“How did you stay innocent so long?” he asked.
“I didn’t feel this way with other men. Only you,” Willow said simply. “Even my fiancé. When Steven held my hand or kissed my cheek, it was nice, but it didn’t make my heart run away and my chest so tight I couldn’t breathe.”
“Your fiancé?” Caleb said harshly. “Are you engaged?”
“He died three years ago.”
Visibly, Caleb relaxed. “The war?”
Willow nodded.
“Do you still love him?”
“No. I know now that I never loved him. Not really. Not the way I love—”
Caleb’s quick, fierce kiss shut off Willow’s words. “Out of the water, woman. My good intentions are shrinking by the second.”
“Shrinking? I would have said the opposite,” she muttered beneath her breath.
There was a crack of surprised laughter from Caleb, followed by a single word. “Out!”
He emphasized his command by putting his hand on Willow’s smooth bottom and giving her a boost. Just as his palm fell away, his touch changed to a caress that traced the shadowed curve between her hips.
Breathlessly, Willow scrambled out of the warm water and picked up the cotton blanket she had left on the rocks. She turned around just as Caleb emerged from the pool. Silver rivulets poured from his body, highlighting every texture of his masculinity. The blunt thrust of his arousal was startling.
“Too late to run now,” Caleb said dryly, watching Willow’s eyes widen as she measured him. “We fitted together like a hand in a velvet glove and you loved every bit of it.”
She swallowed, flushed scarlet, and said in a faint voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare at you.”
“You’re still staring.”
“Oh.” Guiltily, she closed her eyes.
Caleb took a step forward, bent, and kissed Willow’s cheek lightly. “Look all you like. I’m just teasing you. You’re so sweet to tease. Like licking honey.” He leaned over, scooped up his razor and his own blanket, and held out his free hand to her. “Come on. I promised to brush your hair dry.”
Her eyes opened. “And you always keep your promises, don’t you?”
“Always. Even the ones I don’t want to.” Caleb’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “Especially those.”
An eye for an eye.
“You don’t have to brush my hair if you don’t want to,” Willow said hesitantly. “I know it’s a lot of trouble getting all the tangles out.”
Caleb smiled and threaded his fingers more deeply between hers. “I love brushing your hair. It’s like brushing sunlight.” He saw her shiver and squeezed her hand. “Come on. It’s warmer in the meadow.”
Ishmael’s head came up the instant they stepped from the cover of the trees out onto the grass. The stallion watched for a few moments before he returned to eating.
“He’s wary for a horse that’s never run wild,” Caleb said.
“That wariness saved my life during the war. He’d smell the soldiers coming and set up a ruckus. Mama and I would run for the forest if she was well enough, or the cellar if she wasn’t.”
Caleb’s hand tightened. He brought Willow’s fingers to his mouth and stroked across them with his mustache.
“I don’t like thinking about you being in danger, being hurt, being scared, being hungry.” He hesitated, baffled by the fierce protectiveness he felt toward Willow. “It unsettles me.”
“Lots of women had a worse time of it than I did. I was lucky. The only soldier who ever found me looked the other way.”
“Maybe he had a sister.”
Something in Caleb’s voice reminded Willow that he, too, had a sister. “Maybe he did. Like you.”
“Rebecca is dead.”
Willow flinched at the barely repressed savagery she sensed beneath Caleb’s words. “I’m sorry.”
“She was seduced and then abandoned by a man. I went out looking for her lover to bring him back to marry her. She died of childbed fever. Her baby girl died a few hours later. I didn’t find out for a month.”
“Dear God,” Willow said. “I’m so sorry, Caleb.”
He looked down into her clear, compassionate eyes and wondered what she would say if he told her that the baby who had died was her niece.
“I swore to kill him,” Caleb said evenly. “When I find him, I will.”
Willow looked at the bleak expression in Caleb’s eyes and had no doubt that he would do just that. She remembered her first impression of Caleb. Dangerous. And her second. An implacable, dark angel of justice.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.
A chill moved over Willow’s skin, roughening it. There was an intensity and a power in Caleb that was almost frightening.
“You’re shivering,” Caleb said, frowning. He wrapped his blanket around Willow’s shoulders, led her across the meadow, and spread the cotton blanket she was carrying. “Lie down here. You’ll be warmer next to the grass where the breeze can’t get to you. I’ll get your brush and comb.”
Caleb left before Willow could tell him that she wasn’t cold, not in the way that he had meant. After a moment, she stretched out on her stomach on the blanket, trying not to think about the sister Caleb had lost and the man he had sworn to kill because of it.
Very soon, Willow realized Caleb had been right about getting warmer out of reach of the breeze. Before he had gone the hundred feet to camp, she pulled off the wool blanket and tossed it aside. The fine cotton and lace of her underwear dried quickly in the direct sun. Within minutes, heat infused her, making her feel languorous. She stretched luxuriantly, smiling at the sheer pleasure of being alive.
“You look like a kitten that’s just discovered cream,” Caleb said.
“That’s what I feel like,” Willow admitted.
She opened her eyes as Caleb knelt beside her. A single glance told her that he was still as naked as the sunlight, still powerful, still potent. When her eyes returned to his, the smile he gave her was both amused and rueful.
“You have a pronounced effect on me,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“Not frightened anymore?”
She shook her head.
“Embarrassed?”
“Well…” But she was unable to deny the blush that crept up her body.
Caleb laughed softly and brushed the back of his fingers over Willow’s flushed cheek. “You’ll get used to me, little one. Just like I’ve gotten used to being naked with you.”
She gave him a puzzled look.
“In some ways,” he admitted, “I’m as new to this kind of play as you are.”
Willow blinked. “You are?”
Caleb hesitated, wondering how to explain something he wasn’t sure he understood himself. He wanted Willow to know this was the first time he had found a woman whose sensuality increased and enhanced his own, each driving the other higher and then higher, teaching and learning with every touch, every cry, every kiss.
“None of the women I’ve known made me want to be buck naked with them in a sunny meadow,” Caleb said finally. “I doubt if any of them would have wanted to be naked with me. Not one of them could make me hard with a look, a word, a casual touch.” He made a baffled sound and added ruefully, “It’s damned unsettling, if you want the truth. You reach places inside me I didn’t know were there.”
“You do the same to me.”
Willow’s husky admission made Caleb want to ravish and cherish her at the same instant. The force of the conflicting urges held him motionless. Letting out his breath in a soundless curse, he picked up the wool blanket and began drying Willow’s hair, working quickly yet gently, touching her in the only way he would permit himself.
Soon Willow’s hair was lying in a rippling, shining fan over her shoulders. Long after the strands were dry, Caleb continued brushing, sifting through her hair, loving the feel of it caressing the sensitive skin between his fingers as he worked.
“You have the mo
st beautiful hair,” Caleb said, finally setting aside the brush.
Willow sighed and stirred, sitting up with a fluid movement, her legs curled to one side. The wild electricity of her hair made it cling to her even as it divided over her breasts and fell to her hips. Caleb stroked a flyaway handful back from her face. She kissed the masculine fingers that were gently tangled in the golden strands.
“Thank you.” She smiled, remembering what he had once said. “In spite of your disdain at the idea, I think you would make a wonderful lady’s maid.”
Caleb’s smile flashed beneath his mustache. “Southern lady. My God, what a surprise you were,” he said huskily.
“Not southern,” Willow said. Then she looked down at the fine lace clinging to her body, clothing whose dampness emphasized rather than concealed her breasts, her waist, the shadowed secrets at the apex of her thighs. “And not a lady.”
“Hush,” Caleb said, putting his fingers across Willow’s mouth. “What happened wasn’t your doing. It was mine. But I can’t feel ashamed of what we did. It was too good for shame or regrets. Even if I could give you back your innocence, I wouldn’t. I’ve never been given a gift half so sweet. Don’t belittle yourself because of it.”
Willow’s smile was as beautiful and haunting as her eyes watching the man she loved, the man who had yet to talk of love to her. Yet Caleb was very gentle with her despite the harshness she knew he was capable of, a dark angel of justice, dangerous, deadly.
But not with her. Whether he ever spoke of love or not, he cherished her.
Willow kissed Caleb’s fingers and admitted to herself that he was right about what they had shared. She should be embarrassed to remember their intimacy, to look at his nakedness, to sense with such clarity her own nudity beneath the flimsy lace. But she wasn’t embarrassed. She had never felt more alive and yet more at peace than she did with Caleb. There was a rightness in being his woman that went to her very soul.
“I wouldn’t take my innocence back,” Willow whispered, kissing the calloused masculine fingers that were pressed against her lips. “I would never find a better man to give it to than you.”
The lines in Caleb’s face tightened as he heard Willow ’s soft words and felt the warmth of her lips whispering kisses against his hand.
“How do you feel?” he asked. “Still cold?”
Willow shook her head. Golden hair rippled and shimmered, falling over his hand like captive sunlight.
“No aches and pains?”
Despite the heightened color in Willow’s cheeks, her slight smile was as old as Eve. “No pains.”
“No aches, either?”
“None that can’t be cured. What about you? Do you ache?”
As Willow spoke, her hand moved beneath a veil of golden hair until she could touch the blunt masculine flesh between Caleb’s thighs. He jerked reflexively at the caress and his breath hissed between his teeth. Startled, Willow snatched back her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Caleb let his breath out, trying to still the violent beating of his heart. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“You—moved.”
“Have you ever been so close to a lightning bolt that you could feel currents racing through you? That’s what it felt like when you touched me. Only it was pleasure racing through me, not pain, and the force of it surprised me.”
Willow’s eyes widened.
Caleb smiled despite the fire still coursing through him. “Go ahead, honey. Explore. You won’t take me by surprise again.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said hesitantly.
“Then you better pet me again, because I want those soft hands on me so much I ache.”
Willow looked from Caleb’s rather fierce smile down the length of his body. He was kneeling beside her, facing her, sitting on his heels, his thighs flexed to take his weight. The long, powerful muscles of his legs stood out in relief. So did the quintessentially male flesh that was so responsive to her touch. She could count his heartbeats without even resting her fingers against him.
Despite their recent intimacy, in many ways Caleb’s body was still a mystery to her. Hesitantly, Willow allowed her hand to settle on his thigh, curious about the elemental differences between male and female. The hair on his legs was thick, black, shiny, hot from the sun. His skin was warm and supple, and the muscle beneath was shockingly hard. His skin was darker than her own, though much lighter than the skin on his chest.
“You work stripped to the waist, don’t you?” Willow asked without looking up.
“Sometimes.”
Caleb’s voice was thickened by desire. He was discovering that being looked at by Willow was almost as arousing as being petted by her. The sensuality, curiosity, and approval in her eyes made him feel as tall as a mountain. And as hard.
“But never all the way naked,” Willow said, noting the fine pale skin sunlight had never touched before now.
“I told you, honey. In some ways this is as new to me as it is to you.”
She smiled. “I like that. I like knowing I’m touching you in ways no one else ever has.”
“You’re barely touching me at all,” Caleb pointed out hungrily, “but you’re right just the same. No one has ever been like you, Willow. You make it all new.”
Smiling, watching Caleb’s face, Willow traced the thick upper muscle of his thigh with her fingertips. She saw the narrowing of his eyes, felt the tightening of his legs, heard the swift intake of his breath as she came closer and closer to the hard reality of his desire. Her fingers tested the thick cushion of hair that surrounded his very different flesh. Hesitantly, then with greater assurance, she stroked the length of him, enjoying the heat and shifting masculine textures. When she reached the blunt tip, she made a surprised, approving sound.
“No wonder you didn’t hurt me. You feel like satin, all warm and sleek and smooth.”
Caleb’s answer was a groan and a wild wave of desire hammering through his veins. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, Willow’s words and the skimming caress of her fingers would have brought him down. He couldn’t prevent the potent response of his body, the silky residue glistening on her fingertips in stark testimony to the uncontrollable passion she called from him.
Willow’s hand stilled.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said huskily. “I didn’t mean to shock you.”
“You didn’t,” she murmured.
“I sure as hell shocked myself,” he said.
Willow glanced up at him, surprised.
“I’m not used to losing control like that,” he said bluntly.
“Oh.”
“I’m not used to this at all.”
“Do you…” She hesitated. “Do you like having me touch you?”
Caleb smiled. “What do you think?”
Willow let her breath out in a rushing sigh. “I think I’ve never touched anything quite so fascinating. You make me shameless, Caleb. And I don’t even care.”
He bent down and kissed her gently. “There’s no need for shame between us. Shame is for people who cheat and steal and destroy. Being together like this is part of creation, and it’s good.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s good. Lock and key. Woman and man. Two halves of a beautiful whole. All my life I’ve known that without really knowing.” Willow smiled at Caleb. “How dull the world would have been if male and female were the same.”
Caleb laughed, then his breath caught as one of Willow’s slender hands glided between his legs, seeking more of the primal differences between male and female. Enjoying her open curiosity, Caleb shifted, allowing her to find what she sought. He was rewarded by a gentle exploration that brought him to the brink of losing control once more. He groaned, trying to stifle the overwhelming pulses of ecstasy. He was only partially successful.
With a soft sound, Willow touched the liquid silk of passion once more.
“How long,” she asked softly, “do you
think it would take you to get used to losing control?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted in a rueful voice, “but I get the feeling you’re planning on finding out.”
“Do you mind?” Willow’s voice was as gentle as her fingers curling around him, exploring and memorizing him with slow movements of her hand even as she cupped him in her palm. “I’m discovering that I like touching you where you’re most a man. I like seeing your eyes narrow and your whole body tighten as you fight against losing control. You’re so strong, Caleb. I love that strength.”
One of Willow’s fingertips skimmed the blunt satin flesh whose smoothness and taut heat fascinated her. A sultry drop formed beneath her touch. She shivered visibly as her own body secretly answered. Her hands moved lovingly, cradling him, testing him, teasing him, admiring him.
Caleb shuddered in response to Willow’s honest sensuality. A lightning stroke of desire surged through him. He heard her quickened breath and felt her fingertips gliding over his hot flesh, enjoying the result of the silky pulse that had escaped his control.
“Do you mind?” she asked again.
“Touch me any way you like. Let me touch you in the same way,” Caleb said, words pouring recklessly from his lips as hungers he had never known existed were called from him by Willow’s hands. “Let me show you everything I ever wanted with a woman. And then let me give you things you can’t even imagine with a man.”
“Yes,” Willow whispered, drawing her nails very lightly down his straining flesh. “As long as I can keep touching you.”
Caleb made a thick sound while her hand moved warmly, pleasuring him, enjoying him with an honesty that aroused him to the point of agony.
“If you keep that up, I’ll lose control,” Caleb said almost roughly. “Is that what you want?”
Willow looked at his tawny eyes, felt his power, sensed the life coursing through the flesh she held so intimately, and realized that she wanted him in just that way. “Is that kind of pleasure…allowed?”
Caleb met Willow’s luminous, smoky glance and knew with a distant sense of shock that he was going to give her what she wanted. Her sensuality burned through his self-control in ways that would have angered him if her honesty hadn’t disarmed him so completely at the same time.
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