Erin was dreaming. She knew it was a dream because she had imagined it ever since she was old enough to imagine being with a man. She had comforted herself with stories and fantasies in which Sam Barnes was always the hero. Whether he knew it or not, Sam had been there to dry the tears she’d shed in private during those years in D.C. when she had become the brunt of bullying from other, more successful students. When she was scared or uncertain, it was him she always thought of.
Now was the most delicious dream yet. He was there in her room, stripping off his clothes in the dim light of the moon filtering through the window. He stood next to the bed, looking at her with an expression that was both somber and searching.
As she always did in her dreams, Erin moved to the side, a silent invitation. The mattress shifted with his weight, and she smiled drowsily at how realistic this dream was. His weight and warmth enveloped her. His lips nuzzled her face and her neck, his breath faintly flavored with bourbon. Big, calloused hands pulled her against him, molding her to him. Why couldn’t he be like this when she was awake? Why couldn’t he like her in real life?
“Sammy,” she said with a sigh against his mouth. “Make love to me. I want you, all of you.”
Her dream hero kissed her deeply, seducing her so she never ever wanted to wake up. She looked into his dark eyes and saw heat and passion so intense it burned straight down to her sex. She ached for him, throbbed for him. She helped him as he pulled her baggy shirt over her head, baring her breasts to him.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and his lips and hands caressed her, making her whimper and moan. “So beautiful. I’ve dreamed so long of touching you. Touch me too,” he whispered against her ear.
Erin’s fingers trembled as she traced the contours of his beloved face, skimmed along his muscular neck and shoulders, and spread across the sprinkling of hair covering the muscles of his chest and stomach. Her dreams had never felt this real, this compelling. As her hands brushed along the rigid outline of his hips, Sam’s breathing altered, becoming harsh and strained. Then his fingers untied the string at her waist and his hands brushed the material down until she was as naked as he was.
Erin sighed with pleasure and arched against his work-sculpted body. Never had her dream been this detailed, this realistic. Her whole body burned and tingled where skin met skin…her thighs, her belly, her nipples. She and Sam rubbed together, hard and soft, until they moaned with the pure, heart-pounding pleasure of it. He moved away for an instant. She heard a sound like ripping paper; then he was back, pressing against her, his heat nearly burning her.
“Oh, Sammy, yes,” she whispered. “Don’t stop. Please.”
He groaned near her ear. Then his hand slipped lower, sliding between her thighs to the moist, bare flesh there, and his fingers did the most deliciously wicked things… Things she had never even imagined. She whimpered again as a second finger joined what the first one was already doing, and his thumb rubbed the bud of flesh nestled in her swollen sex. She had fantasized about this so often it seemed real.
“I want you,” he whispered. “I want to feel you around me when you come for me, baby.”
Her fog began to clear. In her dream, Sam always said he loved her, not that he wanted her. But before Erin could puzzle that out, his knee parted her thighs, and even as she whimpered, his fingers were replaced with the hard heat of his erection. He slid along her moist folds until he found the opening he sought, then thrust powerfully into her.
Pain burst like the crack of a log in a fireplace. Erin gasped. This was no dream. This was actually happening. And it hurt. No one had told her that. Maybe Sam was just too big. It felt that way. At last, she found her voice.
“Get off me! Get off me!”
“Erin?” Shock reverberated in Sam’s voice, and he abruptly withdrew. The lamp next to the bed snapped on, and she heard his muttered curse before the bed shifted again. Erin opened her eyes and looked down at herself. She scrambled off the bed, snatched her shirt, and threw it over her head right before Sam stalked back into the room still gloriously naked and carrying a wet washcloth.
She backed away from him. The flush of embarrassment that had flooded her morphed almost immediately into anger.
“Get out,” she yelled. “Get out of my room. I thought you were a dream. Get out!”
Sam’s dark eyes were shadowed with concern. “Erin! We need to talk for God’s sake.”
“There’s nothing for us to talk about. Nothing.” Her voice rose to near hysteria, but she could do nothing to control it. “Leave me alone!”
“Talk to me!” he ordered. “Sweet heaven. How are you still a virgin?”
Erin looked at his confused, frustrated expression and lost it. The first thing that came to hand was the alarm clock, and she sent it sailing toward his head. Sam deflected it with his forearm.
“You…you…you jackass,” she yelled. “First I’m not pure enough for you because you think I’ve slept with everyone and their brother… Now you’re pissed because I haven’t?”
Erin picked up a crystal dish that was sitting on the nightstand and threw that too for added measure. Again, Sam deflected it, but this time before she could gather anything else, he rushed forward to grab her and pin her tightly against him.
“Talk to me!” he growled once more against her hair. “You let everyone think…. Everyone assumed… What about Rick? And Matty? The way you dress…the birth control pills. Darn it, Erin! What was I supposed to think?”
“You were supposed to leave me alone.” She struggled in his arms, arching away from him now with her entire body as stiff as a board until she could glare him in the eye. “Put me down, Sam!”
She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. She never cried. She wanted her dream back. She wanted that fantasy where Sam looked at her and saw her, not who everyone thought Erin Richardson was. Sam would look at her, and he would know. He was her hero. He had to be the one to see her. He had always been her hero. From the day when she was nine and he’d found her with her broken arm. He’d picked her up, put her on his horse, and taken her home. He was her knight.
* * * *
Sam stared at her pale face. She had said yes. She’d told him not to stop. The shadows below her beautiful eyes were dark enough to be bruises. Oh God! What had he done? His mind recoiled. She had gone limp in his arms now, and her face was ever so slightly averted.
“Please, Erin, baby, talk to me,” Sam pleaded. Her head dropped forward, and he felt a tear hit his chest. Christ. A tear. He had done this. His heart was ripping in two. He wanted to howl. He had made her cry. Sweet Virgin Mary. When all he had wanted was to love her, he had brought her to tears instead. She must have felt it too, because she began to struggle, but Sam wasn’t going to let her run away. Not anymore.
“I won’t let you go, Erin,” he told her, and he picked her up in his arms as easily as if she weighed no more than a feather. “And I won’t let you hide. Too many people have done that with you.”
As he sat with her in the chair next to the bed, he saw that, even crying, she would not release the control she exercised over every emotion except her anger. Her tears were silent, the mortification written plainly on her face that anyone should see her cry.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he pressed her head against his bare chest. Erin’s soft hair tickled his skin, and Sam leaned his cheek against the top of her head, pain tightening his jaw. He had to clear his throat before he could continue. “I would never have been that rough if I’d known it was your first time. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
He held her close and rocked her. Sam closed his eyes, feeling her body jerk with her silent sobs. His arms tightened and he rocked her harder, desperate to ease her, aching with guilt.
“I thought it was my dream,” she choked.
It was the second time she’d said it. She dreamed of him that way? Dreamed of him in her bed, making love to her? He hardly dared hope. Maybe there was something they could
salvage out of this. He cradled her head and let his other hand rub soothingly on her back. He needed to make it up to her, to show her that making love was pleasurable.
“Oh, baby, I can’t give you back what I’ve taken,” he whispered, “but I can make it better. Would you let me do that? Would you let me show you how it should be?”
She looked at him with tear-drenched eyes. He hated the wariness there, hated the knowledge that he had put it there through his own actions and his own ignorance.
“It hurt,” she muttered against his chest. “Nobody tells you that.”
Sam closed his eyes in shame not only at what he had done, but also at the memory of Jenny telling them they didn’t know anything about her and they would be ashamed when they found out. She had no idea just how right she was. Sam felt like the worst kind of heel. It was obvious from her words she had never forgotten him, just as he had never been able to forget her.
“It won’t hurt again, Erin. I swear to you. Let me show you how amazing it can be. I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m begging you to trust me.”
Trusting anyone, when her trust had been betrayed over and over, was a struggle. He knew that, could see it. He racked his brain trying to think of some way to win her over. Maybe it was time he confessed a few things of his own. Using two fingers, he tilted her chin, kissed her nose, her forehead, and leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “Ever since I saw you in my pond all those years ago, I’ve dreamed of you, Erin. You’re so lovely. I want to hold you, touch you. “
“Then why do you always push me away?” she cried.
How could he tell her the real reason, especially when he’d ended up doing exactly what he’d feared? His face flushed. She was so perfectly formed, so pretty…and so tiny! Next to her, he felt clumsy and huge, but worst of all, old.
She watched him. “Sam? Are you blushing?”
He stroked his big thumbs over her cheeks and wiped away her tears as he gazed into her face. “I-I haven’t been with many women, Erin. I’ve spent so much time thinking about you—then feeling so guilty. You were just a kid. It was wrong. Then you came back…” He paused and took a deep breath. “You’re so tiny. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you. Sure, you’re an adult…but—you said it yourself—I’m old. I keep trying to convince myself you need someone closer to your age. You could never want someone like me.”
Chapter 6
His face was shadowed, his brows drawn together with uncertainty. Erin touched his cheek. “Sammy? I can barely remember a time when I didn’t want you.” Feeling emboldened by his gruff confession, she twisted until she straddled his lap in the chair and put her hands on either side of his dear, dear face. She leaned in close to him, touched her mouth to his, and let her hands drift into his hair to pull him closer. This was Sam, her Sam. She wanted to touch him and taste him. She wanted to hold him and never, never let him go.
“I’ve never wanted anyone else but you, Sam,” she murmured against his mouth, then brushed her lips against his. “I could never give myself to anyone. It’s always been you. At first, it was hero worship, then somewhere along the line it changed. All it took was seeing you again, and I was right back to wanting you. Your age means nothing.”
“Aw, babe. Put your arms around my neck.” When she had done that, he cupped her bottom and stood. She automatically wrapped her legs around his lean waist. “You just have no idea how wonderful that feels,” he growled in her ear.
When he laid her on the bed, he followed her down, holding her and soothing her with hands that caressed from her shoulders down her thighs. Patiently, gently, he kissed her and touched her breasts through the material of her shirt. After easing the material up, he bent his head until he pressed his lips to the broken heart on her breast and gently suckled her nipple, flicking it with his tongue so she gasped and knotted her fingers in his short, thick hair.
It was even better now. Knowing it was real, knowing that Sam wanted her, that he was touching her, sharpened and heightened her responses. As he trailed kisses lower across her belly and along the sensitive skin where hip met thigh, Erin arched upward and cried out.
“What—what are you doing?” she gasped.
“Shh. Kissing you, baby. Relax. I promise you’ll enjoy it.”
And she did. His tongue flicked where his fingers had caressed just moments before. Erin whimpered and when he added his fingers to what his mouth was doing, she arched against him. Heat suffused her entire body until she felt as if she were once again aboard the Sprite with the sun beating down on the deck. Her heart beat as fast as the first time she’d felt the ship crest a wave and slide into a trough. Ecstasy like she had never imagined rolled over her and she cried out, this time in pleasure. He held her close as she trembled in his arms.
“Oh, Sam!” she gasped in amazed wonder. “I never imagined.”
He hugged her. Slowly, as her pulse evened out and her breathing returned to normal, she became aware of other things. The silken feel of the sheets beneath her back and the hard length of his erection pressed against her hip. She ran her fingertips along his lean cheek. “Can I touch you?”
His smile was sultry and slow, his dark eyes lighting with passion and pleasure. “Baby, you can touch me anywhere you want, any way you want.”
She pushed him onto his back, then sat back on her heels to study the body she had only been able to imagine for years on end. He was heavily muscled and covered in a fine sprinkling of dark, downy hair that arrowed over his stomach, around the bold, hard flesh of his swollen cock before thinning once more along his well-defined thighs and well-shaped calves. His shoulders were broad, the prominent muscles molding sleekly into arms that were powerful and hands that, for all they were huge, were incredibly gentle.
Erin met his dark gaze again, and found him watching her curiously and cautiously. There was an edge of vulnerability apparent in his expression that she would never have imagined. She wanted to make him feel as wonderful as she did. “You’re even more handsome than I fantasized.”
His fingers feathered along the line of her cheek.
“Then touch me with your hands as well as your eyes. Touch me however you want. Whatever you do, I want because it’s you.”
She started at his head, slowly and shyly making her way down his body until he trembled with the effort to restrain himself. She sat back again and stripped off her shirt, and stretched out full length on top of him, savoring the way her softness met and molded around his hard body. She laid her cheek against his chest and felt the heavy beating of his heart. A deep wellspring of need nearly choked her.
“I want this, Sam. I want you inside of me, part of me, but it hurt last time.”
He stroked her cheek. “Stay on top, honey. Then you can decide how much or how little, how fast or how slow.”
Erin stared at his thick shaft, before slowly wrapping her fingers around as much of it as she could. Her wide eyes met his hooded gaze.
“Will it fit?”
His breath gusted out on a soft chuckle. “It already has, but you can keep doing that for a while if you want,” he rasped. He reached over to the nightstand, fumbling until he came up with a condom package.
She stroked him until he begged her to stop.
“Now would be the time to put that on,” she whispered, watching him as he did. Erin’s breath came out in a sob as she straddled his hips and slid her body onto him, sheathing him and feeling his fullness within her. They both trembled with fear, with passion, with restraint, but as pleasure replaced what had gone before, relaxation followed.
He braced her hips with his broad hands. “That’s it, baby. Are you okay? I’m not hurtin’ you, am I?”
She laughed, and for the first time since she could remember, she felt carefree. Her body had stretched and remolded to accommodate him. They fit in every way. “I feel wonderful. You feel wonderful.”
He smiled again, and his strong, white teeth flashed more brilliantly than she
had ever seen. “Then let’s make it even better.” With his hands, he taught her how to move over him and with him until they both gasped with pleasure that tipped them beyond the edge of reason. Erin climaxed first, crying out again, then watching as his expression changed from passion almost to pain with the intensity of his own orgasm. He held her hips firmly as he thrust into her, crying out as he came.
When she moved, he held her close. “Not yet. Stay with me, right where you are.” He stroked her and soothed her, his body still a part of hers. Erin laid her head on his chest, overwhelmed by the intensity of what had just occurred. Her fingers threaded through the silky hair of his chest, and she rubbed her cheek against him, as content as a cat.
She must have fallen asleep, because when she awoke, the covers were over them and they were lying on their sides. Sam had curled his powerful frame around her protectively.
“Sammy?” she whispered.
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad it was you. I always wanted the first time to be you.”
His arm tightened around her. She thought she heard a slight catch in his breathing. “Go to sleep, baby.”
“Will you stay with me?”
“All night,” he rumbled and gently kissed the back of her neck.
* * * *
Sam held her, willing his body to relax as she relaxed against him. She felt even better there than he could ever have imagined, but sleep eluded him. His thoughts churned.
Something about the scene in the hotel room was missing. It didn’t add up the way it should. He pictured the two men. The one called Rick was almost certainly somewhere in his early forties, though he acted much younger. He was tanned and fit, leaner and shorter than Sam, with a wiry kind of strength and a world weary expression. For all that he seemed to be in charge, the one who knew the score and what they were all about, something in the younger man’s expression nagged Sam.
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