“So I make lists,” Lynn said. “That doesn’t make me anal.”
“If you say so,” he murmured with patent disbelief, his head tilting so that his forehead rested against hers. “Know what?”
“What?”
“Plan or no plan, until the water goes down we’re stuck.” The warmth of his breath feathered across her lips.
“We are?” She wanted to bridge the fraction of an inch that separated their mouths more than she had ever wanted to do anything in her life.
“Unless you were joking about us not being able to fit through that passage.” His voice was husky. The arm beneath her head was as taut as a stretched-to-the-max bungee cord.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” His nose touched hers. It was a nothing touch, really, quick and elusive, probably accidental. It sent fire shooting clear down to Lynn’s toes.
“Jess,” she said, and stopped because she had forgotten what she was going to say. One thought filled her mind to the exclusion of all else: She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to make love to him. Badly.
“Lynn.” His turnabout mimicry was both humorous and tender. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her mouth. “Lynn.”
The second time he said her name, he sounded serious.
“What?” Her heart was beating faster. Her hands curled into his shirtfront, clung.
“Remember that first day at the airport, the way you scowled at me when you caught me looking at your legs?”
“Yes.” Lynn had no trouble at all conjuring up a vision of the tall, handsome, tawny-maned stranger in skintight jeans, boots, and a cowboy hat, whom she’d caught eyeing her legs before they even said hello. She had frozen him with a look at the time, and deservedly so.
Now the memory made her hot.
“Know what I was thinking?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“If I have anything to say about it, that lady’s going to have one hell of a vacation fling.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lynn couldn’t be certain, but from the sound of his voice she thought he was smiling.
“I was planning on including myself as part of your package deal,” he added.
“For one all-inclusive price?” As she said it, Lynn found herself smiling too. That had been the wording in the brochure, after the specific listing of what the outfitters would provide. Included in the quoted price were housing, all meals, and such amenities as showers. Not included was Jess.
“Heck, you might even have been able to talk me into a discount.”
“What made you think I’d be interested in a fake cowboy?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not then.”
“Now?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe.”
Whether she tilted her chin the requisite fraction of an inch or he moved his head, Lynn couldn’t have said. All she knew was that after that last maybe his mouth was on hers.
It was firm and warm and almost unbearably tender.
Irresistible, in fact.
With a sound that was part moan, part sigh, she slid her arms around his neck and gave herself up to Jess.
32
LYNN HAD NOT REALIZED how hungry she was for him until she felt his tongue slide into her mouth. It had been a long time since she had felt real sexual pleasure, many months, even years, in fact. The boyfriends she’d had since her divorce had been few and far between, and none of them—not one—had affected her like Jess.
All he had to do was touch his mouth to hers and heat exploded inside her like a bomb filled with fiery shrapnel.
She returned his kiss wildly, burning for him, feeling as if her nerve endings had been doused with napalm and set aflame. Her arms wrapped around his neck. She clung to him, her fingers tangling in the hair at his nape. She pressed her breasts against his chest, loving the way the muscles there refused to yield to her softness. A rhythmic throbbing sprang to life inside her, and she rubbed its source against the bulge in the front of his jeans.
The drugging heat of his mouth and the hard masculinity of his body were what she had craved for what seemed like forever.
He shifted onto his back, taking her with him without breaking the kiss. The upper part of her body lay across his chest. His hand was on her breast, caressing her through the thin nylon and lace. It was large enough to cover her completely and warm enough to feel shocking against her chilled flesh. Her nipples, already hard, ached as his fingers spread and his palm flattened. Gasping, Lynn wriggled closer to encourage him. He broke off the kiss to press his open mouth to her neck.
“Oh, God.” She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to sensation. He moved so that she was once more lying beside him. The wet heat of his mouth moved down her neck to her collarbone, to the upper slope of her breast, only to be thwarted by the lacy edge of her bra.
His mouth burned there against the softness of her skin.
Lynn could scarcely draw breath.
“Do you know how many times I’ve imagined doing this to you?” His voice was a husky whisper as his hand slid under the bra band to find her bare breast. His skin was slightly rough, his fingertips callused. His hand curved over her breast, caressing it, possessing it. His thumb found her nipple.
The throbbing inside her heated and grew more urgent, threatening to spiral out of control.
He pushed her bra up out of his way, and suddenly her breasts were free. His head descended.
Knowing what was coming, Lynn tensed in almost unbearable anticipation. Her nails dug into the nape of his neck.
“Every hour, on the hour, since you gave me that first go-to-hell look.”
His mouth found her nipple. He touched it with the tip of his tongue, withdrew, did it again. Unable to bear such teasing, Lynn grasped his head and pulled his lips down to her breast.
As the scalding warmth of his mouth enveloped her, Lynn gasped. Her hands moved to cradle the back of his head. He suckled her, nibbled her, teased the sensitive nubs with his tongue.
Lynn was reduced to making mewling sounds of pleasure. She heard them, knew they came from her own mouth, but didn’t care. Her head was thrown back, her fingers buried in his hair as she pressed herself against him, demanding and beseeching at the same time.
“Ah, Lynn. I knew you’d be hot.” His voice was thick. His thigh slid between hers. Lynn felt the hardness of his leg pressed against the part of her that burned and throbbed with need, and she thought she was going to explode.
“Jess. Jess.” Beyond coherence now, she could only manage his name. She couldn’t wait, not so much as another second. She reached for him, blind in the pitch darkness, one hand sliding beneath the flannel shirt to stroke his flat, washboard-hard belly, briefly distracted by the sheer sensuality of touching him at will as she sought the waistband of his jeans. She meant to free him, but she found to her surprise that she couldn’t manage the snap. Her passion-drugged fingers were too clumsy. Thwarted, she slid her hand inside his pants. He was there, swollen almost to the waistband, waiting for her. She touched him, her fingers crawling over him, closing around him. He was huge and hot and damp, and hard as a granite monolith in her hand.
As she squeezed him he groaned, then groaned again, rolling over with her until her back was pressed against the rock and he was on top of her, yanking at her jeans and his own. She helped him, on fire for him, wanting him inside her right that second more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
“Oh, God. Lynn.”
His breath came in hard, fast bursts. He was heavy, covering her, urgent now as he freed himself from his jeans. As he got her pants down he thrust his hand between her legs. Lynn squeezed her thighs around his hand, holding him tight, quaking, feeling like she was going to come right there and then and wanting him inside her when she did.
She pushed his hand away, kicked free of her jeans, and pulled him between her legs. H
er hands were shaking as she guided him to the place where she needed him to be, lifting her hips off the rocky bed to meet him as he touched her. His body was on fire, burning her.
She whimpered.
With slow control he pushed inside her, forcing her hips back down against the ledge, filling her with a hot, damp, velvet-over-steel instrument that felt better to her than anything in her life ever had. Moaning with pleasure, Lynn arched her back, squirming beneath him, feeling as if she would die from the pure bliss of having his body joined to hers.
He withdrew, then thrust again, deep and slow. She cried out.
So did he.
They kissed with greedy passion. Lynn’s lips, like her body, opened to him endlessly. Their tongues mated in the same drugging rhythm as their bodies, hot and fierce, nakedly hungry.
He pressed her down into the cold unyielding stone, his movements slow and controlled and yet relentless, rendering her mindless with desire. Her legs twined around his waist, her fingers clutched his hair. She panted and squirmed and lifted her breasts for his delectation and her hips for his taking and called out his name.
His hand slid between them, seeking the place where their bodies joined, finding the quivering flashpoint that was already stimulated almost beyond bearing.
When he touched her, she went utterly still for an instant. Then her hips arched off the stone, begging him to plunge even deeper inside her. In answer he thrust so hard that in a rational state Lynn might have feared being injured. But she wasn’t rational. She was mindless, out of her head with passion, with pleasure, with need. He thrust again, and she could stand no more. Sensations she had denied for years burst scaldingly inside her.
Lynn cried out, clung tight, shivered and shook.
As she came, so did he.
How long it was before she surfaced Lynn couldn’t have said. Except for her socks and her bra, which was twisted from armpit to armpit, she was naked. She lay sprawled on top of Jess, who had obligingly maneuvered himself so that he lay on his back on the stone. Her arms looped loosely around his neck, and her head rested on his chest.
He wore his socks and his shirt, which, from the feel of him beneath her, was wildly askew.
From mid-chest to ankles, he was naked. Wonderfully naked. Gloriously naked. Seductively naked.
Lynn wriggled a little, experimentally. She felt that most-essential part of him stir in response.
“Hi,” he said into the darkness above her head.
Lynn smiled, remembered he could not see, and wormed up his body the few inches that were necessary to allow her to kiss his mouth.
“Hi yourself,” she said. Her bra was cutting into her skin. She reached behind, unfastened it, and pulled it off, all without changing position any more than she had to.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m up for seconds,” he said with an unmistakable verbal leer.
“Greedy,” she chided, and kissed him again, lingering over it this time as she felt him stiffen to complete attention beneath her.
His hand found her breast.
“We should check the water level first,” she said into his mouth, even as she enjoyed the ministrations of that hand.
“To hell with the water level.”
His hand, the one on his injured side, curled around the nape of her neck, pulling her closer as he kissed her. The hand that had been fondling her breast slid down to close over a bare buttock, squeezing intimately.
“We really should check …” Lynn lost her train of thought as the hand on her bottom moved lower still, sliding in between her legs, caressing her.
“Jess …” she whispered his name against his lips as he put two fingers inside her, pulled them out, and pushed them in again. “Oh, Jess!”
Her mouth left his to move down his body, kissing his neck, his chest, his navel, while his fingers delved and played. She meant to kiss other places as well, meant to take him into her mouth and drive him as crazy as he was driving her, but she wanted him inside her too badly to wait and ended up astride him instead, her legs straddling his hips, her head thrown back, and his hands on her breasts as this time she set the pace.
She came as thoroughly, as wonderfully, as unbelievably as before, crying out his name.
“Jess! Jess! Jess, oh, Jess!”
“Yeow! Watch the shoulder,” he cautioned seconds later, snatched from the afterglow by pain as she collapsed atop his chest, sated.
“Sorry. Did I hurt you?” She smiled and snuggled closer as she said it. His arm slid around her waist.
“Just my shoulder. The rest of me feels … pretty damned good.”
“Is that so?” She kissed the bristly side of his neck.
“Yes, ma’am. Want to go for thirds?”
“We really should check the water level. And your shoulder.” Reluctant but determined, Lynn rolled off him. Being careful not to get too close to the edge, she kept a hand on the wall to keep perspective on her location.
“Jess, where’s the lighter?”
“Tell the truth: You’re not interested in checking the water level at all. This is just a ruse to see me naked.” He sat up, and she could feel him groping around the ledge in the dark just as she was. “The lighter’s in the front pocket of my jeans. They should be down here somewhere—got ’em.”
“Thank goodness.” Lynn had been assailed by a vision of his jeans, lighter and all, being kicked over the edge during their recent endeavors. She sat with her legs curled beneath her, her back against the wall.
The Bic flicked. Lynn found herself eyeball to eyeball with the man with whom she had just been locked in the steamy throes of unbridled passion.
He looked like a wild man, was her first thought. His hair hung in a tawny tangle around his shoulders, his face was dirty and scratched in places, and the normally clean lines of his cheeks and chin were obscured by a thick growth of dark stubble.
Naked except for his flannel shirt and mangled socks, he was on his knees, the lighter held high in one hand. His baby-blue eyes gleamed brightly as they met hers.
Lynn’s second thought was that sex appeal definitely did not depend upon immaculate personal hygiene. Or upon dignity either.
Because even half-naked, grungy, and in a ridiculous position, Jess was the sexiest thing she had ever seen in her life.
“Hi,” he said softly, and leaned forward to plant a kiss on her mouth.
“Hi,” she replied when he lifted his head. Every nerve ending in her body radiated warmth. Her mouth tingled. She knew her eyes must be glowing. She smiled at him, feeling all marshmallowy inside.
“I didn’t think you needed that Wonderbra,” he said, openly appraising her body.
Lynn promptly covered her breasts with her hands and scowled at him.
“Hey,” he said, letting the Bic go out as he pulled one of her hands away and kissed the soft tip of her breast. “I think they’re the perfect size. You didn’t imagine that I was the kind of Neanderthal who goes for women with really big chests, did you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I did.”
He kissed her other breast, put the lighter down somewhere—Lynn heard the faint chink of plastic on rock—and loomed over her. His breath was warm on her face.
“Okay, I admit, I might have been—once,” he said, one hand coming up to cup and fondle the body parts under discussion. Lynn’s pulse quickened as he whisked his thumb back and forth over a nipple. “Not anymore though. I go for brains now.”
“Brains?” Her voice radiated skepticism.
“Yeah.” Lynn thought he was smiling. “And butts and boobs and—”
She hit him on his sound arm. He yelped anyway. Then he kissed her again.
It was a while before they got around to checking the water level.
When they did, Lynn was wearing his flannel shirt over her jeans. Her bra listed to the left; a strap had broken under the force of Jess’s tender ministrations. Jess was reduced to wearing nothing more than his jeans, socks, and the gauze banda
ge around his shoulder.
“We can’t lose any more clothes. We’ll be naked,” Lynn observed, eyeing him as the Bic flicked to life again.
“Fine by me.” He grinned at her. Lynn realized that, although by now there was hardly a millimeter of his body she had not explored by touch, she had never actually seen him without a shirt. Nice, she thought, admiring the breadth of his shoulders and the wedge of dark hair in the center of his chest that tapered down to disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. Very nice.
She’d take a dozen just like him, wrapped up in a big bow.
“Look, there’s my jacket.” Jess was peering over the edge now, and Lynn followed suit. His goose-down floated just below the surface of the water. The sight of it triggered another fierce craving for nicotine, which she had been more or less successfully fighting off since untwining herself from Jess.
There was something about a cigarette after sex …
“There were two cigarettes in the pocket,” she said mournfully.
“You need to quit anyway.” He looked and sounded unsympathetic.
“Do you suppose Rory is all right?” Jess had temporarily wiped everything else from her thoughts, but now that her mind was functioning properly again Rory was the first thing that popped into it.
“She should be. We know where the bad guys are, and they aren’t chasing her. You said she was going to follow Theresa out of the mine. If she did she’s up there walking around in the sunshine, in a lot better shape than we are.”
“I bet she’s scared.”
“Being scared won’t hurt her.”
“Jess.”
“Hmm?” He was on his knees near the edge, holding the lighter high as he examined the opposite wall.
“Did Rory ever tell you that she wanted to have your baby?”
He looked around at her. “Told you that, did she?”
“She really did?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Oh, my God. What did you say?”
“That I’d rather put one in her mama.”
Lynn’s jaw dropped. “You didn’t!”
He grinned at her. “No, I didn’t. But I thought it.”
“So what did you say?”
Heartbreaker Page 21