Another tiny convulsion swept over her. Her heat rippled around him again, tugging at him. He fought against his own need but it was too late, control slipping away, ecstasy claiming him as completely as it had claimed her. With a low cry he arched into her until they couldn’t be any closer. Then he gave himself to her and to the deep completion he had found only in her.
For a timeless moment they burned together, giving each other a shimmering pleasure that neither had ever known, before.
Chapter Fourteen
Slowly, slowly, Shelley came back to awareness of the late-afternoon sun slanting through the bedroom. The light turned Cain’s body into a golden sculpture so perfect she couldn’t help tasting him to see if he was real.
Cradled in his arms, she smoothed her lips over the resilient muscles of his shoulder and chest. Smiling lazily, she savored the memories that licked over her like another kind of sunlight. She decided it was fitting that the man next to her was bathed in radiance, a god cast in gold, for no mere mortal could have shown her that paradise was a place of ecstatic fire.
His stomach growled beneath her cheek. If he was a god, he was a hungry one.
She laughed softly and nibbled on his flat belly.
“Could I interest you in some ham sandwiches and fresh lemonade?” she asked.
“Who do I have to kill?”
“No one. I slaughtered the lemons myself while you were in the shower.”
She slid a bit farther down his body, closing her teeth on the skin over his stomach, savoring the taste of him. He ran his hard thumb down the length of her backbone to the generous crease below her waist.
“Mink,” he said huskily. “Soft and wild.”
His body tightened in sensual reflex as her mouth drifted even lower, where he was now fully naked.
“But no longer shy,” he said on a swiftly indrawn breath.
She turned her head quickly, looking up at him. He was right. She felt no shyness with him, simply a rightness that was like homecoming, a feeling of being wholly alive.
The sudden movement of her head sent her hair drifting over him, covering him like a loincloth made of silk. His breath caught in a husky groan as the cool, soft strands rubbed over him and slid caressingly between his thighs. Heat and heaviness shot into his veins, making him stir beneath the silky veil of her hair.
“Should I be shy?” she asked, resting her cheek on his abdomen. “Is that what you want?”
“What I want would shock you.”
“Tell me,” she said quickly. “I mean it. You gave me so much. Let me give you everything you want.”
He laughed gently. His fingertips caressed the dark arch of her eyebrow, the hollow beneath her cheekbone, the soft curve of her lips.
“Cain?”
“You gave me everything I wanted and then taught me how to want more.”
“More?”
“Then you gave me that, too. Right now, you could skin me with a dull knife and I’d thank you every inch of the way.”
He saw the puzzlement in her hazel eyes, the frown drawing together her eyebrows.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You really don’t understand, do you?”
There was no mockery in his voice, only wonder that someone so naturally sensual could be so innocent.
“But that shouldn’t surprise me,” he said. “You haven’t slept with enough men to know the difference between sexual release and the kind of mutual pleasure we just had.”
He traced the line of her mouth again, loving its softness and promise of heat.
“I didn’t believe that kind of pleasure existed,” he said simply. “Until you.”
Her tongue touched his fingertip briefly, then vanished. The caress was like the moment when she had licked a water drop from his chest, a touch that was violently arousing simply because it was spontaneous.
He eased his fingers around to the back of her head, kneading her scalp. His breath hesitated when she slid her cheek from his abdomen to the musky, thick hair just below. The movement sent her own much-softer hair sliding over him again. His body hardened even more, magnifying the beat of his heart with each second.
“What about you?” he asked.
She made a humming, purring sound that almost tickled against his body. Almost, but not quite. The difference was pure fire.
“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you?” he asked.
The soft breath of her laughter spread over his ultrasensitive skin.
“I almost fainted, but you didn’t hurt me. I didn’t know a man and woman . . .
Her voice trailed off as she discovered the intriguing changes taking place in him again. Her tongue flicked out.
His breath came in hard.
“I’ve just discovered the problem with that kind of pleasure,” he said. “It satisfies me all the way to my soul.”
Delight swept through Shelley. She loved knowing that she could both arouse and satisfy Cain, a man of laughter and intelligence and strength, a man whose male sensuality and hunger spoke to her own elemental feminine core.
“Is that a problem?” she asked, tasting him again.
“Knowing how good it’s going to be makes me want to bury myself in you all over again, and then again and again.”
“Yes.” She dragged her hair slowly over him, tasting him, loving him. “Again and again. I want to . . .”
She froze as she heard her own thoughts. I want to possess Cain. I want to keep him locked within my body so that no other woman could ever take him from me.
He saw the darkness expanding in her eyes and wondered what was wrong.
“Mink?”
She looked at him strangely, as though she were suddenly afraid of him.
“What is it? Did I hurt you after all?” he asked. “We don’t have to make love again now, if that’s worrying you. Just being like this with you is more pleasure than I ever expected to have from a woman.”
Slowly she shook her head.
“Your hair,” he said. His voice broke. “Do that again. It’s like a cool kind of fire wrapping around me.”
Another wave of possessiveness swept through Shelley. She couldn’t bear to think of him going from bed to bed like her ex-husband, making sweet, sensual demands on other women. And answering their demands in turn.
“Shelley?”
Cain’s voice was as gentle as the fingers stroking her cheek. She took a ragged breath and forced herself to relax.
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“Are you sure? When you felt me getting hard again, you looked frightened.”
“It’s not that. I just realized—” Her voice broke.
The newness of her feelings overwhelmed her, shaking her. She couldn’t think clearly enough to be tactful or to duck his questions. All she could think of was the truth she had just discovered.
“I don’t want you to be with other women,” she said starkly. “It was bad enough with my husband. With you, it would . . .”
She stopped talking, closed her eyes, and concentrated on trying to control her emotions.
“Shelley.”
After a moment she looked at him. His eyes were a silver blaze of desire.
“You weren’t listening very well a moment ago, were you?” he asked quietly. “I’ve never known this kind of pleasure with another woman. I never will. It’s you, mink, not me.”
“But I’m not like this with other men.”
“Then I guess we’re stuck with each other.”
His smile was both gentle and fierce, like his eyes, like his fingers caressing the nape of her neck. He pulled her up his body and kissed her until she forgot her fear of losing him. Her arms went around his neck as she met and matched his hungry kiss.
Finally, tenderly, they released each other, oddly soothed by the knowledge of how easily each could arouse the other. She buried her face against his neck, breathing in the warm male scent of him. After a moment she began to laugh softly.
“Your
stomach is growling again.”
“There are two parts of a man’s body that he doesn’t have a hell of a lot of control over. His stomach is the other one.”
“I’ve got just the thing.”
“You certainly do.”
His hand smoothed down her body until her breath caught and her lips parted in surprise. She hadn’t realized she was still so sensitive.
“How about sharing it with me?” he whispered.
Laughing, she nipped his shoulder and slid out of bed. The sandwiches were where she had left them, on the dresser. She picked up the tray and started across the room. When she looked at the bed, her steps slowed.
Cain was watching her as though he had never seen a woman before that moment. His glance went from her tumbled hair to her toenails, then back to the feminine curves between.
Heat shimmered through her in a tingling wave. Suddenly she was very aware of herself.
Completely aware.
Her mouth went dry. She felt as if she were looking at her own body through his eyes, seeing for the first time the ripe invitation of her nipples, the beckoning curve of waist and hips, the dark hair gleaming at the apex of her thighs, the hot inner softness that so perfectly matched his body.
“Shy again?” he asked huskily.
“I—not really. I’ve just never seen myself through a man’s eyes before.”
“Then you finally know how sexy you are.”
“To you,” she whispered. “Yes.”
She started toward the bed once more, feeling strangely light, as though a weight had been taken from her. She had always believed in herself as a person, but this was the first time she had been confident of herself as a woman.
When she bent over to set the tray on a bedside table, he caressed her lazily. Long fingers stroked her legs and the smooth skin of her inner thighs. Slowly, inevitably, his hand moved higher, until finally his fingertips rubbed over the soft, sultry flesh he longed to taste. Smiling, he watched her shiver at his slow penetration. His thumb sought and found the sensitive knot that was still flushed and sleek with passion.
A burst of heat and golden weakness shot through her, making her sway slightly. She started to say something, but the words were lost in a gasp as his thumb moved again, sending lightning through her.
He felt the sensual tensing of her body as vividly as she did.
“Cain? I—”
Words died as she melted over his hand.
“I love feeling your response,” he said.
“We just—your lunch—”
She gave up and braced herself against the bedside table while he caressed her with a slow sensuality that consumed her.
“Don’t worry, mink. I’m not going to make a meal out of you.”
He leaned over and nibbled on her thigh.
“Dessert, now,” he said thickly, “is an entirely different matter. Would you be my dessert, Shelley Wilde?”
When she answered, her voice was throaty, unrecognizable. Eyes half closed, she was looking at Cain’s sun-streaked hair feathering across her thigh.
“I’ve never been dessert,” she said. “What’s it like?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to make dessert of a woman. It seems we’re destined for a long list of mutual firsts.”
His mustache smoothed against her skin. His tongue flicked out, almost tasting her. Then he turned his head away from her too-tempting warmth and bit her thigh with measured force. When he felt her shudder and sway against him, he cursed quietly and released her.
“Wildfire,” he said in a low voice.
He looked from the fine trembling of his hands to the sudden, heavy urgency of his body. He knew that even if he took Shelley now, he would want her again and again. There was no end to his need of her, and no beginning. He had always needed her.
He always would.
“My God,” he said, disbelief and passion roughening his voice. “Do you know how much I want you?”
Shelley sank down onto the floor and slumped against the bed. She took a long, ragged breath and fought for control of the female body that kept astonishing her with its reckless passion.
“I can see the headlines now,” she said. “ ‘Man and Woman Starve to Death in Bed.’ ”
He lay back and laughed despite his insistent sexual hunger for her.
She took another long breath and began to laugh with him, releasing them from the tension that had wrapped hot, silken coils around her.
And him.
The certainty of her ability to arouse him was like wine heating her blood. It was all she could do not to test the boundaries of her newfound sensual powers. The only reason she didn’t was the memory of how exhausted he had looked before he showered. Obviously he had gone short on sleep as well as on food and baths while he was in the Yukon.
When Cain’s hand appeared over the edge of the bed, blindly seeking her, she grabbed a sandwich and plopped it down against his palm.
“Here,” she said. “I refuse to be a three-day wonder for the Enquirer.”
“Sounds like fun to me.”
“Eat.”
“Are you telling me I’m going to need my strength?”
“Yes!”
Hand and sandwich disappeared. Sounds of quiet munching drifted down to her. She rested her forehead against her knees and tried to think of anything but his utterly male body stretched out naked on the rumpled sheets.
She sensed a movement above her head and looked up in time to see another sandwich disappear off the tray. Her own stomach entered a loud complaint.
The hand reappeared, waving food under her nose. The sandwich was already half eaten.
“You called?” he asked.
She grabbed his hand and sank her teeth into the sandwich, just missing his fingers.
“Come up and eat with me, mink.”
“Can I trust you?”
“I doubt it. Want to find out?”
Shelley rose to her knees and peered over the edge of the mattress.
All six feet three inches of Cain was sprawled at ease against the lemon-yellow sheets. He was propped up on his elbow, quickly reducing the sandwich to a memory. The color of his body hair ranged from streaks of spun gold where the sun had touched him to very dark where it hadn’t.
Yet it was what lay beneath the symmetry of flesh and bone that appealed so strongly to her. The depth of her attraction to him increased with every bit of laughter he shared with her, his generous sensuality, his kindness to Billy, even his icy anger at JoLynn’s cruelty. There was an essential goodness in Cain, a clean inner strength. It was more compelling to her senses than any arrangement of male skin and bone and muscle would ever be.
As she watched him, emotions condensed within her, filling spaces she had never known were empty, filling her until she thought she would overflow with tears.
“It isn’t fair,” she said.
“I offered to share.”
“Not the sandwich.”
“Then what?”
“You. Men aren’t supposed to be beautiful.”
He tossed the last bite of sandwich back on the tray and turned to look at her. The color of his eyes went from blue-gray to silver as he read the simple truth in her expression.
To Shelley, he was beautiful.
The uneven smile he gave her made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
How could I give so much of myself to him so quickly?
There was no answer except the truth she already knew: she had given Cain much more than her body. Too much.
She kissed the callused fingertip that was touching her as though she were a dream come true.
“I’m not beautiful, mink. Hell, as you pointed out when we first met, I’m not even handsome.”
“I was wrong.”
Smiling, he stroked her cheek and shook his head.
To keep from reaching for him, she crossed her arms on the mattress and rested her chin on them. She looked him over with the same at
tention she brought to judging a piece of art.
“Someone like Brian or JoLynn might have more surface prettiness,” she said. “But you can’t see into them. They’re . . . muddy.”
“Like your ex?”
“And yours. But you aren’t muddy. You’re clean and strong all the way to your soul. That’s what beauty really is. The rest is just distraction.”
“Then you’re the most beautiful woman ever born.”
He lifted her onto the bed and cradled her against his body. There was no hungry passion in his embrace. He simply held her, needing to feel her warmth, the stir of her breath against his neck, the feminine strength of her arms holding him in return.
His hands moved over her without sensual demand. The feel of her reassured him that she was real rather than a dream born out of his own loneliness, a loneliness that had been part of him for so long that he didn’t even think about it until it was gone.
He wasn’t lonely any longer.
The realization went through him like a shock wave, changing everything in its wake.
Shelley made an odd sound and pushed slightly away.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I wasn’t about to ravish you again.”
“How disappointing.”
His chest moved in silent laughter.
“Not that I blame you,” she added. “Look what I did.”
Very gently she touched his chest. Beneath the cushion of hair was a bruise.
“Not likely, mink. You’d have to take a hammer to me to leave a dent like that.”
“Then what was it?”
“Like I said, a hammer.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wish.”
The thought of anything hurting him went into her like a knife. “What happened?”
“A slight difference of opinion.”
“Over what?”
“The usual. Whiskey and a town bike.”
“A bicycle?”
“No. A woman. The kind anyone can ride.”
Shelley winced. “Did you see a doctor?”
“No point.”
“Why?”
He stroked her hair, trying to soothe the tension he felt vibrating through her. When that didn’t work, he pulled her head toward his mouth and kissed her lips.
“It’s no big deal,” he said.
“Then why won’t you talk about it?”
Where the Heart Is Page 18
