Remember Summer

by Elizabeth Lowell

  But she was worth every bit of patience he could find, worth each passionate agony and savage pleasure she innocently gave him while she explored him, becoming as hungry for him as he was for her. At least he hoped she was seducing herself, because she had him on an exquisite rack of desire that tightened with every caress. He had felt nothing like it before, known no one like her before.

  With her, the world was clean and new. And so was he.

  When she lifted her head and looked down at him, he was smiling. His fingers searched through her clean, soft hair as he pulled her mouth down to his for a kiss that promised a hot, seamless mating of their bodies. Soon. She shivered uncontrollably when his hands cupped her breasts through the thin white shirt she wore.

  Before the kiss ended, her blouse and bra were open and his hands were caressing her bare breasts. She tried not to cry out when he gently devoured her, pulling her deeply into his mouth, making fire burst deep inside her. But in the end she couldn’t help herself, husky cries pouring from her lips with each movement of his tongue over her breasts.

  The room swung dizzily as he shifted without warning, taking her down beneath him on the bed. From mouth to thighs, his body covered her in raging demand. It wasn’t enough. He needed to be closer, utterly naked, buried inside her.

  With a hoarse sound he rolled aside and stripped off his clothes. His eyes never left her while he kicked his jeans and underwear aside. Passion gave her a beauty that made him lightheaded. Her eyes were brilliant, her skin flushed, her nipples dark rose, still taut from his hungry mouth.

  She was watching him with a heart-stopping combination of hunger and wariness and hope.

  “I know I should wait,” he said almost roughly, “but I have to see you. All of you. Will you let me?”

  She shivered. “Of course.”

  He peeled off her blouse and bra and tossed them aside. His hands swept over her jeans, unsnapping them, pulling them off her. Her silky underwear soon slid down the length of her legs and followed her jeans onto the floor.

  “Let me touch you,” he said hoarsely.

  “You have.”

  “Everywhere, Raine. Everywhere.”

  She looked at him as he stood beside her, naked as the desire he had for her. Need twisted through her, shaking her. She had to touch him, to have him lie beside her and hold her, fit himself to her, fill her.

  “Cord—” Her voice broke on a rush of passion. She shook her head, impatient at her inability even to speak.

  All he saw was the negative movement of her head and the flat line of her mouth. He brought himself back under control with an effort that left him shaken.

  “Don’t be frightened, little queen,” he said finally, turning away. “It’s all right. I know you don’t want me. Not really. Not enough.”

  At first she was too shocked to speak. Then the words tumbled out. “You’re wrong. I want you so much that I—I can’t think, can’t speak, can’t do anything right. I don’t know what to do. Please, don’t turn away. I need you.”

  Before the last words were out, he came down on the bed beside her, naked, close, not touching her.

  “I need you the same way. Too much. I don’t trust myself.” He made a sound that wasn’t quite laughter, wasn’t quite pain. “That’s a first. It scares the hell out of me.”

  “What I feel scares me, too. But it doesn’t stop the wanting.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if anything will.”

  Slowly, hungrily, his hands stroked up her body from her ankles to her temples, then back down again. He lingered over her breasts, teased the shadowed hollow of her navel, then slid down until his fingers tangled in her dark, springy hair. At the same moment, his mouth caught her breast again, tugging swiftly at its already hard peak.

  The twin assaults made her cry out and hold his head fiercely against her breast. She felt his fingers ease down to her thighs, her knees, then stroke slowly upward, pressing, asking, wanting. Instinctively she shifted, opening herself to his touch.

  He whispered her name against her mouth as his fingertips touched the liquid heat of her. She was everything he had hoped for, hotter than his dreams. Words could lie or try to please, but not this. This slick fire came only from passion. His head swam as her heat licked over his fingers, promising everything he needed, promising things he hadn’t even known he must have to live.

  With a hoarse sound he caressed her deeply, only to withdraw with slow pressures that tormented her. He returned again, and then again, exploring her sleek center as thoroughly as his tongue explored her mouth.

  She arched and twisted into the deep caress. She had never been touched like this before, never savored and lingered over while her lover’s body shook with hunger that he held in check for her. Just for her. The contrast between Cord’s stark passion and tender restraint turned her bones and her flesh to honey. Currents of sheer pleasure pulsed through her.

  Her hips moved sensually, increasing the pressure of his fingers within her. When she arched up against his hand, his voice came to her in shades of darkness, shaman’s words murmuring over her, asking that she give herself to him, telling her that she was everything he desired, more than any man had a right to hope for.

  Tiny shudders rippled, quickened, passion growing with each shared movement, each redoubled caress. Moaning without knowing it, she melted in waves, flowing over him like hot honey.

  Shock froze her as she felt her own heat spilling out. Fragmentary words tumbled from her lips, pleasure and confusion and apology all at once. He kissed away her words, cupped his hand around her heat, and pressed lovingly. He savored the hot lick of her pleasure and the knowledge that it was shockingly new to her.

  “That’s what I want,” he murmured against her lips, stopping her stumbling apologies.

  “But—”

  “I came to you for your fire. Then you came to me. It’s just beginning, Raine. Just beginning.”

  He moved slowly over her, caressing her with his hands until she shuddered and clung to him, melting, and he knew her pleasure again. Only then did he take her fully, burying himself in her hot, sleek body. Her eyes opened as she felt the extent of his possession.

  He saw her surprise and smiled down at her through lips drawn back with a need that was too consuming to be called either pain or pleasure. His hips moved and her breath came out in a moan. He moved again, joined with her in an intimacy greater than he had ever known, for her heat was inside him as deeply as he was inside her. He felt her shudder, felt her molten response spreading between their bodies.

  “Yes,” he said roughly, triumph and passion thickening his voice. “Give me more. Take more.”

  She barely heard. What had begun as pleasure had become something more, something different. It consumed her, biting deep, wringing hoarse cries from her, cries she never even heard. Her body coiled tighter and then tighter still, pulsing, poised for a leap into the burning unknown. She would have been frightened if she hadn’t trusted him all the way to her soul. But she couldn’t even tell him that. She could only push and twist against him, asking and demanding in a hot, primitive language that had no words.

  Clenched over her, breathing as though he had just finished a long run, Cord held back as long as he could. He wanted to infuse himself with the searing, silky, pulses of her climax. He wanted to absorb her heat so that he would never be cold again.

  Her hips lifted hard against him once, twice, and she shattered. He was so deep that he felt each of her shivers and pulses and cries as though they were his own.

  And then they were. He was lost, burning with her. His eyelids trembled down and he began moving hard within her, deep, answering her need with his own body.

  The shivering, shimmering tension that had just spent itself in her body speared through her again. Her body tightened, coiled, clenched until she would have screamed but for his mouth over hers. Her nails raked down to his thighs and she rode his powerful body with all her strength. He answered by driving into
her until her world shook apart, exploding into an ecstasy so intense she couldn’t breathe, only feel the elemental release throbbing through her.

  It was no different for him, the shattering pleasure, the pulsing surrender as he gave himself to the fire he had called from her. Blinding heat consumed them until there was nothing left but ragged sounds of ecstasy.

  Through it all Cord held Raine, sharing the tremors that swept through her as the world reformed around her, around him. He stroked her hair and kissed her cheek, cradling her. She sighed and nuzzled against him, smoothing her cheek against his furry chest.

  “You’re . . . beautiful,” she murmured.

  He laughed softly against hair. “You have strange ideas of beauty. I’m about as pretty as a rock slide.”

  “I’m not talking about pretty.” Her eyes followed her hand down his body. “Beautiful. The way mountains are beautiful. The way Dev is beautiful when he takes an impossible jump—rippling with fierce pleasure and power and purpose.”

  “Like I said,” he murmured huskily, “a strange idea of beauty. I have a more conventional idea of beauty. You.”

  “How did you get this scar?” she asked, looking away from his clear, intense eyes.

  “Why do you tighten every time I say you’re beautiful?”

  “Because I’m not, and I know it.”

  “Crap.”

  She turned back to him, startled by the certainty beneath the lazy sensuality of his voice. “You’ve never seen my sisters. They’re beautiful. Particularly Alicia. Men quite literally stop and stare when she walks by.”

  A shrug sent a ripple through Cord’s muscular body. “That’s one kind of beauty.”

  “It’s the only kind.”

  “No. It’s the least important kind. There’s another kind of beauty, one that only special women have. A fire burning, hot and soft and incredible.”

  Wanting to believe, not wanting to be flattered, Raine turned her head aside. His hard palm came up and turned her face toward him while his shaman’s voice flowed over her.

  “It’s the kind of beauty that sinks into a man’s bones until he can’t breathe without remembering how his woman’s breath felt on his skin, can’t lick his lips without tasting her, can’t move without remembering the soft weight of her sliding over him, can’t feel anything but her burning around him, can’t hear anything but her cries of pleasure. That kind of beauty can make a blind man weep. It’s the only kind of beauty that matters, Raine. It’s your beauty.”

  She blinked back sudden tears. She had known him such a short time, yet he had slipped by all her defenses. He had made her laugh and he had made her cry. He had frightened her and he had protected her. He was dangerous and kind, hard and gentle, aloof and sensual, self-sufficient and needing her more than anyone ever had.

  He was the wrong man for her.

  And he had become as much a part of her as the passion he could draw from her with a look, a touch.

  “Do you believe me?” he asked softly.

  She nodded. She believed that she was beautiful to him.

  He pushed damp tendrils of hair away from her face. “What’s wrong, honey? Why the tears?”

  She lowered her eyes and whispered, “I thought I knew myself.”

  “Don’t you?” he asked, shifting until he could see her face.

  “Not when you touch me.”

  “It’s the same for me. A new world and a new man experiencing it.” Despite her subtle resistance, he shifted her close enough to brush his lips over hers. “Don’t pull back, sweet rider. Is it so terrible when I touch you?”

  “No . . .” The word came out as a shiver and a sigh.

  “Tell me,” he murmured, shaman’s voice coiling around her like an invisible warm river. “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it. Tell me.”

  “You’re the wrong man for me,” she said helplessly.

  The hurt was all the more intense for being so unexpected. Cord closed his eyes and wished he could close his heart as easily. But he couldn’t. All he could do was be reminded of what he already knew—whatever feelings she had for him weren’t enough to overcome the obstacle of his profession.

  “No,” Raine said quickly, hating to see the satisfaction and peace in Cord’s face turn to distance and ice. “That’s not true. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s me. I’m the wrong woman for you.”

  He swore, a single vicious word. Then he moved abruptly, pinning her beneath him. His kiss was harsh, overwhelming, for he expected her to fight.

  She locked her arms around him and returned the kiss as fiercely as he gave it. His hands clenched in her hair, then gentled even as his mouth softened. The kiss ended very slowly, tender as a wistful sigh.

  Feeling as though she was being torn apart, she held on to him, simply held on with every bit of her rider’s strength. She couldn’t live in his world. But having met him, having found a man who called to her heart and body and soul, she didn’t know if she could bear to live alone in her own world anymore.

  Yet she must.

  She owed it to too many people, including herself. Riding in the Summer Games was the culmination of a lifetime of dreams and sheer hard work. She didn’t know how she could rise to the demands of the three-day event when her world was being shaken apart. Yet she couldn’t give less than her best to the Olympics and face herself afterward.

  Wrong man. Wrong time. Wrong.

  And so agonizingly right.

  The tension in her body locked against his owed nothing to sensuality. Cord knew it as surely as he knew his own body, his own reactions.

  “Talk to me,” he said with a calm he didn’t feel. “Together, we can find—”

  She put her fingers over his mouth, cutting off his words. “I can’t,” she said simply.

  He kissed her fingers and pulled them down to his chest. “Can’t what?”

  “I can’t handle everything at once.”

  “Does that mean you’re walking away from me—from us?”

  “I can’t do that, either,” she said tightly. “Can’t win, can’t break even, can’t get out of the game. It’s tearing me apart. And I can’t let it.”

  He wanted to argue, to make her agree right now that there was a future for them, to hear her admit once and for all that he had a place by her fire. Yet the cool tactician who lived within the warrior knew that he would lose her if he pushed. Worse, he would hurt her.

  So he said nothing, simply watched her eyes, hazel and shadows and unexpected brightness of gold. Pain. Tension. The edginess of a trapped animal.

  “After the three-day event, we’ll talk about . . .” Raine’s voice died.

  She didn’t know what good talking would do. He was what he was. She was what she was.

  They never should have met each other. “Maybe it will be clearer then. God, I hope so. It can’t be any muddier.” She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. “Until then, just be with me when you can, and I’ll be with you when I can.”

  Tactician and warrior struggled for control of Cord. He sensed her need of him, her fear of his world, and her searing pain. He had deliberately shaken her world to make a place for himself in it. Now she was suffering the aftershocks, unable to realize or admit the extent of the changes he had made.

  “Promise you won’t run from me.” His voice was deep and gritty with emotions barely held in check. His hand brushed her cheek with aching tenderness. “I never wanted to frighten you.”

  She closed her eyes against the tears welling up, another kind of fire scalding her. Helplessly she shook her head. She knew he was the wrong man and she was the wrong woman, and she wanted him anyway, wanted him until she was weak with a need that only grew more overwhelming with each word, each look, each touch.

  “I can’t run, either. What have you done to me?” she whispered. “Last month I didn’t know you. Now I can’t imagine living without you. Or with you.”

  “Don’t cry.” He kissed the tears that gathered and glittered on
her lashes before sliding down her cheeks. “After the Summer Games you’ll see that you don’t have to worry about your world or mine. Things will look different then. I promise you. Look at me, love. Believe in me.”

  Raine opened her eyes and saw the certainty in Cord’s. She didn’t want to question it, to make him as bitterly unhappy as she was. Better to let go of the cruel future, to live only in the present. She had spent her life pursuing tomorrow in one form or another, one world-class competition after another.

  Tomorrow, beautiful tomorrow. It had always been brighter than today, more vivid and more real, a vision forever dancing just beyond her reach. But it danced no longer, and it was dark instead of bright.

  With lips that trembled, Raine smiled at her lover and hoped for the first time in her life that tomorrow wouldn’t come.

  Chapter 15

  Raine and Cord ate breakfast in an easy silence punctuated by smiles and undemanding touches—his fingertip stroking the back of her hand as she poured him coffee, the delicate pressure of her hand on his cheek as she gave him a steaming mug of coffee, the brush of his lips over her palm. He understood the acceptance and intimacy implied by the small caresses.

  He doubted that she did, or she would have bolted.

  “What’s your schedule?” he asked quietly, reluctant to end the warm silence.

  “Dev, Dev, and more Dev.”

  “Never thought I’d be jealous of a horse.”

  Cord’s off-center smile went into her like a knife turning. She didn’t know how he had become so important to her. She only knew that he had.

  And she couldn’t afford to think about it until the Summer Games were over.

  “Dev doesn’t really need that much attention,” she admitted. “It’s more for me than for him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Competition madness.” She stood and began gathering up dirty plates. “Time hanging and clanking around your neck like six iron horseshoes.”

  “I’d think you would be too busy to fret.”

  “Wrong.” Unbreakable dishes clattered into the stainless steel sink. “It’s all done now but the waiting.”