It was just a few steps to Joy’s bedroom. He set her on the narrow bed and looked at her.
Simply looked at her.
Her body was smooth and creamy against the textured mauve of the bedspread. Desire flushed her skin, darkened her eyes, pulsed through her softness.
He saw it, all of it, and he wanted even more.
“Do you remember the first time we made love?” he asked, running his fingertips from her lips to the peak of her breasts.
“Yes,” she said tightly, twisting against him.
Neither one of them knew whether she’d answered his question or had asked for a more satisfying caress than his fingertips teasing her nipples into aching life.
“I remember it,” he said. “Awake. Asleep. Dying. It doesn’t matter. I remember. Do you know what that kind of remembering does to a man?” His voice was soft, hot, like his tongue tracing her lips.
“N-no,” she said raggedly, watching him with eyes that were almost black.
“I’ll show you. So when I’m shaking with memories I’ll know that you’ll be shaking, too. You’ll remember me, Joy. Always.”
She saw the certainty in his eyes and would have been afraid, but her body was already reaching for him, hunger stabbing through her with each speeding heartbeat.
He came down on the bed beside her, not touching her, memorizing her with a hungry glance that went from her honey-colored hair to the trim nails of her feet. She trembled as though he had stroked her.
Then his shoulders blocked out the room as he bent over her, kissing her temples, tongue tracing the spiral of her ear, thrusting languidly into the sensitive opening. Against the chill of the water drying on her skin, his textured heat was exquisite.
She turned toward him, wanting him, needing to feel the hard evidence of his desire between her hands, in her body.
He laughed and evaded her by lifting her in his arms.
“No, sweet Joy,” he said, turning her and placing her on her stomach, smiling down at her. “That’s no way to make it last forever.”
“Gabe—I want you.”
“And I want you. Now it’s your turn to listen to me.”
He ran the ball of his thumb all the way down her spine in a slow caress that didn’t end until he had curved down the shadowed cleft to find the incredible softness concealed inside her. He listened to the ragged intake of her breath and smiled again, a smile as slow and sensual as his thumb tracing her hidden flesh.
“I’m going to explore you,” he said as he kissed her shoulder, her spine, the delicate inward curve of her waist. “I’m going to know each texture, each creamy curve, each beautiful peak and hidden valley.”
As he spoke, his hand moved slowly between her legs, spreading a sweet fire that made Joy want to roll onto her back and pull him into her arms, into her body. But when she tried, he just laughed deep in his throat and moved smoothly over her, covering her, pinning her in place with her arms stretched above her head and his fingers interlaced with hers. The roughness of his hair caressed her back and the heat of him lay snugly between the shadow crease of her legs.
“Gabe,” she said. “I . . .”
Her body writhed as she moved helplessly against his exciting weight, wanting him desperately yet not able to touch him.
Nor was he touching her. Not really. Not the way she wanted to be touched. Her breasts ached for his hands, his mouth. She cried out her need to be filled by him.
He bit her nape with exquisite care.
“It’s like being caught in Small Favors again, isn’t it?” he asked huskily, biting her repeatedly, delicately. “You can’t touch me the way you want to, yet we’re close.” His hips rocked against her, dragging his erection over her sultry flesh. “So close.”
“No,” she said raggedly. “This is worse than Small Favors. At least in the tunnel I could feel you against my breasts, my—”
Her words were lost in a gasp as he swiftly turned her over. Then he pinned her again in exactly the same way, settling over her.
“Better?” he asked, rubbing his body over hers, letting her feel him, feeling her softness in return.
The long caress of his body swept through her, making her tremble. She felt the heat raging through her own flesh and wondered if he could feel it too.
“I ache,” she said. “For you.”
He smiled darkly and rubbed over her again, teasing her with every look, every breath, the hot length of his penis pressed between their bodies.
Her eyes half closed and she moved helplessly beneath him, wanting him, his name coming as a moan from her flushed lips.
He laughed and teased both of them some more.
She shifted suddenly beneath him, opening her legs, trying to force more than the exquisite torment of being so close and yet so far away from the release that burned to be free.
He caught her legs between his thighs, denying and inciting her with the same hot movements.
“Remember Small Favors?” he asked.
She was suspended in a fierce, sensual grip that withheld the release she craved and instead drove her higher, burning her until she wanted to scream. Her body twisted and she panted as if she was trying to force her way through a tight passage in Lost River Cave’s velvet darkness.
“This is much worse,” she said raggedly.
“Are you sure? In Small Favors, I couldn’t do this.”
His mouth took her breast in a fierce and tender suckling. Wild pleasure poured through her, a river hidden within her that had no beginning, no end, only the powerful, rushing present. She cried out Gabe’s name and her need and felt the answering shudder of his body.
He shifted slightly, rewarding her sensual struggle with enough freedom to move her legs. Instantly they wrapped tightly around his hips.
“Better?” he asked again.
Her only answer was a ragged sound and the seeking thrust of her hips.
He stretched her arms above her head until her nipples were tight and quivering beneath his skillful tongue. The hard, sensual tugging of his mouth made her cry out in the same rhythms as his caress. She moved convulsively, using every bit of her strength to capture his hard flesh within her body.
“Not yet, sweet Joy,” he said. “Not yet. You only think you want me.”
“Gabe,” she said brokenly, straining against him. “I’m going crazy. It’s like my dreams, my nightmares, when I could do everything but feel you alive inside me.”
His body trembled. “You dreamed, too?”
“Yes. Awake, asleep—”
“Dying,” he said against her lips. His tongue licked into her mouth in a rhythm that turned her bones to searing currents of desire.
“Ah, God,” she said. “You’re destroying me.”
“No,” he said, sliding down her body, his mouth hot and wet and hungry. “I’m exploring you. There’s a difference. All the difference in the world.”
She felt his weight shift over her body while his mouth tugged at her. Tiny, husky cries rippled out of her. Slowly he explored the soft skin of her belly and the creamy smoothness of her inner thighs. Her heart stopped, then beat wildly as his explorations became unbearably intimate.
Unbearable, yet she wouldn’t have ended the moment to save her life.
“A warm world opening for me.” He nuzzled against her unbelievable softness, tasting her, loving her as he’d never loved another woman. “How did I ever leave you?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She could only twist slowly against his hot, hungry mouth. Giving herself wholly to Gabe’s consuming sensuality, she forgot the past and the future and even the present. The fierce pleasure gathered, coiling deep inside her like a river caught within dissolving stone, pushing for release.
Tension wracked her. “Now, Gabe, now.”
He smiled against her straining flesh. “Yes, now.”
His teeth closed exquisitely, capturing her for the hot suckling that would drive her over the edge. She arched against him, crying and
shaking as the world came apart around her.
“Gabe,” she said raggedly, her fingers kneading through his hair to the hot scalp beneath. “I tried to wait.”
“Neither of us wanted that. Not really.”
He bit her tenderly, caressed her, stroked her, cherished her with exquisitely gentle teeth and tongue, each touch consuming her, creating her, discovering new levels of passion to be explored.
“Oh, God, Gabe. Stop. I can’t bear it.”
“Yes, you can.” His voice was husky and deep, words brushed against her violently sensitive flesh. “You wanted it to last forever, sweetheart. It will.”
He held her in loving torment until she was wild again and crying his name with every broken breath, writhing hungrily against him while her nails raked his taut shoulders. Only then did he give her what she demanded, sinking into her until there was no more to give or take, for they were fused hotly one to the other. Tight, deep movements drove her higher, and then higher still. He burned her with dark words and darker caresses until her body squeezed him like a velvet fist.
Then she would have screamed his name and her own unbearable ecstasy, but his mouth was as deeply joined with hers as his body. The first waves of her wild climax washed over both of them, and his hoarse cry of discovery mingled with hers as they shared a long, pulsing release that kept every promise he had made.
It was unbearably good and it lasted forever.
For both of them.
Twenty-five
GABE AND JOY ARRIVED AT THE CHILDER RANCH LATE, BUT they had called ahead so that no one worried. Joy knew the rough roads with hair-raising accuracy, and drove them the same way. Hair-raising. Dust, too. It boiled around them like a pack of eager dogs.
“I’m going to be spitting grit for a week,” he said.
“Your fault. I was willing to stop at one, but somebody talked me into a regular . . . um . . .”
“Marathon?” he asked, deadpan.
She tried not to laugh or blush. She didn’t succeed.
Laura Childer and Kati bolted from the ranch house and ran toward the Jeep where dust still swirled.
“Did you really find a new cave?” Kati asked. “Is it bigger than the old one? Can I see it?”
Her high young voice bubbled over with an eagerness that made Gabe smile. He’d felt the same way when he was young and the whole world was one constantly unfolding miracle for him to explore. He didn’t know when that had changed for him, when he’d become weary rather than excited, driven rather than lured. He did know the exact instant when he’d once more felt a blinding, incredible excitement at just being alive.
It was a few hours ago, when for the first time in seven years he’d felt Joy soften and run like sun-warmed honey in his hands.
“I want to see the new cave too!”
This time the excited young voice belong to Laura, who was impatiently dancing in place near the Jeep.
Susan Childer laughed and ruffled her daughter’s dark hair. “The last time you talked Joyce into a cave expedition, you got twelve steps down below the entrance and decided to have a picnic up top with me instead.”
“That was a long time ago,” Laura said solemnly. “I’m much older now.”
“Mmm,” Susan said, nodding wisely. “A whole five months.”
Joy spoke quickly, heading off the objections she saw clouding Laura’s face. “No one has really been in the new room. We just found it. And it looks like it will be kind of a rough trip getting there.”
“Does that mean I can’t go?” Kati asked.
Joy hesitated. “Probably not, button. So far, the only way we’ve found into the room is to rappel down a rope for at least ninety feet. That’s like nine cottages stacked on top of one another, taller than the tallest cottonwood in the yard. The most you’ve ever rappelled is twenty-seven feet, and you hated climbing back up the rope to get out.”
Kati looked stubborn. “Gravy-bear would carry me.”
“We’ve talked about this before. If you can’t do it yourself, you can’t do it, period. It just isn’t safe. What would you do if Davy hurt himself and couldn’t get you out?”
Frowning, Kati drew patterns in the dust with her toe. “So this is worse than going into the old cave?”
“Uh-huh,” Joy said. “Lots.”
A deep sigh, then, “Okay. But I still think I could do it. I mean, I got born without any help,” she said with a child’s odd logic, “so I’ve got to be good enough to climb down and up a silly old rope.”
Susan laughed again and ruffled Kati’s flaming hair with the same easy affection she had given her daughter. “That’s it, Kati-me-girl. You tell ’em.”
“Born without help?” Gabe asked, puzzled.
Joy started to cut off that line of conversation, but it was too late. Susan was already talking, telling one of her favorite stories.
“You mean you’ve known Kati for more than ten minutes and she hasn’t told you?” Susan asked in mock horror.
“Not a word.” He smiled at her with the easy charm of a man who has made his living meeting new people and drawing information from them. “Guess you’re the only one who can help me, huh?”
“We’d better get going,” Joy said quickly. “We should be at the cave by—”
It didn’t work. Susan just kept talking.
“Kati is a real pioneer kid, just like in the old days,” Susan said, putting her arm around the girl’s shoulder and giving her a hug. “She was born in the desert a few miles from here. Literally.”
Joy saw the color leave Gabe’s face and stifled a groan. She really didn’t want him to know how stupid she’d been six years ago. She hadn’t meant to have Kati on the side of a deserted road.
It had just turned out that way.
“What?” Gabe asked softly, his lips barely moving.
“Yeah.” The older woman smiled wryly. “That was Fish’s reaction. He came driving up here like a madman with Joyce and a squalling little scrap of life in the front seat. Poor man was white as salt—and him a field medic in the army.”
Gabe opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a hoarse sound.
“All Fish’s kids had been born in a hospital,” Susan explained with a chuckle. “I still tease him about it. Just because there was blood here and there, he thought he was going to lose both of them. He didn’t know that childbirth isn’t Mother Nature’s tidiest moment.” Smiling, she shook her head at Fish’s naïveté. “I knew better. All my kids were born right here, with my husband at my side.”
Kati smiled proudly up at Gabe. “Mommy and me are a team.”
“Yeah.” Susan slanted Joy a laughing glance. “Your mom does the work and you take the credit.”
Gabe knew he should smile politely or say something, anything. He couldn’t. He was as off balance as he’d been when his feet slipped on the water-smoothed pitch leading down into Gotcha. Only this time there wasn’t a safety rope belaying him, nothing to catch him when he lost his balance and fell.
And he was falling.
The idea of Joy giving birth to his child in the desert horrified him. He wanted to know what had happened, why she hadn’t been in the hospital with doctors and nurses at hand if something went wrong.
“How in hell—” he began.
Then he saw Joy’s embarrassment and stopped. Questioning her right now wasn’t a good idea. Not only was she uncomfortable, he didn’t trust himself not to reveal just how intimately the answers about her past concerned him.
He’d given Joy his word that he wouldn’t tell Kati he was her father. He would keep his word if it killed him.
And he was beginning to think it might.
“Amazing,” he said to Joy. “You’ll have to tell me about it sometime. The whole story.”
Her weak smile said she wasn’t in any hurry for that conversation.
Kati grinned and started climbing into the Jeep
“Hold it,” Susan said. “I promised you and Laura some cookies. Run and get them, k
ids.”
With small squeals of anticipation, the two girls pelted back up the porch and into the weathered ranch house. As soon as the door slammed behind them, Susan turned to Joy.
“I know you miss Kati when she isn’t with you,” Susan said quickly, “but Laura and I would very much like to have Kati stay with us.”
“For the weekend?”
“For as long as you’d let her.” Susan’s mouth turned down at the corners and she smiled sadly. “Laura knows Kati will be leaving in a few weeks. So do I. We’d like to spend as much time with her as we can before you go.”
Joy bit her lip and looked unhappy.
Gabe bit his tongue to keep from demanding that he have as much time as possible to get to know his daughter before the closing of the cave forced Joy to carry out whatever her plans for the future were.
He had a few of his own.
He might have a real uphill struggle convincing Joy that he was worth keeping around, but Kati was an easy sell. She loved sitting in his lap and having him read books to her while Joy worked at the kitchen table, frowning and shifting papers from one pile to another.
Then there was the simple, immovable fact that he was damned if he would let the past repeat itself—Joy alone, having a baby in the desert.
“And I know how hard it is for you to juggle Kati and all the underground work and paperwork that has to be done before Lost River is closed,” Susan said. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if we sort of kidnapped her for a while after school is out.”
Hand in hand the two girls burst from the house and leaped down to the dusty yard.
“Think about it,” Susan said quietly. She turned to greet both girls with open arms and a big smile. “Who brought one for me?”
Kati and Laura each handed over a cookie to Susan.
“What about Gabe and Joyce?” Susan asked.
Two more cookies changed hands.
Gabe managed a smile at Kati as he took the cookie, but it was one of the most difficult things he’d had to do in his life. He kept thinking about Joy and the desert and all the things that could go wrong during childbirth.
This Time Love Page 22
