Adrienne deWolfe (30 page)

His mouth courted hers. Nuzzling and nibbling, it sought an open invitation. His tongue pushed past her lips. Fencing and caressing, it wooed hers with tender stabs until their tongues tangled, twined, and mated. He tasted of salt—the salt from their combined tears—and the memory of his compassion made her ache to know him, to be a part of him.

"Rorie, let me look at you," he whispered against her clinging lips. "Let me feel you flesh to flesh."

He'd raised her other hand to her bodice, and she quaked when his fingers slipped a button free beneath her palm.

"Help me," he crooned, undoing another. "You're safe with me."

Her fingers obeyed of their own accord. With his persistent, skillful plucking, it didn't take long to wrestle ties or stays. Soon her gown sagged to her waist, and her corset had disappeared. Only her chemise remained, but he was slipping its straps down and murmuring reassurances, no doubt to mask his determination. When she shrank from the idea of her stark nakedness, his mouth lowered, steaming through the thin veil of fabric, teasing her nipple until the sheer touch of muslin chafed like rawhide on her straining, sensitized flesh.

"Wes, please—"

"Take it off."

"But the lantern—"

She gasped, suddenly blinded by darkness.

"There. No more excuses," he said silkily.

She swallowed. Exhilarated, tantalized, she couldn't help but be scared witless. Even at eighteen, she'd known enough not to let love play go this far. What was she doing? What was
he
doing? She couldn't see him in the ghostly twinkle of starlight.

"Wes, um, maybe this isn't such a good idea," she said, feeling obligated to say so, and hating every word.

A warm hand prowled over the muslin, peeling it slowly, provocatively from her flesh.

"There you go again, darlin', not giving a fella a chance."

He filled his palm with the weight of her breast, and she shivered with forbidden delight as his thumb began to toy with the jutting, tingling nub.

"Some parts of you think it's a very good idea," he teased, sliding his tongue inside her ear. "And all my parts have to agree."

She squirmed, choking back a laugh. He was so bad. And so good. A sticky warmth that had nothing to do with spring heat was lapping at her tender places. It would take divine intervention not to beg him to lay her down, to press inside her, to ease the torment that his grins and glances and stolen caresses had built inside her for days. Although she wasn't naive enough to think he truly found her attractive, she wanted to cling to that thought for a few minutes longer, to feel vibrantly feminine and alluringly beautiful in every fiber of her being. Jarrod had never made her feel anything but clumsy and horse-sized.

"Kiss me," he growled, sipping at her lips. "I want to taste you again."

Any doubt of his sincerity was dispelled when his mouth slanted over hers, feasting with relish. She raised a shaking hand, touching his cheek, sliding her fingers through the rich, coppery waves of his hair. How long had she been wanting to feel those shimmering strands? Since that first afternoon, when the sun had flared behind him and he'd seemed to wear it on his head like some crowning, autumn glory?

"God, woman." His breaths came less evenly now. "I do have a hunger for you."

He was weighting her down, pressing her into the rumpled pile of blankets and quilts. She heard the muffled crackling of the fresh straw underneath, felt the tender prickling of worn wool against her shoulders. Then another, more erotic sensation followed, the hot hard brass of his buckle, branding her belly with the fever of his arousal.

"You smell like wildflowers." His pleased, muffled tones came from the hollow of her throat. "Honeysuckle, I think."

And he smelled like leather and earth and wind and prairie.

"I love the scent of you, Rorie." He shifted lower, and his tongue, like wet velvet, licked between her breasts. "It keeps me up at night."

She flushed from head to toe, hearing a deeper, bawdier meaning in his words. Stretching out a hand, she sought to urge his lips higher to the safety of her mouth, but he delved out of reach.

She heard a clink and a rustle. A heartbeat later, layers of fabric began peeling from her hips. When she tried to sit up, to preserve the last shreds of her modesty, his hands wooed her, gentled her, massaged the nervous tremors from her limbs.

"I just want to make you smile, sweetheart. Will you smile for me?"

She could see him again now, a silvery man-god kneeling between her legs. Starlight spilled over his Olympian shoulders and down the shadowed canyons of his ribs. It was then that she realized he'd shed his belt and jeans. She drew a swift breath. His naked flanks looked as hard and sleek as marble, and the maleness of him...

Her gaze flew to his, and his off-center smile made her secret flesh smoke.

"You're... beautiful, Wes," she said shyly.

"Thank you, darlin'. You know how I feel about you."

With that angel smile she'd come to associate with his devilish side, he lowered his head and sucked on her navel. The tickling of his tongue and mustache made her squirm with delight, until she felt a more intimate tickling against the nest between her thighs. When his long, exquisitely thick forefinger found the entry to her clinging heat, she sat bolt upright, gasping. He wrapped her waist in the prison of his arm, making her helpless to fend off his artful, plunging strokes. A slick welcome spilled from her traitorous core, and he made a thoroughly male, thoroughly satisfied sound.

"Oh, yes. Honey. You feel like molten honey."

With gentle pressure, he arched her back over his arm, and she groaned, digging her fingers into his shoulder blades.

"Relax, sweetheart. I've got hold of you. Just enjoy the ride."

She started a feeble protest, but her breath snagged when he sucked her breast into the steamy textures of his mouth, swirling his tongue over the shameless bud that was pouty and swollen, aching for his kiss.

"Trust me." His entreaty came faintly above the ripping of her breaths. "Let me lay you down."

Now he was exploring her body, learning what pleased her. Every tender foray into her secret, guilty yearnings struck sparks from the deepest female parts of her, like a match strikes sparks from tinder.

"Wes, we can't keep doing this," she pleaded, knowing that to speak at all put her at terrible risk. She might beg him for every wanton delight she'd ever imagined.

"We can't?" His voice came in silky tones between each pinprick of his teeth, prowling up the trembling flesh of her inner thigh. "Why's that?"

A second finger joined the thrusting of the first, and wild pleasure streaked through her, making her writhe.

"P-people will talk."

"I don't plan on telling anyone. Do you?"

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry at his sinful persistence. She'd never been seduced before.

"It's easy for you to jest," she panted, doing her moral best to twist away. "I'm the one who'll bear the brunt of the scandal. They'll call me a desperate old spinster who corrupts younger men."

"Still think of me as a barely weaned pup, do you? Hmm. Then let me show you something that might help to change your mind, darlin'."

He grabbed her hips and hiked them higher. Before she realized his intent, his lips settled on a place she'd only dreamed a man might kiss. Her startled, "What are you—?" fragmented into a high, strangled sound as his relentless, wickedly mobile mouth drove the itchy twitching inside her to a maddening frenzy.

Suddenly she was powerless to do anything more than arch and cry out as lightning splintered through her.

"Sons of thunder." She sank weakly beneath him, and he chuckled. Prowling higher, he planted nipping kisses from her navel to her ear.

"Liked that, eh? Then just consider it a sample—a very small sample, mind you—of what this younger man can do for you."

She shivered, as much from his silky promise as from the tiny jolts of sensation now shooting from her earlobe to her spine. "Wes, please," she moaned, shaking with her need. "Have mercy on me. I want you so much, I can't fight you."

He hesitated, and for a moment, she wished she'd still been too winded to speak sense.

"Rorie." He balanced himself on his arms, separating their steaming lengths, but not enough to keep his heat from lapping over her. "If you want me to stop, I will, but..." He smiled, an odd combination of wistfulness and raw desire. "Don't deny yourself pleasure just because some shriveled, dried-up old wasp in town is jealous of you. We're free, Rorie. Both of us. Who's it going to hurt?"

She swallowed hard at his reasoning. She'd always resented the way Jarrod could sin with whomever he pleased, while she was painted scarlet simply for thinking of the marriage act.

But her husband had divorced her. She couldn't become pregnant. Ethan had ridden off on his cattle drive, postponing the proposal he might never make now that he knew she was barren.

Wes was right. She was painfully,
achingly
free.

"I..." She bit her lip. "I just want..." Tears welled up so thick and fast in her throat, she couldn't loose another word. There'd already been one casualty, although she couldn't bear to let him know it. She had fallen so hopelessly in love with him, that her heart broke every time she imagined him riding away, looking for a wife who could give him the redheaded children he wanted.

"What do you want, Rorie? Tell me. I'll do whatever you say."

"Oh Wes." A sob bubbled up past the knot in her throat. "I want you. Is—is that wrong?"

His expression grew so tender, so sweet with compassion, that she couldn't blink away the tears that slipped past her lashes.

"No, Rorie," he murmured. "Not between us. It will never, ever be wrong between us."

Easing his body down beside hers, he cradled her in his arms, kissing her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. She clung to him, needing his solace, wanting to believe that her love for him would make their union blessed, not profane.

"I would never hurt you, Rorie. Never on purpose," he added, catching her face in his hands and brushing away the last traces of her tears. "I want you to believe that. Do you?"

She blinked. There was something so vulnerable, so needy and urgent, pleading to her from the depths of his gaze, that she nodded yes without a second thought. His breath released in a rush.

"Good. Please try to remember that tomorrow, okay?"

She opened her mouth, but he gave her no chance to respond, much less to question what he'd meant, as his lips stole over hers. Sighing, she deepened the kiss, no longer reluctant to feed the primal hunger he'd restrained so fiercely to pleasure her.

She ran her hands over his back, kneading the taut, thick muscles and delighting in the small, tight curve of his buttocks. He made a throaty sound of pleasure when she gripped him harder, pulling him closer, wedging the hot, sleek proof of his passion between her thighs. When she slipped a hand down his body, she felt his smile against her lips. He wouldn't bear her petting for long, though, and pressed her shoulders down.

"Next time," he promised in a hoarse whisper. "Right now, I'm so crazy hot for you, woman, I might embarrass myself."

He gave her a thoroughly indecent grin, and she grinned back. She couldn't help herself, especially when she heard his breaths go harsh and shallow as she guided him unerringly to his mark. He needed little assistance. Gliding fast and deep, he sheathed himself completely inside her before he shuddered, tensing into rigid stillness.

"Oh God, Rorie, you're so tight."

She froze, afraid to move. Her husband had complained about many things regarding her body, but never of... of
discomfort.

Then again, Jarrod had been smaller in every conceivable proportion compared to Wes. Maybe she and her Olympian young man weren't quite as well-matched as he had first thought. Her spirits sank.

"Am I... hurting you?" she asked.

"Hurting
me?" Dragging a whistling breath into his lungs, he threw back his head and laughed. The sensation of his mirth rolling through her was the most delightful intimacy she'd ever known.

"No, lover," he said, "you feel like velvet heaven. I was worried I might be hurting you. I, er, gather it's been a while since you've had a corruptible young man?"

She flushed from head to toe. Still, there was so much warmth glowing in those dancing, loving eyes that she could only nod.

"Give me your hand then."

Uncertainly, she obeyed, and he kissed it, twining his fingers through hers.

"Now make love to me," he whispered.

Holding her hand as if they were sweethearts, he moved inside her, slowly at first, watching every nuance of expression on her face. The great care he took to please her touched her almost as deeply as the light that poured from his eyes into the very heart of her soul. He murmured tender words to her, calling her every endearment he must have known.

Bearing the soft, shy core of his own secret self, he confessed in a raspy whisper, "I've never been with a lady before. I just want to love you right, honey, so you'll always come back for more."