The Enchantment (35 page)

Images bombarded him, hurled him from one place to another with exhilarating velocity. Silver and turquoise doorways winked at him, reminded him of every dream he'd ever had. He stared in breathless wonder at

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the row of elaborately decorated silver arches carved into the mesas' rock walls.

Instinctively he reached for his notebook. Then stopped. Now was the time to see, to experience the place that had called to him for a quarter of a century; later was the time to capture it.

Slow down, Lare. Slow down.

Emma threw herself into his arms. "You did it! You did it!"

He twirled her around, barely noticing the pain in his ankle at the movement. Their laughter merged, floated upward, and vibrated through the stone-ringed canyon.

"We did it."

She looked up at him. Adoration brightened her eyes, bathed him in its unfamiliar light, and something in his chest tightened. He felt special. Extraordinary, even.

And there was something else in her eyes. Something that filled him with longing. Something he wanted so badly, it made his stomach twist into knots.

Love.

He licked his paper-dry lips and prayed his desperation didn't show. It was getting harder and harder to be in love alone.

He loosened his hold, and she slid down the length of his body. Her heels clicked softly onto the golden bricks.

She giggled playfully and grabbed his hand. "Let's

go."

Laughing, they raced down the twisting golden street

to the pool.

"Last one in's a cow chip," Emma called out, already squatting to remove her serge Congress gaitors.

"Emma, let's—"

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Her shoe sailed past his head and thumped in the dirt behind him.

He tried to remember that he was a scientist and that this was his life's work. "There's plenty of time for swimming. I want—"

Her other shoe hit the dirt at his knee. Still grinning, she crawled over and grabbed him by the shirt collar, yanking him toward her.

Bright blue eyes impaled him, and there was something in her eyes that made his gut clench. An honesty, an intensity that spoke of passion shared, passion promised.

Remember, her eyes said. Remember.

It worked. Images of last night tumbled through his brain, shot through his blood, and landed in his groin.

The buttons on his Levi's suddenly seemed too tight.

He swallowed. Every word he'd ever known vanished from his head; he had trouble remembering what his life's work was. All he could think about was her; her lips, her touch, her fire . . .

She let go of him so suddenly, he plopped on his backside in the sand. Then she slipped out of her clothes and ran, naked and laughing, into the water.

Larence lurched to his feet and started fumbling with the buttons of his jeans. Tossing his clothes in a heap alongside the cattails, he hurried after her. Water curled around his legs, lapped gently against his inner thighs, reminding him forcibly of her touch. Her tongue.

He dove into the water and came up effortlessly beneath the waterfall. The foamy white spray engulfed him. He thew his head back and let the water pummel his desert-dry flesh.

"Larence?"

He heard her voice through the pounding roar of the

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water. He stepped backward, letting the water form a silvery curtain through which he could see but she could not.

She was standing about twenty feet away, looking for him. He could tell she was perturbed, by the small frown that tugged at the edges of her mouth.

"Larence, this isn't funny."

He smiled, almost hearing the underwater tap-tap-tap of her foot. Grinning in anticipation, he dove under the waterfall and headed her way.

Emma didn't notice a movement in the water. Then suddenly there he was, rising from the glassy pool like Triton emerging from his watery world. Naked, waist-deep in water, he walked toward her. Sunlight shone from the slot overhead and gave his skin a pale golden glow. Silver-bright water droplets clung to his dark brown lashes; one by one falling lazily down his cheeks and plopping silently onto the hard, muscular squares of his chest. His fingertips trailed sensuously in the silver-green surface, sending snakelike ripples fanning out behind him.

Anxiety fluttered in her stomach. There was a raw, unveiled passion in his eyes she'd never seen before.

An almost animallike intensity that stole her ability to breathe. As if he wanted more than her touch, more than her kiss, more even than access to the secret passageway of her body. As if he wanted her soul.

The fire in his gaze burned hotter than she'd ever seen it. She felt singed by its heat, branded as a possession.

Their roles had reversed. She was no longer the huntress; she was the hunted. The realization sent a white-hot bolt of desire careening through her body.

Real desire; not the regular, familiar passion she'd

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known for Eugene, but something more. Something dark and wild and forbidden.

She licked her lips nervously.

A strand of breeze murmured through the trees stationed at the bank and ran cool, invisible fingers along her breasts. Gooseflesh popped out along her arms and turned her nipples into pointed, puckered peaks.

Instinctively she raised a hand to her throat, feeling the rapid, rabbitlike dancing of her pulse.

It took a supreme act of will to remain motionless. Her heartbeat sped up. She swallowed dryly. Waiting.

Wanting to stand here and be touched by him, and at the same time wanting desperately never to have met him at all.

She felt suddenly as if she were standing on the edge of a great cliff, and that all he had to do was hold his hands out and she would jump. Into the black void of a need she couldn't control, a desire she was powerless to deny.

She shivered again and closed her eyes. Waiting.

And then he was touching her. His warm, damp palms cupped her shoulders and squeezed lightly, resting there for a heartbeat before gliding down the length of her arms and letting go. "Come on."

She blinked sleepily, surprised.

He cocked his head to the left, where a huge, flat rock lay tilted half-in and half-out of the pool. Its wet, red-brown surface glowed like polished copper. A huge old cedar tree stood guard behind the rock, its long, needle-studded branches arched downward to taste the slowly moving water.

She stared at him blankly. "You want to show me the rock? Now?"

He nodded.

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"I was thinking we mi—"

"Don't."

She frowned. "Don't what?"

"Don't think." Before she could stutter a reply, he swept her into his arms and carried her toward the rock. Water splashed up from his moving legs and dappled her naked body. She felt every droplet like a bead of fire.

The rock felt cool and mirror-slick beneath her bare back. He grabbed her wrists, and forced her hands over her head. When her arms were dangling limply amid the tangle of her own hair, he let go.

She didn't move, didn't breathe, as his gaze moved slowly down her body. She lay there, naked, pinned to the rock like a prize butterfly, and let him study her.

Desire uncoiled deep in her body, sent burning feelers sliding through her blood. Restlessly she shifted her position on the rock. Her heart thumped hard in her chest; her pulse throbbed.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered, planting a kiss on her right nipple.

Emma gasped at the unexpected contact. Her body went cold, then hot. Her breathing sped up.

He pulled back. Cool air immediately rushed in, mingled with the moisture from his kiss, and turned her nipples pebble-hard. She stared up at him, mesmerized by the hungry passion in his eyes. A dull ache settled between her legs.

His hands slid down her sides, formed to the flesh of her thighs, and gently urged her legs to part. Moving between her knees, he leaned closer.

She strained forward for his kiss. His mouth slanted possessively over hers and forced her back onto the 326

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rock. She shoved aside the tangle of her own hair and clutched his shoulders.

He settled possessively between her legs. Naked flesh pressed naked flesh. She felt the thudding of his heart against her breast. Water beaded between them, turned hot, and then zigzagged down their sides and plunked into the pool.

His hardness probed the wetness between her legs, rubbed against her in a fluid, circular motion that made her whole body throb and tremble and need.

Oh, God, the need . . .

Her hands slid down his dew-sprayed back and clutched his buttocks. The ache between her legs turned into a fiery, almost painful throbbing. "Now, Larence. Now."

An unmistakable laugh slipped from his mouth to hers. "Patience," he drawled against her lips.

She shoved his chest hard. He straightened, peered down at her. Suppressed laughter crinkled the corners of his eyes, twitched his lips. "Yes, Emma?"

She stared up at him, breathing hard. "I want you to—"

He shook his head. At the movement, a dozen droplets of water sprayed her face.

She frowned. "But I think—"

"I told you not to think." His lips formed to hers as if God had made them as a matched set, and moved in a gentle, sensual rhythm that restoked the fire in her body.

After an eternity, he moved on. His kisses trailed down her throat, each one like a spark of fire burning along her exposed flesh. Down the pale curve of her throat, along her collarbone, past the swell of her breast to her nipple.

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She felt the flick of his tongue and gasped. Her back bowed above the wet rock, strained for the feel of his tongue. Her breath came in hot, harsh, gasps.

The licking intensified, turned into a gentle laving. Then a not so gentle one. The sensations set her on fire.

She trembled, quivered, arched. Her fingers clawed, dug into the muscular flesh of his upper arms. Need washed through her body in waves.

"Now, Larence," she whimpered. 'Wow. "

Still sucking her nipple, he let his hands slide down the length of her body. Gently but firmly he eased her hands away from his arms and pushed them back above her head.

"Grab hold." The words were spoken in a voice so thick and raw, she barely recognized it.

Without hesitation she grabbed hold of the branch above her head. The knotty bark felt foreign and erotic beneath her fingers. She pulled herself higher up the rock, and at the movement, the limb groaned.

Needles rained down on her face and breasts.

She moved higher; Larence moved lower. His hands and mouth inched with a scientist's precision down her tingling, burning flesh. One by one he plucked the pine needles from her goosefleshed skin and tossed them aside.

He touched her in places she'd never thought sensitive, and yet beneath his inquisitive fingers, her skin vibrated, grew hot and damp. His mouth trailed slow, sensual kisses over her breasts, down the flat, quivering expanse of her stomach, and still downward.

When he reached his goal, Emma sucked in her breath and stiffened. "Wait!"

He looked up.

She suddenly felt awkward, unsure. She swallowed

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thickly. "Don't do that." Her voice came out breathy and hesitant.

He smiled. One eyebrow cocked upward. "Do what?"

"You know. That."

"Don't worry, love," he drawled. "What I lack in technique, I make up for in patience."

"No. I don't want either one of us to be patient. I want—"

He lowered his head. His tongue touched her, and the wet tip sent a spasm of pleasure through her body.

She groaned and closed her eyes as his tongue began to move in a slow, circular motion. She clung to the tree limb, her palms slick with sweat, her hands shaking. The sounds of her heart and the waterfall mingled, roared together in her mind until she couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything. All she could do was feel, and oh, God, what she could feel. . . .

The motion intensified, turned fast and fevered. She moaned his name over and over again, whimpered.

The pressure between her legs doubled, tripled, turned hot and hard and demanding. She felt as if she were flailing toward something, desperate to touch it, and yet the closer she came, the faster it spiraled out of her grasp.

Her breath came in hot, aching gasps. Her body went taut, then slack, then taut again. Mindlessly, desperate for release, she writhed on the rock. "Please," she said, near weeping. "It hurts. Oh, God, it hurts. ..."

"Let go of the tree."

Trembling, she slid down the rock's slick face into Larence's lap. Shamelessly, aching with need, she opened her legs and straddled him.

He guided her onto his hardness. She coiled her arms and legs around him and buried her face in the warm,

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water-dappled crook of his neck. She clung to him as he rose out of the water and pressed her against the slick rock. The cool stone touched her flesh and she shivered uncontrollably.

His hardness slipped inside her. She gasped at the pleasure of it and clung to his sweaty body. He moved harder. Faster.

Her knees slid up and down the sweat-and-water-slicked muscles of his sides. Her fingers clawed and raked his back. She moved up and down, matching him thrust for thrust. The heat in her loins turned from a slow-burning fire to a liquified inferno of desperation and need.

"Oh, God, Larence. Oh, God, oh God, oh God . . ."

Her body went bow-string-taut, quivered. She strained forward, panting with need, aching; her nails sank into his back. She was almost there, almost there. . . .

Release blasted through her body like a tidal wave. A white-hot volcano of pleasure so pure, so elemental, she cried out. Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision. She bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from screaming as spasm after spasm throbbed through her body.

She was dimly aware of Larence as he plunged inside her one more time, deep and hard. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. She felt his strangled, bitten-off cry as a blast of hot breath against her flesh.