Not Even for Love (16 page)

“You look terrific,” he said warmly, and his eyes told her he was sincere.

They ate slowly, and when their hunger was abated, Reeves said, “We can put the basket near the door to preserve the meats and cheeses.”

“How long do you think the storm will last?” Jordan asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Since it’s the first of the season, it probably won’t be too bad. We’ll reassess the situation in the morning.”

Tacitly they agreed not to discuss their departure from this tool shed that had conveniently provided them with a time and place of their own, away from the rest of the world. They would only face going back when they must. For now they would be grateful to the storm for making this encapsulation necessary.

Neither of them mentioned Helmut, though both knew that he must be frantic with worry about them. What would he think of them spending the night together? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except their solitude in this mountain retreat.

“Look! Another box of chocolates!” Jordan exclaimed happily, and took the discovered treasure out of the hamper. Reeves snatched the box from her hands.

“Let me have some this time. You ate every one of them at lunch.”

“You had two pieces,” she argued.

“You were keeping count?” he teased, and held the box out of her reach.

As it ended up, they shared them equally. She fed Reeves his ration bite by bite and, when her fingertips became sticky and chocolate covered, he licked them clean.

She watched as he gently sucked each fingertip. His tongue laved it. A tight, tickling sensation welled up in her throat to match the one in the center of her body. Involuntarily her eyes closed. “I never knew that eating chocolates could be such an erotic experience,” she whispered.

“I never knew a woman could be so sexy without even trying.”

They kissed. They kissed again.

“We’d better gather up the food,” she mumbled against his lips.

He grumbled an “All right,” and began to help her.

When everything was replaced in the basket and it was set next to the door, she returned to the tarp with the thermos of coffee and the bottle of cognac.

“I don’t know if this is still hot, but we’ll see.” She un-capped the thermos and the smell of fresh hot coffee wafted out. “It is!”

She poured each of them a cup of the steaming coffee and added a capful of cognac while Reeves spread the now dry blanket over the tarps. They took off their boots and socks and stretched their bare feet out close to the stove, whose chimney was drawing well despite its ramshackle appearance.

Jordan sipped her coffee slowly, the cognac burning in her stomach. “I think I’m getting drunk,” she said softly as she leaned against Reeves. She was settled between his thighs, her back to his chest.

“Good. I plan to take advantage of you.”

She slapped him on the knee and he yelped. “What?” she asked in alarm. Then she noticed the raw, red skin on his knees. “Oh, Reeves. I hope you don’t get frostbite.”

“No, they’re just chapped.”

“Here, I’ve got something for them.” She crawled across the blanket toward her backpack and came back with the plastic bottle of lotion she had used on her cheeks.

“Does it burn?” he asked suspiciously.

“Like fire.”

“No thank you,” he said, and moved his legs away from her.

She laughed as she reached out a hand to capture one of his legs. “You big chicken. I was only teasing. It’ll make them feel better.”

With soothing strokes she applied the lotion to the reddened skin. She smothered a giggle, then another. “What’s so funny?” he asked huffily.

“I’ve never put lotion on hairy legs before.” He tried to look offended, but couldn’t, and they both laughed. The lotion was put aside when she was finished and they resumed their former position. They stared into the flames.

“This is when I really miss a cigarette,” Reeves said after a spell of companionable silence. “It’s not just the tobacco I miss. It’s the relaxing activity.” He sighed theatrically. “I guess I’ll have to find another relaxing activity for my hands.”

Before the sentence was completed, he matched action to words. His hand slipped under her arm and curved around her until his hand covered her breast. He flexed his fingers, not quite squeezing her.

She snuggled closer to him. “Speaking of your hands, this is the one you cut, isn’t it?” She removed his hand from her breast and saw the telltale red marks across three of his fingers. Each one was kissed in turn.

“Jordan, do me a favor,” he murmured into her hair.

“Is it illegal or illicit?”

“We’ll get to those favors later. This is a simple request.”

“What?”

“Would you take this off?” He took her left hand and touched the large diamond ring on the third finger.

Words weren’t necessary. She knew how he must resent that symbol of her relationship with Helmut. The ring was slipped off her finger and zippered into a small compartment of her backpack.

Silently she came back into his arms. He eased her around to face him. Gently he cupped her head in his large, capable hands and drew her upward until her lips met his. The kiss conveyed a tenderness that conversely broke down all barriers she might have constructed in her mind. Whatever the future held for them, tonight belonged to her and Reeves. One night out of a lifetime wasn’t asking too much. Whatever the cost, she wasn’t going to deny this to herself.

The consequences could be met later, the piper paid later, but not now. Not now, when his mouth invaded the hollows of hers. Not when his hands touched her so exquisitely that her mind reeled under the impact.

“Jordan,” he groaned softly, and pushed her away slightly. “I want to see all of you.” His fingers deliberately and deftly worked the buttons of her blouse until it hung free. With self-imposed, agonizing care, he eased it over her shoulders.

His eyes dropped to her chest. The sheer lacy bra was a voyeur’s dream. It hid nothing, enhanced everything. The glossy flesh-toned fabric made her skin beneath glisten. The rosy nipples pressed against that tight, shimmering veil invitingly, daring the observer to touch and kiss.

Self-denial became Reeves’s obsession. His thumb hooked under the satin straps and gradually pulled them from her shoulders and upper arms, staring all the while at the two perfectly shaped breasts that were revealed to him by tiny degrees.

Finally his patience was rewarded and they fell free of the gossamer fetter. Only then did he unclasp the garment and remove it completely.

Jordan had remained motionless, watching his face and the tender expressions so apparent on it. It gave her a heady, victorious feeling to know that she could evoke such emotion from him. Had he asked her to, she would have torn the bra from her body. But she knew, as did he, that this way was better.

Just as a connoisseur glories in the properties of the wine, studies its color, its bouquet, twirls it in his glass, before taking the first sip, so had Reeves treasured her before availing himself of her body.

His eyes wandered over her, taking in the creamy texture of her skin, the delicate color of the crests, the gentle curves that flagrantly declared her femininity. Then his hands joined his eyes in that most pleasant expedition.

“You’re beautifully made,” he said gruffly. The dark russet hair tickled her skin as he dipped his head and kissed her breasts, each in turn, lingeringly, slowly.

They had all night.

In silent agreement they backed away from each other. He rid himself of the rest of his clothes. She shyly stepped out of her jeans, but left on the wispy protection of sheer panties.

When they were lying on one half of the blanket, covered by the other half, he pulled her to him. His heavy leg rested on hers, moving hypnotically.

She caught the sides of his head in eager hands and drew him down to her lips. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth. She grew dizzy under its avid searching and clasped his shoulders to keep from falling into the sublime abyss that lured her so seductively.

“I’ve got to have you, Jordan.” His words were barely audible as his mouth left hers to plant kisses across her chest. Her breasts were gently ravaged. Twin buds of desire rose up to meet the wet heat of his mouth. He gave as much as he took. His tongue and lips blessed her with the honey of his mouth.

“Don’t stop,” she begged when he moved his lips away from her tingling breasts. But the request went unheeded as his mouth trailed over her stomach and past her navel. “Reeves…!” she gasped when she felt that urgent sweetness tugging on her skin in places that had never known a kiss before.

Her panties were dragged down her hips and legs until she was free of them. Still kissing her, his hand slipped between the slender columns of her thighs and touched her where she most longed to know him.

His fingers commenced a gentle exploration that began as a mere fluttering but became a stroking search that knew no bounds.

“Sweet… you feel… Look at me, Jordan, please… look at me while I touch you… Precious…”

She obeyed every command and heedlessly raced toward the culmination his hands and mouth promised.

“Say you want me,” he pleaded. His fingers bespoke an entreaty all their own.

“I do,” she moaned.

“Say it, Jordan. Tell me.”

He covered her with his own body and she felt the hard, throbbing evidence of his desire against the insides of her thighs. “I want you, Reeves.” She shuddered at his tentative probing. “Please.”

Then he was inside her, strong and massive, filling her completely, eliminating a void, giving her all of himself.

He buried his face in the fragrant cloud of her black hair and whispered endearments, accolades. Her hands locked behind his back.

His head, lying next to hers, turned until he was looking at her and he said, “Don’t move for a while. Just surround me….You can’t know how good it feels.”

“Explain it to me.”

And he did, in a language that their bodies understood long before their minds could grasp its import.

CHAPTER 9

W
hat do you want to be when you grow up?”

She laughed and snuggled closer to him, if that were possible, and settled her lips at the base of his throat. “Don’t you think I’m grown up already?” she purred as she nibbled at his neck.

“You’ve grown up in all the right places.” His hands admired those places.

Temporarily their passion had been slaked. They were cuddled together under the single blanket. The floor was hard underneath them, but neither noticed. Jordan’s backpack, emptied of its contents and wrapped in Reeves’s sweater, served as their pillow. The logs in the stove, well seasoned, crackled and hissed cheerfully. The golden reflection of the flames danced on the dark walls.

His fingers traced her spine. “Do you intend to stay in that newsstand for the rest of your life?”

“I can’t. I was fired.”

The fingers stilled. “Fired? When? Why?”

She laughed softly. “Yes, to the first question. This morning to the second. Because my boss saw the story about my engagement to Helmut and assumed that I wouldn’t be needing my job anymore to the third. The boss’s daughter inherited my position before my corpse was cold,” she said lightly.

“Sonofa—That was a rotten thing to have happen. No wonder you were so mad at me this morning. I’m sorry, Jordan. Can I help? Is there something I can do?”

“No. At first I was upset, to say the least. Now”—she moved one slender leg between the warmth of his—“now it doesn’t seem to matter so much. The job in Lucerne has served its purpose. After Charles’s death, I needed to live and work, breathe, without the interference of well-intentioned friends and my parents. This time I’ve spent in Switzerland has been like a three-year vacation. I need to find something to do that’s more challenging and productive.”

“Will you return to the States?” Studiously they were avoiding talking of Helmut and the role he would play in her future. He was there, lurking in the background of their minds, but neither wanted to speak his name aloud. Apparently, since he was asking about her going back to America, Reeves had finally accepted her insistence that she wasn’t going to marry the Swiss.

“Yes, probably, but I don’t know where,” she replied. “I think I’ll try to find a nice, quiet place and settle down to write. That’s something I’ve always aspired to do.”

“What type of material do you want to write?”

“Sex manuals,” she quipped.

“How-tos?”

“Yes.”

A laugh vibrated his chest, where she rested her head.

“Oh, yeah?” He clasped her to him and rolled her atop him.

“That requires a lot of research, you know.”

“I’m willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary,” she teased, and leaned down to taste his mouth. It tasted like her own.

“Are you willing to be a guinea pig?”

“Oink.”

She collapsed with laughter. “Guinea pigs don’t oink, you dope.”

“No? What do they do?”

She showed him, and the subject of her immediate future was forgotten.

“So after your first sex manual is a bestseller, then what?”

With the blanket wrapped around them, they were sitting facing the fire. “I’ll never write a sex manual.” She jabbed him in the ribs.

“It’s the world’s loss. You’re an expert.” He kissed the end of her nose. “What are you going to write?”

“Travel tips for an American in Europe? Fiction? I haven’t decided yet. My priority is settling down and carving out my niche in the universe. What about you?”

“I guess I’ll keep on globe-trotting with my trusty camera.”

“Oh.”

It would seem that their goals in life were as opposite as east is from west. Again the subject of their future was left alone. He pulled her onto his lap. They had no future beyond the walls of the tool shed.

“I’m starved,” he whispered against her ear. They were lying entwined under the blanket. Her legs fit snugly between his. It would be hard to determine which limb belonged to whom. Their arms were wrapped around each other.

“You’ve got an insatiable appetite.”

“I know. And I’m always hungry, too.”