Elizabeth Lowell

by Elizabeth Lowell

  His clenched thigh muscles barely gave beneath the testing of her teeth. Feeling the intense strokes of desire that shook him with each of her moist caresses was intensely arousing to her, but she was too consumed by her sensual explorations to realize that her own body was as hot as his. She only knew that bursts of pleasure went through her when she rubbed her breasts over his hard thighs and brushed her cheeks over the rigid evidence of his desire.

  “Janna,” Ty said raggedly. His voice when she turned her head and her lips brushed over him in a caress that nearly undid him. “Sweet God, you’re killing me. Love, don’t, I’ve never...you’ll make me...”

  The intimate touch of her tongue was a liquid fire that burned away his words, burned away his thoughts, burned away everything but the incandescent instant when she first tasted him.

  Speech unraveled into a cry that was torn from deep in Ty’s throat. The harsh sound made Janna stop. She looked up. The green blaze of his eyes made her tremble.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “But you...cried out,” she said hesitantly.

  “So did you when I touched you that way.”

  Her eyes half closed as sensual memories burst inside her, drenching her with heat. She looked at him and remembered what it had been like to feel his mouth loving her, enthralling her, devouring her in steamy intimacy. She looked again at the potent male flesh that had felt so hard and smooth and intriguing to her tongue just a moment ago.

  “Don’t,” he said huskily, biting back a raw sound of need. “You’ll make me lose control.”

  “But I’m not even touching you,” she whispered.

  “You are in your mind. And in mine. Satin butterfly, hot and sleek and perfect. When you took me into your body it was like being taken into a fiery paradise. You burned me to my soul. You’re still burning in my soul, burning in my body, everything burning. You don’t know what you do to me.”

  Ty saw Janna’s shivering response to his words and thought he would lose what little control remained to him.

  “You burned me the same way,” she said, touching him with the tip of her tongue. “I’m still burning.”

  Restlessly she stroked her hands over his clenched leg muscles, trying to tell him something for which she had no words, seeking something she couldn’t name. One of her hands caressed the inside of his thigh until she could go no higher. She felt him shudder, heard his ripping intake of breath and knew she had found another way to touch him with fiery paradise. Fascinated by the difference between his body and her own, she caressed the flesh suspended so tightly between his thighs.

  Ty watched Janna with eyes that were no more than green slits set against the stark tension of his face. He had thought he could want her no more without losing control. He had been wrong. He wanted her more now than he ever had.

  Yet he made no move to take her, for he was learning more about himself and her with every instant, every caress, each sweet glide of her tongue as she discovered the changing textures of his masculinity.

  The sight of her loving him, enjoying him, pleasuring him and herself at the same time was unlike anything he had ever known. Slowly his legs gave way, unable to bear the weight of his passion any longer. He sank to his knees, then onto the grass, and she moved with him, loving him in silence, displaying that love with every caress.

  When her mouth circled him, accepting and cherishing him with a shattering intimacy, a cry was ripped from him once again. This time she didn’t stop loving his hot flesh, for she knew that he had but given voice to the savage, overwhelming pleasure that was shaking his body.

  “Janna...”

  Her answer was silent, a changing pressure of her mouth that dragged a hoarse sound of ecstasy from his throat. He tried to tell her what she was doing to him, consuming and renewing him with each clinging movement of her lips and tongue. But no words came, for he had none to describe the shattering beauty of being loved without inhibition, without bonds, without expectations, nothing but the sultry heat of her mouth cherishing him.

  “Janna,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t. I’m going to...” Words became a groan of ecstasy dragged from his as his hips moved in helpless need. “For the love of God... stop.”

  “Am I hurting you?” she asked, knowing the answer, wanting to hear it anyway.

  He laughed brokenly, then made a low sound when her hands and mouth slid over him once more, caressing him, burning through his control, burning him alive.

  “Love...stop. I can’t take any more without losing control.”

  He felt the shiver that overtook her in the instant before she stroked him and whispered, “Yes, I’d like that.”

  He clenched against the pulses of ecstasy that were bursting through his body, not knowing how to give himself in that elemental way.

  “Please,” she whispered. She touched the tip of her tongue to the blunt masculine flesh that was no longer a mystery to her. “You taste like life itself.”

  Watching her, he made an anguished sound as he fought the tide of ecstasy that was surging through him. Deep within his soul he realized that he would never forget the picture she made as she loved him with a generosity that was a kind of ecstasy in itself, a giving and a taking that became a profound sharing he had never imagined possible. She accepted and cherished him without restraint, teaching him that he had known nothing of true intimacy before he had known Janna.

  Ty felt his control being stripped away with each loving instant, each sweet and wild caress. Pleasure convulsed him, shaking his body and soul with each primal pulse of rapture; and the word he cried out at the shattering peak of ecstasy was Janna’s name.

  The cry pierced her soul, bringing tears that were both hot and sweet, an overflowing of her joy in the certainty that she had given the man she loved such intense pleasure.

  When Ty could again control his own body, he caught Janna between his hands and pulled her into his arms, needing the feel of her close to him. She closed her eyes and held him as strongly as he was holding her, savoring the closeness and the sound of her name repeated over and over by her lover as the aftermath of ecstasy shuddered through his powerful body. When he finally tilted her face up to his own, she smiled and nuzzled against the masculine lips, which were resilient and soft and...insistent.

  “Ty?”

  Her husky voice was like a caress on his hot skin.

  “I need to be part of you,” he said simply. His hand slid from her cheek, skimmed down her shirtfront, below her waist, seeking and finding the soft mound at the apex of her thighs. He made a deep sound of discovery and satisfaction when he felt the sultry heat of her. “And you need me, too. I can feel it even through all the clothes you use to conceal your beauty. My own satin butterfly, waiting to be freed of your cocoon.”

  The pressure of his strong hand cupping her so deliberately made a shimmering tension gather in the pit of her stomach.

  “You need me, butterfly,” he said, flexing his hand, feeling her alluring heat calling to him. He bent to take her lips, then stopped just short of that goal. “You need me, but do you want me, too?”

  She tried to answer. All that came out was a breathless sound when his tongue touched her lips and she realized how hungry she was for his kiss. Vaguely she felt a shifting pressure at her waist, but she barely noticed, for his teeth had caught her lower lip and were holding it captive for the slow probing of his tongue. He released her soft lip by tiny increments.

  “Do you want me?” he asked huskily while his hand flicked open buttons, pushed aside cloth, slid beneath fabric, seeking her feminine core. “Will you let me undress you, touch you, tease you until you’re hot and wild and you can’t breathe without calling my name?”

  She couldn’t answer, for his hand had claimed her and the blind searching of his fingertip was making her tremble in anticipation of the ecstasy she would know again at her lover’s hands.

  “Janna,” Ty said in a low voice. “Tell me what you want.”

>   “Touch me,” she said raggedly.

  “I’m already touching you.”

  She shivered and shifted her legs unconsciously, silently telling him what she wanted.

  “Say it,” he whispered. “I want to hear it. I need to know that I’m giving you something as sweet and powerful as you gave to me.”

  “I…I…”

  She turned her face against his chest in a gesture of trust and shyness that made him smile despite the need clenching fiercely within him. She had been so abandoned in her seduction of him a few moments before that he had forgotten she was new to sensuous play.

  “Then I’ll tell you what pleases me,” Ty said, and as he spoke, his fingertip barely brushed the dark auburn triangle that both defined and concealed Janna’s softness. “I love seeing you this way, with your clothes opened and your breasts bare and my hand between your beautiful thighs. I love watching your nipples rise and tighten even though nothing of me is touching you but my words. I love watching your breath shorten and your legs move restlessly until you open for me, asking that I touch what no other man has.”

  Smiling with frank sensuality, he watched the effect of his words on her. He encouraged her movements with teasing hesitations and tiny touches on her breasts, her navel, the heavy auburn silk at the apex of her thighs, and she moved beneath his touch, response and plea at once.

  “Yes, like that. Just like that,” he said, his voice thickening. His hands moved, caressing and revealing her in the same motions. “I love parting your soft lips and sliding into you. So warm…”

  A ragged cry came from Janna as she felt a bubble of sensation expand wildly within her and then burst, heat spilling over at her lover’s words, his touch, his clear enjoyment of her body.

  “Yes, I love that, too,” he said.

  He advanced then withdrew his touch from her, teasing her and pleasuring her in the same motions, feeling the increase in her heat and softness with each caress. His voice changed with the heavy running of his own blood, becoming dark, deep, as elemental as the endless hunger he felt for the woman whose body became his at a touch.

  “The way you respond to me makes me feel like a god. Hot satin butterfly…” Ty’s voice broke as he felt the sudden constriction in her satin depths, heard her breath hesitate and then come out in a low moan. “Love,” he whispered, bending down to her, “tell me what you need. I’ll give it to you, all of it, and then I’ll begin all over again, touching you, pleasuring you again and again until neither one of us has the strength to speak…if that’s what you want. Tell me what you want.”

  His name came from her lips in a ripple of small cries marking the rings of pleasure expanding and bursting sweetly within her body. Blindly her hands moved over his hot skin until she found the flesh that she had come to know so intimately. He was hard and smooth to her touch, as tight as though it had been weeks rather than minutes since he had known release. Having tangible proof of her ability to affect Ty was like another kind of caress, deep and hot and unbearably sweet.

  “I want you,” Janna said, her voice breaking from an unexpected, wild burst of pleasure at feeling him so thick and heavy in her hands. “I want to be joined so closely with you that I can feel each heartbeat, each pulse of life…”

  Her words shattered into rippling sounds, tiny cries called from her very core as Ty swept her loose pants from her body and merged their bodies with a single powerful motion, giving her all that she had asked for and more, for he had wanted the joining as intensely as she had.

  The swift fulfillment was like lightning searching through her flesh, creating an incandescent network of fire, burning through to her soul. She didn’t know that she called Ty’s name even as ecstasy transfixed her, but he did. He heard his own name, felt the satin convulsions deep within her body, and he smiled in a mixture of triumph and passionate restraint as he bent to drink from her lips the taste of ecstasy.

  Only when the last of her cries had faded and the final echoes of passionate release had stilled in her body did Ty begin the slow dance of love, penetration and withdrawal, sliding deeply, retreating, sheathing himself within her once more, retreating, sheathing.

  Janna’s body gave no warning. Suddenly she was in the grip of something unknown, something hot and vital coiling relentlessly within her, tighter with each movement, tension dragging breath from her lungs and strength from her limbs.

  His answer was an even more complete sheathing followed by husky laughter when he felt her back arch in helpless reflex to his presence deep within her body. Her cries unraveled into a moan as she joined with him in the sinuous dance of love, her body driven by the pressure coiling within her.

  He encouraged her with dark words whispered into her ear and the strength of his arm circling beneath her hips, sealing their bodies tightly together. He felt the tension vibrating within her satin depths as surely as she did. The realization that she was poised on the brink of violent rapture slammed through him, nearly wrenching away his own control.

  He fought against his own climax, dragging himself back from the brink. He didn’t want release yet. Not before he had drunk the wine of Janna’s passion to the last glorious drop.

  The feel of her nails against his buttocks was like being burned by sensual fire. He groaned and gave her what she was demanding, what she needed, the elemental joining of his body to hers, no borders, no calculation, nothing but heat and sweet friction and the driving rhythms of life.

  The tightness within Janna increased until she would have screamed, but her voice was paralyzed. Her body twisted and her legs wrapped around Ty’s lean hips as she strained toward something she both feared and needed, something so powerful that having it might destroy her—but not having it would certainly destroy her. She began to call Ty’s name with each breath, broken sounds, she was being pulled apart by the tension that had no end, no release, nothing but a need that drove her relentlessly higher.

  And then the tension doubled and redoubled with each heartbeat. She screamed his name and burst into a thousand blazing pieces, each one of them a separate ecstasy consuming her all the way to her soul.

  Ty held Janna, drinking her passion, feeling her climax to the marrow of his bones and beyond, kissing her with both gentleness and hunger, holding himself still despite the tension still hammering in his body with each breath, each heartbeat. He didn’t move because he wanted it to last forever.

  There had never been a woman for him like Janna. He had learned in a twilight meadow on Black Plateau her rare gift for ecstasy. Now he was driven to learn the boundaries of that gift. He began to move again, caressing and probing and filling her once more, each motion inciting flesh still quivering from the height of sensual stimulation and wild release.

  “Ty?” she asked, opening dazed eyes.

  “Yes,” he said, bending down to Janna’s mouth. “To the last drop of passion. Until we can’t breathe. Until we die.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Janna looked at the stone overhang that had been the only home she had ever had. Only scattered ashes remained of the campfire that had always been carefully tended. The pots and pans had been washed, upended and set aside. The trunk had been filled with herbs that would discourage insects or mice from settling in.

  All that she had kept out was a small pack consisting of her bedroll, herb pouch, and canteen...and the sketch of her mother, a silken lady who hadn’t survived the demands of frontier life.

  “We’ll be able to get the books once the Army takes care of Cascabel,” Ty said, putting his arm around Janna.

  For an instant she leaned against him, savoring his strength and the knowledge that for once she didn’t have to stand alone. Then she straightened and smiled up at him, but she said nothing about their coming back to the secret valley. If she kept her portion of Mad Jack’s gold, she could build a home anywhere she wished, save one—wherever Ty was.

  That she would not do.

  She had been lucky enough to have her dream of a h
ome made possible. The fact that she now wished for Ty to share that dream was unfortunate, but it was her misfortune, not his. She had taken advantage of his natural woman-hunger by teasing him until he was beside himself with need. She hadn’t realized the power of the weapon she had turned on him. He had tried to resist, but he hadn’t been able to, not entirely. That was her fault, not his.

  Especially yesterday, when she had thrown herself at him with utter abandon, touching him in ways that made it impossible for him to turn away. Even now the memories made her tremble with the aftershocks of what they had shared.

  But her wantonness was no reason for Ty to give up his own dream. Requiring him to give up his deepest desire just because he had been the first man to show her ecstasy…that would be an act of hatred, not of love.

  And she loved Ty so much it felt as though she were being pulled apart by claws of ice and fire and night.

  Silken lady, wherever you are, whoever you are, be kind to the man I love. Give him the dream he has wanted for so many years.

  “Janna?” Ty asked, his throat aching with the sadness he felt twisting through her, the bleak shadow of night just beneath her sunny smile. “We’ll come back. I prom—”

  She put her fingers over his lips, sealing in the unwanted promise before it could be spoken. “It’s all right,” she said. “I knew I would have to leave someday. Someday…is today.”

  He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. “Wyoming is beautiful, too. If you don’t like it there we can go anywhere.”

  Tears Janna couldn’t conceal came to her eyes. Ty’s words were agony to her, for they weren’t the words she had longed so much to hear, the words he only spoke to her in her dreams, the words his silken lady would someday hear from his lips.

  I love you.

  But Ty didn’t love Janna. He was amused by her, he liked her, and he was enthralled by her sensuality without realizing that passion’s wellspring was her own deep love for him. He talked about their future together, but it was a future decreed by his unbending sense of honor and duty, not his desire to make Janna his mate, his lifetime companion, the mother of his children.