“Have I finally worn you out?” Buck demanded as he brought in mugs of hot cider from the kitchen, with cinnamon bark for swizzle sticks.
Loren nodded, taking the cup with both hands to warm her fingers. She felt a lovely kind of tiredness, her legs just pleasantly aching from the long exercise, the frantic pressures of her normal life relegated to some other world. She felt deliciously lazy; it was so cozily warm, and the room was scented with the sweetish cherrywood scent given off by the stove. She sipped at the mulled beverage, her knees drawn up, her toes curling as the cider seemed to curl deep inside of her. “Tired…and disgracefully happy,” she admitted impishly.
“Nap time.”
He dropped two of the floor cushions a few feet from the woodstove, took the empty mug from her hand and nudged her stomach with one of his big stockinged feet until she obediently lay back, laughing. From the closet, he drew out a handmade quilt like the one on the bed upstairs, not a heavy thing but a soft, lightweight covering. He covered them both and then lurched up again to lean over her reclining form, pulling off first her socks, then his. “Can’t sleep with feet covered. No one can sleep with feet covered,” he informed her gravely.
“And to think I never knew that,” Loren said, according proper respect to the Oracle at Delphi.
He grinned, rolled her over to her side, curled her back to his chest and closed his eyes. To Loren’s total amazement, her eyes closed, too.
It was just a little cooler in the room when her eyes flew open. A watery sunlight beamed late-afternoon rays onto her hair, and when she half turned, she found Buck stretched out next to her, leaning on one elbow, watching her with heavy, hooded eyes.
They had touched a hundred times that day, but not in passion. It mattered to Loren that he had waited, had first created a feeling of closeness and empathy that had nothing to do with sex. She knew it was coming, but she hadn’t known he would find a way to make it easier for her, so that the transition to intimacy felt natural, simple…inevitable.
She felt a sleepy glow from within at the sight of the need in his eyes and reached up to touch the unsmiling features of his face, the crescent-shaped scar at his jaw. His head moved, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist. “May I take off your sweater?” he murmured.
She shook her head, just a little. She would do it, and she wanted him to know that, yet she found her fingers fumbling a little. The wool sweater was bulky and completely concealing; there was a strange shyness in daylight, a faint fear she would not please. When she had pulled the garment over her head, she sat very still in that little circle of sunlight, her hands trembling just a little. She met his watchful eyes, needing to see herself the way he saw her.
She was afraid she was too thin. Her neck was too long, her shoulders too pronounced…yet that wasn’t what his eyes reflected back at her. Her soft skin was sleep-flushed, warm. A faint shadow divided her breasts, the swell of silken skin more pronounced on one side than the other because of the way she was sitting. The delicate lines of her collarbones, the wisp of mauve lace she called a bra, the hollow of her throat… In his eyes, she saw herself as lovely, cherished; just by looking at her that way, he seemed to claim every plane and hollow and curve. For a long moment, he didn’t even touch.
“Buck…”
Her hand reached for him, and he caught it, held it. “I love you, Loren. I never had any intention of falling in love with you…”
It was so much more than she expected to hear, and her own emotions brimmed over in response. The shyness left her, the caution of years, the old images of herself. She unclasped the bra with her eyes lowered, then slipped slowly from the jeans. She wasn’t finished before he’d urged her back to their deep carpet mattress, his mouth hungrily on hers as she kicked off the last of the corduroy fabric from her ankles. And then she molded herself to him, bending to his weight and warmth, her skin supple and giving for him.
She had never cared enough to really know a man’s body. She craved the knowledge of his. The exact way flesh covered rib, the patterns of the hair that matted his chest, the feel of his skin, the scent of it. She explored first with her hands and then with her lips, pushing aside the shirt she had unbuttoned, every sense exploring him with intense concentration.
She heard a guttural sound of pleasure in his throat and slowly stretched down the length of him. Her nipples flattened against his bare chest; their heartbeats meshed and echoed one another; a more primal rhythm stirred inside her. Her thighs and stomach felt extraordinarily soft next to the stiff denim of his jeans; she rimmed the waistband of his pants with her fingers. For all the size of him, his waist was narrow, his buttocks flat. Her fingers splayed, learning boldness, indenting his bare skin through the fabric while his palms slipped beneath the lace that covered her hips, drawing her close, defining the exact measure of his arousal between them.
She knew he could feel her quickening, the way her thighs suddenly tightened, the way her breasts swelled against him. Yet her restlessness slowed rather than hurried him. His tongue flicked at her breasts, tasting the hard pebble of one nipple, then the other, his hand molding the orbs of flesh erect for him. A sweet, slow rush started in her veins…and never stopped. His touch was tender and teasing and endless, as if he’d known her forever, as if his only goal was to savor her soft skin, the flat little curve of her stomach, the perfect cream of her thigh.
He drew down the wispy panties and finally stood up to take off his jeans, his other clothing. His eyes never left hers; she was trembling with the sudden separation, her own eyes like dark silver.
Her blood seemed to still for that moment he stood towering over her, before he came down to her again. She had never felt quite so small, so vulnerable. In his clothes, Buck gave the illusion of power, of strength; without them, his flesh took on the truth of those characteristics. A blend of the most primitive emotions seemed to swamp her mind as he slid down next to her again, as she saw the fierce, dark need in his eyes, as he drew her close once more.
Tremors shook her body at the sudden total awareness of intimacy. Like shock waves, the graze of his bare, hard thighs against her own, the feel of those thighs against the smooth palms of her small hands. She could feel the building tension in his every muscle, and her hands courted those shock waves, danced with danger. He shifted slightly, and she shifted with him. The thought of any further separation was intolerable. As if he understood, his mouth captured hers yet again, his tongue-play increasingly erotic, and she returned a pressure equally explosive as she learned what pleased him. She wanted desperately to share in a way she had never understood sharing before. Her palm glided over his hip to his abdomen to more intimate flesh. He stopped moving, and a shudder took his body, then his lips softened on hers, their pressure suddenly tender. “Loren. You’re so small. If I hurt you…”
“You couldn’t,” she whispered back. So sure. Rationally, perhaps she was not so sure, but her emotional instincts already had the answers. He was impossibly tender for a man of such physical power and size; his touch had more giving than taking.
“My sweet lover,” he murmured as he took her lips again…and again. Her throat released little erratic sounds; a silken sheen of moisture was beginning to coat both their skins. His hand stroked the length of her over and over, each time teasing closer to the feminine core of her. Her nails dented his back when he touched, invaded…“Please,” she murmured helplessly.
Her skin was on fire; the dark desire in his expression pulsing through her bloodstream. She could feel restless tears in her eyes when he moved over her, soothing her with soft love words, and then he was within, filling her to her soul. The silken seduction was completed; neither of them wanted to dally any longer. It was a fierce climb up, a splintering of the senses, a wild, uncontrollable feeling of soaring. Explosive shudders echoed over and over in Loren’s body, she heard Buck’s hoarse cry.
He held her cheek to his chest for a long time afterward. Loren felt drained, even bewildered by the e
xplosiveness released in her own body. Buck kept stroking, stroking…until her breathing became normal, until she became conscious again. The fire was sputtering in the stove, the daylight fading rapidly; there was a soft quilt beneath her.
“That was a mistake, you know.” Buck’s palm lingered on her throat, then arched her neck back so he could see her face. Sleepy and flushed, her features seemed different after lovemaking, and the look in his eyes was possessive, taking in the unique and intimate loveliness that he had brought out in her. “Definitely a mistake,” he growled. “You just lost the option to back out, Loren. I’ll never let anyone else touch you.”
She half smiled, shaking her head just slightly at his nonsense, still bemused by his loving. He kissed her forehead gently. “You love me, little one.”
“I love you,” she agreed. It wasn’t hard.
“I don’t know how you managed celibacy for all this time, Loren, but you certainly weren’t cut out to be a nun.” He shifted, sitting up to draw on his shirt, clearly amused at the sudden color in her cheeks. “In fact, it doesn’t make sense,” he said gently. “Did that ex-husband of yours leave scars, or have you still been caring for him all this time?”
He got up, motioned her sternly to stay on the floor as he put on his jeans. He went into the kitchen but returned just moments later with two glasses of dark red wine. She accepted hers, taking just a short sip, wanting very much to give him an honest answer to his question without quite knowing what to say. It had been important to her in her marriage that she please Hal sexually, and from his responses, she believed she had. But her own responses had been of a different nature, and until now she had always seen herself as loving but not particularly passionate. She had needed no outlet for what she didn’t believe she possessed, and she had always had dozens of places where she could expend other kinds of love from her family to her men at the plant…
“Loren? Is it memories?” he probed.
“No, nothing like that,” she assured him finally. “It was more…just having to put some needs out of my mind, Buck. Responsibilities always interfered with forming certain relationships…”
“Yes,” he murmured as he bent down to add wood to the stove. “We’re about to talk about that, Loren. We’re about to talk about a lot of things.”
Chapter Eight
The bread was in the oven, the potatoes washed and jacketed in foil, and the salad made. Buck prepared the steaks. The dinner took twice as long to prepare because he kept stopping every few minutes to touch her. He had brushed her hair himself, had forced a pair of his socks over her derelict mismatches so her feet wouldn’t be cold on the kitchen floor. She set the dishes on the coffee table in the living room because the kitchen was too cold, and by the time they sat on the carpet across from each other, Loren felt a permanent flush on her face. She had never felt quite so beautiful, so cherished, never so cossetted.
It had become dark outside, the way night pops down like a curtain in winter, and the lake outside was like ink, still and black. There were no other lights or signs of people around anywhere. They might just have been in a universe of their own making. The steaks steamed fragrantly, and butter was melting on the baked potatoes; she could not remember a dinner that looked or smelled as good. She was ravenous, and Buck served her a ridiculously large portion of steak—almost as large as his own.
“You are aware I’m half your size,” she said teasingly.
“I’m aware of every inch of you,” he scolded back wickedly, and then his smile faded, and he poured her a little more wine. “You really haven’t given me much choice but to marry you, Loren.”
She thought he was teasing. “Are you trying to spoil the first illicit thing I’ve ever done in my life?” Her smile disappeared when she saw his expression. “You can’t possibly be serious!”
“So we haven’t known each other very long.” He took a bite of steak, his eyes boring straight into hers. “You know the core of the man, Loren. Well enough to have made love with him. Well enough to have said you love him. Have you changed your mind?”
She set down her knife and fork and curled up her knees, her hands in her lap. “Buck,” she said despairingly.
“Did you lie, Loren?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But that has nothing to do with it…” This tough, craggy-featured man had very soft eyes, at least where she was concerned. Or always had. But suddenly, those eyes took on a hard jade fire that seared, and the jaw set in lines that didn’t give. She felt stunned, the world suddenly knocked for six.
“I know all about your family, and your responsibilities, Loren. We’ll get to that. But we’ll stay with the two of us for another minute or two.” When he saw she wasn’t eating, he speared a piece of steak and held it in front of her lips. He motioned to her twice before she took it. “I knew you weren’t ideal affair material from the moment I set eyes on you. In fact, you’re rotten affair material, Loren.”
She found another tidbit of steak in front of her mouth before she’d finished swallowing the first. She swallowed, shook her head—but the fork stayed in front of her lips. “Buck…” Her parted lips were force-fed the steak; she glared at him.
“Apart from your character, half-pint, I’m not going to be satisfied with being squeezed into your busy schedule. It wouldn’t work, Loren, an affair. You said it yourself; you run yourself into the ground until there’s nothing left over. There’s no time for loving in your life. Or did you think you were just going to be able to walk away after today?”
She swallowed the steak and this time firmly pushed aside his hands. “No,” she said quietly, “but I thought you would, Buck. I knew what I was risking when you came into my life. I knew my responsibilities and that I didn’t have the…right…to a relationship. Love doesn’t really conquer all; I’m not seventeen anymore. I wanted…my minutes with you, whatever we could have. But when I go home tonight, it’s to Gramps and hiding bottles and Angela and the house. Then there’s my job, the four hundred–plus men, Frank, the extra paperwork…I can’t change that, Buck—”
“I can.” He motioned to her plate. “Eat, Loren.”
But she no longer felt hungry. Buck wasn’t angry, but there was control with a capital C on his features, in the way his fork stabbed the steak, the way his eyes pinned hers, the way his jaw was set, and in the tension in his shoulders. Had she asked for so much? she wondered fleetingly. She had reached out to the one man who had touched her in so many years; was it so wrong to put everything aside on the promise of moments—when she didn’t have any more than moments to offer?
He stood up, towering over her as he picked up their two plates. “Just stay sitting. I’ll bring the coffee. I want you to listen—”
“Buck, I really think I’d better be going home,” Loren said miserably.
He disappeared into the kitchen as if he hadn’t heard her. She knew he had. Restlessly, she got up, stretching muscles suddenly taut with tension. She wandered to the bare panes of glass that overlooked the lake. A March wind was frothing up little silvery waves; clouds were ghosting across the night sky.
In the window’s reflection, she saw Buck walk back into the room, carting two cups of coffee to the little table and then standing, hands on hips, looking at her. She felt a sudden, mortifying awareness of the faint soreness she felt from his possession of her. She was his. Rationally, she knew better, but emotionally she was so conscious of that single physical truth that she felt the sudden blister of tears in her eyes.
“What matters is that I have you close,” Buck said quietly, coming from behind her to pull her gently against his chest. At first her back was rigid and then not. It was a hug of warmth she could not deny herself. “That’s all that matters, Loren. The only chance we have to build something together is if we have time together. That’s easier than you know, but your pride is in the way, Loren—”
She half turned to him, brushing wearily at her eyes. “Buck, I can’t believe you’re serious—”
He wanted her to smile, so she did.
“See this?” He pointed to the crescent-shaped scar near his jaw. “Where do you think I got it?”
“A fight,” Loren guessed.
“A fall out of a tree when I was six. I don’t tell anyone else that either,” Buck said flatly. “The scar on my forehead was from a bike crash. The first actual fight I ever had was with a girl, and she won. I was eleven. It set my ego back years…”
Her eyes cleared with genuine amusement as she listened, both of them carting dishes to the kitchen. He had a reputation as too smart for his own good by the time he’d reached junior high school; since he looked tough, he played the part. He told a half-dozen tales where he came off as less than victorious, a swaggering Mr. Cool with the confidence of a wrinkled carrot was the image he projected to her, one she knew could not have been entirely true.
“There were six of them that talked me into it. I wasn’t even sure I knew what a red-light district was. I was only fourteen. The rest of the gang were sixteen or over—”
Loren wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “You didn’t really lose your virginity to a prostitute? I thought that only happened in books…”
“I don’t think we’ll dwell on that—”
“What did she look like? What did she do? Where was it, Buck?”
He shook his head at her. “I would like to move past fourteen, nosy; it was hardly the best of experiences. I wouldn’t even have brought it up, but I was trying to build trust, Loren. To show you there is nothing I’m not willing to tell you.” He shook his head again with an amused grin for her obvious fascination with the topic. “If you will let me continue with this riveting saga—”
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