Loving Wild

by Lisa Ann Verge

  “One minute,” she said, yanking the zipper open. ‘Just one minute. I’ve got… Right here.”

  She closed her fingers over the box. She pulled it out, wiggled back down and held it before her—just as Dylan yanked his own box out of his backpack and held it up.

  For a moment they lay in silence, their skins hot and dose, their breath coming fast, while they held two identical purple boxes up at each other. For a heartbeat the rain sounded very loud against the tarpaulin. They lay there, bodies entwined, holding the same brand of condoms.

  Then Casey smiled and heard Dylan’s soft, shaky laughter that rumbled through his body and found an echo in her own. With that sexy laughter came a rush of relief—for now there would be no awkward conversations, no discussions of safety and birth control, no onus on her to talk him into wearing one instead of doing what they both wanted to do—plunge hot turgid skin into soft moist flesh and consequences be damned. With that sexy laughter came a sense of peace…and trust.

  “Same brand,” Dylan said, as his heated smile lingered. “Both lubricated, too.”

  She reached up and rubbed her fingers against the bristle on his cheek. “I should have known you’d have one, Mr. Ever Ready.”

  “I bought them two days after I met you, lady.” His voice deepened. “I didn’t expect you’d have a box of your own.”

  She felt her color deepen. She’d bought them while she was buying camera batteries and a few other essentials at the drugstore before they’d left. In a moment of folly almost as crazed as this. On a whim… Or maybe it had been a moment of premonition.

  She held his gaze but could not find the words to speak. They were going deep. Maybe too deep, and she didn’t want to think about such things. Not now.

  She settled down on the cool nylon floor. She let her box drop to her side as he dealt with the necessaries. She watched him fit the latex over himself, and found the sight fascinating…and exciting…for soon he would be rolling himself into her.

  He nudged her legs apart, then surged atop her, his skin rasping against hers, as he braced his forearms on either side of her. He kissed her—no, it was more like a bite. He ridged his teeth against the line of her jaw as she arched up, so her nipples scraped the hair on his chest. His thighs felt rough against the tender flesh of her own inner thighs—and he felt hot, probing her hard.

  “Casey… I’ve wanted you for so long—”

  “Oh…” She caught her lower lip between her teeth as he pushed deeper. “Dylan…”

  She grasped the muscles of his back as her whole body flexed around him; they fit, oh, how they fit, and it seemed to Casey that she lost a part of herself every time Dylan drew back for a stroke. She clasped him closer, stretched her hands up to his head and raked her fingers through his damp hair. The moisture of the rain, the moisture of their bodies, made their skins slick against one another, made her feel all the more one body with this muscle-bound lover she’d chosen for reasons she no longer cared to examine.

  For the movement between them loosed a wild part of herself, loosed a sensuous creature of instinct who arched, and arched again, to meet him, to draw him deeper, to reach that thrumming quiver of glorious forgetfulness so that, for a few dazzling moments, they could revel—to—gether—in the purest, most intimate joy of all.

  Later, long after they were both still, she became aware of the patter of the rain upon the tent, and the bowing of the wind against the walls. Wet waxed cards clung to her back, and hot male skin molded against her hips and thighs.

  She opened her eyes dreamily. Dylan was watching her, his face inches from hers. A lock of his hair, long dried, fell over his forehead. She resisted the urge to reach up and sweep it back; she liked that he looked boyish. She liked the soft, strange smile playing about his mouth. She liked that he had not yet lifted himself off her, that he toyed with a strand of her hair.

  Already…already she felt a yearning for him again.

  Her gaze fell, briefly, upon the open purple box on its side beside them. “Do you think,” she whispered, tilting her head toward the debris, “that we’ll have enough of those until we reach civilization?”

  “Hell,” he murmured in a shaky voice, lowering his lips to hers. “I was just wondering if we’ll have enough for tonight.”

  MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and wet. Dylan flung the tarp of the tent aside and climbed out into the glory of nature wearing nothing but a yawn. Rainbows sparkled in the water dripping off the trees. He swaggered to the edge of the river, filled his lungs with the scent of the late-summer air, and resisted the urge to run like hell.

  Casey…

  Sensual images of the night flooded through his mind, generating an instant rise in him. The downy feel of her earlobe in his mouth. The tender sensitivity of the white flesh of her thighs. The firmness of the curve of her hip. The way she moaned when he scraped his tongue across her breast. The hot, womanly taste of her sex.

  He raked his hands through his hair, then curled his fingers into fists. They’d made love over and over last night, each time more hungrily, more fiercely, than the last. He’d forgotten how good a woman could feel. He’d forgotten the mind-numbing pleasure of it all.

  He shook his head. What a lousy liar he was. He hadn’t forgotten a damned thing. He hadn’t been a saint since his last divorce. But last night had little to do with lust. Casey had felt right lying by his side, in a way more fundamental than any woman had ever felt before. The way she’d moved, the way she’d cried out when she’d climaxed, the sweet smell of the nape of her neck, the way she’d spooned her body around his when it was all over…

  It had never been like that before. Never.

  He crouched down by the river, let his fingers slide through his hair, and buried his head between his elbows. What the hell was he doing? What the hell had he gotten himself into? Why couldn’t he make love to a woman and leave it at that? He was dam near forty years old. He’d grown comfortable in his bachelorhood. He took great pleasure in his weekend fishing trips to the cabin that his married friends couldn’t take without checking first with the wife. And he’d tried the married life before. Twice before. One wild night under the stars with Casey and he was already thinking of white lace and wedding vows.

  Damn it. Not this time. Not this time. He was going to enjoy an uncomplicated relationship with a beautiful woman. He was sure of one thing: Come the end of this camping trip, Casey Michaels was going to climb back into her minivan and set off for destinations unknown, leaving him behind.

  He would be a fool to let her leave him behind with a broken heart.

  He plunged his hands into the river, then splashed his face with cold water. Again. And again. Until rivulets slipped over his chin, down his neck, to soak his chest. He raked his wet hands through his hair, soaking it to his head, welcoming the chill of the morning to cool the heat of his thoughts. Rising up, he stepped into the cold river up to his thighs, then dived in to swim until his body and his thoughts chilled.

  Later, much later, when his body had dried and he’d made coffee and breakfast, he pulled on a pair of dry shorts and muscled up the will to enter the tent.

  He braced himself, then flung open the tarp. The air inside the tent was thick with the scent of woman, with the scent of sex. The misty light of dawn fell upon a figure huddled under the sleeping bag. The figure rolled over, and a pair of wary brown eyes peeked over the flannel edge of the sleeping bag.

  “Dylan?” She winced against the hazy light as she struggled up. ‘Is it dawn already?”

  “Almost.”

  He said the word in a strangled voice, for the sleeping bag slipped down to reveal one pert, perfectly formed breast The tarp fell out of his fingers, plunging them both into an intimate dimness.

  She lowered her hand from her eyes but made no move to cover herself. She looked strangely vulnerable this morning, with her hair mussed, her eyes heavy with sleep, and all traces of lipstick kissed off her lips. Not at all like the well-dressed, self-confident
journalist who had breezed into his life not so long ago. Not at all like the competent, courageous woman who was his partner in this crazy adventure.

  She looked one-hundred-percent woman. Soft. Vulnerable. Lovely. Incredibly sexy. And full of the knowledge of her own power over him. This was the side of her that threatened to bring him to his knees.

  Literally.

  “I made coffee,” he said. His voice sounded rough to his own ears. “Breakfast, too.”

  “A man who makes breakfast the morning after. A rare and precious find.” She ran her fingers through her unkempt hair, making her breast rise and pucker. “How about eggs and bacon, Dylan? French toast and fresh-squeezed orange juice?”

  “How about oatmeal?”

  She grimaced. “How romantic.”

  “Ill feed it to you.”

  She stilled. Their eyes met. His gaze dipped to her breast, and he thought of all the possibilities inherent in spoons and warm oatmeal and two willing bodies.

  “Dylan,” she said, in a voice more breath than sound, “you have a wicked side.”

  He had to get out of here. He pushed out the tarp. “Are you coming for breakfast?”

  “Later.” She sank back down in the sleeping bag. “I lost track of the poker game last night,” she said, as she tucked one hand under her pillow. “Do you remember who was winning?”

  He felt the blood rush out of his head, and converge in his hardening loins. “The bank,” he said, jerking his head toward a little plastic bag that held the neatly rubberpacked evidence of their nocturnal activities. ‘It’s making a fortune off us.”

  “How about you and me making another deposit?”

  His jaw tightened. He stared at her soft little smile, at the breast winking at him, at the stretch of her side and the leg she’d slipped around the sleeping bag.

  Then he was kneeling at her side, peeling the sleeping bag off her body, close enough to feel her warmth, close enough to see the flex of her soft belly, to see her nipple tighten into a sensitive little knot.

  She had exquisitely sensitive nipples—only one of the wonders he’d discovered about her body last night. So he leaned over her and scraped his cheek against her breast, then took the hard nub gently between his teeth.

  She sucked in a breath and convulsed beneath him. He tugged her nipple, and teased the throbbing tip with his tongue, closing his eyes as her body spoke to his.

  He listened. He did as she wished. He ran his fingers down into the damp cleft between her legs, rubbing the tiny nub until she made that strangled little noise in her. throat. He settled himself heavily upon her, welcomed the embrace of her arms, welcomed that other, more intimate embrace. He stroked into her darkness, hovering on the edge of losing all control, until she dug her fingers into his back and convulsed around him, crying out his name—and then he let himself fall.

  After he’d drained his passion into her once again, he rose up and looked deep into those smoky brown eyes. And felt himself getting caught in them. Stuck fast. Like a fly in amber.

  DYLAN NUDGED THE GEAR to make sure it was packed tightly into the canoe, then tugged each of the ropes for tautness. The sun beat hot upon his back. He and Casey had whiled away half the morning, and it was long past time they were back on the trail.

  Rising from his work, he glimpsed Casey sitting on the shore. Her head was bent over her tattered journal, and her pen flew across the page. Her wet hair gleamed with chestnut highlights where the sun hit it through the webbing of trees.

  “So,” he said, marching to the shore, “I’ll bet that journal has just gotten very interesting.”

  She glanced up. Her pen stilled. A smile spread across her lips, painted with a slick coat of that mysterious brown lipstick. “Now, Dylan, do you really think I’d write down all the juicy details?”

  “You are a journalist,” he said. “A slave to fact.”

  “Yes, fact,” she said, flattening the pages against her chest as he leaned over to try to see them. “So that’s what I’ve written—fact A record of where we’ve gone, what we’ve seen, how long it has taken—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A wicked gleam lit her eye. Dylan felt the now familiar sinking sensation in his loins, and wondered how much a man and a woman could make love before collapsing.

  “If you have to know, Dylan, I was just recording some important survival details for anyone else wanting to make this trip.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Well, for one,” she said, “I’ve included the many unintended-but-intriguing uses for oatmeal.”

  He felt the spread of a slow grin. He’d scrubbed well af ter their sticky breakfast, but he was sure he would find flakes of oatmeal in his hair for days. “You should see what I can do with peanut butter.”

  “Dylan!”

  “I hope you’re intending to write up that experience for some other market,” he said. “Playboy, perhaps. Or Penthouse?”

  She shook her head. “Too tame. Need a racier magazine.” She pursed her lips. “I suppose I could call it ‘Three and a Half Weeks’ or ’My Days with a Wild Mountain Man.‘”

  “Wild mountain man?”

  “I did warn you that anything you say or do could be used against you—”

  “Against me? Hell, a story like this would do wonders for my reputation around Bridgewater.”

  “You know, I’m beginning to think you made all that up.” She lumbered to her feet and tucked the journal into her backpack, then pressed her lean body against his and wrapped her arms around his neck. “There isn’t a boring bone in your very marvelous body, Dylan MacCabe.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  He kept smiling down into those bright brown eyes, and kept his hands firm on her hips, but inside he felt his smile wither. Ah, yes, the sun was bright on his back, the air was fresh, and desire sang in the veins of them both, but this was a moment out of time. Casey couldn’t imagine who he really was—not here, not now.

  But that was okay, he told himself. For it was sure she wouldn’t be hanging around after the trip was over. There had been no talk of the future. It didn’t matter if she imagined him a wild mountain man, for she would never know the high-school history teacher who lived in a backwater town and loved it.

  “C’mon,” he said, stepping away. “If we keep this up, we’ll never make it to the end of this trip.”

  They paddled through most of the morning. Though the sun blazed bright on the water and the birds sang joyous music in the trees around them, he felt as if a dark cloud hung over him. She tried a few times to tease him into banter, but he didn’t have the tongue for it. They soon fell silent.

  It should have been a companionable silence. All this past week or so, they’d managed to paddle together without filling the silence between them with words. That was yet another thing he liked about Casey—she understood the silence necessary for concentration, even physical concentration. She understood the athlete’s mind-set. There weren’t a heck of a lot of women he knew who did.

  But this, for the first time, was not an easy silence between them. And Dylan wasn’t such an insensitive brute that he couldn’t recognize the uneasiness. He supposed that two people who had just slept together would usually get to separate into their own worlds for a while just about now, to reassess the situation away from their new lover… To have time to wonder if it had been a wise decision to sleep together; time to grapple with any confusion over the state of this fragile new relationship. But he and Casey were not afforded such a luxury. He knew they would be together, inseparable, for ten days to two weeks more. And so between them swam a river of confusion and unspoken, unspeakable questions.

  Part of him wanted to steer the canoe to the nearest riverbank and drown the awkwardness between them in a healthy bout of lovemaking. But this voyage beckoned, and they were behind schedule, and they’d already spent half a morning exploring each other’s bodies—and no doubt would do the same when they broke for lunch.

 
Besides…he wasn’t so sure that would help the situation. The more time he spent with Casey, the more he wanted to spend time with Casey. He was falling too hard, too fast.

  As usual.

  So he lost himself in the physical exertion, and they covered six miles in record time. Then they both started looking for the next marker on the map—a portage to another stream. They scanned the northwest bank of the river for a break in the greenery.

  They paddled a mile farther, then backtracked, closer to the river’s edge. Dylan used his paddle to push away the overgrowth. Finally, they found a sliver of riverbank free of greenery that seemed to extend inward.

  “Are you sure this is it?” Casey asked, frowning over the well-marked map on her lap. “It doesn’t look like much of a path.”

  “It’s got to be. There’s nothing else around here. Anything we find would be overgrown, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I’d expect it to have some kind of marking.”

  “A break in the trees, Casey. That’s the marking.”

  He hadn’t told Casey yet, but they’d reached the most confusing part of the route. The part for which Henri had left the least information, the least definitive markings—and the part where the webbing of rivers and the depth of the woods were at their thickest. Of course, she probably had figured that out on her own, judging by the way she was squinting at the map. But he didn’t want to worry her. She seemed to have a terrible fear of getting lost.

  They splashed out of the canoe and into the shallows. Dylan secured it to a branch and they started unloading.

  After they’d spread the gear on dry land, he helped her strap on the frame of the backpack they would be using to carry the gear over the portages. He pulled the straps tight over her shoulders. His fingers lingered on her collarbone; it looked so fragile, jutting from her skin. Not strong enough to hold her head, the sweep of her shimmering brown hair—never mind thirty pounds of weight in a backpack.

  Then his gaze caught hers, and there he saw questions. Confusion. Curiosity. And a host of other emotions he couldn’t quite name.