Deborah Camp (18 page)

The wind combed through his midnight hair, throwing it back from his forehead and ears and curling it at his collar, making it blue-black in places. Her gaze slipped down his torso to his lean hips and long legs, encased in black trousers that were worn to a dark gray in places. She
remembered his body and the strange glory of it: dark curling hair, rock-hard muscles, cords of tendons, taut skin.

Yearning blew through her like a hot, restless wind. She didn’t know what she yearned for, only that her yearning was intense and as violent as the mounting storm. It shook her sensibilities, buffeted her common sense, and aroused impulses she hadn’t known until that moment.

Cassie reached up slowly and unpinned the braid she’d wound at the top of her head. Her fingers worked, loosening the braid, parting the strands, combing through them until her hair was a pale cloud around her face and on her shoulders. She slipped one hand inside the collar of her blouse and touched her warm, moist skin. Her fingertips danced across her breastbone as her skin grew more slippery and her breathing became more like panting. Hypnotized by the throbbing of her pulses, she moved with lethargic grace, gliding across the planked floor on bare feet that whispered sensuously and caught Rook’s attention. His head turned ever so slowly until he could see her standing at his side, her eyes level with the top of his shoulder. The wind tossed her hair and threw a strand across her face, but she didn’t draw it away, leaving it there for him to do it. He obliged, his fingertips trailing lightly across her eyelids, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, before he pulled the strand of light blond hair from her lips and tucked it behind her shell-like ear.

He bent slightly, dipped his head, and kissed the delicate curve of her ear before he lowered his lips to her earlobe. His teeth nipped her skin and Cassie shivered as a savage feeling raked through her.

“What’s happening to me?” she moaned as she turned to face him, her eyes wide and pleading. She gathered his shirt in her fists, holding on and shaking him a little. “You tell me. You know, don’t you? Tell me what’s happening to me. Why do I feel so … like something’s coming and I’ll be swept away with it! Tell me!”

Rain began to fall in fat drops, blown by the wind onto the porch where they stood. The raindrops sparkled in his hair, clung to hers, ran down his face, caressed hers.

He smoothed the hair back from her face and kept his
hands on her head. “You know what’s happening. You just don’t want to admit to it. You think it’s some kind of weakness, but it’s not. It’s natural and wonderful, Cassie. Like rain falling on hard soil. Like lightning splitting open the heavens. Like dust devils waltzing in the wind. Natural,” he whispered, and his lips brushed against her forehead. “Wonderful.” His lips touched the tip of her nose. “Stronger than our own wills.”

His mouth hovered for a moment above hers, long enough for her senses to reel and then settle jarringly. She pressed her hands against the wall of his chest and sprang back from him.

“It’s not right,” she said, breathlessly. “I can’t …”

He reached out, grabbing her shoulders in a moment of desperation. “Yes, you can. We can. We should.”

“No!” She wrenched herself from his grasp. “Your family—”

“Forget that, damn it!”

“Maybe you can, but I can’t!” She dashed into the cabin and found shelter in the bedroom, closing the door against the howling wind and her wanton hunger.

He called out her name in a way that made her think of the wolf’s mournful cry, and Cassie pressed her hands against her ears to shut him out … to shut away the power of him … the yearning in her … the crackling sizzle of desire.

Lightning popped its whip again and Cassie dropped to her knees. Flinging her arms over her head, she burrowed into herself like a turtle into its shell and waited for the storm’s fury to pass over her.

Lightning zigzagged to the ground, striking a tree nearby and making the air vibrate. Cassie strangled a scream and poked her head out from under her sheltering arms to look wildly around the bedroom and make sure it hadn’t been ripped away by the storm. Suddenly the door crashed open and the scream Cassie had managed to swallow came tearing up her throat.

Rook stood on the threshold. He’d removed his shirt, and his chest rose and fell with his ragged breathing.

“I won’t let you shut me out tonight,” he said in a voice
that belonged to a side of him Cassie had never known. “It’s not the storm you’re frightened of, Cassie.”

“The lightning struck something,” she insisted. “Maybe something’s on fire.”

“Us.” One long stride brought him right up to her. His hands curved over her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “We’re on fire.”

She looked deeply into his eyes and forgot the storm. “I’m scared.”

“Don’t be.” His lips touched her left temple, then her right. “I won’t hurt you.”

Cassie released a trembling sigh as she flung back her head, feeling boneless and needing his strength to support her. “Oh, I’m glad it’s you, Rook. I’m so glad it’s you.”

She stood motionless, arms dangling limply at her sides, her knees barely able to hold her up. Rook’s hands were still upon her shoulders, keeping her in place as his mouth traveled from one side of her neck to the other, then across her cheekbone to her eyelid. When his mouth finally melted over hers, Cassie was awash in emotions so new and fragile that she was close to tears.

“Are you through fighting me?” he asked with a smile in his voice.

“Yes, for now,” she promised, then held her breath when she realized that he was unbuttoning her blouse.

She brought her hands up to cover his in a reflex action. Her gaze locked with his for several moments while the import of what was about to happen dawned on her, chasing aside the shadows of guilt and propriety. Nodding to affirm her decision, she released his hands and allowed him to finish his task. He tugged the hem of her blouse from the confines of her skirt’s waistband and spread the blouse open with his hands, holding it that way while he looked upon her simple cotton chemise. Rook removed her shirt with practiced efficiency: Then he eased the thin straps of the chemise over her smooth shoulders and down her arms, drawing the chemise down over her breasts and exposing taut nipples and ivory skin that contrasted alluringly with her tanned arms, neck, and face.

Cassie trembled, wondering what to do next. Was it her
turn to do something or say something? Why was he just looking at her as if he’d never seen a woman’s parts before? Were her breasts different from other women’s? She crossed her arms over herself and backed away from him.

“I don’t like it when you stare at me,” she said. “You look at me like I got three instead of two!”

It was a struggle not to laugh, but Rook managed. He hooked an arm around her waist before she could dart from the room, and with a sweeping motion, he gathered her up into his arms. Before she could object or utter any sound of surprise, his mouth was upon hers and his tongue mated with hers in a dance that made her whimper and tremble. He moved to the bed and lay down on it with her, as the eye of the storm drew closer and closer to them.

She had little chance to ponder her fate as Rook rained kisses across her face and shoulders while his busy hands removed the rest of her clothing and his. When she started to shy away from his insistent fingers as they reached for the final barrier of cloth that covered her most private secrets, he overruled her with a drugging kiss that swept all rational thought from her head. She shivered, feeling exposed and vulnerable. When he lifted his mouth from hers, she turned her face away from him.

“Cassie?”

She kept her face averted, suddenly afraid and shaking with apprehension.

“Cassie, look at me,” he said, cajoling her as he hooked one finger under her chin and tried to pull her face around to his.

“I’m not good at this. I can already tell. You’ll be sorry—” Her words were chopped off by his mouth grinding against hers. His body pressed her deeper into the mattress.

Holding her head between his hands, his gaze bored into hers and she dared not move a muscle.

“How in the hell do you expect me to love you when you’re whining and yammering?” he asked, smiling and trying to win a smile from her. “Let your body talk to me.”

She nodded, and from that moment her lips might have
been carved from marble. He smoothed back her long, corn-silky hair. She was perspiring lightly; he kissed her creased brow and tasted her salty essence.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

His lips traveled lightly over her face. He dropped a few kisses across her clavicle and she caught her breath.

“Relax,” he urged, then moved on across the virgin territory of her creamy breasts.

Cassie stared unblinkingly at the ceiling and listened to the noisy rain on the tin roof. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides, taking in great gathers of the sheet with each newly formed fist. She was as stiff as a board and she knew it, but she didn’t know how to relax even though he kept telling her to do just that. How did a woman relax with a man laying on top of her? she wondered. It was like having a log across you, squeezing out your breath. It was so difficult to breathe and impossible to think clearly when he was nuzzling her like a friendly hound.

No wonder some women wanted to get paid for this, Cassie thought. Maybe Jewel and the girls had the right idea about pleasuring men. Men certainly got the pleasure and women got the discomfort. What was he doing now? she wondered, but she dared not look. She kept her gaze glued to the shadowy ceiling and told herself that it would be over soon and she could thank Rook kindly and never moan about her single life again. She’d be happy with her lot in life and never wish for another encounter like this one. She’d remember Rook’s tender kisses and forget this terrible night of—

Cassie sucked in her breath, held it inside her, and felt her eyes widen in sudden shock. Fire shot through her veins, and her hands moved up in an almost spastic motion. Instead of gathering in handfuls of sheet, she clutched at Rook’s thick, wavy hair and held on for dear life while his lips circled one of her nipples and his tongue scraped across it again and again, each stroke sending a deep quiver to the pit of her stomach. She was about to ask him where he had learned that particular trick when he pulled another miracle from her body by suckling gently upon one breast and kneading the other with knowing fingers.

A string of disjointed words fell from her lips, broken by sharp intakes of breath and swooning moans. She felt weightless, floating blithely on a cushion of heavenly sensations as Rook continued his magic act, making her body his instead of her own.

His hands spanned her waist easily and he pulled her toward him until his lower body was cradled between her legs. She realized that her eyes were tightly shut and she forced them open. Rook was on his knees, his face floating above her like a handsome man in the moon. His smile was slightly sad as if he were sending off a loved one to a better life, wanting her to move on but hating to let her go. Cassie’s eyes filled with tears as she caught and shared his sentiment. She nodded, silently permitting him to free her from her maiden’s cocoon so that she could soar on the wings of womanhood.

The confluence of their bodies was the sweetest of embraces. She wept openly, thrilled to have experienced this miracle with Rook, for he had become her anchor, her hope, her shield against loneliness. She imagined herself to be a vial and Rook a colorful, warm liquid being poured into her, filling her up until she fairly brimmed with him.

He was the wind and she the willow, bending to his every whim. When he slipped his hands beneath her shoulder blades, she rose up to meet his descending mouth. His tongue parried with hers, teased the corners of her mouth, and then thrust home at the same moment he did.

Rook teetered on the brink of fulfillment, wanting to fall into the lap of repletion but holding on for one more precious second before he let himself go. He shuddered into her, feeling like the tide flowing in and out of a narrow estuary of femininity. He called out her name in a hoarse, moaning voice that filled his head and echoed there as if in a canyon. She scattered kisses over his chest and clung moistly to him. When he was spent, he knew he’d been blessed, for he had satisfied more than his lust. His dream of being loved by Cassandra Mae Potter had come true and he was everlastingly grateful.

“How did I do?” she asked in a little girl’s voice. “It
is
over, isn’t it?”

He laughed and felt himself stir to life within her again. “It’s not over, honey.”

“No?”

“No.” He moved ever so slightly and her eyes grew large with surprise. “It’s only beginning.”

Hours later, when the storm had passed and the morning was minutes away, Cassie slipped from the bed and into the other room. She covered her face with her hands and ached with conflicting emotions. If only she could get the thought of his wife out of her mind!

“How can it be wrong?” she whispered to herself. “How can it be wrong and right at the same time?”

The sun spread fingers of light across the horizon and cleaned away most of the shadows in her mind. The one that failed to lift was her guilt at loving another woman’s husband, and she knew she’d have to live with it the rest of her life and into damnation.

The hound dog wandered onto the property during the first week in May. Gray with black splotches of varying sizes all over him, the hound was floppy eared and long limbed. He had blue eyes and a tail that wagged in a hopeful sort of way.

Cassie shooed him away from the chicken coop, although the hound showed no interest in the flock. His tail flopped back and forth and he turned his woeful blues up at Cassie, making her heart go out to the woebegone creature. She propped her hands at her waist, stood back with an objective air, and regarded the poor dog. He wasn’t too old—two or three, maybe—and so puny she could count his ribs. He wasn’t wearing any sort of tether, so Cassie decided he was a roamer.