Emma closed her eyes and leaned against him, trying to lend support in the only way she could.
“It was supposed to be temporary. Turned out it was permanent. She never came to visit while I was there. They said she never returned the calls they sent, either. It turns out the minute I was taken away she took off. A few years later I was notified that she’d died.”
“God, baby…baby, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. But it took me getting into a hell of a lot of trouble to wise up. And that was because of Kyle. For a long time, as far back as I could remember, I thought I hadn’t been ‘man’ enough to help my mother. I hadn’t been what she needed, that somehow I was responsible for my dad leaving and for her dying.”
“You were only a child. You weren’t responsible—”
“I know that now. It just took me a long time to understand it. It took an even longer time for me to believe it.”
As he spoke, his voice low, telling her how, when Kyle brought him to Sweetwater Trail and shared his story with him, Shane finally realized that it wasn’t his fault. How at that moment he realized his life was his own and that what he chose to do with it was up to him.
“I guess it’s where I kinda laid to rest some of the old ghosts,” he finished.
Emma struggled with the feelings his tale had stirred, struggled with her own ghosts, the ones that made her feel much as he had.
The feeling that she wasn’t good enough.
He turned to her. She swallowed hard, seeing the pain in his eyes. “I’ve been alone my whole life, Emma. With the exception of Kyle…the jumpers. I’m not sure I’m looking for anything else. Anyone else. You deserve someone better than me. Someone who can—”
She placed a finger over his mouth, halting his words.
“I’ve been alone my whole life, too, Shane.” She turned away from him, swallowing down the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her.
“I’ve enjoyed being with you. Making love to you. And when our time is over, well…”
He pulled her back around to face him.
“You deserve more than that, Emma. You deserve someone who can love you. Someone who can take care of you, give you what you need.” His worried gaze traveled over her face, and Emma forced a smile on her mouth.
“Let’s just enjoy the time we have now. I learned a long time ago that nothing is promised beyond today. I can take care of myself.” While she spoke the confident words, she didn’t know that she was trying to convince Shane of the truth of her words as much as herself.
He started to speak again but stopped and nodded. Standing, he reached a hand out, and Emma placed hers within his and he brought her to her feet, keeping their fingers intertwined, hands linked.
Emma stared down at his hand, feeling the warmth and the slight roughness, along with the tingling she always felt whenever he touched her. Then she looked up at him, seeing a truth reflected in his light eyes. A truth that told her that his feelings were more involved than he was willing to admit. A truth that told her he wasn’t ready to let her go, despite his attempt to try.
Arms wrapped around each other, they turned and silently headed back up the trail.
Chapter 18
“Hey, you,” Emma whispered softly. Filtered light and shadow shifted along the sculpted planes of his face, her mouth inches from his. “I was just dreaming about you.”
“Hey, you. I was dreaming of you, too,” he answered huskily, before claiming her lips with his.
The kiss was the spark that led them down the heady path of carnal bliss. He layered the kiss with sweeps of his tongue across her mouth, slowly nibbling her lips in small biting caresses.
With a tight groan, he brought both hands to the back of her head, tugged her close and slid his fingers beneath her tangled tresses. Lightly massaging her scalp, he angled her head for a better fit.
Emma opened her mouth to his when his tongue pressed against the seam of her lips, her tongue eagerly seeking his as their kiss deepened. Bringing her hands up, she ran them over the hard wall of his chest, trailed them down until she reached his stomach, stopping when she reached the soft thatch of hair below.
When her hands found what they had been looking for, she grasped his shaft in one hand, circling as much of him as she could with her fingers, groaning when he quickly grew too thick for her hand to contain him.
She whimpered against his mouth when he broke their kiss and pulled away from her, both of them breathing heavily.
“Shane…” Her protest was cut short when he brought her hands back up and above her head, grasped within both of his.
“None of that. It’ll be over before it starts. And I have plans for you.” The promise was whispered coarsely against the corner of her mouth.
Liquid heat eased down her leg. “Oh yeah? What kind of plans?”
With his free hand, he trailed his fingers down her body until he reached the apex of her thighs.
“Oh, Shane…” Her breath caught when he delved a finger between her dewy lips, swirling a finger around her clitoris.
Although the light was next to nonexistent in the dark tent, his bright blue gaze gleamed with the clarity of his intent shining from within. He brought his finger to his mouth and licked it clean of her essence.
She tasted so damn good.
Shane licked a line from the tip of her chin down the line of her neck and beyond.
When he lapped a rough caress across one long, taut nipple before trailing a scorching path across the valley of her breasts, her body arched high, a long hiss escaping from her lips.
“Shane…” she whispered, the throaty moan barely audible. “Baby, please…”
He released her breast and again covered her mouth with his, drinking in her protests.
“I want to make this perfect for you.”
When she placed her small hands on his face, he closed his eyes and turned into her caress. It was such a simple thing, the gesture.
Yet whenever she touched his face, framing it with her small hands, the move was so sexy and sweet at the same time that his heart constricted, the feeling almost painful in its intensity.
“You always have. Like no one else.”
The raw emotion, the sincerity in her voice, shook him even more.
He’d never felt for anyone else what he did for Emma. And he hadn’t a clue what to do with the newfound feelings. He had no experience in this area. Like a rookie on his first jump, he was a mass of nerves when he was around her. When she smiled up at him, her soft brown eyes filled with an emotion he was sure she was unaware they showed.
It was unfamiliar, raw and unlike anything he’d ever felt for anyone else. And it broke him down on levels he wasn’t ready to examine.
Back at the site he’d tried to break free, for her sake more than for his. The thought of hurting her when the relationship inevitably ended was intolerable to him.
She deserved more, more than what he thought he had to give, because all he could give her at this time was this and nothing else.
“Mmm, you make me feel so good,” she moaned breathlessly.
He slid down her body until his face was level with her breasts. Slowly he ran his fingers along her silky skin until he cupped her breasts, his thumbs brushing across their peaks, watching in lustful fascination, as each one spiked long and hard beneath his touch.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he replied, a touch of humor in his sleep-roughened voice before he lowered his mouth.
With near reverence, his tongue swiped out to bathe her nipple, rolling over the extended nub until she wiggled and whimpered beneath him, her hands tugging tightly on his hair as she pressed his face closer.
Every squirm, every shiver and moan was his reward. With no thought to his own needs, he made love to her breasts with his hands and lips.
He wanted her badly, ached to go deep, to bury himself inside her body until neither one of them knew where one started and the other began…he wanted
to give her pleasure she’d never forget. Spread out in front of him, her beauty made his heart slam against his chest. He wanted to get her on all fours and penetrate her completely, spread her soft thighs, slide deep inside and lose himself within her body.
He wanted to love her until there was no thought of another, so that no man would ever be able to compare to him. The thought was a selfish one, knowing their time together was short, but he didn’t give a damn. She was his. She always would be.
“You like that, baby?” he asked, his words warming her breasts as he stroked. Before she could stutter out a response, he opened his mouth wide and engulfed as much of her breast inside his mouth as possible.
Feeling a strange immediacy of the moment, he lifted his head and gazed down at her, seeing her as though for the first time. Or the last.
So beautiful. She was so incredibly beautiful. Her smell, her taste…everything about her was intoxicating to his senses, driving him wild with need.
With a growl, he grabbed her wrists again, placing her hands above her head and kissing his way down her body. Carefully, gently, as though she were a fragile piece of crystal, he separated her legs, lifting them until she was left exposed to his gaze.
He felt her body tremble beneath his touch as he feathered just the tips of his fingers across the springy curls that protected her entry. Releasing her hands, he fingered her moist lips apart, pressing a finger deep inside her body…
The rain falling against the tent became nature’s soft, sensual background music accompanying the sighs and moans within.
Despite the warmth of the sleeping bag, Emma shivered violently from his hot caresses. When Shane had brushed a finger across her mound, her breath hitched as she breathlessly waited for what he’d do next. She didn’t have to wait long.
When a thick finger slid inside her, a strangled cry erupted from her and her body arched away from the sleeping bag.
Her walls clenched and grabbed his finger as his lips laid claim to the nub of her femininity, stroking and kissing her until she grew dizzy, her cries of pleasure ringing out sharply in the tent as he made quiet, intense love to her.
Shane groaned against her folds. One long swipe of his tongue deep inside her, and her body detonated. Emma slapped her palms down, her body shaking so hard she could barely move, straining against the hold he had on her.
“Shannnnnne…” she wailed, her head on the sleeping bag, her heartbeat stuttering against her chest.
He didn’t release her until the last of her cries had died down to whimpering moans and panting breaths, hard tremors shaking her legs.
Strung out, her body a liquid mass, Emma was afraid to move. The slightest movement caused tendrils of sensation to curl throughout her body, one big mass of oversensitive nerves.
But he wasn’t done with her. The look in his eyes told her he had even more decadent plans in mind. She was lightheaded, dizzy, his touch intoxicating.
He turned, fumbling in the semidark tent in search of protection, and was back seconds later, covering her body with his.
He lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his waist slowly and driving himself deep inside her in one long plunge.
On and on he drove into her, his thrusts becoming wilder with every stroke until Emma screamed, passion exploding behind her tightly clenched eyelids. He reared back, digging his fingers into the skin of her legs, and delivered two more strokes before throwing his head back as the fall of rain became harder, the sound of wind and rain deafening.
“I love you, Emma. I love you!”
At that moment, she came, her cries of release blended with his stunning exclamation…both lost in the sound of the rain.
Their lovemaking had alternated between fast and raw, when he’d slipped between her legs and had her so hot and ready she climaxed within minutes, and long and sweet, with their undulating bodies and swaying hips in perfect rhythm, their lovemaking drawn out, deliberate and intense.
Whatever method, it hadn’t mattered; the result had been the same. Each and every time it had been mind-blowing, leaving them both breathless, satiated…and somehow still wanting more.
At one point she’d thought she’d heard him say he loved her. She adjusted her body, glancing down at him, but he’d been asleep, his face nestled in the hollow of her throat.
In sleep, the lines that bracketed his mouth had appeared softer, making him look younger, vulnerable. Entranced, she’d continued her silent perusal of him, realizing it was the first time she’d seen him, even after the many times they’d made love, so…at ease. Even in sleep he always seemed aware, as though he never fully relaxed.
His eyes had opened and a ghost of a smile flirted around the corners of his mouth as he caught her perusal of him. Without a word, he’d flipped her beneath them, and rained kisses across her face.
Yet the peaceful, relaxed image of him had remained in her mind as they made love. She’d tucked it, as well as the other images of him she’d began to mentally store away, for a time to revisit later, when her assignment was over.
A time when she’d once again be alone.
She sighed, not wanting to think of when that time would come, realizing she had only a few weeks left at the station before they would have to say goodbye. Troubled, she tried to fall asleep, her body curling into his.
Chapter 19
Emma woke and turned toward Shane, expecting to feel him next to her, their limbs intertwined around each other, as she had many times throughout the night. Instead, she encountered empty space beneath the double-down sleeping bag when she reached for him.
She opened her eyes and rose up slowly, her foggy mind gradually piecing together the events from the day before. Crawling from beneath the covers, she fumbled around until she found Shane’s shirt and drew it over her head and located her discarded panties from the night before and pulled them on.
She walked outside the tent, the sun’s early morning rays filtering through the thicket of trees greeting her.
She stopped and inhaled deeply, the morning air carrying a sachet of smells—wildflowers, earth and nature.
Her gaze searched out and found Shane. Standing not far away, near his truck with his bare back toward her, wearing nothing but low-slung jeans. In his hand was a mug of what she assumed was coffee, his thumb absently tracing around the rim.
He turned and placed the coffee cup on the hood of his car, and she caught a glimpse of his face. From that distance, she could see the way his brow was furrowed, a contemplative look on his face.
When he caught sight of her, he paused in the act, turned and fully faced her, his expression lightening. A slow smile replaced the frown. He held out his hand, inviting her to join him, pulling the mug from the hood of the truck. Putting the look she’d seen and the possible cause from her mind, Emma made her way over to him.
Shane’s eyes flew open when he felt Emma’s fidgeting body move against his.
In her sleep she tossed, restlessly moving her body, a deep frown on her face, mumbling incoherent words in an oddly childlike voice.
He bent his head toward her, listening carefully, finally making out her words.
“Mommy, Daddy, please don’t go. Please don’t leave me again. I wanna go with you guys this time,” she begged. “I promise I won’t be in the way!” She began crying seconds later.
As he listened to her murmuring, he realized she was locked inside her dream world, repeating her crying pleas to her parents, tugging on his heart until it ached.
There was a pause. As she slept, her face took on a look similar to that of a frightened child, her full bottom lip poking out, trembling. Tears fell down her cheeks, her lips quivering as she softly cried.
“Sssh, it’s okay, baby. I’m not going anywhere.” Shane gathered her body close to his, murmuring soft, reassuring words until she quieted down.
He held her that way until her soft snores alerted him that she was no longer trapped inside the dream. His soothing words and gentle touch fin
ally relaxed her body, no longer tossing in agitation, a calm finally settling over her.
He stared at her face for a long time, her body curled trustingly around his, hand rested on his chest. He lifted it and opened her palm, giving a soft kiss to the center before laying it back on his chest.
“I love you, Emma.”
The words he said came back and slapped him in the face.
He’d said more things than he wanted to remember in the heat of the moment when making love to a woman. But one thing he’d never said were those three words.
He turned from her, running his hands through his hair, staring into the near darkness, the only illumination coming from the small lantern he’d placed outside their tent to ward off any curious nocturnal creatures.
Assured she was sleeping peacefully, Shane eased his body away from Emma’s and stood. Throwing on the jeans from the previous day, he left the tent, his thoughts filled with Emma and the tantalizing question running through his mind that they could be together.
As he looked at her now, watching her from the entry of their tent, that curious ache blossomed in his heart again. He held his hand out, and she moved toward him.
Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.
It was time to head back home. Back to reality.
Chapter 20
“Yeah, that’s what your mouth says!” Emma shot back, lining up her stick to the cue ball, leaning down over the pool table. “Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is, son!”
“Son? Okay, little girl, show me what you got,” Shane replied, smirking.
Emma pulled back and made the shot. The hard crack of the cue ball hitting the eight ball, sending it spinning, banking off the back rail and neatly sliding into the corner pocket, split the air. Emma spun around, raising a brow, a cocky grin on her face.
Hot to Touch (Kimani Romance) Page 11