And all the while, he watched. He watched her body respond, her belly tighten and her breasts tauten. He watched her eyes widen and her lips part and her head fall back. He watched as she began to writhe beneath him and smiled when she whimpered his name.
And Amanda, caught in his hands, by his mouth, saw the heat rise in his eyes, saw the wonder, the yearning, the love he couldn’t express any other way, and knew what it felt like to soar.
Finally when he took her breasts in his hands, he couldn’t keep her still any more. She wove her fingers into his hair and held him to her. She balanced herself against his chest, against the solid swell of his shoulder. She measured his arms, sleek and strong enough to control half a ton of animal, and claimed his torso. She watched, too, seeing the dark gold hair against her breast, the sun-darkened hand on her belly. She relished the contrasts, sleek against rough, hard against soft, light against dark. She savored the sensations, the curling, writhing fire that licked through her, the chill of kissed skin in the air, the delicious agony of tongue and lips and teeth tormenting breasts. She couldn’t hold still, couldn’t stay quiet. She couldn’t imagine any sweeter torment. And then Jake edged his hand up along her thigh, and she arched to meet it, to meet him, and knew she’d been wrong.
“Please, Jake,” she gasped, clutching him, the gathering fire demanding union, the dark lightning his fingers ignited splintering through her. “I can’t... wait...”
He silenced her with his mouth, his quirky, insatiable mouth. Amanda begged, but he didn’t hear her; she cried, and he drank her tears. She lost thought, lost time, lost place. There was only Jake, only his hands, his mouth, his tongue. Only his body, so warm and slick and sweetly familiar against hers. And finally, when she thought she couldn’t stand it anymore, when she scored his back with her nails just to keep from falling apart, he slipped inside her.
“I love you, Amanda,” he whispered to her, his hands in her hair, his sweat-sheened body filling her arms. “I love you.”
But Amanda couldn’t answer. She could only hold him, pull him into her, again and again, dancing on a tide that consumed light, sound, time. Lifting, singing, sailing into the sun where the words became meaningless and the act itself was all that was needed.
“It still doesn’t solve anything,” Jake murmured in her ear much later.
Amanda smiled. “Yes, it does,” she disagreed. “Now I’ll know where to get all my computers.”
He didn’t answer. He just stroked her hair where it lay tumbled across his chest. And slowly, quietly, they fell asleep before the fire, there with just an old afghan over them.
It didn’t occur to them what a bad idea it was until the next morning.
“Hey, Jake!” Lee yelled from the back porch as she slid her key into the lock. “I’m home!”
Both Jake and Amanda bolted upright and stared at the door not more than fifteen feet away.
“Uh-oh,” Amanda moaned, and then found herself being yanked into the bedroom, leaving all her clothes behind on the floor.
