Leftover Love (16 page)

Yet she found it unnerving, in an exciting way, to see all those sinewy, powerful muscles and that diamond-shaped patch of chest hairs. She became conscious that she was staring and turned away.

A fire blazed in the fireplace, young flames leaping high over the dry logs. She moved toward the hearth. “This looks warm and cozy,” she declared. “I’m glad you started it.”

Creed came into the room as Layne sank to the floor in front of the fire. “I fixed you some hot, sweet tea. It’s supposed to be good for shock.”

“I don’t think I’m suffering from any, but it sounds good anyway.” Her lips barely curved, but the look in her eyes was radiant with the inner glow of pleasure she was feeling as she accepted the cup he offered to her. He pulled a footstool closer to the fire and sat down, bending his long legs.

“Where’s Mattie? I thought I heard you talking to someone earlier.” Her gaze kept straying to the hard, bare muscles of his chest as she sipped at the strong, sweet tea. That indefinable male quality she had always sensed about him was more pronounced now—and more disturbing.

“She left a note saying she’d gone into town. It seems we’re low on coffee. She said she was going to stop at the Powell ranch on the way back, so she probably won’t be home until suppertime,” Creed explained. “You probably heard me talking to Stoney. Your horse came back to the barn. They were worried something had happened to you until I told them I’d found you and brought you home.”

Layne tilted her head to one side. “What were you doing out there? How did you find me?”

“I was driving the fenceline—about a quarter mile from the pond. I saw your horse … and noticed his legs were wet. The pond was the only place that was close by.” He
threaded his long, callused fingers together, absently studying them. “I kept hoping you’d simply been thrown.”

“Then it was just sheer luck …” Her throat tightened on the rest of the words. “If you hadn’t been there, I—”

“Don’t think about it, Layne,” he ordered grimly when a small shudder trembled through her shoulders. “I did find you.”

“Yes.” She felt shaky inside and set the cup of tea on the hearthstone. She made a determined effort to find a lighter subject. “Why did you put your hat on my head? It was about three sizes too big for me.”

His glance flicked over her curled position on the floor. “A lot of a person’s body heat escapes through their head. That’s why in the old days, people used to wear caps to bed.”

Layne turned her head to study the bright, crackling flames. Slowly she let her gaze be drawn back to him. “Isn’t it crazy? Even with this fire … and the robe, I feel chilly.”

There was a slight hesitation before Creed moved off the stool and went down on one knee to join her on the floor. When he started to gather her into his arms, it seemed the most natural thing to lay back and turn into his length so they would be lying face-to-face on their sides.

Layne pressed close to him, his arms wound firmly around her to mold them together. With the fire warming her backside, she snuggled into his bare chest to have closer contact with the body heat radiating from his hard flesh. She laid her cheek in the center of the sensually rough mat of chest hairs and inhaled his warm, male smell.

“Is that better?” The vibrations of his low voice rumbled beneath her.

Her hand stroked the hard skin stretched tautly over his ribs while Layne enjoyed the sensation of touching him.
“You must have a furnace inside you,” she murmured. “Your body feels so warm.”

“Does it?” His fingers spread across the hollow of her back, lightly caressing, while his other hand absently rubbed her shoulder.

“I’m glad you’re such a large man,” Layne mused softly, enveloped by the sensation of those wide shoulders curving around her. “There’s so much more of you to keep me warm. It almost feels as if I’m crawling inside you.”

There was a faint tremor in the rough fingertips that curled along the underside of her chin, silently urging her to lift her head. She raised it slowly and felt the running search of his gaze over her face. Layne sensed the tautness in his body, the stringent containment of his feelings. Then, like the slow uncoiling of a tightly wound spring, it was released as he moved toward her lips.

His mouth rolled over their soft curves, testing and tasting, while his hand cradled the back of her head in its palm. It was an instinctive movement that eased Layne around until both shoulders touched the carpeted floor. Her hands slid around his naked middle and flattened themselves along his ridged spine. Creed nibbled at her lips, taking sensuous bites of them. His fingers tangled themselves in the silken strands of her hair while he dragged his mouth over her cheek and eye, grazing along her jaw. She felt the raw shudder that claimed him when he pressed his lean cheek against hers.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” he muttered thickly, close to her ear. “I was shaking so badly when I crawled onto that ice … I thought you were going to slip away from me before I could reach you.”

She had a brief flash of insight for the hell he’d gone through. The pressure of his hands increased as she held him tightly to her and pressed her lips to his angular jaw.
There was the faintest scrape of his whiskers against her sensitive mouth when he turned to give her a more satisfactory location on which to bestow her kisses.

This time it was all raw desire, undisguised and unrestrained, as he plundered her parted lips to lick the sensitive insides of her mouth and tease her tongue, stirring her excitement. Her gliding hands reveled in the sensation of the bunched and flexing muscles beneath the hard, smooth skin of his back.

There was a spiraling pleasure stabbing sweetly through her body. When she felt his hand pushing apart the crossed front of her robe, a need to experience his intimate touch flowered deep inside her. His large, work-roughened hand slid onto her bare skin and cupped its palm over the peak of her breast.

The blood pounded through her veins and a delicious languor claimed her limbs. Shivers danced over her skin as Creed burned kisses down the sensitive cord in her neck and the hollow of her throat. She breathed in sharply at the exquisite sensation of his lips trailing up the slope of her breast and curling onto her hardening nipple.

The slipknot of her robe sash was easily dispensed with so that nothing held the robe closed. Her fingers were in the unruly thickness of his hair, its springy texture stimulating to the touch. Unconsciously she murmured his name over and over again in a fevered need. But his hands were already answering it, gliding down her stomach to her hot thighs and twisting hips.

Hungry for the taste of him, she urged him back to her lips. His devouring kiss only made the throbbing in her loins more intense, and the fine mat of hairs on his chest sensually tickled her breasts, which had been so sensitized by the manipulations of his hard tongue. She writhed against him, inviting a greater intimacy, oblivious
to the scrape of the rough denim jeans against her bare legs.

When he pulled away from her to unfasten them, Layne rid herself of the encumbering sleeves of her robe. When Creed sat up to simultaneously push off the jeans and long underwear, the yellow cat appeared and strutted over to him, attempting to rub its head against his arm. Creed impatiently brushed it aside.

The cat glared at Layne and marched away in a huff, its long tail slashing the air. Her glance followed its offended departure, then swung to Creed as he lowered himself alongside her once more. His lean male flanks glistened in the firelight.

“I think Fred’s jealous,” she murmured and curved her hands around the strong column of his neck to bring him the rest of the way down.

“He’ll have to get used to it,” Creed said against her lips.

Just the touch of his mouth and the feel of his hard male body was enough to arouse her already eager flesh. She arched against him.

“I want you, Creed,” Layne said, admitting all that her actions had been telling him.

“Not yet,” he said thickly. “I’ve waited for this too long, and now I’m going to take my own sweet time about making love to you.”

With his hands and his lips, he kissed and caressed nearly every inch of her until Layne was trembling with the rawness of her needs. It was abundantly clear to her that a person didn’t need to be a skilled lover to know all about loving.

When she thought she could endure the agony of wanting to love him no longer, a lithe, powerful leg nudged her legs apart. She wanted to gather him in, hold all of him to
her, but Creed levered the upper half of his body away from her.

“No,” she whispered and pulled at him.

His resistance was only a temporary thing as he responded to her urgings and eased his weight onto her. “I’ll be too heavy for you,” he warned.

“No. You’ll never be that,” Layne murmured and rubbed her lips over his mouth.

Then he was taking her and driving into her, their lips and bodies fusing in a glorious union of souls and flesh that lifted them both. They strained together, trying to deny the physical laws that kept them two separate beings. Yet, in a swirling moment of sheer ecstasy, their essences mingled and it didn’t matter.

The firelight was flickering soft and low, burning steadily but without the leaping flames with which it had so hotly begun. Her head was resting in the crook of his shoulder, their bodies still partially entwined as if reluctant to let go of that moment. Layne sighed blissfully and sensed the inquiring look Creed sent her.

“I feel all warm and soft as butter inside,” she declared softly.

His hand roamed across the flatness of her stomach to the underswell of a breast. “You feel more like a woman to me,” he murmured huskily.

“Oh, really?” Layne tipped her head back so she could see his face. “And what does a woman feel like?”

“All round and soft, with skin like milk.” The faint smile left the edges of his mouth as his gaze darkened to search her face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” she assured him with a small shake of her head. But his question made her remember that it was only the people a person loved who could hurt them. “Love” was a word she used cautiously, and she was hesitant to attribute
it to this warm, wonderful feeling she had. She settled back on the comfortable pillow of his shoulder and shut her eyes to savor this moment of quiet closeness.

“Tired?” Creed asked and lightly stroked her hair.

“Mmm.” It was an affirmative sound.

Layne felt the pressure of his mouth on her hair, then there was just the warmth of his body and the feel of his strong arms. She drifted off, not really intending to sleep, instead finding that plateau somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness. She snuggled closer to him, burrowing into his chest like a cat. She knew when he pulled the robe over her to keep her warm, and smiled at the caring gesture.

A sensation of coolness stirred Layne. She pulled at the blanket on her shoulder to hug it around her neck. When she did, there was a draft on her feet. Suddenly the hardness of the bed made an impression on her, jolting Layne into remembering where she was.

But Creed was gone. She sat up and the robe slipped down. Impatiently she picked it up and pushed her arms through the sleeves as she got to her feet. When she paused to snug the robe tightly around the middle and belt it, she noticed the pumpkin-colored cat sitting in all its majesty by the kitchen door, a very smug look on his face.

“Thanks, Fred,” she murmured. “I wondered if he was still here.”

With a swish of its tail, the cat planted itself in the doorway as she approached, daring her to cross. But Layne wasn’t intimidated by its territorial behavior and simply stepped around it.

Creed was standing near the counter when she entered the kitchen. His back was to the doorway. He sent a half
glance over his shoulder that didn’t quite reach her. On the back porch the clothes dryer was tumbling.

“Fred told me you were out here,” Layne said as she walked up to him and slid her hands around him to the front of his flatly muscled stomach. She pressed her cheek against his back. “I missed you when I woke up.”

“Did you?” It seemed a noncommittal response. “I made some coffee. Would you like a cup?”

Slowly she withdrew her hands and pulled away from him, trying to decide whether his reception was a cool one or her expectations for a more ardent greeting had been too high.

“Sure.” She swung around to the front of him where she could see his face.

His dark glance moved over her briefly, inspecting her features with an almost casual interest. “You look rested.” A second cup was filled with coffee for her.

“Was I asleep long?” Layne had no idea when Creed had brought her to the house, let alone when she had fallen asleep, so there was no reason to look at the clock.

“A half hour. Forty-five minutes at the most.” He turned away from her and walked onto the back porch.

“What have you got in the dryer?” She followed him.

“My undershirt,” he said. “Unfortunately I left your jacket and my shirt out by the pond.”

Taking a sip of her coffee, she studied him over the brim of the cup. He was so lean and brawny, roughly male and rugged. His features were too strong and too harsh to ever be pleasing to the eye, yet they were intriguing; he looked like a wild animal that possessed an indomitable spirit and fierce pride.

Her glance strayed down his muscled arms to his large hands as they tested the dryness of his shirt, then tossed it back inside the machine. Her skin still retained the tingling
impression of the intimate caresses of those hands, caresses that had sometimes been rough simply because they didn’t know their own strength.

Yet there had been a purity to his lovemaking that had taken it beyond a mere physical act. Layne felt the curling heat in the pit of her stomach and the swift rise of some powerful emotion that choked her throat with its sweet intensity. A misting of tears welled in her eyes as the desire surged to be held by those big, strong arms.

A tiny quiver of surprise licked through her. She was actually in love with this big brute. If she had been reluctant to admit it before, it had only been that she hadn’t wanted to mistake the heat of passion for something more. She leaned her shoulders against the door frame, a little bemused by her discovery.