She gasped with surprise, then groaned as he leaned up to take one nipple in his mouth, right through the material. Her knees felt watery, and she thought she would pass out from the pleasure of his hands and his mouth. A flush stained her cheeks as his strong hands began to knead her bottom. No one had ever touched her there either. Jedidiah would be her first lover, and she was glad she had waited for him.
“Take this off,” he murmured, bunching the nightgown in his hands. “I want to see all of you.”
She hesitated, shyness taking over. But Jedidiah impatiently tugged at the nightdress, finally drawing it over her head and tossing it into the far corner.
“Sweet Lord.” He studied every inch of her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Almost reverently he stroked her breast, smiling as the nipple beaded beneath his wandering fingers. Then he touched her slender waist, teased her navel, and finally, with a soft sound of triumph, tangled his fingers in the nest of blonde curls at the juncture of her thighs.
She grabbed his shoulders as her legs collapsed, and he laughed, falling backwards on the bed with her straddling him. Instantly he cupped her breasts in both hands, kneading the sensitive mounds with gentle skill.
“Open my shirt, sweetheart,” he urged. “I want you to touch me, too.”
Susannah reached for his remaining buttons, but the sensations his hands were bringing forth staggered her all over again. She managed to get his shirt open, and by the time he leaned up to suckle one pale pink nipple, she realized that they had only just begun.
The tugging of his mouth at her breast combined with the tickle of his mustache against the delicate skin struck her as an incredible sensation—one she wanted to feel everywhere. Suddenly she got greedy for his kisses and his knowing hands. Tugging his face to hers, she kissed him with all the sweet passion streaking through her veins. She fell forward, still kissing him, and he held her as he gently rolled them over.
Now she lay on her back, naked beneath him even while he was still mostly clothed. He pressed his mouth to her neck, his mustache sending streaks of excitement shooting to her center. He strung kisses down her throat, then paused, coming to the mark the noose had left around her neck. Very gently, he brushed slow, tender kisses along the welt.
Her heart swelled and all but burst from the love that overflowed from it. She knew he didn’t want her love, but she gave it to him anyway with her hands and her mouth, showing him without words how she felt about him.
He shuddered under her touch, this tall, strong man who had the strength of a cougar but now purred like a kitten. He traced her thighs with first his fingers, then his mouth. She opened to him like a flower in the sun, and shivered with reaction as he stroked her delicate woman’s flesh, his caresses soft and sure.
She was burning with a hunger she had never known but had waited for all her life. She lifted her hips off the bed, her body longing for a completion she didn’t fully understand. She knew what happened between men and women. She had been raised working with farm animals, after all. But somehow she had never suspected the force of the need that went with the physical act. This demanding fire that stoked desire and singed all vestiges of reason.
“Jedidiah,” she whispered, stroking his hair, arching beneath his hands.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
“I want…”
“I know.” He pressed his thumb over a sensitive spot that made her gasp and open wider, offering herself to him.
“Please, Jedidiah!”
“Yes,” he murmured, kneeling up to shed the rest of his clothing. “Here, help me.” He took her hand and placed it at the front of his trousers.
“Oh!” Blushing furiously, she jerked her hand back from the strange male hardness.
“Susannah?” With a puzzled frown he took her hand and put it back where he wanted it. “Don’t you want to touch me?”
“Of course I do.” Tentatively she stroked. “I’m just not used to it.”
It took a moment, but she knew when the meaning of her words struck home. He stopped her wandering hand by putting his over it. “Are you telling me you’ve never done this before?”
“That does appear to be the case.”
“Never mind that sharp tongue.” He leaned forward and took her chin in his hand, making her look at him. “Susannah, are you a virgin?”
“Not if you intend to stop.”
“You are.” He sat back again, closed his eyes.
“Jedidiah?” She reached for him, her fingers brushing his furred belly before he grabbed her hand and held it fast.
“Wait a minute. I’m trying to get some control here.”
“I don’t want you to get control!” She sent a questing hand sliding up his thigh. “I want you as wild as I feel.”
“I am,” he said with a shaky laugh. Then he stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes. “That’s the problem. This is your first time. I want it to be good for you.”
“It already is.” She couldn’t help staring as he climbed back on the bed. His thrusting manhood fascinated her. She touched it curiously, surprising a strangled groan from Jedidiah.
“Am I hurting you?”
“In the best possible way.” Shifting, he lay back on the bed, then tugged her hand until she took the hint and straddled him.
“I like this.” She stroked her hands over him, caressing him as she would a big cat, as he had once instructed her. His body was so different than hers, so furry and hard where hers was soft and smooth. Except for his sex. She tentatively traced her fingers along the hard, silken flesh. He made a sound as if he were being tortured, then suddenly he had his hands on her bottom, urging her up on her knees.
“This way is better for you,” he muttered. “You have control. Take your time.”
She knew what was supposed to happen, but she allowed him to guide her hips as he positioned her over his hardness. Leaning her hands on his chest, she moved with him as he tentatively probed the slick folds. She let out a soft sound of surprise as he penetrated slowly.
Jedidiah shut his eyes tightly and concentrated on control. Dear God, let it be easy for her. He didn’t think he could last very long.
She seemed to know how to move instinctively, undulating her hips in rhythm with his shallow thrusts. Her breasts bobbed with each shift of her sinuous body. She was getting used to him, but he wanted more. He slid a hand behind her neck to pull her into his kiss.
He was losing it, he could feel it. Releasing her mouth, he kneaded her thighs and held her gaze. “Do it, Susannah,” he whispered hoarsely. “Before I go mad.”
She lowered herself an inch more, then stopped and looked at him helplessly. “Help me. I don’t know how.”
He smiled tenderly. “Come here.” He tugged her down to meet his kiss, then gave one strong thrust of his hips.
Her body stiffened for a moment as he breached her virginity. Murmuring soothingly, he stroked her back and pressed small, nibbling kisses to her mouth as he held still inside of her.
It took a few moments for her body to adjust to the penetration. Her inner walls rippled deliciously against his rod, making it even harder to maintain control. But he managed it. And soon he felt it, that first, hesitant movement as she experimented with having him inside her.
“Yes-s-s.” Wordlessly, he showed her how to move, slow, then fast, making circles with her hips until she caught the rhythm on her own. Then she set out to drive him crazy by indulging her sensual side with reckless abandon.
He should have known it would be like this with her. Though he’d bedded dozens of women, it had never been like this.
He filled his hands with her breasts, then leaned up to suckle one hardened nipple. She gave a soft gasp, and her body tightened around him. Smiling, he turned his attention to the other breast, licking and sucking, until her pleading whimpers had them both in a frenzy. Holding her hips so he wouldn’t become dislodged, he rolled them over until she was beneath him.
Susanna
h found herself on her back, surrounded above and around and inside with Jedidiah. He was everywhere, kissing here, touching there, murmuring soft words of praise and desire against her flesh. He coaxed her thighs wider, lifting her legs around his hips in what suddenly seemed to her a natural position as it urged him deeper inside of her.
Experimentally, she lifted her hips, seating him yet deeper, and was rewarded with a strangled groan. Power surged through her, the power of a woman who knows that she can pleasure her man. She raked her nails down his back and gave a little squeeze with her inner muscles—muscles she had never before known existed. He muttered a curse and shut his eyes and picked up the pace of his movements.
Yes, this was what she wanted. She met his increasingly deepening thrusts with abandon, glorying in the way he filled her and wild with the emotions that flooded her. Something was building, and she wiggled against him, trying to get him to move just like that and touch this place. He reached between them, slowing his pace, and pressed his thumb in a circular motion against one particular spot. And it hit her. Whatever had been building, snapped. Her heart stopped, and her breath left her lungs as her entire body sang with the joy of release. A soft keening noise escaped her throat as she shuddered with a pleasure she had never known before.
“Yes, damn it,” he muttered. And even before she could stop trembling, he began thrusting deep and fast inside her, stretching out her pleasure as he worked for his own.
She realized what he was after. She boldly met his thrusts, stroking his shoulders and nibbling at his neck and ears, whatever she could reach.
Suddenly he stiffened, then gave one, two jerks of his hips. With a low groan, he shuddered in her arms as his own release took him.
Susannah held him as he trembled, stroking his hair, his shoulder, his arm. A soft smile curved her lips.
Yes, indeed, she was glad to be alive.
Chapter Sixteen
They slept.
When Jedidiah awoke in the dark hours just before dawn, he thought at first that it had just been another dream. Yet here was Susannah in his arms, her naked body snuggled to his as if they were long time lovers.
Surprisingly, he felt none of the urgency to send her back to her own bed that he had felt with other women in the past. In fact, his sated body stirred to life again, and he couldn’t resist stroking a hand over her smooth hip.
He was in love with her. The lock on his heart had grown rusty, and his feelings had burst free. For the first time, he fully acknowledged that this was not something that would just go away. If he were a marrying kind of man, he would want to spend the rest of his life with this woman.
But he wasn’t a marrying man. He traveled too much, and he didn’t have it in him to make that sort of commitment. It wasn’t fair to Susannah to ask her to sacrifice her happiness with someone like him, someone who couldn’t give her the future she deserved.
All they had was now. She seemed to accept that, though he wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. Women wanted commitment. They wanted a wedding ring and a house and a couple of kids. And even though it pained him that Susannah would no doubt find that life with some other man, he knew he would have to let her go. He wasn’t cut out for that.
In two days, they would be in Denver. He would do everything in his power to make sure she was cleared of all charges, and once the trial was over, they would have to say good-bye. He knew it, and she knew it. So they would have to get all their loving in over the next two days.
Moved by emotions he was reluctant to name, he touched her again, teasing her soft nipple, and smiling a little as it slowly hardened. Her eyelids flickered, then opened, and she gave him a sleepy smile.
“Hi there.”
Her voice, husky with sleep and satisfaction, rippled over him like an electric shock. His heart pounded so hard he thought it would burst out of his chest. He leaned forward to kiss her, gathering her into his arms, suddenly so hungry for her, for the closeness they shared, that he couldn’t wait another minute to be inside her.
He wanted to see all of her, wanted to watch as she came apart for him.
He parted her legs and slipped inside her, swallowing her soft gasp of surprise in his kiss. He stayed there, barely moving, glorying in the feeling of her surrounding him. But gradually their kiss grew hotter, and the gentle clenching of her inner muscles around his sex was making him wild. He rolled on to his back, sliding even deeper inside her. Her low, husky groan of pleasure at the new position echoed his own.
“Ride me, Suzie,” he urged.
Her eyes grew wide with feminine power, and she smiled slowly. She rose above him, her naked body glowing white in the shadowed room, her thighs a subtle invitation as she shifted to better straddle him. He reached up to caress her lush breasts, groaning as the satiny combination of soft skin and hard nipples filled his hands. She gave a sweet cry of arousal and arched her back to press herself more completely into his hands, pushing him deeper inside her as she did so.
He clenched his teeth against the pleasure and teased her breasts, each pleading undulation of her hips swerving both of them closer to the edge. He strained to hold back, silently demanding with sheer will that she go first over the precipice. But she was woman and therefore capricious; he saw the knowledge in her smoky blue eyes that she intended to hang on as long as he did.
It became a battle of wills. Each of them worked with eager hands and hungry mouths to drive the other mad. Finally he gripped her hair in his hand and pulled her head down for a hot, open-mouthed kiss that sent both of them shuddering to completion.
The pleasure rolled over him, more intense than anything he’d ever felt in his life. She sank down on him with a hoarse cry, her face buried in his neck, the utter limpness of her body testifying to the strength of her own climax. As he stroked her sweaty back, she murmured his name into the flesh of his throat.
I love you, he thought, nuzzling her hair. But he didn’t dare say the words aloud. For he knew if he did, he’d never be able to let her go.
Susannah awoke to a tickling sensation on her fingers. She swatted at it, but it came back again, this time accompanied by a masculine chuckle. She came fully awake with a start and stared at Jedidiah, who continued to nibble her fingers. The tickling sensation was his mustache brushing across her knuckles.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile, seeing that she was awake. He was fully dressed. She, on the other hand…
With a squeak of dismay, she jerked the covers to her chin. He roared with laughter.
“Sweetheart, unless something’s changed since the sun came up, I’ve already seen everything it is you’re hiding.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “You’ll have to excuse me if I am unfamiliar with the etiquette, Marshal. This was my first time, as you recall.”
“I do recall.” Still grinning, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And there is no etiquette. What happens in the morning depends on the people who spent the night together.”
“And we certainly did that.” Never a reticent person, Susannah was surprised at her own shyness this morning. But then, she’d never spent the night making love with a man either. “I don’t know what to say. Or how to act.”
“Say good morning. And kiss me.” He tilted her face to his with a finger beneath her chin and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.
She closed her eyes and responded as her body warmed with echoes of the night’s pleasure. A smile curved her lips as he broke the kiss, and she opened her eyes. “Good morning.”
“It’s a wonderful morning.” He touched her shoulder, her cheek. “Are you all right? No soreness or anything?”
She shook her head. “Not really. A twinge or two.”
“Good. I hated to hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You made me feel incredible.” She leaned forward of her own volition this time and brushed her lips over his. “Thank you, Jedidiah.”
“My pleasure.” He reluctantly rose from the bed. “As much as I wouldn’t
mind staying here with you, we do have to get going today. We’ll be in Denver in a couple of days.”
She sighed. “Why did you have to remind me?”
“I’ll do everything I can to help you out of this, sweetheart. You have my word on that.”
“I know you will.” She started to get out of the bed, then paused. “Umm…could you please hand me my nightgown?”
He looked as if he wanted to say something, but then he simply went and fetched her nightgown from where it had gotten tossed the night before. She could feel that her cheeks were still burning with an uncharacteristic blush, but tried to ignore it.
Jedidiah handed her the nightgown. “I’ll be downstairs with Nate. You come on down when you’re ready.”
“All right.”
He left the room without looking back. For an instant she felt a stab of dismay as she watched his retreating back. In a few days’ time he would leave her for good, but knowing in advance didn’t make it any easier to bear.
She refused to think about it.
She slid from the bed and slipped the nightdress over her head. The night had held fascinating discoveries about both herself and about Jedidiah. She felt like a different person altogether, and she found herself grinning at the hint of an ache that lingered between her thighs. It was as if she had gone through some initiation, passed into a new phase of life and become a woman grown. She was still smiling as she stepped out into the hallway.
Darcy was just coming up the stairs as Susannah stepped from Jedidiah’s room. They both paused and looked at each other.
Darcy bore a tray of eggs, toast and coffee. Susannah shifted her bare feet guiltily as she realized the woman was bringing breakfast to the sickroom—her sickroom. Darcy tilted her head to the side and glanced from Jedidiah’s door and back to Susannah.
“Lost?” she teased.
Susannah let out the breath she had been holding. “No, actually, I think I’ve found myself.”
Darcy grinned. “That’s the way you should feel. Why don’t you come to your room and eat something while I find you something to wear?”
The Lawman's Surrender: The Calhoun Sisters, Book 2 Page 17
