Having Faith (7 page)

But what he did was different. At least, Faith thought it was. Not that she could remember the fine details of what he'd done before, since the amount of wine she'd drunk robbed her of that clarity, but she remembered the titillation of it. What he did now was even more titillating. It was bolder, more confident, persuasive in ways that had nothing to do with clarity and everything to do with pure sensation. By the time he ended the kiss, she was grasping his sweatshirt for dear life.

"Is that how you kissed Joanna?" she whispered between short gasps.

He didn't know. He hadn't been consciously thinking of Joanna. He hadn't been consciously thinking of much but the fire that licked at his nerve ends.

"Maybe we'd better stop," he whispered back. Her head was cradled in his arm. He looked down at her face to find features whose eagerness shone through the dim night light.

"I don't want to stop. I want you to show me more." She bobbed up.

With the sudden movement, she swayed. Steadying herself, she sat on her haunches between his legs.

"I want to do something."

"What?"

"Touch you. Jack didn't like being touched. He didn't think it was important. He didn't need it to be aroused. But it might have helped me." She averted her eyes in a moment's reconsideration.

"Maybe not.

Jack had a nice enough build, but there was nothing spectacular about it. Maybe my touching him wouldn't have done a thing for either of us. " She looked back up at Sawyer and whispered.

"Let me touch you.

Just a little. " She relaxed her grip on his sweatshirt and flattened her hands on his shoulders. Slowly she drew them toward his neck, back to the top of his arms, almost timidly down over the musculature of his upper chest. And everywhere her hands went, her eyes followed.

She let out a single, clipped sound, halfway between a sigh and a gasp.

"Like this," she whispered.

"Just like this. So nice."

Sawyer didn't know whether he was more pleased with the look of awe on her face or the feel of her hands on his chest.

"Wait." His voice was sounding hoarse.

"I'll make it even better." Before either of them could begin to wonder whether they were going too far, he whipped the sweatshirt over his head.

Faith sat back on her heels, looking at what he'd bared.

"Sawyer, you're so big!"

"Is that good or bad?"

"Good! Good! I hadn't realized..." Her voice trailed off when she brought her hands up and touched him. His skin was warm, even hot, but she was truly stunned by how much of him there was. She'd known he was well-toned, but she hadn't known he was so broad in the shoulders.

Moving in a slow, dreamy way, her hands took forever to cover him.

Part of that was because the hair on his chest slowed her down. It created a friction that she found surprisingly exciting. Where the hair thinned and tapered into a narrow line, she purposely kept her hand slow to fully appreciate the firmness of his skin.

Sawyer had never been so erotically charted. He leveled his shoulders, took in a deep gulp of air that expanded his chest even more. With that oxygen feeding his brain, he grabbed Faith under the arms and drew her forward. His mouth met hers in a kiss that, for the first time, held raw hunger.

It should have frightened Faith off, or at least alerted her to the fact of his arousal. But she was too aroused, herself, to think of anything but enjoying more. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she immersed herself in the kiss. Somewhere in its midst,

he began to caress her breasts, but that fact was lost amid the overall headiness of what she felt.

"Hold on for a second, babe," he dragged his mouth from hers to whisper. He tried to ease her away but she made a throaty sound of protest and tightened her grip on him. Reaching back for her wrists, he dragged them forward.

"Wait. I want to touch you." He held her gaze while he covered her breasts with his hands. After a second he began to knead her flesh. It was the most wonderful thing Faith had felt yet. Her expression told him so.

"Didn't Jack do this to you?"

She nodded.

"But it didn't feel like this."

"What does it feel like?"

"Good. I don't know. Really good. Did Joanna like it when you touched her breasts?"

He shook his head.

"It embarrassed her. Does it embarrass you?"

Faith swallowed. She was breathing more quickly again, and he wasn't even kissing her anymore.

"No. It makes me hot."

"I want to take off your shirt."

"Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe this is enough." But he chose that minute to rub his thumbs over her nipples, which were distinct even through her bra and sweatshirt.

"Mmm, do it." She reached for the hem herself, and while she was pulling the sweatshirt over her head. Sawyer unhooked her bra. By the time she lowered her arms, she was naked from the waist up. For a minute, she sat very still looking up at him. Her expression would have been wary if her features were working right, but they didn't seem to be responding efficiently to the commands of her brain.

"Is this right, what we're doing?" she managed to ask. She was feeling warm and tingly and more than a little muzzy.

"Oh, yeah," he professed a bit brashly.

"We're the best of friends, Faith. Nothing between us is wrong. Here." He held his wine glass to her lips and gave her a drink, then took one himself. Then he set the glass aside and touched her.

"You have very beautiful breasts. They stand there, just waiting for me."

"Joanna's didn't stand there?"

"They sagged."

She sputtered out a laugh.

"You're awful!"

"I'm serious," he said, but softly. His eyes didn't stray from her breasts, and as he talked, his hand moved lightly, if a bit unsteadily over her flesh.

"I didn't really see them much. She kept them well hidden. I think she was ashamed of her body." Raising his eyes to hers, he said, "You're not. I can feel it in you. You're proud to be a woman. That's really refreshing, Faith. Do you know how refreshing it is?"

For a minute, Faith couldn't say a word. He was brushing his fingers over the tips of her breasts. She fancied there was a wire stretching from that point to another point deep inside her. With each brush of his fingers the wire twisted.

"Faith?"

"Mmm?"

"Are you okay?"

"I think so."

"How does that feel?"

"Incredibly" -Her voice caught. She tried again.

"Incredibly nice."

But just then, the wire snapped. She came forward and up on her knees, looking for his kiss. He gave it to her with just the force she needed, but even before the kiss was over, the hunger had grown.

Hugging him tightly, she cried, "Sawyer?" Her mouth was by his ear, her high-pitched cry urgent.

"What is it, sweetheart?"

"Something's hurting. I'm feeling so empty inside that it's hurting.

Help me. Please, help me. "

Sawyer was feeling the same hurt. It had managed to surface through the aura of pleasure that was clouding his view of reality.

"Shhh, it's okay, sweetheart." He held her tightly for a minute, but the feel of her bare back beneath his arms, not to mention the heaven of her breasts against his chest, drove him on.

"Okay," he whispered. He took her mouth in a kiss at the same time that he reached for the snap of her jeans. The zipper was quickly down. She scrambled back to push at the denim and her panties. Together they shimmied both from her legs.

Then, while he ran his hands over the parts of her body that were newly uncovered, she hurriedly worked at his jeans.

His zipper was more difficult to lower than hers had been. He was fully aroused, and while that hindered her progress, the discovery excited her beyond belief. No sooner was his fly open when she slipped both hands into his briefs and found the heat waiting there.

"Oh my," she murmured.

"Oh my."

"" Oh my' is right," he growled. Tumbling her backward onto the carpet, he quickly shucked his pants. He had to be inside her. There wasn't any doubt in his mind that if he didn't make it fast, he'd die of frustration. Her thighs were open. She rose to meet him when he came between them, and when he entered her, she cried out.

It was the heat. He knew because he felt it himself. It was the heat and the moisture and the wine that made her sheathing so perfect. He tried to savor it, tried to move in and out with the proper understanding of how well she fit him, but he didn't have the patience. He was burning from the inside out, and the only way to fight that was to surge hard and deep toward fulfillment.

Faith was with him all the way. She goaded him on with the movement of her hips, her legs, her restless hands. Their bodies grew damp with sweat, and the sweat mingled. They drove each other ever higher. And when he reached the release he sought, the spasms of his body beat against and between her throbbing.

That should have been the end of it. They should have fallen apart on the floor, done in by drink or exhaustion or sheer bliss. Somehow, it didn't work that way. They did lie there for a minute until they'd caught their breath. But then it was as if they forgot they'd climaxed. Sawyer was still hard inside her, and when he began to move, she gasped in delight.

It took longer this time. Their movements were slower, more drugged, but no less pleasurable. After a time, it was hard to tell where one peak ended and the next began.

Faith came awake very reluctantly the next morning. On the one hand, things were as always. She was in her bed, where she was every morning when the sun rose over the harbor and skipped sideways into her window. On the other hand, things were different.

Her head hurt, for starters. She discovered that when she tried to move it around on the pillow. Her eyes hurt, too. She opened them a slit, immediately realized her mistake and shut them again.

And she was naked. The sheets felt different against bare skin. Moving a hand to her ribs, she confirmed the finding, but that didn't make it any easier to understand. She never slept naked. She was usually too cold for that. Winter or summer, it didn't matter, she always wore something, preferably long-sleeved and ankle length, to bed.

She was warm, though, and for an instant she wondered whether she'd set the electric blanket higher than usual. But she didn't have the electric blanket on. At least she didn't think she did. It was still in storage. And yet she was warm. Gingerly exploring that warmth, she moved her leg. In the process, she discovered two things.

The first was that her muscles hurt. Not just any old muscles, but those in her legs. To be exact, those in her thighs.

The second was that she wasn't alone. Her foot had hit something solid. It was the source of the heat, she knew. She also knew that it had been well over a year since she'd shared a bed with Jack. She hadn't shared a bed with any other person since.

Momentarily ignoring the pounding in her head and the ache around her eyes, she forced herself to look at the side of the double bed that was usually vacant. It wasn't vacant now. A head capped with dark, rumpled hair was in possession of the second pillow. Just below that head was a sine wed neck, below that a pair of broad shoulders, below that a smoothly muscled back that held remnants of a tan.

Unable to take her eyes from that back, Faith took in a quick breath and sat up. She clutched the sheet to her breasts and swallowed once, hard. That was all it took for the events of the night before to slowly begin to filter through the fog that still clouded her brain.

"Sawyer?" she called in a very low, very shaky voice. The second time around, she managed to make it a little louder, but no less shaky.

"Sawyer?"

He didn't move. For a split second she wondered whether it wasn't Sawyer after all but a big dummy he'd left as a joke. She'd like that.

She'd like the things--pictures, images, flashes of memory--from the night before to have been make-believe.

But no. That was real live flesh, real live Sawyer Bell, real live naked Sawyer Bell beside her.

"Sawyer?" she called, this time in a panic.

"Sawyer!"

He jerked, then groaned and put a hand on the side of his head.

"Sawyer, get up!" Tugging the top sheet free of the quilt, she scrambled to the side of the bed and wrapped it around her as she stood. When she looked back at Sawyer, he was rolling onto his back.

"Get up, Sawyer. Oh please, get up."

He opened his eyes a crack, much as she'd done not so long before. As she'd done, he squeezed them tight again. But Faith wasn't allowing him the leisure she'd had to let memory come calling.

"Sawyer." He grunted.

"Sawyer!"

He pried his eyes open and focused on her, and for a minute he simply stared, trying without success to make sense out of what he was seeing. Finally he frowned.

"Faith?" He knew it had to be her. There wasn't anyone who had quite her face, quite her hair, quite her voice.