“Wait,” Sarah said urgently, reaching blindly for him. “Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I’m as hungry as you are.”
Belatedly she understood that he was simply taking off his clothes. Starlight ran in pale streamers over his skin as he lay on his back and twisted out of his pants. Still slick with her passion, his hard, aroused flesh glistened against the night.
He looked huge.
“Dear God,” she whispered, stunned. “Was all that inside me?”
Case made another odd sound, laughter or pain or both at once.
“Every bit of it,” he said in a low voice.
Even darkness couldn’t conceal the widening of Sarah’s eyes.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“I do. You liked it, honey. You twisted up against me like a cat, wanting more, but I lost control before I could give you what you need.”
She reached toward his hard, intimidating arousal. Then she stopped short.
“May I…touch you?” she asked uncertainly.
Something very close to a smile gleamed in the moonlight as he looked at her.
“Anywhere you like,” he said. “Anyway you like. But would you mind sharing those blankets first? It’s cold out here alone.”
Trembling with sensations that were neither entirely fear nor wholly pleasure, Sarah lifted the blankets in silent invitation.
She still couldn’t believe that she had held all of him inside her body without being torn apart.
There was a rush of cold air and then Case was beneath the blankets with her. She lay on her side, facing him. At first his skin was cool against hers. Then it became deliciously warm.
Slowly, thoroughly, he gathered her close, putting the naked length of their bodies together for the first time. His blunt arousal lay against her stomach like a length of warm rock.
“Dear Lord,” she breathed. “There is an awful lot of you.”
Though he made no sound, his shoulders moved in what might have been silent laughter.
“No more than there was before,” he finally whispered against her lips.
“It’s hard to believe.”
“It’s hard, period.”
“I noticed.”
“That’s why women are so soft,” he murmured.
“As in the head?” she whispered tartly. “So that we’ll let men put that great hard thing inside us?”
Again his shoulders moved.
Again Case made no sound.
“Your head is harder than mine,” he whispered after a moment.
“Ha!”
“If you don’t believe me…”
His fingers closed around hers. He pulled away just enough to guide her hand down his body.
Sarah’s breath came in with a startled sound as he stroked her fingers from the smooth, blunt head of his erect flesh to the hot thatch of hair at the base.
“See?” he asked huskily. “Not so hard after all.”
“It’s as hard as stone.”
“Stone doesn’t have a heartbeat.” He wrapped her fingers around him. “I do. Feel it.”
The pulse of his life’s blood beat unmistakably against her palm.
The wonder of it took her breath.
Curiously she explored with her fingertips the strange flesh that was both rigid and alive.
“Sleek satin here,” she murmured, caressing his tip, “and so different down here. Not rough. Just…different.”
As she combed gently through his dense hair, she discovered another way that men were different from women. She curled her fingers around the tightly drawn spheres and at the same time smoothed her palm over the heartbeat hidden within stone.
His breath came in on a husky curse and a ragged prayer.
“Are you sure I’m not disgusting you?” Sarah asked anxiously.
“Damned sure.”
Still, she hesitated.
“Does this disgust you?” Case asked.
His hand slid down between her legs. He threaded through the hot nest of hair and found the slick, aroused flesh beneath. Deliberately he circled the sultry opening.
Her breath broke.
“Does this disgust you?” he asked again.
“You must be joking,” she said, trembling. “Don’t you know how good it feels to me?”
“Does it?”
“Dear God, yes.”
“That’s how it feels to me,” he said. “Good. So good. And this is even better.”
He parted sleek folds of skin and teased her until she made a broken sound. Silky heat licked over his hand.
“Pure fire,” he breathed. “God, I love feeling your response. How could something so generous disgust me?”
Sarah didn’t answer. She couldn’t. His thumb was rubbing against the coiled knot of her passion.
“Put your leg over my hips,” he whispered.
As she moved, she realized that she was opening herself to him. She remembered the gleaming, fearful length of him against the stars.
“Case, I—”
Her voice broke.
His fingers were teasing her deliciously, unbearably, plucking, caressing, probing the depths of her response. Without knowing it, she began to moan.
“Give me your mouth,” he whispered.
Blindly she lifted her face to him.
“Now,” he said, against her lips, “give it all to me.”
His tongue slid into her mouth as his fingers probed the secrets of her body.
Sarah shivered and would have cried out, but her mouth was ruled by Case as surely as her body was. The knowledge sent a shudder of raw emotion through her.
It wasn’t fear.
It was a wild freedom that came from a woman’s certainty about her man. She knew he would protect her while she was helpless in his arms, just as she had protected him when he lay shivering and spent against her breasts.
Pleasure stabbed through her, arching her like a drawn bow. At the peak of it, Case stroked deeply, increasing the delicious pressure. Then his thumb moved and pleasure shimmered, smoldered, and burst into a fire that ravished her.
He drank her broken cries, muffling them so that none went beyond the blankets they shared. Slowly, reluctantly, he released her silky, sultry core.
She protested in the only way she could, arching her hips toward him.
With a throttled sound he gave her what she was asking for, whether she understood it or not. He pushed his rigid, hungry flesh into her. When he couldn’t get enough of her that way, he rolled her onto her back and drew her legs up around him beneath the blankets.
He sank into her completely.
The feel of her all tight and hot around him made his whole body clench with pleasure and an elemental hunger that shocked him. He wanted her more than he ever had before.
Distantly Case knew that he should have been afraid of the fiery, living need consuming him; but as it had been for Sarah, at that moment the lure of ecstasy within their interlocked bodies was greater than any fear.
“I wish I had a big feather bed to lay you on,” he said in a low voice. “Are you cold?”
“All I can feel is you.”
He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and her face was taut with what could have been pleasure or pain.
“How do I feel to you?” he whispered.
“Wonderful.”
He let out a long breath and reined in the savage urgency of his body.
“Now, so there’s no confusion about it,” he said, “put your hand between us.”
Her eyes opened. Starlight made them a gleaming mystery.
“Go ahead,” he whispered. “Do it.”
“Like this?” she asked, pushing her hand between their chests.
“Lower.”
Her hand moved down to her belly.
“Lower,” he urged.
Her hand moved down again. Her eyes widened suddenly, pure silver in the night.
“Yes,” he said against her lips. “Every bit
of me is inside you. Still scared?”
“Astonished.”
She moved experimentally.
Delicious sensations spread up from where he was so deeply lodged inside her.
“We fit,” she breathed. “We really fit.”
“God, yes.”
He bit her lips delicately and was surprised by the quick, broken rush of her breathing. He knew she had found release just moments before. He hadn’t expected her to want any more sensual play.
Yet there was no mistaking the instinctive tightening of her body around him.
“I’m going to start moving again if you keep doing that,” he whispered.
“Doing what?”
“Stroking me all over, deep inside.”
Again Sarah caressed him without moving her hips at all. She shivered at the delicious sensations that cascaded through her with each hidden clenching of her body.
“Like that?” she whispered.
“Just like that.”
“But it feels so good to me. I don’t want to stop.”
“How about this?” he asked.
Case moved his hips sinuously against her. He barely covered her mouth with his own in time to muffle her surprised, sensual cry. He twisted against her again and again, exciting her even more with each powerful movement of his body.
Her nails scored heedlessly down his back and dug into his flexed hips. It set fire to him more than any tender caress could have, for he was too completely aroused to feel a gentle touch. He had to have something as primitive as the urgency cording his body until sweat glistened over every bit of his skin.
She gave him what he needed, all but fighting him for the embrace, demanding that he give her everything he had in turn.
She had to have it or die.
She would have screamed her need if she could have, but his mouth was joined to hers, enforcing silence. Sweat slicked her body as she fought to get closer and closer to him and to the ecstasy that shimmered just out of reach.
And then it wasn’t out of reach. It was all around her, inside her, light and darkness shattering into endless colors.
Yet still he moved against her, driving into her, feeding the ecstasy until she shivered and wept and gave herself to the blinding, pulsing colors that knew no darkness, only joy.
With a hoarse cry, he gave himself in turn, repeatedly, blindly, knowing only the golden fires of ecstasy burning him all the way to his soul.
It was a long time before either Case or Sarah could speak. They simply held each other hot and close, gentle and fierce, hungry and sated, stripped naked and basking in the searing, tender fires of completion.
“Dear Lord,” she whispered finally.
“Amen,” he breathed.
He brushed her lips with his own, tasted her, felt her sweet tasting of him in turn.
“You’re incredible,” he murmured against her mouth. “So damned alive.”
“It’s you, not me.”
“No, it’s you,” he insisted.
She laughed softly.
“We’ve got the rest of the night to argue about who is burning whom alive,” she said.
White flashed briefly against the black of his beard.
“There are certain kinds of, uh, arguments that a man can’t do more than once or twice a night,” he said.
“Really?”
“God’s truth.”
She smiled and stretched deliciously against his naked male strength.
“Does that mean I can pet you now and have you fall asleep peacefully in my arms?” she asked.
He nuzzled against her neck, yawned, and rolled onto his side, taking her with him.
“If you like,” he said very softly. “For a while.”
Just a dream. Just for a while.
A dream, that’s all.
Just a dream.
Despite the tears burning against her eyes, Sarah kissed Case’s neck, his shoulder, the hard hand that was cradling her cheek. She tasted the salty sleekness of his skin, tested the muscular resilience of his biceps with her teeth, caught the hair on his chest between her lips and pulled.
There was no teasing in her caresses, no seduction, no demand. She simply was experiencing his textures in every way she could. Slowly she worked her way down his big body, turning her face from side to side, smoothing her cheeks over his chest and belly, inhaling the elemental scents of man and woman and completion.
The line of hair that arrowed down from his navel to his groin intrigued her. It tickled her lips in a way that made her smile. She was still smiling when her mouth brushed against firm male flesh that was becoming increasingly familiar.
It was increasing, period.
Her head lifted until she could look at his face. He was watching her with a smoldering intensity that even night couldn’t conceal.
“Is this a permanent state with you?” she asked softly, perplexed.
“Never was before.”
“Before what?”
“You.”
“Oh. Is that…good?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s never happened before. But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
Sarah put her cheek against him. Her breath sighed out over his swelling arousal.
She kissed him.
Rather distantly Case wondered if he had died and gone to heaven instead of to the hell he had always assumed awaited him.
The tip of her tongue drew a line of fire over the pulse that beat so heavily in his rigid flesh.
“It’s good,” he whispered roughly. “It’s so damned good I can’t believe I’m not dreaming.”
“You are, remember?” she asked, tasting him. “Just a dream.”
“For a while. Until dawn.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Dawn, when all dreams ended. But until then she could dream a lifetime of dreams, enough to last her until she died.
“Until dawn,” she said. Then, so softly that she hoped he couldn’t hear, she whispered, “I love you, Case.”
Despite her care, he heard the fragile confession. He wanted to protest the pain he knew loving him would cause her.
Yet he couldn’t speak.
He couldn’t even breathe for the hot, sensuous pressure of her mouth around him.
He stopped trying to speak, to think, to breathe. He simply reached for the golden flame of Sarah the way a dying man reaches for life.
And like life itself she came to him, hot and sweet and generous.
22
Sarah awoke with the warmth of Case surrounding her and his heart beating beneath her cheek. She murmured lazily, snuggled closer, and fell back asleep.
When Case felt the small movements, he was torn between pain and peace.
Pain because he never should have been in her bed.
Peace because he was.
What if she’s pregnant?
The question had haunted him throughout the night, keeping him from sleep.
I can’t let it happen again.
Even Case didn’t know whether he meant making love to Sarah, or feeling responsible for a child’s life, or losing that child to death. He knew only that a chilling fear had settled in his gut. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, even during the bloodiest of the war.
Concealed by darkness, he had smiled.
Hidden in silence, he had laughed.
Last night he had lost himself in Sarah’s generous passion.
Never again, he thought bleakly. I can’t go through it again, the laughter and the loss.
Sighing, Sarah burrowed closer to him. Her trust kept breaking over Case in waves that were hot and cold, exhilarating and chilling, threatening every certainty he had.
She loves me.
I can’t love her.
I’ll hurt her.
I can’t hurt her.
She loves me.
I can’t!
Thoughts circled and swooped, raking Case with a pain that should have made him bleed, but was a
ll the more agonizing because it didn’t.
“Sis?” Conner called quietly. “Are you feeling all right?”
Case felt the change that went over Sarah when she heard her brother’s voice. The tension of being fully awake shot through her, stiffening her.
“What’s wrong?” she called softly.
“The sun is up and you aren’t,” her brother said. “I thought you might be sick.”
“Never felt better.”
She yawned, stretched…and fully realized for the first time that she was naked beneath the covers.
The look on her face almost made Case smile.
Almost, but not quite. The price of laughter was simply too high.
“Hunter said to let you be, you’d probably had a hard time out here last night,” Conner said, “but I was worried.”
Case felt the heat of Sarah’s blush as clearly as she did.
“Uh, yes, a hard time,” she muttered.
When she heard her own words, she blushed even more hotly.
A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He fought it to a flat line, but couldn’t deny the tenderness that shivered through him when she hid her scarlet face against his chest.
“What was that?” Conner asked. “You sound funny.”
She cleared her throat with unnecessary force.
Case opened his mouth, only to have her small hand clamp right over it.
“I’m just fine,” she said distinctly. “Hunter is right. Sleeping out here wasn’t as restful as being inside, that’s all.”
“You’ll get used to it,” her brother said cheerfully.
She doubted she would ever get used to anything as elemental as Case in her bed, in her body, in her very soul. Heaven at midnight in the full flight of dreaming. Hell at dawn, when all dreams ended.
The eyes of her lover said that dawn had come.
“Go on into the cabin,” she said quietly to her brother. “I’ll be along in a few minutes to make breakfast.”
“Morgan is doing it. Have you seen Case?”
One black eyebrow rose in silent query as he looked at her over her hand. His eyes were shadowed with ghosts and vivid with the life he refused to accept.
“Blazes,” Sarah muttered, lifting her hand.
“What?” Conner asked.
“Yes, I’ve seen Case,” she said.
All of him, she thought. Every bit.
I tasted him, too.
Lord, I didn’t know how bittersweet life could be, heaven and hell and everything in between.
Winter Fire Page 29
