Knight in a White Stetson (20 page)

Luckily, he knew. He might have smiled, in triumph, at her impatience, if he hadn’t been caught in the same frenzy.

“Take that off,” he said.

She leaned back and whipped the gown over her head.

“Oh, Calla,” he breathed. She towered over him like a goddess, her plum-tipped breasts firm and swollen with passion, the wet curls against his belly the same color as her hair. He rubbed his knuckles across them.

Calla whimpered and bowed back her body as a gift to him. “Henry…”

He touched her again, parting her, running a long finger along her cleft, the pearl waiting there rising to meet him. It was as firm as a new rosebud, as soft as wet silk, as soft as anything he’d ever touched.

He levered up, took a nipple between his teeth, making her cry out. He would’ve liked to have touched her breasts again, molded them, run his thumbs over the plum-colored crests, but what he touched now was too precious, too amazing. He couldn’t make himself stop stroking, stroking, stroking.

She came like a wave crashing, uninhibited. He watched her, intent on everything, her look, her scent, her movement. She bucked against him, unknowingly, as she crested, and he nearly went with her.

No rest for the wicked, though. She snapped from her climax greedier than before. Her hands started to move before the last quiver inside her had abated. Aah. Henry.

Straddling him, her eyes still closed, she took the same journey of his body he’d taken of hers. And she found that the dreams she’d had of him were so much less than what he really was. His chest was wide and hairy, with a narrow line of brown fuzz that winnowed down
to
his navel. She raked her short, functional nails through the hair, sorry for the first time in her life she didn’t have inch-long claws. Henry didn’t seem to mind. His back and hips came off the bare floor when she touched his nipples, making of himself a bow with his shoulders and heels, of her the arrow notched above.

Ah, so he is sensitive there. Who knew a man could be so fascinating? She toyed with him, kissed and suckled and bit, and found that if she wriggled backward just a little, and slid ever so slightly back and forth, it made his eyes roll back in his head. And drove her insane.

“Wait. Wait,” he whispered frantically. He really would like
to
actually get inside her before he spilled like a randy teenage virgin.

“Here.” He sat up, banding her to him as he moved, and snagged her sleeping bag. Rocking back and forth on his knees, he managed to spread the bag beneath them. He stretched out again, taking her with him, lying next to her, then, when instinct could dictate nothing else, on top of her.

He kissed her again, and she ran her hands along the taut muscles of his back down to his tight buttocks, lifting for him, urging him silently, in the way of women since the first coupling, to come to her. She felt as needy as if he’d never touched her. But he wouldn’t be rushed; the wait had been too long, the sensations now, too intense. He kissed the hollow of her throat, the valley between her breasts, the rosy, tightened buds, the soft, white curve. He kissed her belly, the indentations
at
her hips of flesh stretched across bone, the delicate cup of her naval. He murmured regret over the bruise he’d given her, and kissed it gently, too. Every kiss he took as though it would be his last, every kiss she received as though it were her first.

And when he reached that slick nub, that little, perfect center of her, and took her between his lips to brush
at
her with his tongue, and tasted what he’d already brought forth from her body, all worlds came apart; his, hers and the one they’d made together.

“Ah … ah…” She reached for it. And it swooped down to take her, stronger, sharper, a thousand times keener than before.

He hummed his pleasure as she bucked against his deft and mobile mouth. And before the first high crest subsided, he was inside, where he belonged.

“Calla.” It was his turn to moan. She was tight, hot, wet, everything he could have asked for. The mold within which he’d been cast. “Don’t move … don’t…”

Innocent. It flashed through his head, where he dismissed it. Innocent. No, it couldn’t be.

She moved under him, in a way that told him she knew everything there was to know about this, even if it was the first time.

He gathered what strength he could and lifted his head to look into her beautiful, her beloved face. “Calla?”

“Henry,” she moaned, her eyes tightly shut, and she writhed beneath him once more, seeking further rapture, a higher release. She clutched at him, trying to force him deeper, though he knew he could go no deeper; they were fully, gloriously together.

A better man might have been able
to
resist the lure of her, to question and console, but he couldn’t. He slid out of her body until he could feel those chestnut curls against his sensitive tip, and sank in again.

Over and over, faster, faster, until she was gone again. He watched her climax under him until his own vision grayed and his own head dropped forward in surrender.

* * *

“A virgin.” He could not believe it.

“Mmm.” He felt the low rumble of her laugh against his chest. “Not anymore.”

“Calla, you should have told me.”

“Why? So you could wonder what a twenty-four-year-old woman like me was still doing with a hymen?”

“You didn’t have a hymen.”

“I know. Horseback riding. It was a figure of speech.” She opened her eyes to see him staring down into her face. She touched his face with tender intent. “How did you know?”

How? He wasn’t sure. It had been a revelation, like a vision in the desert. He was her first, he’d be her last. “I just knew.”

“Oh, well, so I didn’t need to tell you, anyway.”

“You should have,” he insisted. “I would have been more…” Something.

She smiled up at him. “Gentle, tender, wonderful, spectacular? What?” She grinned up at him. “If you’d been more of anything, it would have killed me.”

Well, that was certainly good for the old male ego, she thought. She watched him in amusement as his concern turned slowly, manfully, inexorably, to satisfaction. He buried his face in her hair, took hold of her earlobe and bit down softly. She could practically hear him crowing.

“It was like that for me, too,” he whispered into her ear. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn he had turned just a little shy.

He had, in truth, and it made him feel a bit idiotic. But that he’d pleased her so well, that it had been everything he’d hoped it would be, made him giddy. He wanted to laugh, to squeeze her tightly to him and never let go, to weep with the newness and discovery of it all. But he wouldn’t tell her all that. Not yet.

He rolled until she was stretched on top of him, protecting her from the hard floor as he wanted to protect her from everything. He ran his hand from her hip to her shoulder, again and again.

“So,” he asked after a while, “was that, um, your first orgasm?”

She laughed. “Egomaniac. No. In fact, I had one just the other morning.”

“When?”

“The other morning. When I woke up so crabby.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I had a dream, about you. I had one then. I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“You had an erotic dream? About me?” He was touchingly thrilled about that. It may have been the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. He was also hard again thinking about it. “What was I doing?”

“Um, basically what you were doing a little while ago.”

“Which? With my fingers?”

“Your mouth.”

“Huh.” He wanted to slide down and do it again, with her on top this time. But he did have one more question first. “So, why were you?”

She buried her face in the warm hollow of his neck. “Look, I think you know enough now.”

“Come on. Spill it.”

“It’s my private business!”

“Need I remind you where my mouth was a few minutes ago? You don’t have private business from me anymore.”

She bit his shoulder, was pleased by the little yelp. “Dog.”

“Just tell me.”

“Why are you so curious?”

“I just am. I’m curious about everything about you. So, spill.”

She should have had the will to separate from him. She should have got up, put her nightgown back on and gone back to her narrow cot. It was over, her curiosity and her lust were satisfied, and they both understood it shouldn’t get any more intimate that it already was. But she couldn’t resist. She snuggled naked on top of him and chatted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

“I was a mess after Benny died. Grief-stricken and guilty and, God, for a while there, even suicidal.” Henry tightened his hold on her for a minute. His grip almost took the breath out of her. “While everyone else in high school was steaming up the windows in their father’s pickups, I was working like a maniac on the farm, trying to take Benny’s place and keep my sanity.”

“But, eventually, I mean, you’re twenty-four, and gorgeous, Calla. There must have been a thousand men since high school who wanted…”

“Oh, please,” she mumbled, flattered. “You’ve been up on this mountain too long. There were a couple guys I dated, but Paradise is not exactly teeming with eligible bachelors. Sober, employed ones, anyway. And I was always working, anyway. And when I went to college, I worked even harder, to justify the loan Mom had taken out.”

“And Dartmouth is obviously gay.”

Calla laughed. “No. But it’s not like I have a lot of privacy in that old house. It’s like living in an elder hostel. Besides, I’d already waited this long, and there didn’t seem much point to doing it until I got married.”

“Then Dartmouth can live.”

“Very funny.”

“Come on.” He scooted out from under her, grabbed her wrist and tugged her to her feet.

“Aaah! I’m naked! Where are we going?”

“Out to that trough. I’ve been fantasizing about you in there for two weeks.”

“What time is it?”

“Get a watch. Are you sleepy?” He wasn’t. He could have run all the way to Hot Sulphur Lake. And back to Calla.

“No, but we should…”

He pulled her through the tent flap and scooped her into his arms, making her laugh.

“Put me down. I must weigh a ton.”

He nipped
at
her neck. “Shut up.”

He lifted her into the trough and climbed in after. Water cascaded onto the ground around them, and the hot water steamed in the clear night air.

“Oooh, nice,” she said.

“Calla. Be still for a second.”

She looked up and found him watching her intently. She let him look.

“You are so beautiful,” he breathed. “Calla, you’re beautiful.”

Of course, she wasn’t, but it pleased her that he thought so. “So are you, Henry. I’ve thought so from the first second I scooted out from under that pickup.”

She turned until her back was to him and she settled against his chest. His hands came up to cup water over her exposed breasts and shoulders, warming them. His lips in her hair made silent promises he wasn’t ready for her to hear.

“You have the most beautiful breasts. They were about the … third thing I noticed about you.”

“Third?”

“Okay, first. They’ve haunted me ever since.”

She giggled. “They
haunted
you? My breasts have
haunted
you?”

“Stop laughing
at
me, you little brat. I was being poetic.”

“Well, you stink at it.” She turned in his arms, went to her knees, kissed him lightly a dozen times. “And don’t call me a brat, or I’ll
haunt
you with my breasts some more.” She collapsed into giggles.

He smiled into her hair, deliriously happy. “You know, I’ve imagined this a thousand times, but I never imagined you’d be laughing.”

She shook her head and leaned into him. “No. That would have been bad.” He could feel her chest shake against his. After a minute she quieted and snuggled closer. “Henry?”

“Mmm?” He petted her silky bottom.

“Have you had enough of this hot tub?”

His fingers reached a little lower, where soft hair clung to them. “Why?”

She wriggled, giving him better access. “Because I was thinking we could go back in the tent and … oh, do that … ahh … a little lower…”

“You were thinking…?”

“Slide your finger … there, that’s … oh, Henry.”

He watched the stars as he touched her, held her in his hand.

“Are you sore?”

“I’ve been riding horses for twenty years, spud. It’d take a better man than you to make me sore.”

“Good.” He slid his legs between hers and positioned her on his lap, straddling him.

“What are you?” she teased, “Eighteen?”

She impaled herself, greedy, impatient and wanton, and rode him, he thought later, with considerably more grace than she ever rode any mule.