Follow the Sun (34 page)

James drew the hand up, circled one of her breasts, and squeezed it sensually as his mouth covered the nipple. White-hot desire shot through her body, and Erica speared her fingers into his hair.

He tantalized her as if she were a rich fruit he wanted to take whole into his mouth. The uninhibited loving left her breasts wet from his lips and tongue.

Erica made a high-pitched keening sound. She was lost in a haze of pleasure; nothing had ever felt so good in her whole life. She could have died happy, feeling James’s lips on her this way.

He whispered earthy compliments against her skin during those brief moments when his tongue wasn’t involved otherwise. They were the crude kind of words Erica heard construction workers bandy when good-looking women walked by a work site. If the workers had ever used such language about her, they’d been careful to make sure she didn’t hear.

‘Oh, thank you,” she told James in rapt gratitude. “I needed that.”

He lifted his head to smile at her, and the half-wild look of arousal in his expression excited her even more. He kissed her. “Later I want you to talk to me that way.”

“Now,” she said eagerly.

James chuckled deep in his chest and put a hand over her mouth. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

She knew her eyes must have looked huge with understanding, because he chuckled again. “Your voice is too sexy.”

He moved down her body, kissing, nibbling, sucking her skin roughly. Erica forgot about talking when James coaxed her legs apart and grasped her gently. “Easy, now,” he murmured in a soothing way, as his fingers became part of her.

With a ragged gasp of pleasure she pushed against his hand, aching for release. His mouth sank onto her, and he groaned happily at the taste and feel of her readiness. Erica lost all control and tugged at his hair, urging him to come to her and make this magnificent ceremony complete.

He whispered against her swollen flesh, “That’s it. Red. Want me as much as I want you.”

Half-crying with the fervor of emotion and sensation, she grasped the item he’d arranged on the bedside stand. It lay on top of its package, waiting grandly. Erica thought no other man in the world would have gone to so much trouble to make her feel safe and uninhibited at the same time.

She was beyond words; the best she could do was a hoarse mewling sound as she stroked the offering
against his shoulder. He felt the odd texture against his skin and looked up, his eyes gleaming.

“Yeees?” he asked, his voice a coy rasp. But when he saw the look on her face he quickly knelt beside her and cupped his hand under her shoulders.

He pulled her upwards and watched as she prepared him with shaking hands. “Are you afraid?” he asked hoarsely, stroking the disheveled hair back from her forehead. “It won’t hurt. I swear I won’t let it hurt.”

Devotion surged through her as she looked up at him. “Not afraid,” she whispered raggedly. “I want you so much that I don’t care if it hurts.”

“Oh, Red.” He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back. Gently he caressed her face as he lowered himself on top of her.

“Like this?” she asked as she gripped him with her thighs.

“Perfect,” he said, and it sounded like an understatement.

Their eyes met and held. Erica was lost in so many new experiences—the feel of his body nudging her patiently, the weight of him pushing her down into the mattress, the almost fierce look of controlled desire in his face.

The air seemed to hum with intensity, as if it might shatter into crystal fragments just from the swift harmony of their breaths.

Erica lifted her head and kissed him, “No more old maid, please.” Then she added in a voice too sensual for him to resist, “Do it quickly, James.”

He bowed his head to her shoulder and thrust into her with one smooth, sure movement that filled her completely. She felt her body stretching to accommodate him, but there was only that tightness, no pain.

Erica smiled, and tears came to her eyes. He drew back and looked at her anxiously. As her hips began to move in slow, erotic circles, he sighed with relief.

“No more volcano candidate,” he murmured tenderly.

She shook her head, and somewhere in the midst of it she realized that the ache inside her was exploding. Erica shut her eyes and whimpered.

He felt the gathering of sensation and moved carefully, bending his head close to hers so that he could whisper delicious promises in her ear; promises of slower times, of many times, of all night and everything she ever wanted from a man.

Erica slid her feet over the backs of his thighs and rose wildly, her hands digging into his shoulders, her lips moving soundlessly against his jaw.

Caught in her abandoned writhing, he moaned her name and, trembling violently, managed to thrust only once more before he joined her in a trance of sensation.

They rode the cloud down together, looking into each other’s eyes, hands moving in gratitude over damp, hot skin, mouths meeting to promise more.

Erica made herself admit that he didn’t think of this as anything serious, that he wanted her out of friendship and desire, not love. But she knew also that they had given each other something special, and there would always be a bond between them because of it.

The candlelight made yellow flecks in his eyes, like golden stars gleaming in a night sky. “
Da-nitaka,
” he murmured.

Erica stroked a fingertip along his cheekbone and asked tenderly, “What does it mean, Wolfman?”

“They are together.” He put his arms under her and lifted her slightly. Erica was lost in his gaze.

James arched gently inside her. “Their spirits are so close that they share one body,” he explained. “
Da-nitaka.
”

Forever, she added silently. Some day she hoped he’d want that too.

CHAPTER 8

E
RICA QUICKLY DISCOVERED
that James had a marvelous way of turning everything into foreplay or afterplay.

Such as at that moment. He sincerely wanted to know about her construction company, but he had his head pillowed on her naked rump and he kept dawdling a finger down her spine.

“Why’d you decide to study civil engineering in college?”

Erica hugged a pillow under her chin and tried to think despite the fact that he was nibbling her right hip. “I was good in math and science, and I thought I’d make the world a better place by learning to build highways. After I graduated I decided that the last thing the world needed was more strips of concrete covered with oil slicks and flat animals.”

Now he politely kissed the spot he’d bitten. “So where’d you learn about building houses?”

“When I was at school I worked summers for a residential contractor, a woman. She wanted to give
women a chance in the business, and half her crew was female. You wouldn’t believe the looks we’d get when we’d show up at a construction site with our tool belts and hard hats. We had T-shirts printed up that said ‘Yes, we’ve heard the one about the lady carpenter.’ ”

“So that’s where you learned to use a drill,” he said ruefully, and began nuzzling the small of her back.

Erica chuckled, and slumped lazily onto the pillow. His nuzzling destroyed coherent thought. Finally she twisted around and grabbed his bad knee. “Poor baby,” she said in a crooning voice, and began kissing the surgical scars that framed the kneecap.

“Sympathy. Ah. Hmmm.”

She placed kisses up his leg and scrutinized several tiny white dots on the top of his thigh. “I’d thought that these were just reverse freckles. But they’re scars.”

He cleared his throat and said softly. “That’s where I used to give myself steroid injections. But mostly I put them here.” James slapped his rump. “Hurt like hell.”

Erica rested her cheek against the scars on his thigh and curled one hand protectively over his leg. “Was it worth it?”

His voice was gruff. “At the time, yes. But I’ll never let a kid of mine do it.”

“How do steroids help a player, besides making him bigger and stronger?”

“They make you so aggressive that you want to rip people apart. That’s a good attitude for football; not so good for anything else. The last season I played, I tore up my locker before every game. Pulled it off the wall and beat the hell out of it. And I wasn’t the only player doing crazy things like that.”

“Oh, James.” She stroked his leg tenderly. “Is that why you didn’t come home very often? Because you were so messed up while you played ball?”

“Yes.” He ran his hand over her hair, caressed it back from her face, then sank his fingers into it as if the texture were comforting. “I wasn’t a good person
to be around. The money and the fame didn’t change me, but when my knee started to give me problems and I took steroids to compensate, I turned into a real touchy SOB. At least I recognized the change. So I stayed away from my family as much as I could.”

After a second, he added, “And there was another reason. Travis’s wife.”

Erica listened in stunned silence as he told her about times when Danna Tall Wolf had tried to corner him, and the Christmas eve she’d slipped into his old bedroom while Travis slept in the room across the hall. James had firmly set her out and locked his bedroom door.

“That was the last time I came home for a holiday,” he said.

“Does Travis know any of this?”

“No. And he never will. He can think what he wants to about me. I won’t hurt him with the truth about Danna.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me.”

James turned her face toward him and cupped her chin. “I trust you with it.”

Between kisses she asked softly, “What are yoii going to do when you move down to the reservation for good? I mean, what kind of business?”

“I’m going to build furniture. Custom pieces. I’ve already sold a few things to friends.”

“That’s great, James.” She grasped one of his brawny hands and studied the callouses. “Yep. You have the hands to be a builder.”

“That’s not wood stain, that’s my skin color.”

“Strong, tough hands, but not clumsy.” Erica gave him a solemn look. “Though you do have knuckles like a gorilla.”

James tugged his hand away and tweaked her nipple. “I’ve played football since I was five. Plus my father ran a logging business, and we boys spent all our spare time cutting timber. These hands have been through a lot.”

He wasn’t angry, but she raised his hands and nuzzled
them in apology, anyway. “I know, Wolfman, I know. I think they’re wonderful hands. Very sexy.”

That made his eyes gleam. “They look good against your skin.”

“Hmmm. Show me.” Grinning, she stretched out and put her head on his stomach.

“A lap cat. That’s what you are.”

“What’s ‘cat’ in Cherokee?”

“
Wis-sah.
” James walked his fingers down her belly. “Here,
wis-sah
, here,
wis-sah

They both jumped a little as they heard a car coming up the driveway. They’d been alone for two days, and naked virtually all of that time. The outside world had creased to exist.

James got up quickly and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He parted a window curtain and glanced out. “Lancaster. Alone.”

Erica hopped out of bed and grabbed her clothes. She didn’t know what James might say or do in Echo’s defense.

By the time she went outside James and Drake Lancaster were standing in the yard, embroiled in a tense discussion. James had his arms crossed over his chest, and Lancaster lounged against a muddy, dented pickup truck. Both he and the truck looked as if they’d been through hell.

Drake’s dark, frowning gaze swiveled gratefully toward Erica as she stopped beside James. “Do you know where Echo is?” Drake asked, his voice gruff.

“No.” Erica couldn’t decide what to think about this bewildering man, but she did know that Echo seemed to be the kind of woman who loved carefully and for good reason. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to leave. I don’t have time to say good-bye, and there are things she doesn’t understand, that she’s worried about—”

“We know,” James interjected grimly.

“I love her. There’s no other woman. My work is unusual, but it’s not illegal. Or immoral. At least not by most people’s standards.”