by Lori Wilde
Thank God. Those things would eat you alive.
However, Abby was getting her first taste of the downside of following one’s passion.
He unclipped himself from the glider and his gear, then quickly unbuckled Abby from the harness and peeled off her helmet.
She blinked, trying hard not to give in to the pain. He knew from experience those damned cactus spines well and truly hurt.
“I’m so sorry,” he apologized.
“It’s not your fault.” She swallowed bravely. “I’m the one who panicked and grabbed the control bar after you told me not to.”
“Why did you freak?”
“I thought we were going to crash,” she confessed. “It seemed to me that something so incredible was bound to end in disaster.”
“You’re seriously twisted, you know that?” He shook his head. “Equating pleasure with catastrophe.”
“I didn’t say my fear made sense. I’m only relating what I felt.”
He studied her a long moment. The woman had some screwy ideas about life. Durango had an irresistible urge to prove how misguided her beliefs were.
But he had to give her credit: she was trying. Ten years ago she would never have considered hang gliding, much less do it. His admiration for her escalated while at the same time he had to caution himself not to care too much about her. She’d cut him deeply once before, and he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to hurt him like that again.
“I have a first-aid kit,” he said. “Which includes pocket pliers. Let’s just get you somewhere comfortable and out of the sun so I can extract the thorns. Can you walk?”
“Uh-huh.” She grimaced.
“The Indian ruins are just over that rise. It’s shaded and there’s a creek nearby.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
It only took a couple of minutes to hike to the place where sycamore trees provided a broadleaf canopy beside a narrow, trickling creek. Good thing that it was still May. Any later in the year and the creek created from the spring runoff would be dried up.
Abby wasn’t the outdoorsy type, but she was holding her own. Bucking up under the pressure and rising to the occasion. Durango took her hand and led her to the rocky overhang that hundreds of years before had been stone dwellings.
It was cool inside the crumbling structure. The front was gone, but there was still a semblance of a roof overhead to shelter them from the sun.
He seated himself on a large flat red rock and opened the first-aid kit. He took out the pliers, alcohol pads and a tube of antiseptic ointment.
“Come here.”
She minced over to stand in front of him.
He studied the curve of her full lips and thought about how much he wanted to kiss her again.
“This is going to be uncomfortable,” he said. “Taking off your jeans to get at those stickers.”
She nodded. “Do what you have to do.”
With him sitting and her standing, the fly of her jeans was positioned at his eye level. He reached out and undid the snap on her flap.
His fingers accidentally grazed her bare belly and it almost felt as if he’d been burned, his reaction to her was that volatile. He slid the zipper down and realized his fingers were sweating. Not from the heat, but from the tension. He couldn’t have been more nervous if he’d been juggling TNT.
Gently, carefully, he began edging her pants down over her hips.
The shallow rising and falling of her belly was barely perceptible as she breathed. He tried not to notice the subtle movement, tried not to be affected by the sight of her bare flesh, but hell, he was just a man and she was some kind of woman.
He felt himself grow hard and he clenched his jaw to fight off his arousal.
Nothing doing. The boner was there to stay.
Ignore it.
Right.
“Ow,” she whispered. “Ow. The needles are catching on my jeans.”
“Turn around,” he ordered. He hadn’t meant to sound sexually commanding, it just came out that way.
Her eyes widened and then she obeyed, giving him a wondrous glimpse of her backside. She was wearing white cotton thong panties. What a soul-sizzling combination of innocence and lust those panties were.
Never mind his lust. The thong would make extraction easier and she could probably keep her panties on.
Lucky for him.
Or maybe it was unlucky.
“I’m going to pull the fabric away from your fanny,” he explained.
“Okay.”
Durango placed one palm flat against her lower back and used his other hand to stretch the denim material out as far as it would go and slide it down. Once he had gotten past the thorny area, he quickly shucked her jeans to her knees.
She stepped out of her pants, resting a palm on his shoulder to balance herself, and kicked the jeans aside.
Her breathing was as raspy as his. He didn’t dare look into her eyes. He had work to do. Cactus needles to extract.
“Bend over my lap,” he said.
She laid herself across his knees and he almost shot his wad right then and there. Only through sheer will did he manage to retain a thread of control.
“You’ve got a hard-on,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I’m responsible?”
“You see any other sexy, gorgeous, almost-naked woman bent over my knees?”
“No.”
“Okay. Now that we’ve ascertained I’m a complete animal, how about we concentrate on getting those thorns out of your backside.”
Her inhalation of air was jagged, shaky. “Do your thing.”
Sensations, emotions, memories collided in his brain and body at warp speed. No single thought registered. Instead, he experienced a montage of pleasure, excitement, anticipation and restlessness.
How many nights had he lain awake and dreamed of holding a near-naked Abby?
A hundred? Two hundred? Whatever, it had been an agonizingly high number.
The years tumbled away and he was eighteen again, hormones raging through him, mind consumed with the steady ache of his erection, totally absorbed with lust.
He remembered necking, groping, fondling on the front porch swing of her father’s house, tantalized by the notion that the judge might open the door and catch them at any time.
He recalled how excited he’d been back then. Getting so close to making love to her and being held at bay by her fears.
Durango believed that he would never again find that same intense level of sexual excitement he had experienced back then.
He was wrong.
Here was Abby, splayed across his lap, her vulnerable tush exposed to him. Her breasts, covered only by a bra and skimpy shirt, squashed against his knees.
She was everything he’d ever hoped for and so much more.
Although she was trim and lean, she wasn’t skinny. She possessed subtle curves and delicate arches like a dancer. No hourglass figure but seriously sexy all the same.
She smelled of rose-scented soap and windblown sunshine. No heavy perfume, just a sweet, precise, womanly fragrance. The skin of her derriere was baby soft and delightfully pale.
Her heart was racing, fast as his own. He could feel it pounding through her chest, into his knees, spreading all throughout his body. Lub-lub-lub-dud, they vibrated in unison.
“Durango?” she whispered low and throaty.
“Uh-huh?”
“Aren’t you going to pull the needles out?”
“Um…yeah…just making sure I can see them all.”
“Oh.”
In the light from the cave opening, he studied her buttocks and found the angry thorns. They were in a cruel clump. Fifteen or twenty of them inflamed her flesh, causing her skin to pucker red from their irritating sting.
Gripping the pliers firmly between his thumb and fingers, Durango began to pluck.
Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.
Abby’s rib cage was pressed flush against Durango’s lap and she
could feel his hardness straining against his jeans, poking audaciously into her side. He was embarrassed over the boner, she could tell, but Abby was not. She felt proud. Honored that the sight of her bare bottom had reduced him to this.
She grinned.
The palm of his hand was pressed flat against her unafflicted butt cheek. From out of nowhere, she found herself wishing he would spank her.
Just a few quick swats. Lightly but firmly. She wanted to hear the sweet smacking sound, wanted to experience the erotic thrill of being gently paddled.
She closed her eyes. What was she thinking? Allowing her imagination to run wild was what had gotten her with a rear end full of cactus needles in the first place.
What was this strange passion? This unmanageable yearning to fantasize about him?
Abby shuddered. How did she get over something like this?
“Did I hurt you?” Durango’s tone was thoughtful, concerned, caring but at the same time heavily laden with treacherous undercurrents.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Almost done. This is the last one.” He plucked out the remaining thorn. “Just let me check and see to make sure none escaped.”
He trailed his hot finger over her bottom, gently probing, innocently looking for more cactus spines. But the inferno he had started inside her was anything but innocent. The building pressure was heavy and reminiscent of the way he’d made her feel when they were teenagers making out on her father’s porch swing.
But this was different. This sensation was stronger, more urgent, more full-bodied than those long-ago stirrings. Those feelings had been tinged with caution and tempered by her youth. What rampaged through her now was pure animal need.
“Feel any pricks?” he asked, his fingers still strumming.
“You mean beside the one poking me in the side,” she joked sassily. The new haircut had given her more courage than she realized and she loved her new bravery. Loved the person she was becoming.
“I’m sorry about that, Abby…”
“Don’t you dare be sorry.” She spun around in his lap, and settled her legs on either side of him. Her knees were bent up under his armpits. Her pelvis pressed against his erection. She dropped her arms around his neck and stared him in the face.
“Kiss me, Durango,” she commanded.
The chocolate in his dark eyes melted to syrup. His mouth crushed hers—hungry, demanding, just the way she wanted it. His tongue thrust past her teeth, discerning, exploring, then teasing and savoring. His hands massaged her breasts through her skimpy shirt until they were sensitive and stiff.
Without warning, he lifted her off his lap and sat her to one side. He stood up and shrugged out of his shirt, casually letting it drop to the stone floor of the ruins. Beneath the button-down shirt, he wore a plain white tee. With lightning-fast fingers, he stripped the tee over his head and flung it to the ground, too.
His muscular chest was much broader than she remembered and covered with a light carpet of springy ebony hair. Abby stretched out her hands and rubbed both palms against his nipples, feeling the strong, steady thumping of his heart.
Her raspy breathing echoed off the eroded walls of the ruins. With a soft growl, he pulled her to her feet and tugged her into his arms.
His biceps bunched as he held her. His tongue flicked out to wreak shivery havoc against her tender skin. He kissed from the hollow of her neck to the gentle swell of her breasts.
Then he kissed down her torso to her flat abdomen and, when he reached her panties, he dropped to his knees and clamped a hand around her waist to steady them both.
With the other hand, he inched her panties down and when she noticed where his eyes had fixed, saw the wonder in them as her dark brown tuft emerged.
The scent of her womanhood rose from between her legs. The deep musky aroma aroused her, the smell of her feminine power stoking her desire to even loftier heights. She was an ancient goddess in here and this man was kneeling before her in awe.
“Babe, you are gorgeous.”
He removed her panties over her feet. She stood there wearing only her belly-baring tank top and sexy little half-boots.
The smells and sensations inundated her. The outside heat of the Arizona sun versus the shaded cool of the sycamore trees. The rich aroma of sand and man. Abby was inebriated by him, his lips, his tongue, his erotic foreplay, the hint of hidden menace that turbocharged her libido.
“Lean your shoulders against the wall,” Durango demanded.
She was barely breathing. He was going to take her here in the crumbling red rock ruins of the desert. Lay her down on the ancient soil and plunge his hot flesh into hers.
How primitive. How utterly erotic.
“Lean against the wall,” he repeated. “And spread your legs.”
She could not resist him. She pressed her heated back against the cool stone and positioned her legs shoulder’s width apart, waiting for what came next.
“Good,” he said. “If you need to get your balance, do what you need to do, but hang on.”
“What are you intending?” She curled her toes inside her boots, eagerly anticipating his sinful purpose.
“What do you think?”
“No one has ever done that to me before.”
“Not even Ken?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He laughed gleefully and covered as much of her as he could with his mouth.
What she felt at first was gratitude mingled with a touch of shame. This felt so very naughty yet so damn right. Soon, the sweet sensation of his tongue teasing her most tender flesh took away all thoughts of anything except the physical reality of what was going on inside her disorderly body.
She moaned. “Aah. Durango.”
“Yes, yes, say it again,” he whispered, and then went back to what he was doing.
Abby writhed hotly against him. “Durango, Durango, Durango.”
“Aren’t you sorry you sent me away all those years ago?”
“I was a fool,” she cried, flailing blindly. “A silly, scared fool.”
“This is the sweetest revenge of all,” he said. “Taking you out of yourself. Changing you. Making you mine at long last.”
But she wasn’t his. She wanted to correct him, to make sure he understood she simply wanted to find her passion, not start a relationship with him. This was about sex and lust and excitement, not commitment. How could there be anything else between them?
He was simply her tutor. Her passion mentor. He had turned his back on her world and she didn’t belong in his. Anything other than a sexual liaison was out of the question.
Before she could voice her concerns, his tongue licked away all her protests, all her common sense. She would talk to him later.
For now she was awash in pleasure and stunned to find she wasn’t the least embarrassed exposing herself to him. Indeed, she felt like a flower kissed into bloom by the thermal power of the sun.
She savored the wild, sensory ride, for once ignoring her cautious side. She felt out of control and that made her edgy. It seemed he was threatening everything she held dear and yet she could not resist him. Could not turn him aside. Could not tell him to stop.
His touch was incredible and she was unprepared for her body’s volatile reaction. She trembled and ached as his tongue caressed her.
She grasped his hair between her fingers and pressed her shoulders hard against the rock, tilting her pelvis upward to give him easier access to her silky treasure.
Gently his mouth manipulated her taut peak until it was stiff and throbbing.
“Oooh.” She moaned and thrashed, tugging on his silky hair, barely able to tolerate the exquisite achiness of it all.
“That’s right, moan for me, Angel.”
She clung to him, wanting so much to climax. His tongue flicked, nuzzled, teased. The slippery wet sensation was incredible. His fingers glided into her molten center and she rocked against him while his tongue and lips continued to work their magic.
The dual sensation of fingers and tongue was more than she could take. She was tumbling, fumbling, stumbling in a cauldron of fire.
He suckled her aching hood, ever so lightly running his tongue over the straining nub.
She bucked and thrashed, moaned and whimpered. She tossed her head, a restless mare blazing to be covered by a champion stallion. She was dripping wet for him and so hot she wanted to rip off her skin.
Building, ever building to crescendo.
This was heaven, this was hell. It was maddening and incredible, infuriating and awesome.
“I can’t stand it. Make me come, Durango. Make me come.” Abby couldn’t believe what she screamed, but it was what she wanted. Desperately.
Passionately.
What he was doing felt forbidden and raunchy and wonderful.
Her calm control was shattered, shredded into a million tiny fragments.
He was far above mortal man. He was raw strength and raw mind. He defied the decree of polite society. He made his own rules, lived life on his own terms. He was an outlaw of sorts, banned from his homeland, living in splendid exile among the red rock cliffs.
She was afire, alight, alive with need for him. She was caught in the swirl of his magnetic masculine energy. Tossed by his powerful, unrelenting current.
Her pulses kicked. She was invigorated with need and a vicious sort of joy. So this was passion. This impetuous, absurd orgy of the senses.
At the last moment she tried to push him away, tried desperately to reclaim her equanimity because she couldn’t stand one minute more of the torturous bliss. If she allowed him to make her come, Abby suddenly felt as if she would pitch headlong into a bottomless abyss with no hope of salvation.
The fear was too unsettling and as soon as the thought entered her head, she started sneezing.
“It’s too much.” She sneezed. “Please, please, it’s too…too…aachoo.”
He stopped, pulled back and looked up into her face. “Do you want me to quit?”
“Yes.” And then her throbbing, achy body changed her mind. “No.”
And then just as quickly as the sneezing had come upon her, it disappeared.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, and pushed his head against her pelvis, shocked by her wanton actions but thrilled by them too. She was jerked in opposing directions. Passion on one side, caution on the other.