Morning Light

by Catherine Anderson

  She leaned the rifle against a rock near the fire. “I’ll be sure to point well away from them.”

  Clint crossed the creek by jumping from one rock to another. Once on the other bank, he found a way up through the sheer crags of rock to crest the rise, and then he followed the sound of bubbling water. He’d walked only a few feet before he found what he was looking for. Loni was in for an after-dinner treat tonight, he thought with a grin. Talk about a romantic setting—this was it.

  His only worry was how on earth he was going to resist making love to her when he brought her up here.

  Chapter Eleven

  Supper was divine. Loni created their rice dish, sipping Irish coffee as she cooked. Clint reclined beside the fire, talking with her while she worked. He was, Loni decided, the handsomest man she’d ever seen. His skin was the color of caramel toffee, her favorite treat. His thick, wavy hair shone in the fading light like polished jet. His features were purely masculine, reminding her of chiseled granite. She loved his sharp nose, his firm yet mobile mouth, and the deep cleft in his square chin. Freshly shaven and wearing a clean blue chambray shirt, he looked almost good enough to eat, and when he flashed her one of those glamorous grins, she was tempted to have a taste.

  She settled for feasting on the rice-and-chicken concoction, which was amazingly good. After they were both replete, they enjoyed another Irish coffee and then went to the creek to wash the cooking utensils. Loni felt just a little tipsy, which made her laugh a lot. At one point Clint grabbed her arm, afraid she might topple into the water.

  “Remind me to mix your coffees a little lighter tomorrow night. I think you’re just a wee bit drunk.”

  She laughed as if that were the funniest joke she’d ever heard, realized it wasn’t really that humorous, and quickly sobered. “Hmm, I guess maybe so.”

  When the gear was all repacked for the next morning’s ride, Clint stoked the fire, then fished some towels from a pack and slung them over his shoulder. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of those wolves since last night. I watched for tracks today, too. I think it’s safe for us to leave the horses for a while. We’ll still be within hearing distance.”

  Loni watched him tuck a bar of bath soap into his shirt pocket. “Where are we going?”

  He winked at her. “Go grab a full change of clothes. I found a hot spring.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I’m dead serious. You’re about to enjoy sitting in one of God’s Jacuzzis.”

  When Loni returned with her clothing and a disposable razor that Clint had either overlooked or deliberately left in her cosmetic bag, he was waiting with his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. “For just-in-case. The pool isn’t far from the top of that rock.” He indicated the spot with an inclination of his dark head. “If there’s trouble, I’ll hear the horses acting up and be able to get a clear shot from up there to protect them.”

  “Do you think the wolves will come back?”

  “I doubt it. We gave them enough food to hold them for a while. But when it comes to the safety of my horses, I leave nothing to chance. You want to grab the flashlight? It’ll be full dark by the time we return.”

  Loni almost tumbled into the creek trying to get across. Clint, following behind, caught her arm to help steady her. “You’re definitely a little drunk, Loni mine. Don’t fall in the drink, and whatever you do, don’t drop the flashlight.”

  She was laughing helplessly by the time she made it to the other side. When Clint joined her, he bent his dark head and stole a quick kiss. Then he straightened, his gaze solemn and searching. “You are so beautiful. I keep thinking I must be dreaming.”

  “I hope not. If you are I must be, too, and if that’s the case I don’t want to wake up.”

  When Loni saw the pool, she was mildly disappointed. Russet-colored deposits discolored the rocks, a sulfuric smell rose with the steam, and the water looked murky. “I think it needs a good chemical shock.”

  “No way,” Clint said with mock horror as he placed his change of clothes and the rifle on a nearby boulder. “It’s supposed to look that way. And when you get out your skin will feel like you just spent a week at a ritzy spa. The minerals are fabulous.”

  Setting the clothes she’d brought beside his, Loni went to the edge of the pool and bent to test the temperature. “Oh, my stars, it is like a Jacuzzi. There are even rocks to sit on. How lovely!”

  “Are you gonna admire it all night or get in?”

  It suddenly occurred to her that bathing in the pool would require that she remove her clothing. While she had enjoyed fantasizing about having wild, passionate sex with Clint, when it came down to reality, she’d never been naked in front of a man.

  “How are we going to do this?” she asked.

  “I’ll keep my boxers on, and you can wear your panties and T-shirt. We can hang everything by the fire tonight so it’ll be dry by morning.”

  Clint turned his back to her, she followed his lead, and they began to undress. Loni heard one of his boots plop on the rocks. One of hers soon made a similar sound. Before she knew it, she was down to her panties, her bra, and the T-shirt. Getting her bra off without removing her top proved to be tricky, but she managed by tugging the straps down each arm, and then pulling her hands through the loops.

  “You decent?” he asked.

  “Sort of.”

  They turned to face each other again. Loni took one look at him and almost swallowed her tongue. She’d expected his torso to be white from lack of exposure, but his chest and arms were nearly as brown as his face. A mat of black hair covered his bulging pectorals, then tapered to a dark line that disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts.

  “You have an all-over tan.”

  “I work without my shirt sometimes.”

  “But your legs are brown, too.”

  He glanced down. “Sort of, I guess. That’s just the color of my regular skin.”

  His regular skin was gorgeous. He had sculpted thighs furred with silky black hair. Loni even thought his feet were attractive. His anklebones were far sturdier than hers, big and sort of squared. He had nice toes, too. She wished she could slip him a Mickey and study every inch of him without his knowing. Unfortunately he was very much awake—and staring back, which made her skin feel itchy all over. Did he think her thighs were too big, her knees too knobby? And, oh, how she hoped her boobs didn’t look droopy without a bra. The T-shirt was old, limp, and did little to hide her imperfections.

  “I feel like a dumpling.”

  His dark gaze traveled slowly over her. “You’re the most gorgeous dumpling I’ve ever seen.”

  “And white. I’m so white. I’d die for skin like yours.”

  “I love your skin,” he protested. “Opposites attract, remember. If you were brown like me, I might not think you were so damned pretty.”

  He climbed into the pool first, gimping on the rocks because the soles of his feet were tender. Watching him, Loni concluded that she’d never seen so many muscles. Every inch of his body was toned, and as far as she could tell, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.

  “Do you work out?” She tried to pass it off as a casual question, but her voice had an odd, twanging sound.

  “Every day.” His dark eyes twinkled mischievously up at her. “I work out in the open stalls. I work out in the paddocks. I work out in the stable. I work out in the hay shed. I work out—”

  “Enough!” she cried with a laugh. “I get the picture.”

  He held a hand up to her. “Come on in. The water’s great.” As she started to step in, he added, “Ah, honey, the insides of your legs are still bruised.”

  In midstep Loni tried to splay a hand over the apex of her thighs to hide the crotch of her panties, lost her balance, and fell in on top of him. To Clint’s credit he did manage to catch her, but the full impact of her weight, hitting him squarely on the chest, propelled him backward. The next instant Loni was in hot water over her head. She came to the surface sp
uttering and coughing with hanks of hair plastered over her eyes.

  “Are you all right? Damn, girl, what’re you trying to do, drown me?”

  Loni batted the water with her palms, unable to see. “Yuck. It tastes awful.”

  He caught her to him with an arm that felt as hot and hard against her back as molten steel. She sucked in a quick breath. Using his free hand, he pushed the hair from her face. Loni blinked up at him, her eyes burning from the water. His black eyelashes were spiked with wetness, the tips shiny with droplets.

  “You are so sweet,” he said huskily. “I’ve never in my life felt like this about anyone. Have you?”

  “No, not ever.” Her feet didn’t touch the bottom. She clung to his thick shoulders, loving the feel of his bare skin under her hands. “For the last several years I convinced myself that my teenage romantic fantasies about you were foolish. Now I’m wondering if I wasn’t a lot smarter as a kid than as an adult.”

  He turned in the water with her, his hard legs grazing hers, the coarse hair on his thighs tickling her sensitive skin. “You never got around to telling me about those dreams.”

  Loni trailed a fingertip along his jaw. Her throat felt suddenly tight. “I’d just see you,” she whispered. “Before I ever actually met you, I knew exactly how your mouth would tip into a smile, how your eyes would twinkle with laughter, how you’d scowl when you were thinking. And way deep in my heart I always knew, always, that I would love you. It was only when I got older that the possibility began to frighten me.”

  He caught her fingertip between his lips, the hot, wet sweep of his tongue over her flesh making her heart leap. Releasing her, he asked, “How could the possibility of feeling like this frighten you?”

  “I was afraid of caring—of needing. I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable like that, only to have you walk away. Not many men would take me on, Clint. Even if I learn to control my gift to some degree, my life will never be normal, and if you stay with me yours won’t be either.”

  “Honey, I’m not going to walk away. Ever. And what’s normal? If I could change you—if I could take your gift away from you—I wouldn’t. It’s part of who you are, and whether you believe it or not, it’s all the little things, plus the big ones, that make each of us so special. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you.”

  Her throat went tight. “You’re sure?”

  “I’ve never been so certain of anything. I love your sense of humor. I love the way you laugh. I’ve been searching for you—for this—all my life. Every time I met someone new, I’d think, ‘Maybe this time,’ but it never happened.”

  Loni relaxed slightly. “Maybe God was saving you for me.”

  “No maybe to it. He meant for us to be together. Don’t you feel that?”

  She did, but the tightness in her throat wouldn’t allow her to speak. So she nodded instead.

  He smiled, his eyes shimmering yet aching with emotion—and when she searched his gaze, she felt loved. It was the most incredible feeling, a certainty within her that he would always be there for her, that his affection for her would be as strong and unbendable as he was himself.

  His mouth was only inches from hers, and her gaze dropped. She felt his breath hitch in his chest. His eyes went from coffee brown to almost black.

  “We can’t do this,” he said thickly.

  Swallowing hard to regain her voice, she said, “You’re right. It’s not as if we’re a couple of irresponsible teenagers with no thought for anything but our raging hormones.”

  “We need to stay focused on what really matters—our future.”

  “Absolutely. We need to go sit on the rocks.”

  “You at one end of the pool, me at the other.”

  She nodded. “We’re adults. We’ve agreed that it’s best to wait until we’re married. We just have to be strong and stick to our guns.”

  He moved through the water, every push of his hard thighs against hers a sensual torture, until her feet touched the rocks. Then he released her. Unable to break eye contact with him, she backed away, her feet finding purchase on the ledge of stone behind her. As she rose from the water the T-shirt streamed water, the drenched cotton sticking to her skin. She tugged at the knit, but the moment she turned loose it sucked close again.

  Clint’s gaze dropped. His jaw muscle ticked. And then, with lightning-quick speed, he seized hold of her wrist, jerked her back into the water, and said, “Damn!”

  That was all he said, just that one word, and the next instant he was kissing her. It was everything Loni had ever dreamed it might be. His mouth was hungry and demanding, his hard hands urgent yet gentle. She gave herself up to the kiss, letting her body melt against his. The deepening dusk and steam enveloped them, creating a moist, sultry cocoon that separated them from the world around them.

  With that first contact of lips and tongues Loni forgot everything but the feelings exploding within her. He was twilight and mist, shadows and heat, shivers of delight and mindless desire, a man who made love as he did all else, with practiced exactitude and elemental strength, and with a blatant directness that might have embarrassed her had she been with anyone else.

  Clasped so closely to his chest, she found no room for shame to come between them—no room for second thoughts. She surrendered to him as a blade of new grass does to the wind, bending under his strength, vulnerable to his every caress. Dimly, she felt him tugging the T-shirt off over her head, and then his mouth was at her breast, surrounding one nipple with heat, a moist, drawing heat. With one stroke of his tongue he laid bare every nerve ending in the rigid bud of flesh that crested her nipple. Then his teeth came into play, lightly grazing, gently pulling. Loni made fists in his black hair, let her head fall back, and cried out at the shocks of sensation.

  “You are so sweet, so wonderfully, impossibly sweet,” he whispered.

  When he drew her legs around his hips, she locked her ankles at his lower back, riding high above the water now, her breasts his for the taking. He took until she thought she would certainly go mad with the longing that was building to a crescendo within her.

  In a dizzying blur of movement, she found herself perched at the edge of the pool with him trailing soft kisses over the bruises on her inner thighs. She didn’t know where her panties had gone, only that she was no longer wearing them. When she realized where he meant to kiss her next, she was appalled. This didn’t happen in the movies, not that she’d ever seen, anyway. She planted a staying hand at the top of his head.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Don’t think,” he whispered against her skin, the caress of his lips sending jolts of delight streaming through her. “Trust me, sweetheart. Just trust me.”

  She trusted him. She did. She’d followed him into the wilderness, trusting him with her very life. It was just—“Oh, my. I don’t think…Clint? What’re you…I just…” And suddenly there were no words. A shriek bubbled up at the base of her throat, her body tensed, and sensation exploded through every cell of her body.

  Her muscles were jerking as if she’d just had a seizure when he joined her on the rocks. She splayed a hand on his chest to measure every hard beat of his heart.

  “I can’t,” he whispered roughly, burying his face against the slope of her neck. “Not here, sweetheart. Not on the damned rocks.”

  She heard the tortured strain in his voice, felt it in his shuddering torso. Vaguely she registered that he was afraid of hurting her. Hot tears stung her eyes. His willingness to deny himself in order to protect her touched her deeply. But she wasn’t made of fragile glass. The timeworn stone beneath her was smooth and warm. Catching his dark head in her hands, she angled her face to kiss him, conveying to him in a language as old as womankind that she wanted him, right there, right now.

  He groaned, murmuring against her lips, the words disjointed, his thoughts tumbling forth in a confused rush. “You’re a virgin…Not on the rocks…Too sweet, too precious to me. I can’t.”

  Loni deepen
ed the kiss, invading his mouth with thrusts of her tongue just as she yearned for his throbbing manhood to invade her body. She felt no fear, only a sense of absolute rightness. She wanted, needed to feel him inside of her, yearned to be one with this man, her dream cowboy. She’d been waiting for this moment all her life.

  When he rose above her, a blur of bronze in the deepening twilight, she smiled. He divested himself of the boxers, returned to her with a quaver of breath, and gathered her back into his arms, the swift tattoo of his heart vibrating against her breast, bare skin against bare skin, his muscular body slick with water and sweat. Breathless, they looked into each other’s eyes, once again communicating without words. His gaze clouded with tenderness. Gently he nudged at her passage with the head of his shaft. She opened herself to him, her hands clenched over his shoulders.

  “I’m not afraid,” she assured him.

  “I am,” he confessed, his body trembling. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her gaze locked on his, Loni lifted her hips to impale herself. The pain was sharp, a tearing sensation deep within her. She clenched her teeth against it, straining upward, until he finally cursed under his breath, drew her close, and broke through the barrier with one smooth thrust. She gasped and dug her nails into his skin, her body arching against the brief flare of discomfort. But then, as quickly as it came, it began to abate to a slight burning sensation.

  Clint held perfectly still, watching her face, his breath coming in sharp, uneven rasps. Knowing that he held himself in check out of concern for her, Loni dredged up a tremulous smile, encouraging him to move slightly. The molten friction set off explosions of delight within her.

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

  The words seemed to release him. White teeth clenched in a grimace of restrained passion, he withdrew and then plunged deep, magnifying the feelings within her. A glorious, white-hot tingling spread through her.

  “Oh, yes…”

  With jarring force he set the pace, and she rocked her hips to his rhythm, sobbing as renewed need mounted inside her. Higher. Higher. He pushed her ever upward toward a zenith of pleasure. Clint. His name resounded in her mind like a song. Clint. And then she reached the crest, spinning off into a dizzying darkness sparkling with fragments of brightness. It was like plunging off a cliff, only she wasn’t afraid because his arms were around her. On the descent, she felt his body snap taut, his thrusts quickening to a jarring intensity, and then he jerked and froze, his body shuddering with release. A tingling heat pulsed into her.