In the Midnight Rain (25 page)

He closed his eyes, counted backward from ten. When he reached one, he took a breath and blew it out, then opened his eyes. She'd pulled the shirt over her head. The fabric was wet and clung to her nipples, the highest point on her. Blue couldn't help himself. He snared her by one wrist and bent down to put his mouth on that pointed crown, because he could, after wanting it so long, because he thought it would remind her, and because he wanted to hear that soft gasp of surprise and pleasure that she gave. But though he did hear that sound, it wasn't all. She raised a hand and cupped him, stroked him, through his jeans.

Agony.

"Tonight," she whispered, and danced away, almost running through the greenhouse away from him, leaving him counting again. Backward from a hundred.

It didn't help. He found a dry T-shirt in the workroom, tugged it urgently over his head and grabbed his keys from the hook by the door. He wouldn't embarrass her by going anywhere in town, which meant a twenty-mile drive into a neighboring little town, a hole in the wall that at least had a grocery store and pharmacy. As he paid for the economy-sized box of Trojans, he caught a sideways look from the clerk, and realized he must look like a wild man, his hair damp and messy, his jeans wet, his shirt dry, his only purchase the giant box of condoms.

He chuckled, which turned the speculative look on the clerk's face to one of alarm. Blue took his change and jumped back in the truck and raced back to Gideon and Ellie, praying urgently that she would not change her mind.

He drove to the cabin and leaped out, into the sunlight and the heat. He slammed the door behind him and walked through the hot dust. "Ellie!"

13

E
llie had showered the heat of the day from her, and shaved her legs and dried her hair, unwilling to let it lie, damp and annoying, on her neck the whole day. It was impossible to even think of working, so she put on a lightweight robe and stretched out on the bed beneath the fan. She'd been lying there about five minutes when she heard Blue's truck outside.

She jumped up and looked out the window, laughter rising in her chest when he leapt out of the truck and cried her name, a package in his hands. Giddy, she went to the door just as he landed on the porch, still barefooted. April started to wiggle, making a whimpering noise of greeting. She barked, once, pointedly, lifting a paw as if she'd open the screen door herself, then pushed at it with the same paw. The dog looked back at Ellie, as if to say, well, get up already! He's here. He's here.

"I know."

Blue stood beyond the screen, his head cocked so his hair fell in a tumble nearly to one shoulder.

He simply stood there, holding his hand to the screen in deference to April, who wanted to lick it but didn't much like the taste of weathered wire. Behind him was the strong clear sunlight of midafternoon, a time when children screamed and splashed at the local pool, and bank tellers were making change. She'd imagined loving him in darkness, with a little bourbon and music to blur the reality. Not sober, in daylight, making it impossible to excuse her actions later.

But looking at him, she noticed that desire didn't need night or liquor or even music. "Condoms, I presume?" she said through the screen door, nodding at the box in his hand.

A vulnerable little flush crawled up his cheeks, and Ellie felt her heart catch. He looked wild, barefooted and his hair wind blown, and his jeans still wet, and a sudden tentativeness on his mouth. "You didn't change your mind already, did you?"

Ellie pushed open the screen door. "If you aren't naked inside ten seconds, I swear I'm going to explode."

He laughed, relief and the same giddiness Ellie was feeling. "Yes, ma'am."

He came in, pushing the box at her. She shook the bag off of it and got a fingernail under the flap, then turned and closed the wooden door for privacy. Her heart was still racing and uneven, and her hands were shaking a little as he shucked the shirt and shimmied out of his jeans, and turned to face her, naked and beautiful and slightly abashed.

The box in her hands was forgotten as she admired him, the long legs dusted with hair that took gold sparks from sunlight pouring in through the windows, and the flat lower belly, and the aggressive slant of his swollen organ. She smiled and went toward him, feeling that curious mix of fondness and protectiveness naked male aroused in her, and put her hands on that funny flesh. She pressed the condoms into his hand.

"My hands are shaking," she said. "But if you get one out, I'll be more than happy to adorn you."

He tore the box open, and little foil packets spilled all over the floor. He laughed, taking one of the few left in the box and dropping the others as he leaned close to her. "Now you." He untied the robe, bending his head to kiss her at the same time. He pushed the fabric off her shoulders and Ellie dropped her arms to let it slide off.

Oh.

Naked.

With Blue.

She closed her eyes and pressed close to him, her breasts against his chest, her arms around his back, his hairy thighs against hers. She opened her palms wide on the silky flesh of his back and felt his organ nudging like an ungainly animal into her belly until he reached between them and slanted it upward so he could press closer.

She rubbed her face across his chest, kissed the dip in the middle, and touched his nipples with her tongue. Sunlight blazed against her eyelids and silence was the only sound. Silence and breath and the wet sound of her mouth.

"God, Ellie," he said, and his hands were in her hair. He kissed her lips and eyelids and cheeks, his mouth wet and hot and hungry. And always that nudging, thick against her belly. She wrapped her hand around it, and felt the jump, and Blue made a sound in his throat, and she opened her mouth and took his tongue, her fingers moving lightly, then not so lightly.

Finally she broke away, panting, and pushed a little against him, pointing wordlessly to the bed, taking his hand, pulling him behind her. When she was about to lie down, he said, "Wait."

She turned toward him, only dazedly aware of sunlight streaming in around them, pooling over their bodies. He was gilded with it, his shoulders, burnished in a round arc, the hips narrow, his organ heavy between lean thighs. But it was his skin that drew her hand, supple, smooth, perfect. She skimmed her fingers down his throat, over the curve of his arm, as he stood, only looking at her.

"You're so gorgeous," he whispered. His hands cupped her breasts lightly, and lifted them, and there was an expression on that artful face that made her feel lost and pleased. She felt her orientation shift; a dizzy sense of growth pushed through her, as if she were Alice in Wonderland after one of the magic pills. She did not mind when he knelt before her, and opened his mouth and touched the very tip of his tongue to one nipple. The sight stunned her, his hair falling in gold and brown around his face, her white flesh against his darker fingers, that red tongue flickering over the pointed copper.

Everything in her went still as she watched. His mouth, full lips so beautifully cut, closing around her, hot and wet. His eyelashes, gold-tipped and long, fell in arcs across his cheekbones, and his wild hair tumbled around her fingers. Ellie swayed.

He skimmed a hand down her belly, between her thighs, and still Ellie watched, feeling him with one part of her while the other part watched in breathless wonder. He was beautiful, his back gleaming in the sunlight, and he kissed her all over, suckling and stroking until Ellie could no longer stand up. Even then, he simply settled her back on the bed and kept stroking, sure and strong, light and teasing, all with such intense enjoyment she felt like a queen, like Mabel, and when she came, she moaned with such depth that she might have been embarrassed, but then Blue was over her. He tore open the condom package with his teeth and one hand, and Ellie took it. "Allow me." She slid it on, then pulled him back to her, wishing for a moment that it could be bare flesh that slid inside her, but he fell on her, his tongue swirling into her mouth as he arranged her legs and plunged in with a wild noise of deepest pleasure, Ellie still pulsing all around him and shuddering from her shoulders to her hips.

And then he was rough, as if he could not help it. His hands dug into her buttocks and lifted her close, and his teeth bruised her lips and she thought she could feel his plunge to the bottom of her ribs. When he came, he roared, like a lion, his hands so tight, her legs so close around him that for the first time she understood what union meant.

They collapsed together, sweating, breathless, and did not speak as heartbeats slowed, as trembling finally ceased. Ellie's limbs felt weighted and gilded, and she touched his hair where a band of yellow light fell through it. He kissed her wrist. Ellie didn't want him to move, but eventually he shifted, slid sideways and lay beside her, his hand across her belly, his forehead pressed lightly into her shoulder.

She simply drifted, closing her eyes, feeling air across the damp places on her skin, and sunlight on her toes. His hand was big and covered her from hipbone to hipbone, pelvic bone to rib. She sensed him looking at what he touched, felt the small, exploratory movements of his fingers, a millimeter here or there.

"Your skin is like orchid petals," he drawled, his voice quiet.

Ellie smiled, but didn't open her eyes. "From any other man, I'd think that was a practiced line and laugh at you, but I reckon you have a good acquaintance with orchids."

"They're cool, though. Your skin is warm."

She laced her fingers through his hair, silky and thick at once, let it trail across her wrist, twined some around her ring finger. He would break her heart, eventually, but there wasn't much to do about that now. Maybe it would be worth it. She pressed details of the moment into memory so she could take them out and admire them later. His hip against hers, the feel of his skin, the sound of his breath.

His hand slid down a little, brushed her thighs. She felt him lift on one elbow. "You always so quiet?"

"Mmm." Lazily, she opened her eyes. "Who needs words?"

"Maybe I do," he said, a perplexed little frown creasing his forehead.

She shifted, turning on her side. Looking at him made it harder to stay aloof, because there was vulnerability in his jeweled eyes and on his jaw. If she thought of him as a rascal, a ladies' man, a rake, she could keep her distance.

But there he was, an all-too-human man who had once been a boy who'd lost his family, and a teenager who played a single song so often and so loud that it earned him a new name, and a man who'd built a Taj Mahal of flowers because his heart was shattered by grief. She brushed a lock of hair off his forehead, stroked a line of gentleness over the side of his face. "I don't mind talking," she said quietly.

He closed his eyes for a moment and pulled her closer to him. "Oh, Ellie," he breathed into her hair. "It's been a long time since a woman got to me."

"Yeah?" she chuckled, pulling back a little instinctively. "Well, you sure got to me, Dr. Reynard. Lord have mercy." She clutched his arms in mock horror. "This doesn't mean we have to give up tonight, does it?"

"Hell, no. Got lots of condoms," he said with a chuckle, and gestured to them, scattered all over the floor. "Be a shame to waste 'em after that emergency trip to Hector."

"You drove to Hector and back that fast?"

"I did." Laughter shook his shoulders. "Oh, they'll be talking about me for months."

Ellie got a sudden picture of him, wild-looking, barefooted in some tiny little grocery in Hector, and laughter welled in her, too. "You were quite a sight on my front porch. Did you go in the store without your shoes?"

Amusement overtook him, and he turned to her, shaking, laughing against her neck. Nodded.

"Condom emergency," she cried, and they clung to each other, giggling like teenagers, and then one would slow and the other would start to say something, and they'd be off again, laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces.

Finally, they slowed, and Blue took her into his arms. "Whew."

"Don't say anything more," Ellie cried, feeling the edge of hilarity still ready to spill out any second.

"You, either."

Finally calm, she sighed softly, entirely too pleased at the way her head fit in the hollow of his shoulder. "You have to promise this won't ruin our friendship, Blue. I couldn't stand that."

"Why would it?"

"You know better than that. Sex ruins lots of great friendships."

"Not sex that good."

She turned her head. "It's not the sex. It's all the bad feelings that come after." She sighed. "You may as well understand right now that I will fall in love with you—but you don't have to feel bad about it. When it comes time to go, I'll keep my dignity and I swear I won't slobber on your shirt." She smiled softly. "Or at least not much."

"Ellie—"

"You don't have to say anything back. I just wanted it out on the table." Earnestly, she looked at him. "Promise, Blue. We have to stay friends."

He cupped her head and kissed her, deep, stirring up the low thud of desire again. She made a soft noise and he let her go. "I promise."