Nan Ryan (39 page)

It was fleeting joy that had no equal. Diane observed and savored the changing expressions on Star’s handsome face. The love shining out of his beautiful dark eyes. The laying open of his heart and soul to her. Star experienced the same intense thrill watching her.

It was electrifying.

Their pleasure swiftly escalated, and too soon the initial tingles and spasms of their shared climax began. Both in excellent health with perfectly toned bodies which moved together like well-oiled machines, the excited pair made very energetic, highly physical love. While the chandelier above their heads cast honeyed light over their moving, surging bodies and a strong night breeze ruffled the heavy curtains at the room’s open windows yet did nothing to cool their ardor, Diane and Star wildly, shamelessly mated atop that cloth-draped dining table.

“Star … Star …” Diane gasped as the muscles across her flat stomach constricted in an erotic spasm.

“Yes, sweetheart, yes,” Star said, his hands filled with the rounded cheeks of her bare bottom, drawing her to him, his driving strokes becoming faster, deeper.

Diane gasped again, arching against him. She could feel the thrusting vibrations coming up through her. Her hands curled around the nape of his neck, her purple eyes widened, and she cried out as together they climaxed, the rapture so intense it was frightening.

When finally the fierce explosion had passed, Diane’s face was flushed, her hair damp at the temples. Her head sagged to Star’s shoulder, and she pressed her palms against his sweaty chest. They stayed like that for a time, locked together, panting, resting, regaining their lost breaths.

His hands gently stroking Diane’s slender back, Star sighed heavily and began to smile against her tousled dark hair. Her face pressed into the curve of his neck and shoulder, Diane, moaning softly and kissing his slick flesh, began to smile as well. Star locked his wrists behind Diane’s waist. His body began to shake with laughter. Her smile broadening, Diane raised her head, looked at his handsome, laughing face, and she, too, began to laugh.

The gloriously sated pair laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Suddenly it seemed hilarious that the two of them were naked on their knees atop a white-clothed table in a formal dining room. So they laughed. They laughed at themselves. They laughed at each other. They laughed with pure, unadulterated joy.

Faces hot, tears rolling down their cheeks, they fell tiredly over onto the table. And continued to laugh. They laughed until their stomachs hurt. They laughed because they were together, because they were happy, because they were in love. They laughed because they
could
laugh. Because there was no one to hear them, no one to see them, no one to think they’d gone quite mad. They laughed because here in this delightfully remote mountain mansion they were free to laugh and to make love on the dining table. Or on the living-room floor. Or outside on the balcony if they wished.

So they lay sprawled there on the table, their naked bodies entangled, laughing and kissing and shaking their heads, enjoying to the fullest the frolic and fun and the freedom that was theirs.

At last Star coughed, cleared his throat, and said, “Think we can make it up to my bedroom now?”

“We can give it a try,” said Diane, not at all certain she could.

Star rolled up into a sitting position and reached for Diane. She sat up beside him and pushed her heavy hair out of her eyes. Then promptly went into fits of new laughter when she saw that Star had on one moccasin and that a twisted leg of his beige trousers was still around his muscular calf.

Laughing with her, Star kicked off the moccasin, watching it sail across the room. Then he swung his legs over the table’s edge, straightened his tangled trousers, drew them up both legs, and slid off the table into them. Buttoning the pants up over his flat brown belly, he turned back to face Diane. Up on her knees, she was drawing on the black silk robe. She looked about for the sash, saw it draped over a silver candelabrum atop the buffet.

“Star, will you hand me that—”

“Nope,” he said, scooped her off the table, and carried her out of the dining room. He walked through the living room, into the foyer, climbed the marble stairs, went down the long corridor, and stepped inside the one room of the house which Diane had not yet seen.

His bedroom.

“Star,” Diane exclaimed when he kicked the door closed behind them, “this is your room?”

Nodding, he said, “Mine. And yours. Ours.”

“Darling, it’s—it’s fabulous.” She squirmed, wanting him to lower her to her feet so she could have a look around.

Diane had never seen anything to compare with Star’s spacious bedroom. The entire back wall was of gleaming plate glass. Over his shoulder she looked out through the wall of glass at the towering pines and twisted rock formations, silvered by the moonlight. She saw the leaves of the trees trembling in the chill night winds, the clouds drifting across the sky.

“Star, put me down.… I want to—”

“Tomorrow, sweetheart,” said Star, moving with determined strides across the room.

He reached the oversize bed and continued to hold Diane with one arm. With the other he made short work of peeling the sumptuous fox fur counterpane to the foot of the bed and turning down the beige silk sheets. Still holding her, Star relieved Diane of the black robe, dropped it to the plush beige carpet, then leaned over and gently laid her in the middle of his bed.

When he straightened to unbutton his pants, Diane sat up and looked about, her violet eyes round. She touched the bed’s tall headboard, which was plushly padded and upholstered in raw silk of a deep rust hue. The same raw silk covered the walls of the bedroom.

“Star,” she said, “I’ve never seen such a big bed. A half dozen people could sleep in it.” She stretched her legs out and rubbed her toes against the soft fur counterpane.

“Not as long as I own the place,” Star said in that low, flat voice as he crawled in beside her.

Diane flashed him a bright smile. But when he put a long arm around her to draw her to him, she braced a hand against his chest, and said, “Can’t I look around, Star? You know I’ve never been in this room.” They lay on their sides, facing each other.

“Later,” he told her, smoothing her hair back off her bare shoulder. “Right now I want to make love to you.”

“Darling, you just made love to me.” Her violet eyes flashed in the shadowy light.

Star smiled, drew her long, slender leg up over his hip, and said, “No, sweetheart, I don’t mean like that. I want to love you properly. To love you the way you should be loved.” His hand glided slowly up her thigh and over her hip to the small of her back. “Kiss me. Kiss me, Diane.”

His lips touched hers, and Diane opened her mouth to receive his kiss. Star’s mouth answered with a slow burning, lingering caress. With his lips on hers, he stroked her back, up and down, with the sensitive tips of his long fingers. Diane sighed deeply, and Star continued kissing her sweetly, tenderly, letting her know they had all the time in the world.

He lovingly stroked her shoulders, her back, her buttocks, until finally his hand slipped between the rounded cheeks of her bottom. Diane squirmed, sighed, and slid her knee higher on Star’s body, up to his trim waist. Star moved his hand farther forward, and with slow, infinite tenderness he began intimately caressing her. Diane’s mouth left his. She settled back on the pillow and looked into his dark, flashing eyes.

“I love you, Star,” she said breathlessly. “You make me so happy.”

“I want to make you happy, sweetheart,” he said softly, “in bed and out. If you stay with me for a lifetime or leave me tomorrow—”

“I’ll never leave you,” she breathed, and her eyes slid closed in ecstasy.

Star’s fingers were gliding easily now, wet with the hot silkiness flowing from her. He was rigidly erect but firmly resolved not to hurry her or himself, to take plenty of time, to make this a sweet and lasting act of bliss.

After a while Star flexed his hips and surged his pelvis forward, intentionally allowing Diane to feel the rigid hardness of his pulsing erection. He heard her catch her breath.

His caressing hand left her as Diane’s arms tightened around him. She turned onto her back and pulled him on top of her. He took her hand in his and drew it down between their naked bodies. His hand fell away. Diane’s hand shyly enclosed him. Then her bare body shuddered pleasantly as that hot, hard power involuntarily surged against her loving fingers. Awed, she drew a shallow breath and cautiously guided him into her.

Star made slow, caring love to Diane. Sweetly, gently he took her. He waited for her. Adept now. His studied self-control back in place. Well taught he was. And willing to teach this beautiful woman. Willing as well to learn from her.

Holding back, prolonging their pleasure, Star purposely waited until Diane was so aroused she frantically called his name and bucked her hips, wanting him as deep as he could go. Only then did he give it all to her.

“Sweet love,” he murmured, flexing his hips and buttocks, driving rhythmically into her, lifting her to him.

“Star, Star,” she screamed, clutching his biceps, her purple eyes wide with shock and wonder.

“Yes, baby. Yes, sweetheart. Oh, yes … Diane.”

“Staaaaarrrrrrrr,” she screamed as love’s most pleasurable physical gift was generously given to her by the man she loved.

Diane unselfishly returned the favor, making certain that Star received a like offering. Indeed, he did. Anxiously he accepted the treasured gift of love’s extraordinary carnal joy. And Diane experienced a wonderful mixture of feminine pride and tender protectiveness as she clung tightly to Star while he spasmed in total fulfillment, calling her name. And then Star made Diane the happiest woman in all the world.

“I love you, Diane,” he said at last, his low, flat voice breaking with emotion. “Sweetheart, I love you. I love you. Oh, God, Diane, honey, I love you!”

Chapter 36

“How would you like to take a hot bath with one tired, dirty Indian?”

It was a half hour later. Star lay sprawled out on his back, totally spent. Diane lay quietly enfolded in his long right arm, snuggled close.

When he spoke, she struggled up onto an elbow. She looked at Star’s face. His eyes were closed, the long dusky lashes making spiky crescents above the prominent cheekbones. His cruelly sensual lips were relaxed and slightly parted over perfect white teeth. His too-long blue-black hair tumbled errantly over his high forehead and spilled across the beige-cased pillow.

Diane let her gaze leisurely slide down Star’s lean frame. The steely length of his limbs was potent even in the relaxed attitude in which he was lying. She smiled dreamily. His superb male body held the same dangerous strength as before, but she was no longer the least bit afraid of all that formidable power.

From a man who looked like Star she had once expected savage cruelty. Instead he’d shown amazing gentleness, and that made him all the more appealing, all the more exciting.

Happy as she’d never been in her life, Diane leaned over and impulsively kissed Star’s drum-tight brown belly.

Star’s hand lazily lifted, came to rest on her bent head. In that flat, unexcitable voice, he said, “Is that a yes?”

Her lips still on his smooth, warm flesh, Diane replied, “If the tired, dirty Indian is you, then I’m all for it” She kissed his belly again.

Star cocked one dark eye open as his fingers tunneled into her wild mane of raven hair. “You keep that up, Paleface, and there’ll be no hot bath.”

Smiling, Diane raised her head, looked up at him. “Are you threatening me, Redman?” She laughed gaily. Then screeched loudly, “Starkeeper!” as he cast off his lethargy, yanked her up, pushed her down onto her back, and rolled atop her.

His bare, broad chest crushing down on her breasts, his face inches above her own, Star turned his most menacing expression on her. He had the look of a villain with his dark face and his cruelly sensual lips thinned and stern.

He said, “White girl mighty foolish. Laugh at big, bad warrior.”

Diane continued to laugh. And she laughed all the harder when he growled and buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, as if he were the big bad wolf, going to eat her up. She laughed and shrieked and beat on his back while he moved steadily down her body, snorting and biting and blowing on her stomach the way an adult teasingly devils a small child.

Highly ticklish, Diane tossed and squirmed and shouted for him to stop, laughing all the while, loving every minute of it. Ripples of laughter causing her bare body to jerk spasmodically, she grabbed double handfuls of his dark hair and yanked hard, warning him that he’d “better stop it this instant or I’ll—”

Star stopped before the sentence was completed. Pressing a wet kiss to her quivering belly, he slid agilely off the bed and stood up. He swiftly pivoted with the natural grace of a dancer, leaned over, encircled Diane’s narrow waist, and lifted her to her feet atop the bed. He stood at the bed’s edge, knees braced against the mattress, his arms wrapped tightly around Diane’s hips, his head thrown back looking up at her.