“There’s a light switch on your left,” he told her as she went through the doorway, but he didn’t let her reach for it. He pulled her into his arms instead. She could feel him trembling as they stood together in the darkness of the house. The sound of the rain was softer now, muted by the thick adobe walls. “You’re not scared, are you?” he said.
“Yes,” she told him truthfully, her wet body pressed against his.
He reached up to cup her face with his hands, wiping the rain away with his fingers. “So am I.”
He stepped away from her, leading her into another room—the only other room, as far as she could tell. She could see an arched fireplace, one so narrow that the wood had been stacked in it vertically, and a day bed covered with a Chimayo blanket, its bright colors muted in the dimness of the room.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Mac said quietly, and she nodded, following him, trying not to shiver with the anticipation or with the cold. He switched on a small lamp by the front window.
“Come here,” he said, holding out his arms to her, and she went, the warmth bursting and spreading deep in her belly again the moment she touched him. “You’re trembling,” he said, his hands moving slowly over her wet back, sliding to her firm buttocks and back again.
“So are you,” she told him, and she closed her eyes as his mouth covered hers. He moved slowly, his tongue touching hers lightly, then intruding urgently until her lips parted and her arms tightened around his waist. The warmth was spreading, weakening her knees until she thought she might fall. She clung to the back of his shirt as his hand cupped her neck. Her breasts were heavy with desire, her nipples hard and straining against the fabric of her wet knit camisole and her borrowed shirt. His other hand slid downward from her shoulder, finding her breast, squeezing gently as his kiss deepened, his thumb pressing her nipple in a hard, tight circle she felt so intensely that she gave a soft cry of pleasure. Mac’s breathing was shaky and hard as he lifted her off the floor, carrying her and lowering her gently onto the day bed. He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment to remove his boots, then stretched out beside her, his fingers trembling against her damp skin as he freed one button after another on the pink shirt. His eyes looked into hers, and she reached up to touch his lips with her fingertips. Outside, she could hear the wind, the rain on the roof. Mac’s hands were pushing the shirt aside, raising the camisole so he could stroke her breasts in a way that made her shiver and her eyes close.
“Are you cold?” he asked, and she opened her eyes. His mouth was only inches from hers.
“No,” she whispered, staring at him with mute longing, getting lost in the eyes that held hers with such tenderness.
“You are so beautiful, Amelia,” he said.
“Am I?” she murmured, wishing it were true, her eyes closing again as he began his intimate investigation of her body. She reached up to kiss him, but he caught her hand, pressing a kiss into the palm and putting it aside.
“Just let me look at you,” he whispered, kissing her eyelids. “Let me touch you.” His hands, warm and work-rough, moved over her, hesitating to release her belt buckle, taking away the pink shirt, the camisole. He undid the snap on her wet jeans. The air was cold on her thighs as he peeled them away, and again she shivered. She forced herself to lie still at the feel of his callused hands on her body, her breath catching as he stroked her thighs, lingering between them, then moved to her breasts again. His head dipped suddenly to send an inquisitive tongue into her navel, making her stomach muscles contract. He pressed a soft kiss into the thin, silky fabric of her bikini panties. She could feel his breath through them, moist and hot. He pulled the panties away so that there was no barrier between him and the places he wanted to kiss, and her eyes closed again in the exquisite pleasure of having him look at her and touch her. She wanted to hide nothing from him. She felt no shyness. She had never been treated this way, with such reverence and with such barely controlled desire. His hands were shaking but deft and sure, and she was beautiful—because everything he did told her so.
He moved upward, leaving small hungry kisses over her belly and breasts, taking a hardened nipple into his warm mouth, making her back arch at the tendrils of pleasure that came from the flicking of his tongue and the light pressure of his teeth. And when his mouth sought hers again, parting her lips with his insistent, probing tongue, she gave a soft “oh” sound that made him hug her tightly to him. His mouth was wet and salty and delicious from piñon nuts. She couldn’t get enough of the taste of him.
“Oh, God, Amelia,” he said in a long, hard sigh against her ear.
Mac abruptly sat up, yanking at the buttons on his shirt. She sat up with him, moving to curl herself around him, to help him take off his undershirt. She pressed her bare breasts into his back, the memory of her soapy, lavender-scented hands on his shoulders coming immediately to mind. She pressed kiss after kiss into his neck, loving the taste of his skin, loving the clean, outdoor and leather smell of him. Her hands slid around him to stroke his hard-muscled chest, and he reached for her hand, guiding it into the top of his jeans. He gave a low moan as her fingers explored his maleness, soft, inquisitive fingers that marveled at his arousal.
But he caught her hand suddenly, stopping her for a moment.
“I’m … not so beautiful,” he said, his voice husky and low. He reached up to caress her cheek with his strong, workingman’s hand.
“I’m not twenty-six years old,” Amelia said, whispering into his ear, offering him anxiety for anxiety, shortcoming for shortcoming.
Mac softly laughed. “If you were twenty-six years old, Amelia, I’d be in a body cast.”
She laughed with him, but when he turned to her his eyes were bleak and sad. He stood up to remove his jeans, standing so she could see what had happened to him. It was true. He wasn’t so beautiful. His thighs were a mass of scars, and another—or perhaps several others, almost layered—ran along his lower spine. She held out her arms to him, and he came to lie beside her on the day bed again, her fingers reaching downward between them, continuing her gentle appraisal of his manhood. His desire flowed against her fingers, silky and warm, and he groaned against her ear at the pleasure she was giving him.
“You’re my fantasy, Amelia,” he said, suddenly rolling over with her, his strong body looming over hers. She could feel the rough hairiness of his legs between her thighs.
It’s been so long, she thought, her mouth open and hungry against his.
But Daniel had never made her feel like this. Never.
“Mac,” she whispered, moaned, hardly recognizing the sound of her own passion-thickened voice. His warm mouth had found her breasts again, tugging, tasting, making her toss her head in pleasure. His hands continued to move over her, worshiping, teasing, a fleeting warmth between her thighs, again and again, higher and higher and never quite reaching—
She shifted her body to accommodate him, but still he hesitated, his rough fingers still not touching her in the way she craved.
“I’ve waited a long time for you,” Mac said, his voice shaking.
She could hear the noises she was making, passionate, abandoned noises of a woman ready to be taken, a woman driven to the brink by the hands that moved over her, by the fingers that now, now probed the place of her urgent need of him.
“Please,” she whimpered. Then she could feel him between her legs, proud and demanding and male, so warm and so hard.
“Everything you are,” he said urgently, “I want. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” she moaned against his ear. “Yes, Mac!”
He thrust himself inside her, filling her, the thrust deep and hard. Her fingers dug into his back, and she whimpered with his every stroke, clinging to him, drowning in that ancient pleasure, marveling in the joy of giving him the same pleasure in return. He penetrated the very core of her being.
But he kept her on the edge with his rhythm of advance and retreat. She could do nothing but cling to him, the tears pouring from her eyes, wa
nting it to last forever, desperate for it to end. Her hands opened and closed convulsively on his back, her nails scratching him in her relentless need.
“So good,” he whispered into her ear.
Her body arched to meet his.
“You belong to me.”
“Yes,” she told him, meaning it. She belonged to him. Now. Always.
He was losing his maddening control, moaning, his thrusts harder, harder.
Her body strained to meet his, soaring higher and higher, until with one final thrust he pushed them both into oblivion.
Amelia made the long, slow return to reality. Her eyes were closed, and she could hear that the rain had stopped. Mac was lying beside her, his leg over hers, heavy and warm, his breathing a soft blowing against her neck. She tried to move aside to give him more room, but his arms tightened around her. He pulled the blanket up around them.
“Don’t move. Let me hold you.” He lifted his head briefly to look at her, then lowered it, lightly stroking her ribs with his rough fingertips, then pressing a kiss from time to time on her shoulder and just above her breasts.
He gave a long, contented sigh. “I… wanted to make love to you all the time I was in the hospital with Bobby,” he said quietly. “You didn’t know that, did you?” He placed another warm kiss between her breasts. “You were all I could think about from the first time I saw you.” Amelia could feel him smile in the soft light of the room. “Of course, you were a lot more obliging in my imagination.”
“I don’t see how,” Amelia said, laughing softly, a little embarrassed. She pressed a kiss into his hair.
“You were. All I had to do was say your name,” he teased her, “and you were all over me.”
“That must have been interesting—what with the cast.”
“You didn’t give a damn about my cast, Amelia.” He lifted his head to look at her again, and his face went from teasing to gravely serious. “How do you thank a woman for being better than your fantasy?” he whispered, moving up higher so he could give her a long, probing kiss. “I don’t want to go, but I have to get us back to the house.”
“Not yet,” Amelia said, and she found herself looking directly into his eyes. She was filled suddenly with such tenderness for him that she buried her face in his neck, her arms holding him tightly because she thought she might cry. This was only a “brief encounter,” a “romantic interlude,” and any other cliché she could call to mind for her undisguised need of male attention. She was leaving tomorrow, and she wasn’t supposed to be feeling the way she was feeling now. She wasn’t supposed to want to stay with him forever. At best, she was supposed to feel grateful for the ending of her celibacy. And she was supposed to feel guilty because she’d let him “park his boots.” Or, at the very least, she was supposed to feel all weepy because he wasn’t Daniel. Daniel. She’d hardly even thought of Daniel.
“What?” Mac whispered into her ear, his big hands stroking her bare back. “Tell me.”
But she only shook her head, not knowing what to say or how she should behave. She had been a virgin bride, a faithful wife. But for Mac she had had no sexual experience outside her marriage. But, oh, she loved the feel of him. He was all muscle and rough, curling hair, and she didn’t care in the least that he was scarred. She loved lying here with him, and if she was certain of anything at all, it was that she didn’t want to go back to the McDade place just yet. Her mouth sought his in a wanton kiss that made him give a soft moan. There was an incredible physical attraction between them, and if that was all she could have, she still wanted it.
CHAPTER FIVE
AMELIA OPENED HER eyes to a warm hand stroking the top of her head. “Mac?” she said sleepily, reaching up to touch his face. He was dressed again in his still damp clothes. She hadn’t been asleep; she had been listening to him move about the room while she quietly sorted through her alternatives. There was only one thing she needed to keep her self-respect, she decided. She needed to be the one in control. She hadn’t set the boundaries earlier, but she had to do it now. She had to be the one who withdrew, and she had to keep him from knowing how much importance she attached to their making love.
“We’ve got to go, babe,” he said against her ear. “Are you listening to me?”
“I doubt it,” she murmured, and he gave a soft laugh.
“I never thought I’d say this to you, but will you put on your clothes?” He nibbled at her neck.
“They’re your clothes,” she reminded him, reaching up to put her arms around his neck, her heart aching with what she knew she had to do. He suddenly hugged her to him.
“It means a lot to me, Amelia,” he whispered.
“What does?”
“Oh… that you’re half asleep and you haven’t called me Daniel,” he said lightly, using his fingers to rake her hair out of her eyes. He whacked her soundly on her backside. “Now, get up. I have to fly to Gallup tonight.” He moved away to bring her her clothes, and Amelia sat up, huddling in the Chimayo blanket and quietly beginning to dress. She gave entirely too much attention to the details of sliding a button into a buttonhole. She could feel Mac watching.
“You know,” he said, taking a few steps closer, “if you’d say something about now, I could tell where we are here.”
“We aren’t anywhere, are we?” she asked lightly, glancing at him as she finished the last button. She looked away again and began to draw on her jeans, the damp legs clinging.
“No? Well, if we’d been married a couple of years, from that tone of voice I know where I’d be. I’d be sleeping in the damn truck tonight. What’s the matter?”
Amelia made herself look at him; then she smiled, a smile she hoped was convincing. “Nothing is the matter.” Nothing, she told herself, except that she’d fallen into bed with the first man who really appealed to her and she was having a difficult time pretending it was casual. “Did you say this was your mother’s house?”
“Yes, I said it was my mother’s house—and don’t try to sidetrack me with another architectural tour. This was my mother’s house. She left it to me when she died. She was an artist. She came down here when she wanted to paint so Pop and I wouldn’t get on her nerves going in and out and expecting her to cook, okay? Now that brings us back to you. What is it? You having trouble facing yourself in the cold light of day or what?”
“It’s not day,” she said, getting down on the floor to hunt for her shoes.
“Never mind that. Are you sorry we made love?” he asked point-blank, and she could feel how closely he was watching her, the corpsman looking for wounds.
Amelia straightened up, still on her knees on the floor, one running shoe in her hand. “No,” she answered truthfully. “I’m not sorry we made love. It’s just—” She didn’t want to say it. She bent down again to look for her other shoe.
“Just what?” Mac asked.
She didn’t answer.
He came and sat on the side of the bed, making her look up at him. “Just what?” he asked again, staring into her eyes.
“I’m afraid I… took advantage of you,” she said quietly, forcing herself to look into his eyes and to stay out of his arms. She had already had one man in her life leave her. She wasn’t going through that again.
“You took advantage of me?” he repeated, and she could feel him trying to understand.
“Yes,” she went on with an assurance she didn’t feel. “It’s been a long time since I—I haven’t—been with a man in a long time, and I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your willingness to—” She stopped because of the incredulous look on his face.
“Now, wait,” he said, frowning. “Let me see if I can get this straight. I just happened to be handy when you just happened to have an itch—excuse the crudeness—so you just happened to let me scratch it. And that’s all there is to it, right? It was just one of those things. It can’t mean anything because you’re married—no, that’s not it—”
“Mac—” she tried to interrupt.
; “No, wait,” he said, not letting her do it. “It can’t come to anything because of—your war wounds. Or is it because of my war wounds?”
“Mac, why are you doing this?”
“Why? Because the dumb cowboy here thought this happened because you wanted him, that’s why. I didn’t know I was providing a damn public service, for godsake! What are you going to do, Amelia? Whip out a ten-dollar bill and stuff it into the waistband of my underwear?” He gave a short, derisive laugh. “Well, if this is not a hell of a note. No, no—” he said, holding up his hands when she tried to interrupt again. “I get the picture. I’m going to look for my damn hat. Your shoe is over there. I’d appreciate if you’d get it so we can go.”
Mac found his hat. And he said nothing on the ride back. The side trip to the plane to get her luggage made the awkward silence seem to go on forever. The night was starry and cool, and he hesitated for a moment at the plane, finally offering her his hand so she could get down off Willard and retrieve her suitcase. Her fingers were cold across his warm palm, the now familiar roughness making her remember vividly what she had just willed herself to forget. She half-expected him to leave her there as soon as she got down.
“There’s a jacket on the floor behind the front seats,” he said, his voice distant. “Get it, will you?”
She brought back the jacket, holding it up to him.
“You put it on,” he said, taking her suitcase instead. “You’re cold.” He waited patiently, then offered her his free hand again so she could resume her place behind him. She made it on the second try, and she was perfectly aware of the fact that she could have easily walked across the open field to the McDade house. But he didn’t suggest it, and she didn’t make the offer, preferring to be close to him for a little while longer in spite of all the resolutions she’d just made to the contrary.
Such Rough Splendor Page 8
