple with her mouth and sucked gently. He made a sound that was as much felt as heard, a breaking of breath, a speeding of his heartbeat, and a flush of warmth spreading beneath his skin that told her she had pleased him.
An answering thrill coursed through Jessica. She would never have guessed that her touch could have such an effect on Wolfe’s powerful body. Nor would she have guessed that touching him would both please and excite her. But it did. She found herself wanting to touch him everywhere, all at once, to fill her senses with him until there was nothing except Wolfe in her whole world.
Murmuring sounds that had no meaning, Jessica drew first one cheek and then the other over Wolfe’s chest, caressing him, tasting him, savoring his warmth and strength, losing herself in his male textures, realizing finally that this was what she had wanted to do for so long she could not remember when the wanting had first begun.
Now he was lying beneath her hand, and she was dizzy with the power of him.
When Jessica’s hand slid down the sheet to stroke Wolfe’s clenched thighs, his hips moved hungrily. Remembering how she had caught fire when his hand moved between her legs, she eased her fingers beneath the sheet, wanting to give him the same intense pleasure she had known at his touch. Yet when she tried to slide her fingers from knee to thigh, his legs were too closely held to permit it.
“Don’t you want me to touch you?” Jessica asked.
Wolfe didn’t trust his voice. He simply shifted his legs and prayed that his self-control was as good as he had always believed it to be.
The male flesh Jessica found was utterly foreign, twin weights resting on her palm and all of him drawn tight and hard, so sensitive that Wolfe’s breath was torn from his mouth when she touched him experimentally. Instantly, she tried to retreat. His hand closed over hers, tangling her in the sheet, holding her palm cupped closely against him while fire burned through his body.
Then Wolfe realized what he had done.
“Forgive me,” he said raggedly. “I didn’t mean to force something you didn’t want.”
Gently Jessica kissed the taut skin of Wolfe’s waist just above the line of the sheet. “I want to touch you. I just don’t know how. And from what you taught me my fifteenth summer, for all your hardness, a man is vulnerable there.”
“What? Oh,” Wolfe said, remembering. “That savage little gutter trick.”
“That little gutter trick saved me from Lord Gore.”
“What do you mean?”
“He threw me against the wall so hard I hadn’t the breath to groan, much less to scream the house down around his ears as I wanted. If I hadn’t used my knee as you taught, I’d have been raped on the hall floor just like my mother.”
“Jessi.”
Wolfe half lifted himself so that he could see her face. What he saw was creamy, half-covered breasts, hair on fire with the dawn, and a sweet mouth so close to his aching flesh that he could feel each of her breaths as a current of warmth soaking through the sheet. He stroked a strand of the long, mahogany hair that fanned across his chest.
“Your hand is trembling,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said huskily. “You keep surprising me. You have little reason to trust men, yet you are more generous in your sensuality than any woman I’ve ever known.”
“Only with you. You have never been as other men to me. You are my Lord Wolfe, Tree That Stands Alone, the man who Talks Back To Thunder on behalf of a frightened elf.”
Jessica kissed him softly where sheet and skin met. The brush of his fingertips over her lips made her shiver with memories.
“You have another name, as well,” she said.
“I know. The viscount’s savage.”
“No.” She bit the taut skin of Wolfe’s belly in sensuous punishment. “Never a savage. To me your true name is Takes Me To The Sun.”
Wolfe wondered distantly how many more times Jessica would surprise him; and then she astonished him by drawing down the sheet and kissing the very different flesh that she had aroused.
The kiss was as delicate as the brush of a butterfly’s wing and it burned as nothing Wolfe had ever felt in his life…until Jessica lifted her hair and let it settle over him. He felt each silky strand as a separate sliding caress, concealing and then revealing him in the same endless, searing instant.
“Teach me how to touch you,” Jessica whispered, stroking Wolfe very lightly with her hands. “Tell me where you are most sensitive.”
Her name shivered from Wolfe’s lips. It was all he could say as he fought to control the primal pulses that were dragging him to the brink of ecstasy. For the space of several breaths he struggled, not realizing that Jessica was watching him with eyes made smoky by passion. Finally, he let out a long, shuddering sigh.
“You take the breath from me,” Wolfe said.
“Then I’ll give you mine.”
Jessica lifted her face to his, breathing his name into his mouth as they shared a kiss that burned with leashed hunger. Slowly, his hands closed over hers, drawing them across his aching body. With a soft, ragged sound of anticipation, she kissed the corner of his mouth, the pulse beating so strongly in his neck, the muscular swell of his chest. And all the while her hands hovered just above his fiercely aroused flesh, touching him only with her warmth.
When Wolfe finally could speak, his voice was a rasp that told Jessica how tightly drawn he was.
“Touch me here, where I ache for you,” he said, pressing one small hand between his legs.
Jessica cupped and caressed him very gently, sensing the wildness quivering in him. Slowly he drew her hand higher, wrapping it around his potent flesh, urging her to measure him from base to blunt satin tip.
“There,” Wolfe said hoarsely. “There I am very sensitive. It is there I would feel the shivering of your ecstasy most clearly.”
Jessica made an odd sound and ran her fingers over his different textures with both curiosity and gentle care. Wolfe felt the trembling of her hands beneath his and smiled darkly.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“I want to know how it would feel to have you inside me.”
“That can’t be. But this…yes…I need your hands, Jessi. I’ve never needed like this.”
Her hands moved and pleasure coursed heavily through Wolfe. She kissed the muscular curve of his thigh, the sleek warmth of his abdomen, the intriguing hollow of his navel.
Eyes glittering, half-closed, Wolfe watched her loving him in the only way he would allow. The hushed silence of the room expanded until it became as taut as the instant before lightning arced between sky and earth.
The clear pleasure Jessica took in Wolfe’s body and her utter lack of fear almost undid him. It took a fierce effort of will for him not to grab her and return the intimate caresses. But he knew if he touched her, he wouldn’t stop until he was buried in her, feeling her ecstasy shivering around him, hurling him into the sun.
Wolfe’s fingers clenched in the e
nds of Jessica’s long hair as he felt her warm mouth caressing his skin. Then he could watch her no longer. He could only close his eyes and fight the violent need that threatened to overpower him. Of all the sensual things he had dreamed about his elf, the possibility of her taking such open, heated pleasure in his body hadn’t been one of them. Never had he been more aroused or felt more his own power as a man.
Then Jessica’s tongue skimmed his blunt arousal. He made the sound of a man in torment. Her head turned swiftly toward him, sending her hair over him in silky fire. As lightly as a sigh, as hot as flame, her hair settled between his thighs. A visible shudder ripped through him.
“Wolfe? Did I hurt you?”
He smiled despite talons of need drawing his body on a rack. “Did I ever make you ache?”
She nodded. The movement sent sensual fire coursing over his erect flesh. He barely suppressed a groan.
“Sweet Jessi, it hurts only when you stop.”
“But how do I touch you now? We are so different.”
“I’ve never asked that from a woman.” Wolfe looked at Jessica with eyes that were dark blue gems burning. “That kind of intimacy is too much to ask of an innocent elf.”
“Is it shameful of me to admit I’d rather be wanton than innocent? I find I’m quite…curious.”
“And I find I’ve never been more aroused. I wonder how much more I can take?” Wolfe drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We’ll learn together.”
“This can’t be new to you.”
He smiled ruefully. “But it is.”
“Your duchesses—”
“Hammer the duchesses,” Wolfe said roughly. “They weren’t mine, nor was I theirs. I was a savage trophy for them. Not one of them gave tinker’s damn for anything but cold-hearted rutting. Not one of them ever gave me half the sweet pleasure you have.”
“I have?” Jessica whispered. “By touching you where you’re most different?”
Wolfe smiled and stroked his thumb over her lips, the only way he would permit himself to touch her.
“That, and earlier, when you went down my body as though I were a warm spring and you were bathing in me.”
“But you are.” Jessica drew her cheek against the hard masculine flesh that defined Wolfe’s hunger. “And I am.”
“Bathing in me?”
“Yes.” She turned her head and caressed him with her other cheek.
“Keep that up,” he said in a thick voice, “and there will be as much fact as metaphor in what you say.”
Jessica paused, then smiled secretly as she understood. “That would be only fair.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Her head moved again, but this time it was her mouth that caressed him rather than her cheek. “Did you not bathe in me?”
Wolfe groaned something in Cheyenne as his whole body clenched.
“You are very hard, my Wolfe.”
The sound he made wasn’t recognizable as a word, which was just as well. He was certain the word would have shocked her.
“You’re very warm,” she whispered, testing his heat with the tip of her tongue.
“You are a tease,” he said in a thick voice.
“Am I? Your blood is running heavily. I can feel it.” Jessica trembled with the answering rush of her own blood. “It beats more fiercely here than in your neck.”
Wolfe didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He had never imagined how violently exciting it might be to experience his body through Jessica’s eyes, her hands, her words.
Then the gentle, curious, incendiary heat of her mouth discovered him. With a murmuring sound of pleasure and surprise, she surrounded him. Wolfe’s fingers clenched deeply in the covers as a wave of unspeakable pleasure exploded through him. He fought to control the wild pulses of his release, but even as he fought he knew he would quickly lose.
Wolfe barely had enough strength to drag Jessica back up his body and bury his tongue in her mouth. Then he tasted himself and her and groaned as though he were being torn apart.
The leap and shudder of his flesh beneath her hand awed Jessica. She felt the spreading, silky heat of Wolfe’s fulfillment and knew that she was touching the beginning of life itself. She returned his kiss fiercely, wishing that life within her.
“I didn’t mean to shock you like that,” he said when he could draw a whole breath again. “When you kissed me so intimately, I all but lost control.”
“You didn’t shock me.”
“Bloody hell I didn’t. You tasted me.”
“Yes,” Jessica whispered. “That was the best of all. You taste like tears, only more silky and mysterious.”
Her words went through Wolfe like dawn through night, transforming and renewing him in the space of a single rushing breath.
“You’re going to be the death of me, elf,” Wolfe said huskily, rolling over until he had Jessica caged between his body and the bed. “But first, I’m going to be the death of you.”
Jessica didn’t understand until she felt Wolfe’s mouth on her breast and his hand sliding down her body to seek the scented petals of the flower that opened only for him. She was already sleek, sultry, hungry, for pleasuring him had aroused her. The first brush of his fingers made her gasp. The second made her cry out. The third sent a silky heat spreading between them.
The fourth sent her to the sun.
16
A LTHOUGH Wolfe’s expression had been rather grim when he came in from outdoors, the sight of his wife spooning chili into a big serving bowl made him pause. The slow, very male smile he gave her as he peeled off his leather work gloves told Jessica that he was remembering what had happened between them in the hushed silence of dawn three days ago—and every night since.
As Wolfe took the big bowl from Jessica, he slid the palms of his hands over the back of her fingers. Because there were other people nearby, he didn’t bend to take her soft mouth in a kiss. But he wanted to, and the catch in her breathing when his palms touched her skin told Wolfe that Jessica wanted the kiss as much as he did.
“How’s the little man doing?” Wolfe asked Willow, turning away from the temptation of Jessica’s mouth.
Willow looked up from the shallow basin where she was carefully bathing the baby, who seemed to be enjoying the warm water and his mother’s touch.
“Ethan Caleb Black is doing wonderfully well,” Willow said, smiling.
“Ethan, huh? You finally decided.”
“It was Caleb’s father’s name.”
“Big shoes for the little one to fill,” Wolfe said. He looked appraisingly at Willow. “Are you sure you should be up and working so soon?”
“Lying in bed is for people who are sick. I’m not.”
Frowning, Jessica looked up from the pan of cornbread that was staying warm near the stove.
“In England, the women stay in confinement for several weeks after giving birth,” Jessica pointed out.
“Figures,” Wolfe said. His voice was rich with disgust for the aristocrats of Great Britain. “The whole lot of them is as useless as teats on a boar hog.”
All Willow said was, “The longer you stay in bed, the weaker you are when you get up.”
“You look tired,” Jessica persisted.
“I’ve been a lot more tired. Ask Caleb.” She picked up Ethan and wrapped his bottom in a soft cotton diaper as she continued talking. “Ethan and I had a nice long nap this morning, didn’t we, button? And after lunch, we’re going to have another one.”
Wolfe shook his head, but it was in admiration rather than disagreement. “And here I thought that Cheyenne women were tough. Caleb must have been standing under a whole sky full of lucky stars the day he found you.”
Jessica bent over the pan of cornbread, rearranging the clean cotton towel so that no warmth could escape. The fussing wasn’t necessary, but it gave her an excuse to hide her face until she was certain that none of the hurt she felt at Wolfe’s comments would show in her expression. Even knowing that he hadn’t meant his words as
a backhanded slap didn’t remove the sting of them.
She had begun to hope that he was accepting their marriage. Since the night when Wolfe had discovered the source of her fear of men, marriage, and childbirth, he had been the affectionate companion of old. He had also been a restrained, generous teacher of the ancient arts of sensuality.
But now Jessica realized Wolfe hadn’t accepted her as his wife. Nor was he likely to do so. His contempt for the aristocracy was as deep in him as his blood.
Jessica had been born into that aristocracy. Wolfe never forgot that, not even when in the grip of a passion for her that made him shake. It was why, after three nights of the most intense sensual explorations, Jessica was still a virgin. She was born of the aristocracy, which made her the kind of woman with whom Wolfe might play sensuous games, but not the kind of woman he thought was fit to be his true mate.
The wind flexed against the house, testing its strength and reminding the men inside of what awaited them after they had eaten. A faint scratching sound came from the windows, particles of ice or grit flung against the glass by the strengthening wind. As one, the men stopped eating and exchanged wary looks.
Without a word, Wolfe stood and went to the back door. Ignoring the ice-tipped wind, he walked away from the house until he had a clear view of the sky around the mountain peaks. The air had an odd sheen to it. The wind was alive, potent, and smelled of winter.
Although it was barely noon, the elemental harmonies of wolf packs on the prowl shivered through the forest.
Motionless, silent, Wolfe stood and absorbed all the subtle messages of sky and earth, wind, and wildlife. When he turned and came back inside, his face was impassive and his eyes were bleak.
Caleb watched Wolfe sit down. “Well?” he asked softly.
Wolfe hesitated, then shrugged. The truth would come on the wind no matter what was said or not said now.
“It’s making up to snow.”
Caleb muttered something Jessica chose not to overhear. Quietly she set down another pan of warm cornbread and a bowl of chili.
“How hard?” Caleb asked.
“It’s going to be a real Hell-bringer.” Wolfe’s voice was very soft, but very certain.
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