Rawhide and Lace (16 page)

"I've only had a handful of women, Erin," he said after a moment. "It was always just sex, nothing more. Just a need I satisfied. But it wasn't necessary to give back the pleasure. So I never learned how. I thought it might come naturally, but I guess it doesn't." He took a long draw from the cigarette. "I guess it doesn't."

She ached for him. With his intense pride, a confession like that must have taken a lot of courage. She got to her feet slowly, favoring her sore hip, and went to him.

"I don't know how to say this," she began, keeping her eyes on his chest. "But I don't think experience is all that important, if two people have a...a mutual need to please each other. I'm glad you haven't cared about those other women, because that makes it special with you. Almost as if I were the first woman for you."

"You are the first woman-in every way that counts," he said.

She lifted her eyes. "Then...then...maybe..."

"Can you tell me?" He searched her eyes. "Or at least show me? I'll do anything you want, anything I can to make you feel pleasure." He touched her hair hesitantly. "I don't get much out of it when I know you aren't enjoying it."

Her lips turned up a little at the comers. "I can't look at you and show you," she confessed shyly.

"You won't have to."

He put out the cigarette and lifted her easily in his arms. "Maybe I can hold back this time, since I'm not so hungry," he said, looking at her with kindling desire. "What do you want me to do?"

She arched her back a little, feeling the magic, feeling her femininity blossoming under his ardent gaze. "You know," she whispered.

"Yes, I think I do." And he bent suddenly and opened his mouth over the peak of her soft breast.

She moaned, stiffening, her voice breaking as she caught the back of his head and held him there.

He tasted her, savored her, as he lowered her to the bed. Her hands guided him, showed him where to touch her, how to please her with his mouth and hands. When he reached the softness of her inner thighs, she shuddered and cried out.

He grew drunk on the sound of those soft little cries, but carefully controlled the pulsating fever of his own body as he tasted and kissed and nibbled at her soft, sweetly scented skin. When he kissed her mouth again at last, she was crying.

He eased over her, slowly this time, and felt her arching under him, felt her hands at the back of his thighs, guiding, showing him where she was the most vulnerable, teaching him the rhythm she needed.

"Sweet," he whispered, opening his eyes to look at her.

She was moaning now, her skin glistening, her hair damp. Her eyes were half closed, glazed, her lips swollen and parted. She gasped and tossed her head restlessly back and forth on the bed. Her eyes opened, wild and frightened, then closed again.

"Shhhh, baby. Shhh." He soothed her with his voice, smoothed back her hair with his hands, comforting her even as he kept up the easy rhythm. "It's all right. Let go for me. Let go. That's it. Don't pull away, don't move back. Lie still and let me have you. Let me have you now."

Suddenly she cried out and opened her eyes wide. Her face contorted, her hands stretched out to the brass bars of the headboard and gripped them until the knuckles whitened. She writhed under him, moaning frenziedly and thrashing this way and that. She began to beg him, whisper to him. Her hips moved with his, moved, moved, until his mind began to feel the pleasure building in his own body.

All at once, her hips ground up against his and held there; she shuddered uncontrollably and began to cry as her body went into spasm after spasm after sweet, hellish spasm.

"Open your eyes!" he groaned, clenching his teeth as it began to explode in him, too.

She did, looking up at him. He saw her eyes for an instant, and then her face blurred as he was hurled through time in an explosion of unbearable brilliance-light and color and rainbows and waterfalls...Then, at last, all was still.

He felt her under him what seemed like hours later, felt her sweaty warmth, her pulsing heartbeat, the tender trembling of her arms and legs, and the faint sound of weeping.

"Oh, God, I didn't hurt you, did I?" He touched her face with his hand, gentling her. "Erin, did I hurt you?"

"No." She kissed his neck, his throat; she clung to him, still trembling softly. "Oh, sweet heaven, I never dared dream...I...Oh, Ty, that was so scary!"

"What was?"

"I...I went wild, didn't I?" she murmured. "I didn't even know what I was saying or doing, I just started shaking and I couldn't stop, and then...then, it burst inside me like an explosion, and I felt as if I were going to die of the pleasure, that I couldn't bear it..."

"The little death." He smiled. "The French call it that. I felt it too, for the first time in my life."

"People could die of it, all right." She clasped her arms tightly around him. "Let me feel all your weight," she whispered. "Lie on me."

He trembled a little at the husky note in her voice. "Like this?" he asked, giving her his weight. "I might crush you."

"I'd like that." Her hands slid down his muscular body, finding his hips and pressing them down over hers. She began to move, to surge sinuously under him. "Ty, I'm sorry, I can't seem to help it," she whispered.

"It's all right, honey," he whispered back, sliding his hands under her hips. "I'm just as hot as you are. Here." He moved her legs, positioning her, and then he lifted his smoldering eyes to hers and watched as he took her. "Don't close your eyes," he said softly. "This time, I want to see it."

She trembled gently, holding him as he moved. "Again, so soon?"

"I might make the record books," he said wryly, then grimaced at the surge of pleasure. "God!"

She lifted against him. "Can I watch you, too?" she whispered shakily.

"Yes!" His breath was coming wildly now as her body danced with his, matching each sharp move, teaching him, learning from him, in a rhythm that was quick and hard and devastating.

"Ty...Ty!" she moaned.

"Feel it!" he cried. "Feel it. Let me watch you...!"

Her eyes widened, dilated. She shuddered, and then it was all sharp pleasure and vast explosive sweetness, and his eyes were there, seeing her, dilating, bursting with it. She made a sound, then heard him cry out even as she saw his face contort and redden, his teeth clench, his body tense. She felt him in every cell of her body and clung to him while the world swayed drunkenly around them....

The ceiling came into sharp focus. She stared at it, trembling, her skin saturated with warmth and dampness and pleasure. She felt him shuddering over her, and her hands smoothed down the long, muscular line of his back.

"We'll kill each other doing this one day," he whispered.

"I don't care." She nuzzled her cheek against his. "You're wet all over."

"So are you." He lifted himself away from her and fell onto his back. "My God. I can't believe I felt that."

"Neither can I." She sat up slowly and looked at him, really looked at him, with eyes that revealed both awe and delight.

He opened his eyes lazily and smiled when he saw her expression. "No comment?"

She smiled back and shook her head. "How about, 'Wow'?"

He laughed. "I could second that." He stretched and groaned. "I think we broke my back." Suddenly he sat up. "For God's sake, your hip!"

"It's all right," she told him gently. "Just a little sore. The doctor did say I should exercise it." She blushed.

"I wonder if that was the kind of exercise he had in mind." He grinned. "Should we discuss it with him?"

She hit him. That, of course, led to a bout of enthusiastic wrestling, which she lost. She laughed up at him, delighting in their newfound intimacy.

"I'll remember next time," he said, tracing her eyebrows softly. "You won't have to show me again."

She colored more vividly. "You're incredible," she said breathlessly, and dropped her eyes to his chest.

"So are you." He bent and brushed her mouth with his. "And now," he said, "how would you like to go shopping?"

She smiled. "I guess I can lean on the cane, can't I?" She laughed. "I think I'm too weak to walk."

"Then I'll carry you." He lifted her out of bed and set her on her feet. He searched her eyes. "No more regrets?"

"No more." She pillowed her cheek on his warm, damp chest. "Was this just an impulse, or did you plan it?"

"An impulse," he said. "I couldn't take any more nights like the past several. Cold showers are rough on the system in winter." He tilted her chin up. "And you were pretty jittery. I had a feeling we shared the same problem. Too many hang-ups, too little privacy. So I thought I'd try it."

She reached up and bit his lower lip. "Can I sleep with you from now on?"

He chuckled. "I think you'd better. The hall's pretty cold at night. And sneaking down it would wear me out."

"We wouldn't want that," she murmured dryly.

"No. We sure wouldn't." He tugged her hair. "Let's get some clothes on. I still have book work to do when we finish in town."

"Spoilsport."

He pulled on his jeans, glancing over his shoulder at her. "The sooner I get done with the books, the sooner we can go to bed."

She made a grab for her slip. "Well, what are you piddling around there for?" she asked. "Hurry up!"

He laughed softly. For the first time, he had some hope for the future.

Erin, watching him, was entertaining some hope of her own. She felt deliciously weary and fulfilled, and she wondered at his patience and stamina. He had to be the handsomest man alive, she thought dreamily as she watched him dress. He was more man than she'd ever known, and it was all of heaven to be his wife. She smiled to herself. What a beautiful start for a marriage, she thought. It could only get better.

Chapter Nine

Erin walked through the stores with Ty in a kind of dazed pleasure. He held her arm possessively, as if he might be afraid of losing her, and she pressed close beside him, drowning in the newness of belonging.

He needed a new watchband, so they stopped in a jewelry store. And after Ty had picked out a band and mumbled something to the jeweler, who was going to put it on for him, the friendly clerk talked him into trying on a huge diamond ring. He put it on and eyed it without much enthusiasm. And Erin got an idea.

She hadn't thought what to get him for Christmas, and she wasn't really sure that he'd like a wedding ring or would even wear one. But she had several hundred dollars saved up. And now she knew that the ring he'd tried on would fit him. He didn't like that one, but she saw him gazing steadily at a gold band inset with a string of diamonds. When the jeweler called him to look at the watchband, Erin motioned to the store clerk, told him what she wanted, and watched him slyly remove the ring from the case and size it. Glancing warily at Ty, he held his forefinger and thumb in a circle shape, and Erin grinned. While Ty was busy she quickly wrote a check and told the clerk to put the ring in a jar of jewelry cleaner.

"What are you doing? I'm ready to go," Ty asked impatiently as the clerk came back with a small sack.

"I needed some jewelry cleaner," she said with a straight face. "I'm ready now. Thank you," she told the clerk.

"My pleasure, ma'am," he replied politely.

"What do you need to clean?" Ty asked. "All you wear is that wedding ring."

"When I can keep up with it." She sighed. "I lost it for a while this morning. I know I left it on the sink, but when I went to get it, it had disappeared. And a few minutes later, it was back." She glanced at his rigid features. "Maybe I'm losing my mind."