OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) (32 page)

See how bold I was? I had to have done that before.

He helped shrug it off and, still staring down at me as if in shock, he swung it onto the bed. I dipped my head against his sternum, to momentarily escape the hold of his eyes, and quickly unbuttoned his vest for him, nudging his leg with my stockinged knee at the same time, needing his steadiness, wanting to touch. While he breathed in the scent of my hair, I splayed my hands against his shirtfront and absorbed the hardness of his chest through the warm fabric...he was such a solid, sure man. A rock. Not something to tame, or to gentle.

What was I doing?

When I lifted my face, searching, he covered my mouth with his and suddenly, rocked by the demand of his kiss, fear receded into delicious perspective. Sometimes the dangerous things are the best. Riding the rapids, parasailing, roller-coasters—
roller coasters
? Who cared, I was kissing Jacob Garrison and oh my God, he was thorough about it. His hot mouth, his hard lips branded mine, his beard scratched just a little bit.

Perhaps this was the best danger of all. He wanted me. For at least this moment, maybe for the first time since we
'd met, he definitely wanted
me
.

One calloused hand slid under the back of my camisole, up my smooth spine. The other tentatively brushed the outer curve of my breast—oh yes! I grasped his hand and cupped it more firmly against my skin by way of encouragement, and moaned happily into his domineering mouth. Dizzy—wonderfully dizzy—from his attentions, I scooped the flat of my palms along the slight hollows beneath his shoulder blades, caught his suspenders, pushed them and the vest off his shoulders.

He stepped forward, into me, so that I felt every inch of his hardness, and I mean hardness. He wanted me, all right. This time when he kissed me his tongue ordered my mouth open, and I obeyed, and he tasted me and drank me in.

Wait a minute
...

Ignore that. I drank him, too.

He released my mouth to push away my camisole. I moved my lips to his tanned neck, beneath his whiskers, while the material dropped away to the dirt somewhere and left me nude from the waist up. He tasted salty, smoky, so good, so real. After having no frame of reference for so long, I needed reality, and he was it. His hands claimed my breasts, my waist, my back, greedy, kneading. While I explored his whiskered jaw with little chewing kisses, my own hands followed the taper of his chest to his waist, fumbled at his gunbelt....

Nope—not allowed to play with that! He released me to undo his own belt, thunked it hurriedly onto the table, and unbuttoned his pants while he turned back to me.

Wait a minute....

Wordlessly I reached for his shirt, began to unbutton it, but he pulled me against him, one hand digging into my hair, one hand capturing the curve of my behind, and he took my mouth again. I couldn
't quite move my hands between us to make more progress. Not that I had a lot of strength by this point, anyway—my whole being was dissolving into his touch. My knees were starting to collapse. It occurred to me that I was no longer in control of this situation, if I ever had been. We were charging ahead at Jacob Garrison's speed, and I might as well try to stop a stampede as fight the power of his passion.

Not that I wanted him to stop. I thought I
'd maybe die, if he stopped.

I
'd fallen weakly against him, but it still surprised me a little to be backed against the bed, with him jerking at my drawers. He growled a low rumble of frustration—I'd double-tied the bow—and I laughed throatily and pushed his clumsy hands away to untie them myself, to let them slip down my black-stockinged legs to the floor. If
that
made him impatient, wait until he found out about button hooks!

But he obviously didn
't care about my shoes or stockings, nor the fact that he was almost fully dressed. He was scooping up my legs, cradling me for the briefest moment before laying me onto the bed, on top of his coat, then levering himself onto knees over me.
Wait a minute
, I thought—but when he caught my mouth again, chewing my lower lip, running a greedy palm up and down the smoothness of my thigh, I forgot the protest against the anxious surge of hunger that had been building in me, building for I don't know how long, building toward breaking.
Oh
, I wanted it to break. But not yet. Not yet.

He stopped kissing me long enough to watch himself trace a callused finger across the tops of my breasts, tracing my tan line....

My
tan line
! How had I not placed the significance before? I must have been in the sun a lot, wearing waaay too little, to have this clear a line of demarcation. Obviously he thought it was sexy as hell; that made me feel beautiful, powerful. Realizing that he must have seen it when he found me, that maybe every time he'd looked at me, all week, he'd been picturing my naked breasts and their tan line and what it signified, was even sexier.

I skimmed my hands over his bearded jaw and combed my fingers into his hair, then used his hair to drag his head and thus his mouth back to me with an anxious whimper, and he obliged me with another powerful, possessive kiss.
Oh
yes. I wanted to murmur throaty encouragement to him, to use language that would anger and excite him. I wanted
him
, and whatever that meant... no, of course I knew what that meant... didn't I?

He nudged his
still-covered knee between both of mine; a jolt shuddered deliciously through me at the breadth and hardness of his thigh, and I squirmed happily, my legs wrapping his as I made room for him. "Yes," I gasped into his open mouth.

When he fumbled at his gaping pants to push them farther down, then at the fly of his own underwear, the back of his hand between my legs stirred even more excitement in me. So did his rasping breath.

I rocked beneath him, anxious. "Please...."

Then, something hot and hard nudged against me, something I
'd known about but somehow hadn't fully expected.
Wait a minute—

A thrust—
"
Wait!"
—a tearing pain.

I cried out. "Shit!" is what I yelped, tears burning into my eyes. It hurt!
Wait a minute!
I'd changed my mind, I didn't want....

Garrison, for his part, froze like a buck at the wrong end of a rifle—and not, for once, because of my language. His expression, so close to my face, looked like someone had slugged him. And in that split second, even as the unexpected stab of pain receded to more of an overfull discomfort, I felt much the same way.

It was suddenly apparent to both of us.

I
'd never been a whore.

Chapter 15 - Me Again

Oh my God I've never done this before what am I doing—and
with him!
—I've changed my mind I want to go home—

If we
'd
both
panicked, things would have gotten real messy real fast. But Garrison—he still wasn't Jacob to me—lay very still, swallowed back his momentary shock, then brushed my cheek with his fingers. I realized he was smudging away a tear.

"Shhh," he murmured, low and quiet, like we had a secret, like I
'd heard him talk to his horses. "Hush now. I'm sorry. Shhh."

Maybe I should have felt insulted, to be talked to like a horse. But I was too hurt, too hungry for the comfort, too desperate for the distraction from his physical intrusion—big and firm and
inside me
—to feel anything but gratitude that someone else was taking charge.

No reason to panic, his tone assured me; so did his touch, far softer than it had been moments ago, as he stroked my hair back from my face. So did his steady, confident gaze.
Stay calm
, his gray eyes assured me.
It will be all right.

If his fingers shook, it could be for any number of reasons.

True or not, I clung to the silent promise, almost as tightly as I clung to him, discomfort or not. When I felt his muscles bunch as if to carefully slide out of me, off of me, I held on tighter.

"Don
't go!" I gasped, unwilling—or unable—to face anymore without someone. Without
him
. The pain was almost gone, but him... "Please. Please—"

"Shhh... .
" He kissed my forehead, kissed my cheek, so tender. "Hush now." Maybe he knew what he was doing; maybe he didn't. But the soothing rumble of his voice, the firm, slow stroke of his hand down my neck and my shoulder
said
he did. And that was the encouragement I needed to relax my panic-tightened muscles, catch my breath, and fully remember
what the hell
we were in the middle of doing.

I
'm very afraid that I blushed.

If he noticed, he didn
't laugh—not that Jacob Garrison was much of a laugher, but he didn't give me any of his
looks
, either. He kissed my ear and my jaw, soft little kisses, all the while murmuring those soothing non-words, and he stroked that steady, slow hand farther over my shoulder, down my arm. His thumb glanced across my breast. "Hush."

I gasped, surprised by a tickling resurgence of desire, and I thought—maybe this wasn
't so completely uncomfortable after all. I took another deep breath, inhaled him, and relaxed just a little more. I liked his coat, the one I'd worn that long first day, being under me, warm and familiar.

He shifted his weight slightly, so that he moved inside me, and the tickle of desire flared into a slow, expectant throb. Interesting! Hardly uncomfortable at all. I arched up to kiss him, and not a soft, gentle kiss like the ones he
'd just been giving me. No, this was a hungrier kiss, like the ones that had come before, anxious and inviting and needy.
Love me.

He hesitated, stared intently down at me—and, still pinned, I squirmed awkwardly under him, both embarrassed and kind of turned on by the contrast of my nakedness against his full-length, high-collar shirt. By the scratch of denim against my bare, clean-shaven legs. Damn it, it was too late
not
to do this! Something had started between us, something wild and overwhelming and... significant. I didn't want it to end in a yelp of pain and timid retreat! For a few blissful minutes, instead of being a burden, I'd been just what he wanted, what he needed....

I anchored an arm behind his neck, arched upward again and nibbled on his earlobe. "Don
't go," I begged him breathily, between nibbles. When he exhaled against my collarbone—a hot, shaky breath—and shifted himself again, I was glad I had. I kissed his ear and sank back onto the cot, searching his feverish eyes, and I saw the revived hunger in his shuttered gaze, and I knew he wasn't leaving. Not yet.

He traced a callused hand down my bare torso, as if learning me by touch, and I stretched against him.

Holding my gaze, he shifted his hips and slid deeper into me again, and this time when I caught my breath it was at a swirl of new pleasure. I squirmed encouragement under him, and he pillowed my head on his bent arm as he drew out, then slid into me more firmly—still big, but not a hurt now so much as a wonder. His lips parted in a silent gasp of his own. I let my neck fall back over the pillow of his arm, showing my throat, and lost myself in the full-body sensation of this. His thrusts began to capture a slow rhythm, and the cot ropes creaked, and he took my lips with his, not so gentle this time. I met the kiss, open-mouthed, and now we made love.

Him, the Boss, Jacob Garrison—he drowned out everything else.
He's taming me
, I thought at one point, on a momentary breath of lucidity. As he might with an unbroken filly, he took his cues from my reactions, moving more surely when I smiled or moaned happily, slowing down when I tensed or whimpered. He rode me, controlled me with his mouth and body and touch while I opened myself to that control and let him carry me along. He both sheltered and shook me, sent licks of joy trembling through me, and I dug my fingers through the cloth of his shirt and into his back and held on for dear life.
Him.
It didn't matter where we were...as long as it was him.

When he groaned his own harsh pleasure into my neck, stiffening and then shuddering against me, I felt a hot rush from having brought it to him. I held tight to him as he sank fully onto me, blanketed me with his weight. Only then, and slowly, did the spinning world begin to slow, then finally stop. I lay beneath him, in his arms, safe and happy and feeling incredibly physical, while he panted his exhaustion near my ear. No wonder sex was so popular. The ride was over and, bumpy start or not, I wouldn
't mind riding again!

But from the way Garrison suddenly pulled out of me and rolled off of me, as soon as he caught his breath, I don
't think he felt quite the same way.

Turning away from me, he yanked his pants back up, hitched his suspenders over his shirted shoulders, fumbled at his fly. Was he trembling? While I lay on my side, to better watch from a daze, he snatched his vest from the floor, then didn
't quite glance at his coat because I was on it. He stood for a moment, his back ramrod stiff, still not facing me. Then he drawled a shaky, "Git dressed." And he left. Just like that.