With a groan he lowered his head, and his lips met hers.
They were tentative at first, even though she had issued an invitation.It was as if he didn’t believe it, couldn’t accept it.
But Shea felt every part of her respond to him.She felt his pain, his uncertainty, his pride.She felt the rawness inside him and made it hers.
She looked up and saw those guarded sea-colored eyes of his, but now they weren’t at all guarded.They were desperate and wounded, so full of dark despair that shudders ran through her.
His lips left hers, and he stepped back, as if certain those shudders meant revulsion rather than the uncontrollable response of her body to his.“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“You don’t know—”
“I know everything I want to know.”That wasn’t true.It was, in fact, the greatest lie she’d ever told, but there was no guilt in her when she saw him relax.His lips returned to hers, this time with a need that shook her down to her toes.Heat pooled inside her as his body touched hers, and she felt him harden against her.His hands went down, encircling her hips, pulling her up until the swelling at the apex of his legs matched the crevice at hers, and she felt that heat inside her turn into hot, throbbing rivers of desire, painful in intensity.
Shea had never felt such longing, such yearning, in her life.She wasn’t sure what that longing reached for, but she didn’t care.She just wanted to touch him, to feel that gentleness that said so much more than he would say.
She heard the quick intake of his breath as his lips pressed hard on hers, taking now, because he sensed that she needed, wanted, this as much as he.But even then, he tempered his moves, the strain of doing so obvious on his face.
“Oh, Shea,” he said, his voice breaking as he moved an inch away from her lips, his face taut with wanting.“This is …”
He stopped.She didn’t know what he’d started to say.That this was impossible or ridiculous or insane or all of these things.
“Right,” she finished for him.
“Nothing about this is right,” he whispered, but then he belied those words, kissing her again with a desperation that said something else altogether.
Shea put her arms around him, carefully so she wouldn’t hurt the wound on his arm.She welcomed the feel of his lips on hers, and she opened her mouth to him under the gentle prodding.
She had never been kissed like this, and she was startled that his exploring tongue could set aflame so many other places in her body.Then she stopped wondering and could only react.Her own tongue instinctively stroked his, and she felt him go rigid as a low groan rumbled from deep inside him.
His hands left her hips and moved up and down her back in sensuous strokes.Her body stretched to feel his hardness against the core of her; astonished at a need so compelling, she couldn’t stop herself.She wondered at the way his body, his hands, made her quiver with expectation.She had never thought she would welcome such an invasion, but now she craved more and more and more.
His lips left hers and moved along her face with feathering caresses.She closed her eyes.She just wanted to feel and savor.To memorize.To remember.
Rafe unbuttoned her dress, and his hands slipped inside her chemise.She wasn’t wearing a corset; it had seemed foolish to endure the discomfort up here in the mountains, and now she was glad, for his hand easily found and touched, almost reverently, her breast.She felt it swell and grow taut and tingle.
And ache.Dear God, how it hurt.And then the other breast.She thought she would burst with feeling, with all the new sensations ravaging her body.New and wondrous and exciting and needy.
Her body pressed even closer to his, seeking something she didn’t understand, seeking to unite.Her hands had climbed up the back of his neck, tickling and playing with his thick, curling hair, twisting it in her fingers.
In response his hands moved from her breasts and tangled in her hair, freeing it from the ribbon holding it back, and she felt it fall over her shoulders and breasts.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered.The words sounded almost worshipful, and shefeltbeautiful.For the first time in her life she felt truly beautiful.
Mindless of his wound, he swooped her up in his arms, and she linked her hands around his neck.He carried her several feet and then laid her down on a bed of pine needles, soft now from months of exposure.He knelt beside her, his face strained as he watched hers, and she knew he was waiting for her to say no.
She couldn’t say it.She didn’t want to.She wanted him in a way she’d never wanted anything before in her life.She wanted to see his eyes thaw, and his mouth smile, and the hard, set lines of his face ease.She wanted to hear him laugh.
She wanted to love him.
But that was something she couldn’t tell him.
Only with her eyes could she let him know that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
His eyes didn’t relax, nor did his lips smile, or his face ease, as his hands lifted her dress and chemise over her head and tugged the pantalets down.He did all those things with the same intense concentration he’d used when training his horse, or doctoring the cub, or cutting wood.She wondered sadly whether there was any joy left in him at all.As if he knew what she was thinking, his hands hesitated as they pulled the last garment from her.
They rested on her thigh for the briefest of moments, then his right hand turned over her right one, and he studied it.She no longer wore a bandage, and the blisters were healing.It was still sore, though, and he ran his thumb over it so lightly that it teased rather than hurt.“I’m sorry for that,” he said.
Shea gazed at the two hands together, hers white and slender, his tanned and large.He was not wearing his glove, and the brand was stark on his skin, but he didn’t try to hide it.It was as if he were reminding himself, or testing her.
