As If You Never Left Me (Crimson Romance) (14 page)

For a moment, he held still, sheathed deeply inside her. She could feel every inch of him, the tip pressing against her womb, sending a slow wave of heat up through her chest.

She let him stay there for a long breath, then nudged his hips with her calves, pushing him closer, even farther inside, though that had not seemed possible. A moan wrenched its way out of his throat and he pulled out, then pressed back in, starting an irresistible rhythm.

She’d finished once, in the hot tub, but the heat rose inside her again, rising and pulsing until she found herself in the tide of another climax. His thrusts quickened, harder and deeper, as her body tightened on him, and when she toppled for the second time, he joined her. She pushed herself closer to him, pulled him in as deep as she could, feeling the steady, heavy pulse of his ejaculation.

She felt suspended outside her own body as the waves passed over her, as she clenched and eased on him. Finally, he lowered his head and kissed her hair.

“I love you,” he said.

She opened her mouth to answer him but nothing came out. A thick clog of tears had filled her throat. Closing her mouth, she swallowed hard, feeling a hot tear wind its way down her cheek. He only smiled, and kissed the tear away.

She woke early again, comfortably cocooned in the warm blankets next to Rey. While he snored softly next to her, she snuggled against him, pressing her bare breasts against his back. He shifted a little. She tucked her chin into the curve of his shoulder and lightly kissed his ear.

“Good morning,” she whispered, softly enough it wouldn’t wake him if he were deeply asleep.

He made an odd, very unromantic snorting noise. “Morinn,” he mumbled, then rolled over to face her, wrapped his arms around her and apparently fell headlong back to sleep again.

She smiled. He should have been awake and raring to go, with the two-hour time difference between here and New York. His jet lag seemed to be working in the wrong direction. She settled down into his embrace and closed her eyes.

A moment later, he sat up. “It’s time for you to go to work, isn’t it?”

She looked into his bleary eyes and realized she never wanted to get out of this bed again. “It’s okay. It’s Sunday. It’s my only day off.”

He nodded and lay back down, closing his eyes again.

She grinned. “You sure you want to sleep, hon?” she said.

Opening one eye, he regarded her with interest, more awake than he’d been a few seconds ago. “You had something else in mind?”

She slipped her hand down his stomach. “Maybe.”

He growled and grabbed her. She laughed as he rolled on top of her, pushing her down into the bed.

It was indescribably delicious to have a man in her bed again, Joely thought as his talented hands began their work, drawing lines of fire over her body, arousing her breasts, gently invading and rousing her. No, not just any man.
This
man. This man who could make her feel so wanton and so safe at the same time. Who knew exactly where and how to touch her to start that hot ecstasy spiraling inside her, and how to nurture it until it filled her and overflowed. Who knew without asking that she wanted him to look into her eyes as he came hard inside her, and to keep looking as he, too, toppled over the peak.

And there was more than fire in his eyes when he did it. She thought she’d seen it last night, but it had been hard to tell in the semi-darkness. Love. He could speak it all he wanted, but seeing it dark and heavy in his gray eyes made her want to weep.

But she didn’t, not this time. She drowned herself in it, watching him climax, until he finally closed his eyes to ride her on the final, overwhelming waves. Then, when he sighed and looked at her again, she kissed him gently on lips still trembling a little.

“I love you, too,” she whispered.

He smiled, and closed his arms around her, and cradled her against his heartbeat.

• • •

Later, she poured Rey a cup of coffee while his eggs were cooking. He sipped at it, eyeing her through a misplaced lock of dark hair. Wearing sweats and no socks, unshaven and tousled from early-morning lovemaking, he looked tremendously sexy.

“I have a question for you, Rey,” she said, sliding the finished eggs into a plate. She set the plate down in front of him and picked up her own plate of toast.

“Shoot,” he said.

“If all this works out, where are we going to live?”

He considered a moment, but he didn’t look particularly perturbed by the question. “I guess we’d have to work that out.”

“Yes, we would. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?”

“I’ve never lived outside New York,” he said. Her heart sank, but he wasn’t finished. “However, I think I might like it here. I could find work in Denver, or I could even help you out with your business.”

She chewed her lip, almost afraid to believe he was really saying this. “You’d be willing to move?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He paused. “Would you?”

This caught her off-guard. She hadn’t expected him to turn the question back on her. “Honestly, Rey, I don’t know. I’ve worked really hard to do what I’ve done here. I don’t know if I could give it up.”

He nodded. “Well, one of us has to make the sacrifice, and since I’m the one who screwed things up in the first place, it might as well be me.”

“Rey — ”

He held up a hand. “It’s all hypothetical right now, anyway, isn’t it? We have a month to think it all through.”

She nodded. “You’re right.”

Still, his willingness to consider leaving New York gave her a new sense of optimism. If he could make that big a change for her, it seemed that much more likely that he’d make an extra effort to be sure things went well from there. She chewed her toast, watching him eat his eggs, and considered another possible piece to the plan.

“Tomorrow, when we go in,” she finally said, “you could look over my books and tell me what you think. We could come up with some ideas about how we could work together.”

He nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.” He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “So what do you want to do today?”

“I want to show you Colorado. I want to show you why I stayed.”

• • •

It was too cold to hike, so she took him for a drive. West down highway 285, through Shawnee to Grant, where she turned to head up Guanella Pass.

She’d only been this way once, last spring. It was too late in the year to see the stands of aspens in glittering gold, but the scenery was still incredible. The road twisted and turned, switching back on itself time after time as it wound its way up and over the ridge of mountains. With each hairpin curve, a new vista was revealed — here a waterfall, here a grand sweep of evergreen forest, here the massive slope of a snow-covered mountain.

The road became iffier as they neared the top. Joely trusted her own driving and the Jeep’s four-wheel drive. Rey clutched the edges of the seat as the road became little more than raw rock, throwing the Jeep back and forth alarmingly. At least, apparently, for Rey, who kept his eyes fixed on the often steep drop-offs, sometimes out his window, sometimes out Joely’s.

At the top of the pass, she pulled the Jeep over. There was a path here where you could hike up Mount Bierstadt, one of several fourteeners — fourteen-thousand foot peaks — in the area.

“What do you think?” Joely asked.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. He sounded sincere, and when she looked at him she saw appropriate awe on his face. “It really is. I can see why you love it. It must feed your artistic muse.”

“Yes, it does.” She took a long breath, letting the spell of the place settle over her.

They sat in silence for a time, then Joely turned, surprised, as Rey’s hand settled over hers. “Not much traffic up here, is there?”

“Not this time of year. It gets busier over the su — ”

She broke off as his mouth closed on hers. He kissed her, soft and warm and deep, then drew back with a wicked smile.

“How far off-road can you get this thing?”

“As far as I like, I suppose. I don’t want to get stuck in the snow, though.”

“Hey, it’s a Jeep. Show a little adventurous spirit.”

She knew full well where his mind was. The idea appealed to her. A lot. She reached toward the gearshift but caught his thigh instead. “I can get us far enough.”

With the Jeep in low gear, she trundled over the uneven, snowy ground until they were shielded by a stand of evergreens.

“Back seat?” he said, mischief in his eyes.

“Damn straight,” she answered, adjusting the driver’s seat as she spoke, moving it forward as far as it would go.

Braving the cold, they got out and climbed into the back seat. Before Joely had quite closed the door, Rey had caught hold of her, dragging her across the back seat, half into his lap. He kissed her, devouring her mouth while his hands slid down her back, cupped her ass. His tongue pressed in, tangling with hers.

Joely laughed. “What?” Rey said, almost as if in protest.

She shook her head, unable really to explain. It just struck her funny, that they were about to make love in the backseat of a car, like teenagers afraid of getting caught by their parents.

He grinned at her, eyes twinkling, and she sensed that he understood. She smiled back. That was the way they had always been — in synch, practically reading each other’s minds. It felt good to have that back.

She grappled with the snap on his jeans, with the zipper, finding it quite difficult to get them unfastened while he was sitting. But she managed to get them open, and to work the jeans down his hips and partway down his thighs. He was already firmly erect, and as she worked the jeans down, he worried a rather bent condom package out of his pocket and laid it on the seat next to him.

She smiled up at him, not sure why that particular gesture touched her so much. Maybe because it proved he’d planned ahead, or maybe because it proved he was thinking about protecting her. Either way, it made her warm. Made her love him.

She maneuvered into an uncomfortable sitting position on the floor between the driver’s seat and the back seat. She’d positioned the driver’s seat to its farthest forward position, so there was some room, but it wasn’t quite enough. Still, she could make do. She adjusted until she was relatively comfortable, sitting between Rey’s open knees. He looked down at her, heavy-lidded, lips slightly parted, and put his hand on her head, combing his fingers into her hair. He knew what was coming. Not forcing it, but obviously anticipating it.

She smiled. Tenting her fingertips against his knees, she traced them up his thighs, then back down. His eyes closed and he let his head settle back against the headrest with a soft sigh of contentment.

She slipped her fingers again along his thighs, up to his belly, dropped a fingertip into his navel, lifted it back out again, carefully circumnavigating even the dark curls of his pubic hair. Then, with no preamble, she bent and took him into her mouth. He jumped, gasped, and she chuckled, licking him.

He filled her mouth as well as he did her body, and the taste of his skin brought back memories of other back seats, other blowjobs, quickly going down on him behind bushes at dusk on the college quad. She took him in, deep, all the way to the back of her throat, smiling at the way he fit perfectly against the back of her palate. She had missed that. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

His hands fisted gently in her hair and he began to pulse his hips. It felt good. He tasted good. Faster, deeper, and she brought up a hand to curl her fingers around him as he thrust, working his skin, feeling the hardness beneath it. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and drew her head up.

“Inside,” he said. “I want to come inside you.”

She nodded, then looked around at the narrow confines of the Jeep. How had they done this, years ago? How did teenagers manage? Was it just because they were skinnier?

“Turn around,” he said.

She did, with some difficulty, ending up positioned in the space between front and back seats, facing toward the front window. She stood, more or less, bent over the front seat with the back of her head against the roof.

He laughed. “You don’t look very comfortable.”

“I’m not.” She couldn’t help smiling; it was all really fairly ludicrous.

“I’ll fix that,” he assured her.

He reached around her and unfastened her jeans, sliding them slowly down her hips. He leaned in as he did so, tracing his tongue down her back until it touched the top of the cleft between her buttocks. She shivered under the soft, wet contact. He withdrew, then blew gently on the trail he had left behind. She laughed.

“Damn, that’s cold.”

He laughed, too, then cupped his hands around her hips and settled her back toward him.

She moved with him, trusting him. He maneuvered her backward, one hand steadying her while the other reached between her legs, his fingers sliding inside her. She closed her eyes, the better to feel the penetration, as his fingers went in deep, as far as they could go. Then they slid out, and his erection took their place, sliding inside.

Rey brought her gently back, at the same time rising behind her. There was a handle on the Jeep’s ceiling, just above the door, for extra stability during rough off-road travel. Rey took hold of it as he lifted himself from the back seat, using it as leverage as he pushed deep into Joely from behind.

Joely braced herself against the front seat. She was cold but she didn’t care; Rey was inside her and she could feel his hot belly against her back.

“You good?” he asked.

“Good,” she managed. Good didn’t cover it. Fantastic, wonderful, transcendent … There were no words. He was just — inside. Part of her. Irrevocably.

“Good,” he repeated, and braced himself, and began to thrust.

It was awkward, but the awkwardness enhanced it. She looked out the open window at the snow, the trees, and the thought that someone could wander in and walk right up to the car and watch them made her hot and buttery. God, he felt good inside her, stabbing deep, taking her. He could possess her so completely, so easily. No wonder she’d never wanted another man the way she’d always wanted Rey. The way she wanted him now.