by Julie Miller
“I’ve missed you,” he whispered on a ragged breath.
The jeans had made it up to her thighs before she hugged her arms around herself and glanced back over her shoulder. “What am I supposed to say to that?”
“Nothing. I’m turning.” Summoning a strength he didn’t know he possessed, he managed to turn and study the layers of strata in the wall without really seeing them. “There were so many nights I needed…I needed what we had. I needed you. After that day, did you ever once need…me?”
He breathed in deeply, tried to steady his pulse, tried to look away. But the movement of her hopping on one leg to slide into those uncooperative wet pants drew his attention. The gentle bounce of her breasts, hidden by nothing more than a strip of lace and her long, dark hair, kept it.
“Forget the jeans. We both need to dry off so we can stay warm tonight. Here.” He unzipped his vest and draped it over another rock, then went to work on the buttons of his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Practical survival. Come on. Lose the pants. I promise to be a gentleman if you promise to avoid hypothermia.”
“You’re going to strip down to your undies and expect me to think that nothing’s going to happen between us tonight?”
He forced himself to turn away and peel off his shirt and the insulated Henley he wore underneath. That was the hell of loving a woman, he supposed. His own body could simmer away unfulfilled, and he wouldn’t complain so long as she was taken care of. That was true with this one, especially, who’d already been victimized by men she should have been able to trust.
Ah, hell. A familiar fist punched him in the gut as he imagined just what Sherman Watts and his uncle had said and done to her. Ethan had to say something to lighten his mood, or he’d wind up scaring her further with his own anger. “Well, I prefer to call them boxers or shorts, but I promise, nothing’s going to happen tonight unless you ask me.”
“But you…” Instead of finishing that argument, she pointed to the unmistakable bulge pushing at the front of his unzipped jeans.
He was sitting on the rock, untying his boots, but he quickly pushed to his feet. “Would you feel more comfortable if I slept outside?”
She seemed to consider it for a moment. But then she shook her head. “You’ll freeze.”
“Joanna…” He turned away from those big, dark doe eyes and stretched the shirt back over his head. He’d endured worse than arousal on a cold night. “No way in hell do I ever want to say or do anything that reminds you of that bastard.”
“Hey.” When her fingers brushed the middle of his bare back, he jerked. “Whoa.”
With a shared startle like that, he would have expected her to withdraw her touch. But not the Warrior Goddess with the strength to conquer demons. Instead of pulling away, she flattened her hand against his skin, burning him straight down to his bones. But he supposed what he was feeling inside didn’t necessarily broadcast through the rest of his body.
“You’re chilled already.” He looked down over the jut of his shoulder to see the concern stamped on her courageous features. “We’re mature enough to handle this. We both need to be strong for tomorrow. And we’ll move faster if our clothes have a chance to dry. Confined space, small fire, shared body heat—that’s the only way we’ll stay warm tonight.” She even had the strength to stand there gloriously half-dressed, and smile. “So, you and your boxer shorts are welcome to stay with me.”
God, he wanted her. But he wanted—he needed—something else from her even more. He tossed the shirt back over the rock and faced her. “Just to sleep.”
“Unless I ask.”
“You trust me to do that?”
Those beautiful earth-colored eyes locked on to his for the longest time before she nodded. “I trust you.”
Her words were a true gift. One that erased fifteen years of guilt.
By the time Ethan had finished stripping down to his socks and Skivvies, Joanna was sitting on the hypothermia blankets she’d spread on the relatively flat cave floor. “Go ahead and lie down closer to the fire, otherwise I’ll block the heat.” He untied his knife from his belt and carried it to the far side of their makeshift bed. “Will it bother you if I sleep with this?”
She reached beneath the blankets and pulled out her gun. “Will it bother you if I sleep with this?”
He laughed and lay down beside her, flat on his back with his fingers lightly clasped over his chest. “I’m definitely keeping my hands to myself unless you okay it.”
“It’s not for you.”
He dismissed her apologetic look with a smile and patted the blanket beside him. “I know. Come on over here. Body heat doesn’t work unless we’re closer.”
At first she lay down on her left side, facing the fire. Ethan matched her position, scooting up behind her and pulling the top blanket over them. He had his left arm curled beneath his head for a pillow, but his right arm couldn’t seem to find a comfortable—impersonal—place to settle. Stretching it out along the length of his body put a hitch in his shoulder. He tried resting it on Joanna’s hip, but even as he recognized a possessive sense of rightness by claiming the curve, she squirmed. So he moved it a little higher to let it curve over her waist. But she twisted again, hunching her shoulders and moving away from him.
“Joanna.” He pulled his arm away and rolled onto his back with a sigh. With a granite mattress beneath them, it was no surprise to feel her still wriggling to find a comfy position. But he suspected this was something more. “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep outside? I take up a lot of room. Maybe more than you might be comfortable with.”
“No. It’s just…” She rolled onto her back and turned her face to his. “I don’t want you behind me. I thought it wouldn’t matter, but…I haven’t actually slept with a man since…” She squeezed her eyes shut, working past a tough moment, before opening them again and boldly meeting his gaze. “That’s how Watts—”
Ah, hell. Ethan didn’t need to hear the rest of that explanation. He shifted onto his side and pulled Joanna into his arms, lying with her face-to-face, settling her cheek on the pillow of his shoulder. Their legs tangled together and he hugged her tight. She didn’t have to say another word as she curled her arms between them and settled against him with a sigh.
He brushed her hair off her face and let it fall down her back. “Better?”
She closed her eyes and he felt the tension leave her body. “Much.”
Much better. He smiled over her head, watching the light from the fire dance across the walls of the cave. His body was a little worse for wear, his bed was hard, but Ethan felt as though he was settling in for the best sleep of his life. He pressed a kiss to Joanna’s temple. “Good night, Nüa-rü.”
“Good night, Ethan.”
An hour or so later, the storm had eased into a light patter of rain and Ethan was dozing in a pool of languid heat. He had Joanna in his arms. They were hidden and safe. He’d just added some more wood to the fire to at least keep the embers glowing until dawn.
But something wasn’t right. There was a low, almost moaning sound filtering into his dreams. Then he became aware of something lightly tapping against his chest and he roused himself to take clear stock of his surroundings.
The touches became the unintended caress of Joanna’s fingers bumping against him as she twisted and worked her fingers in that nervous habit of hers. The moan became a whisper of words. “Just say it. He’ll never hurt you. You can do this.”
“Hey.”
Joanna fell silent as soon as she realized he was awake.
“Who are you talking to?” He wrapped one hand around both of hers, stilling their fretting movements. She held herself so still, so stiffly, that Ethan grew immediately concerned. He brushed her hair off her face to read the clarity of her eyes. “You weren’t having a nightmare, were you?”
She shook her head. “I was psyching myself up.”
“For what?”
“You don�
��t have any protection, do you?”
Ethan reached for his knife and sat up, instantly on alert. “Did you hear something?”
“No.” She pushed his hand and his knife back to the ground, sitting up beside him. “Not that kind of protection.”
If this was a dream, Ethan had no intention of waking up.
“I want you. I want to try.”
JOANNA FELT AS THOUGH it were her first time all over again when Ethan returned to the blankets and pulled her on top of him. “I think you should know that I…” With one forearm propped atop his chest, she traced the column of his neck and the strong line of his shoulder with her finger. It was a shy, girlish thing to do, but she didn’t want to spook him or herself by moving things along as quickly as her feverish body seemed to want. “I’m not any more experienced at this kind of stuff than I was before the rape.”
His dark eyes reflected the firelight and seemed to glow from within. The tiny muscle that pulsed along his jaw revealed anger on her behalf that she’d been forced that way, but those beautiful onyx eyes showed her nothing but patience and desire. “Anything you want, Nüa-rü. Anything you don’t want. You tell me. I want this to be right for you.”
He was all heat and muscle, coppery-skinned and supple right down to the waistband of his black shorts. He was such a big, broad specimen of masculinity that even with her tall, athletic frame, Joanna felt feminine and delicate, by comparison. “Can we just start slow and see where it goes? Is that asking too much?”
When she drew her finger across the tension in his jaw, he turned and caught the tip of her finger with his lips and gave it a delicate suckle that seemed pull a taut response from deep inside her. “Anything,” he reminded her.
And for now, that anything meant taking their time reacquainting themselves with each other’s body. Moving in no more of a hurry than the gentle rain falling outside, they touched with their hands and toes, their lips and bodies.
As Joanna tasted the smooth line of his jaw, she curled her toes against the rougher texture of his leg. Ethan settled his palm over the curve of her bottom, warming her skin through the thin layer of cotton between them. If she wasn’t kissing his mouth, then his lips were busy exploring her eyelids, her cheek, the newly discovered bundle of nerves beneath her right ear.
She nuzzled his skin at the juncture where his neck and shoulder met and breathed in the invigorating smells of rain and the outdoors. She touched her lips to the point of his chin, gently nipping at the salty tang of his skin there. He lifted the weight of her hair and drew lazy circles that tickled the skin of her nape, making her muscles bunch and quiver, again and again, creating a growing friction between their stomachs and chests with each helpless shimmy.
Her legs parted and caught his thick, muscular thigh in between. When he bent his knee, pressing against the warmest, neediest part of her, a knot of molten heat ignited at her core.
Joanna buried her face against his neck and moaned at the pressure building inside her. Her skin was extra sensitive to every touch, her lips extra needy to every kiss. The warmth inside grew fluid and flowed through her blood like a river rising, growing with speed and power. Every sensation felt new, unfamiliar, as if her body had forgotten what it felt like to be sexual. To want. To catch fire and need a thing the way she needed Ethan.
“You keep making sweet sounds like that, babe, and I don’t know how much longer I can handle slow and easy.” His voice vibrated against her skin like a drowsy caress.
“Touch me, Ethan. So I can really feel it. Touch me.”
He stroked his big hands—callused and firm enough to arouse, gentle enough to soothe and reassure—up and down her back. Each pass of his hands was slightly different. He reached between them to skim his thumbs over the tips of her breasts, to flick, to tease. He reached a little lower the next time to slip inside her panties to squeeze her bottom, to move her hips over the heavy evidence of his arousal.
“More,” she begged, catching his bottom lip between her teeth and giving him a gentle nip.
He laughed deep in his throat and gave her lip the same little nip.
“More.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
The next pass of his hands unhooked her bra. In another move, the bra was gone and he was lifting her, dragging her up to claim her breast with his mouth. He swirled his tongue around the hard button at the tip, then pulled on it. Gently, harder. Gentle again. Then more demanding, until Joanna was writhing on top of him, wanting more, wanting everything.
“Ethan…” she gasped. “Ethan.”
He sat up, spilling her onto his lap, dipping his head to catch the other, neglected breast in his mouth and torment her with his tongue. She raked her fingers across his scalp and held him against her. “Tell me what you want, babe.”
“I want you. Now,” she demanded.
He raised his head and smiled against her mouth before he claimed it in a deep, drugging kiss. In a matter of seconds, her panties were gone, his shorts were off and she was back in his lap with his sheathed, throbbing desire nudging against her.
He brushed her hair off her face and smoothed its length down the line of her back. In a moment of calm before the certain storm, he rested his forehead against hers, looking deep into her eyes, deep inside her. “This is what you want?”
Would he really stop now? Yes. If she asked it of him. Because he was Ethan—her teacher, her lover, her protector and friend. He was the earth that gave an anchor to her wind.
“I want this,” she assured him, winding her arms around his neck and lifting herself against the wall of his chest, feeling herself primed and ready to become a sexual woman again. “As long as I can see your face. I want to know it’s you.”
He pulled her legs out on either side of him, his hands guiding her into position in his lap. He’d decided not to crush her with his weight. Whether it was consideration for the hardness of the floor or the trauma of her past, it was a beautiful thing to do. With two fingers he pointed to his eyes. “You look right here, Nüa-rü. Right here.”
She held her breath as he entered her. She didn’t blink or look away as her body adjusted to the size and feel of him inside her.
“You okay?” he asked. She could see it in his face, in the stretch of muscles across his chest, what it was costing him to be so patient with her.
She nodded, smiled, loved him for it. “I think I’m going to be better than okay. I can do this. With you, I can do this.”
And then, with a kiss, with his arms wrapped tightly around her, he began to move inside her. He showed her what it was to want a man, to trust a man, to be with a man again.
Had she ever felt this alive? This whole? This desired? Her entire world was this man, this moment. There was no past. There was no tomorrow. There were no fears. No doubts. No fifteen years apart. There was just her. And Ethan.
She tipped her head back, her cries of joy echoing inside the cave as he brought her to the peak of pleasure and they tumbled down the other side, together.
ETHAN WOKE AGAIN, some time later, with a naked woman sprawled like the best kind of blanket across his chest. The relative silence of the cave told him the rain had finally stopped and the fire was dying. He felt warm, rejuvenated, content. His arms and heart were full, his world in perfect alignment. With Joanna in his arms, he was at peace.
“I’d forgotten how hard you sleep…right after. Don’t worry. I kept an eye on things while you were out.”
“You were watching over me?”
“Warrior Goddess and all that, remember?”
He smiled at the voice that didn’t know whether to be shy or seductive. Joanna had always managed to be an intriguing mixture of both. He opened his eyes to find her serene smile just in reach of his lips, and he lifted his head to gently claim them. “You okay?”
“I’m better than I thought I’d be. No regrets.”
Words of healing to a once-broken heart. “Me, either.”
/> When he rested his head back on the blanket, she settled in on top of him. “I think one of us wound up with the more comfortable bed last night. How are you doing?”
He propped one hand beneath his head and with the other, played with the midnight silk of her hair, smoothing the tangles, crumbling a tiny clump of dried mud and brushing it away. “I’ve had worse nights, believe me.”
“So. When can we do it again?”
Ethan laughed. “I guess some things never change, do they?” Catching her around her waist, he rolled them onto their sides facing each other. Her long hair tumbled over her face and he loved catching it and combing his fingers through it all the way to the ends as he pulled it back and took in his fill of her classic Native American features and long, lithe body.
But then, some things did change. His eyes and fingers were drawn to the small white scar that marked the golden tan at the top of her left breast. “Is this what he did to you?”
She batted away his hand and quickly covered the spot with her own. “Does that turn you off?”
“No. Hell no.” He dipped his head and kissed the mark. Then he caught her mouth and gave her a hard kiss, telling her in no uncertain terms just how beautiful she was to him. “It’s a badge of honor. Of all you’ve been through. Of how you survived. But when I’m reminded of how much you were hurt, I just…” His fingers clenched convulsively at her waist.
“You want to hurt him?” Were his coarser, unenlightened instincts that obvious? She pried his hand from her waist and laced her fingers together with his. “Get in line. My therapist said those kinds of feelings are healthy and normal. Unless you get obsessive about it, of course. It’s okay to feel anger. To feel rage. Some days you don’t, as time goes on. More days than not. And sometimes it hits you so hard you want to scream or punch something. That’s normal, too.”
“But I’m not the one who was hurt.”
“You were collateral damage, Ethan. And I’m sorry for the part I played in that.”
“Leaving me wasn’t your fault.”
“It wasn’t my fault I got raped, either. It still hurts, though, doesn’t it?” No argument there. Her dark eyes showed an understanding he was just now beginning to accept. “It changes how you deal with people, how you live your life.”