“What is it?” she asked, glancing around to see what had halted their progress. All that met her eye was the path winding through a stand of pines. “Is the dam nearby?”
“No,” he said.
Her braid had fallen forward over her shoulder, and he picked it up. His gaze was directed somewhere off in the woods as he absently brushed the loose tips of hair over the palm of his hand. Charlie tried to ignore the wavelets of delight coursing over her scalp. After all, Jack had no idea that when anyone handled her hair, she was almost paralyzed with pleasure. Her eyelids had drifted closed when a sharp tug on her hair made her open them. Jack had wound her braid once around his fist, and was watching her intently. Charlie noticed little flames were flickering in his blue eyes.
“I was thinking,” he drawled, “that in the interest of authenticity, we should rehearse a couple of things before we meet your social worker.”
“What sort of things?” she asked, surprised at the direction of his thoughts.
He looped another length of braid around his hand, forcing her closer to him.
“I think a really convincing kiss needs to be practiced,” he drawled.
Charlie tried to shake her head, but he held her hair captive.
“Any amateur should be able to do that,” she said.
“But only a professional knows how to improve with each performance.”
He twisted her hair once more around his fingers, bringing her to within an inch of his chest. She kept her eyes on the third button of his shirt, wondering if he really considered “practice” part of their business arrangement.
Using his makeshift rope, he slowly drew her head back, first to meet his eyes and then to expose the arch of her throat. She gasped as he skimmed his lips down her neck to the hollow of her collarbone and flicked her skin with his tongue.
“That's not exactly a kiss,” she managed to say in a husky whisper.
She actually felt his lips curve into a smile. The vibration of his voice and breath on her skin made her moan as he spoke. “Now you're quibbling about semantics?”
In answer, she gave into her craving and ran her hands around his ribcage and up his back, relishing the feel of soft flannel over hard muscle.
He shuddered and released her braid abruptly. Then he became very, very still. Charlie angled her head to look up at him.
His lips were twisted into a strange, tentative smile very much at odds with the blaze of heat in his eyes and the hard arousal pressing against her thigh.
“Are we going to practice or not?” she challenged. He had started this, and he was damn well going to continue it to whatever the outcome might be.
He choked on a laugh and lowered his mouth almost to hers. “I'm prepared to practice until we get it right. Are you?”
Charlie didn't bother to answer. She simply tilted her chin a degree higher and touched his lips with hers. When he didn't respond, she traced the outline of his mouth with her tongue.
“Say 'yes,' Charlie,” he rasped against her lips. “Just say 'yes'.”
“That's what I've been saying,” she said in some exasperation. “Yes, yes, yes! Is that good enough?”
He brought his hands up between them and flicked a button on her blouse out of its hole. Her nipples hardened instantly at the thought of his fingers on them. She reached up and yanked loose the top button on his shirt. She wanted to lean into him and kiss the pulse she saw beating on the side of his neck but that might impede his progress with her blouse. She started unbuttoning at the bottom of her shirt and beat him to the middle. Pushing her bra up without bothering to unfasten it, he at last cupped her breasts in his hands.
“Oh God, yes, Jack!” she whispered as he pressed his palms against her skin.
Heat blazed like lightning from his hands down to the hollow between her thighs. She tilted her pelvis against him, and felt his body harden even more. Now she frantically undid his shirt and tugged it out of his waistband. His torso was stunning: muscle rippled across his chest and carved lines in his abdomen. Three scars crisscrossed over one shoulder. She traced the three lines with her tongue, following one down to his nipple, which she kissed. He groaned and picked her up by the hips, swinging her around so her back was against a pine tree. He bent his head and closed his mouth over her breast.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Charlie moaned as Jack swirled his tongue over and around first one and then the other tight, aching peak.
She wanted him to touch her lower and he obliged, running his tongue down the center of her body until he reached her belt buckle. He straightened to unbuckle it, and Charlie seized the opportunity to unbuckle, unsnap and unzip his fly. He slid her shorts and panties down over her hips and legs in one fluid movement, holding them as she stepped out of them. Then he stood and pulled her left knee high onto his hip. She pushed aside his underwear and guided him into her, then set her hands on his shoulders. As he buried himself inside her, he slid his other hand up her leg and cupped her bottom, lifting her and bracing her against the tree.
“Yes, yes, yes, oh yes,” she murmured as he stroked into her.
She could feel the rough tree bark rasp against her lower back and a drift of cool breeze brush her bare skin. But the man inflamed her: his hands wrapped around her thighs like steel bands, the skin of his chest softly scuffing her breasts, and the brush of denim and silk against her most sensitive spot as he slid in and out, in and out…
“Ye-e-e-e-s!”
She felt the first ripple of climax and then convulsed so hard she whacked her head against the tree. Another wave hit; she dug her fingers into his shoulders. He withdrew and then buried himself inside her with a shout of release. As she felt him pump deep inside her, she exploded one last time. She collapsed with her head on his shoulder and her arms hanging down his back. He braced his weight against her to hold them both in place while they found their breath again. She made a tiny mew of regret when he slid out of her.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked, as he lowered her to the ground and zipped his jeans.
“No, I'm just sorry it's over,” Charlie said, brushing bark off her bare backside.
Much to her embarrassment, he turned her around for inspection.
“You have a couple of scrapes but nothing too deep,” he said in a tight voice, as he flicked more bits of bark away from her skin.
He reached down to pick up the heap of her shorts and panties.
Charlie took the proffered clothing and turned her back to pull it on. She wanted to tell him how wonderful she felt, what an incredible experience it had been, but everything had happened so fast she felt absurdly shy. She opened her mouth to say something when Jack spoke.
“My apologies. That was unforgivable.”
“Unforgivable?” She was taken aback.
“I pushed you up against a tree with no thought for your comfort or pleasure.”
She had just had the most powerful orgasm of her life and he was worried about her comfort?
“Did you hear me complaining?”
“I didn't give you a chance to.”
“Well, I'm not complaining now.”
He took three steps down the path and stopped, keeping his back to her.
“The most damnable part about this is I want to do it again.”
“I might be talked into that.”
He turned to face her and shook his head.
Charlie stood twisting her wedding ring for a few seconds. What was this man's problem? “You know, I don't want to contribute to your already-inflated ego, but I really enjoyed that. And I'm a little insulted you didn't notice.”
He gave her a travesty of a smile. “My only excuse is extreme provocation.”
“What am I wearing that's the least bit provocative?”
Charlie asked indignantly as she looked down at her white man-tailored shirt, baggy khaki hiking shorts, sport socks and sneakers.
“Sugar, you'd look provocative in a burlap sack.”
“Another backhand
ed compliment,” she muttered.
“Some malicious fate sent you to tempt me,” he continued.
“I don't believe in fate,” she said sharply. He was dousing her afterglow with ice water.
“Don't you?” he asked. He started down the rocky path. “Let's head back.”
They walked in silence. Occasionally, she glanced over at him but his face was set, and he kept his gaze forward. He no longer offered his hand when they hit a steep part of the trail. There was definitely no second time in her future. And she should be glad of that, she scolded herself. Hadn't she learned anything from Nick?
As they walked up the porch steps, Jack said without looking at her, “Maybe we should get back to civilization today.”
“No,” she said. “I'm not going to drag you away from your vigil. I'll go work in my room while you do whatever it is you usually do up here.”
So Charlie spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sitting in front of her laptop, emerging only for a quick visit to the kitchen to fix a sandwich. She could hear Jack hammering something, then roaring off in the Land Rover and returning an hour later, then furiously chopping wood.
***
As he hung up a shiny new axe right beside the two other axes already on the wall, Jack mentally castigated himself yet again for practically assaulting the woman upstairs.
So much for his carefully cultivated self-control.
Miguel had warned him, her friends had warned him, even Charlie had warned him: this “marriage” was going to go in directions he hadn't foreseen.
Now why wasn't he more perturbed about that?
Nine
At midnight, Charlie lay looking up at the stars. She had come to the conclusion that in spite of his flirtations with her, Jack considered their making love against a tree a serious blunder on his part. He was a control freak, and he had lost control. She let her lips curve upward, and turned to look at the solid three feet of springy brown grass separating them.
Jack was obviously taking no chances of this afternoon repeating itself.
She looked back at the sky, no longer smiling. She hadn't found any satisfying explanation for her own immediate capitulation. Despite Nick, or maybe because of him, she believed strongly in the importance of emotional as well as physical intimacy. She found Jack intriguing and attractive to look at, but she really barely knew him.
Maybe the wedding had removed some barrier in both their minds?
She shook her head against the pillow. That was absurd. She thought of him as her husband in a very ironic way. In fact, she needed to work on that if she was to convince Rhonda Brown this marriage was real. She had no doubt Jack would charm Rhonda the way he did everyone else, but she wasn't as accomplished an actor as he was.
Three meteorites blasted in different directions and she “ooh”ed in appreciation.
“Looks like we'll get a better display tonight,” Jack said.
“Great.”
Charlie went back to worrying about the display of this afternoon.
What puzzled her most was the suddenness of their connection. There had been no hesitation, no second thoughts on her part. His desire and hers had fused seamlessly, and built to an explosion that made her quiver when she remembered it. For several glorious minutes, she had felt intensely female: open, receptive, and complete, reveling in her power to give and take pleasure. Wielding that power was very seductive. She needed to remember that it was a double-edged sword.
She glanced at her companion again, this time without moving her head. He was wrapped in an air of detachment so vast the three feet between them might as well have been the distance to the North Star. She went back to watching the debris from space immolating itself in Earth's protective atmosphere. The silent streaks of silver were hypnotic; she let her mind drift aimlessly among the stars. A sudden flash drew her eye back toward Lyra as an odd hissing sound seemed to echo from the trees around their clearing. A brilliant ball of light traced a gleaming line across the sky. It moved more slowly than the falling stars, and its light pulsed with colors: yellow, green, red, blue.
“A fireball!” Jack breathed.
The meteoroid cast dancing shadows on the ground as it blazed across the sky. Suddenly it seemed to throw off sparks.
“It's breaking up,” he said.
The light went bright white, then turned reddish, and the glowing ball disappeared. Its thin trail of smoky glow continued to hang in the sky for several more seconds, then faded. A rumble like distant thunder rolled toward them, followed by several loud thumping sounds. Then silence settled over the woods again.
“That was incredible! What was that noise?” Charlie could barely contain herself.
“That was the shock wave of the meteoroid traveling through the atmosphere,” Jack explained.
“Why didn't we hear it when the meteoroid was overhead?”
“Because light travels faster than sound.”
Jack had switched on a flashlight and was taking notes on a small pad of paper he had pulled from his pocket.
She sat up and scooted over to see what he was writing. “Do you think that there might be meteorites on the ground from the fireball?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you going to go look for them?” Charlie asked, trying to make sense of the numbers and letters he was scribbling.
“No, but I'm going to make a few phone calls after looking at a map. Someone might have seen the fall.” He scanned the horizon and jotted a few more notes.
“That would be unbelievably cool if you found parts of that meteorite! Would I be able to buy one? I'd love to have a space rock that I'd actually seen fall to Earth.”
“If I find any, I'll give you a family member discount.”
He appeared amused by her enthusiasm so she asked the other questions flying around in her mind. “The light seemed to be different colors. What causes that?”
“Some colors come from the materials of the meteoroid itself. Some come from the gases in the atmosphere around it, sort of like the aurora borealis.”
“Why did it last so much longer and burn so much brighter than the other falling stars we've seen?”
“It was probably unrelated to the Lyrids, which are the debris of a comet,” he said, tucking the notebook and pen back into his pocket. “The fireball is bigger, usually a chunk of an asteroid, and it travels more slowly because of the atmosphere's braking effect.” He looked at her for a moment, then continued, “It looks even bigger than it really is because the atmosphere around it becomes incandescent, sometimes for hundreds of feet. Most of the visual drama in a fireball is glowing hot gases.”
“In all my so-called adventures,” Charlie said, with awe in her voice, “I've never seen anything even remotely like that.”
“That was just an average meteoroid. Some fireballs are so bright they light up the daytime sky. And some are so large they knock down entire forests just with their shock wave.”
“That was in Siberia, right?”
“Yes, in 1909. No meteorites were ever found where the fall should have been so the current theory is a large meteoroid exploded about five miles above the Earth.”
“I guess we're lucky that didn't happen over New York City. Of course, the dinosaurs weren't so lucky, were they?” She was literally vibrating with the thrill of the experience and couldn't stop talking. “I still can't believe I actually saw a fireball. Thank you so much.”
“I'd like to take credit for arranging it, but it was pure luck.”
“If I hadn't been out here staring at the sky with you, I would never have had the experience.”
Charlie suddenly became aware she had pressed herself up against his arm and shoulder while she was trying to read his notes. She pulled back and bent her knee to lever herself to her feet when he said in a voice about an octave lower than the one he had used to explain the fireball, “Don't move. I owe you something.”
“What?” she asked, halting in surprise.
He reac
hed around to yank her blankets over beside his.
“I owe you one of these,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and brushing his lips slowly over hers. “And this.” He shifted to run his tongue around the outside of her ear at an exquisitely leisurely pace. “And a lot more of this.” He turned and lowered her onto the blankets, coming down with her so she felt him along the whole length of her body. When his hand swept up her body to rest ever so gently on her breast, she choked on a moan.
“I'm all in favor of honoring your debts,” she said, trying desperately to recall her dispassionate analysis of their afternoon encounter. She felt his other hand slide under her waistband seeking bare skin and gasped, “But I don't think you owe me anything.”
“Let's just call it a southern gentleman's sense of obligation,” he drawled.
As Charlie started to protest, his palm did a slow, exquisite dance over her chest. “I may have to rethink my opinion of Gone with the Wind,” she managed to say before she threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled his face down to hers.
He checked his descent an inch above her. “Call me Rhett and I'll divorce you tomorrow.”
“Jack,” she said, and lifted her head to kiss him.
He sank into her kiss, half-covering her body with his while his hands roamed over interesting places. She could feel him hardening against her hip but he seemed in no hurry to satisfy himself. So she wedged her hands between them and unbuttoned his flannel shirt one button at a time, spreading her palms over the skin she bared, running her fingers along the scars and wondering briefly what accident had put them there. She licked his throat and felt him shudder, but all her encouragement had no effect on his pace.
He shifted and worked her shirt loose from her jeans, pushing it up and unhooking the front catch of her bra. She arched into his mouth when it came down on her breast, and for a moment felt the marvelous scrape of his whiskers before he eased back to just flick her nipple with his tongue.
“Please,” she groaned, arching again.
“Yes, ma' am,” he said and took her into his mouth, letting her feel just the edge of a bite before he swirled his tongue over and around and then drew away to tug her nipple ever so gently in his teeth.
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