Reese (22 page)

Still disoriented from whatever he had been through in the shadows of his mind, he followed her like a child, down the hall to her room.

In the doorway he hesitated. "I should go."

"Soon." Mary reached for the cloth next to the washbasin. After dipping it into the tepid water, she returned and wiped his hot face, then his damp neck. Reese moaned.

"Shh," she soothed. "Let me make you feel better."

It was a testament to his state of mind that he did not argue but merely leaned against the casing and closed his eyes. She continued to wipe his heated skin, but too quickly the cloth became as hot as his flesh.

She led him to her bed. "Sit." She pushed him, but he resisted. "Sit, sit, sit!" she said, as he always did. "You're too tall for me to reach."

Reese raised a brow at her tone, but he sat. Mary brought over the bowl of water and continued to wipe his face then the back of his neck. As he continued to let her, she became bolder, sliding the cool cloth over his chest and surreptitiously releasing more buttons on his shirt.

Her back began to ache, hovering over him, so she placed the water on the floor and went to her knees. As if she'd opened the door of a stove, his heat brushed her face. Mary skimmed the cloth over his belly. Muscles jumped beneath her touch, and she stared at them, fascinated.

Reese swore, grabbed her hand, and tossed the cloth into a corner. Seemingly of its own volition, her free hand reached for the ridges of his belly. Her fingertips grazed through the hair that covered his golden skin. He grabbed that hand too, and held both away from him. "Are you crazy?"

She stared into his face, tight and harsh but no longer in pain. Instead, his green gaze burned as it touched her mouth. She licked her lips.

He shook her. "Look at you."

She glanced down but didn't see anything amiss. When she lifted her head, her confusion must have shown for he made a sound of impatience deep in his throat.

"You need a keeper. You can't ask a man like me into your bedroom, bathe my chest, touch my skin, then get down on your knees in front of me—" He cursed again and let go of her hands as if she were a leper.

"I don't understand."

"You don't. That's the problem."

"I want you to teach me."

"Teach?" He covered his eyes with his long fingers and laughed, though the sound was far from amused.

"Yes, teach me what happens between a man and woman. Show me the things I don't understand. Someone has to. I want that someone to be you, Reese. Only you."

She curled her palms around his thighs. His breath rushed through his teeth on a hiss before his fingers encircled her wrists.

He seemed angry, and for a moment Mary was afraid, not of Reese but of what she was doing to him. He'd been hurt enough, and if she was hurting him more, she would never forgive herself.

"You're making a mistake if you think I can kiss you and touch you and teach you but not take you. I'm not as tame as I appear, and I'm not the man I'd hoped to be."

"You think too little of yourself."

"And you think too much of me." He moved one of her hands from his thigh to the hard length between them. "This is what I feel for you." He pressed her palm to the ridge. "Sweet, virginal Mary." He released her. "Now run away and hide."

He leaned back, as if expecting her to do it, but he was the one mistaken. Instead of running, she ran a fingertip up, then down, the pulsing heat beneath the black cotton.

He snatched her wrist again. "What's the matter with you?"

"You wanted me to touch you." She tugged on her wrist. "Let me touch you some more."

He gentled his hold, though he still held her hand away from his body. "This isn't working. I wanted to scare you away." She snorted and raised a brow. He almost smiled. "Mary, we can't. Someday you'll get married, and then—"

"I won't. I know who I am, what I am." A thought occurred to her, and she glanced into his face with trepidation. "You want me, don't you?"

He hesitated, as if to deny it, and her heart fluttered; her stomach roiled. No one had ever wanted her, not even her parents. But after staring into her eyes for a long time, he sighed, and the fingertips of his free hand brushed her cheek. "Of course I do. I just don't want you hurt. I'm still leaving. Whatever happens between us isn't going to stop that."

"I never thought it would. I need you, Reese, and I think you need me. Just once, let me have this. Let me have you and you can have me. No one else need ever know."

Before he could refuse her again, she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the fascinating ridges of his belly, brushed her cheek against the softness of his hair, let his scent flow through her and into her, then ran her tongue beneath the waistband of his pants.

He growled and shoved his hands into her hair. Hairpins scattered, pinging against the ground like frozen rain. He pulled her mouth to his and kissed her hard, then fell back on the bed, dragging her after him.

This was what she'd wanted; this was what she'd dreamed of. Reese in her bed, his mouth on hers, his hands against her skin. Yet the force of his need frightened her.

One moment, she was atop him, the next, he gently lowered her to his side. As he kissed her, he fumbled with the buttons along the front of her dress. He could not seem to free a single one.

She wanted his hands on her. She wanted his mouth where no one else's had ever been. She lifted her hands, covered his. He trembled, then went still.

"You asked if I wanted you." He leaned his forehead against hers. "I want you so bad, I haven't been able to think of anything else since you found me in Dallas. I've dreamed of touching you like this, and now I'm shaking so badly, you'd think this was my first time."

"It is your first time." He raised his head and frowned. "With me."

His smile was the first smile of joy she'd seen on his face. She couldn't help but reach up and touch his lips. He kissed her fingertips, and her eyes stung.

"Let me take off a few layers. Women's clothes are meant to be a prison. They hold us in."

"And keep us out."

"There is that." She stood, turning away as she released the buttons on her bodice.

"Mary?"

She glanced over her shoulder and saw him light the lamp. A golden glow filled the room, washing over Reese as he reclined on her bed. He was so beautiful.

"Could you turn around?"

She'd led the man to her room, touched him intimately, begged him to teach her things she did not quite understand. Now he wanted to watch her undress.

Why not?

She shrugged the garment from her shoulders. The dress slid down her body, pooling at her feet. She found she could not look at him. Instead she concentrated on her task, tugging the strings of her corset loose and pulling the whale-boned device from her body, then tossing it to the floor. The thud echoed in the silence of her room.

As she bent to unlace her boots, her hair fell across her face. With an impatient huff, she straightened and blew the strands out of the way. Reese stared at her as if she were an exotic creature that had stepped out of a picture book.

"What?" she asked, startled at the intensity of his expression.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

She turned aside. "Don't tease me now."

A sudden rustle, a sharp creak, and he stood too close. His hands descended upon her shoulders, heat against her chill, yet still she shivered. He turned her about so that her back rested against his front. Where her chemise did not cover her shoulders, the hair of his chest tickled.

"Look," he whispered.

The mirror over her nightstand was just big enough to hold them both—Reese... and a woman she'd never seen before.

Untamed golden hair curled about her face, the mass giving an illusion of roundness to the usual sharp planes of her nose and cheekbones. He slid a finger down that nose. "These freckles do sinful things to my insides. I've been wanting to put my mouth on them just to see how they might taste."

Her hated freckles, he adored, which made Mary see them just a bit differently. Her blue eyes shone against the flush of her cheeks, and the pale skin of her chest sloped to the rounded fullness of her breasts.

His hand slid over her shoulder; a single dark finger circled the fading bruise from the rifle's kick and made her remember when his mouth had traced the same path. She forgot that quickly enough when his finger traced the edge of the lace, then slid into the valley between her breasts. As she continued to watch, transfixed, his hand dipped inside and freed one rose-tipped breast, cupping the softness in his hardened palm.

"You
are
beautiful. Not just to me but to anyone with eyes that see." His head lowered, and he pressed a kiss to her neck, then rolled her nipple between his thumb and finger. The sensation exploded throughout her body—his touch, and the sight of it, more erotic than anything she could have imagined.

He pulled the ribbon on the chemise and slid the garment from her shoulders, baring her to the waist. His hands cupped both breasts, lifted them, held them, taunted them as she watched all the while in the mirror.

His hands, her body, her face, his mouth.

The world narrowed to this room, the mirror, her bed, the two of them as entwined as their discarded clothes on the floor.

Dark against light, ivory, bronze, gold—colors danced across them, though them, into them. She closed her eyes and saw every beautiful secret in the world.

She'd wanted a teacher, and she couldn't have asked for a better one. Patience and understanding, gentleness and care—he was everything she could have dreamed of in a secret lover. Everything she could have wanted in a man.

He worshiped every inch of her body and let her explore every inch of his. Her fascination with his muscles, his ridges and valleys, so different from her own, made him smile.

Even his scars lured her to touch, trace, taste. He let her do whatever she wished with every part of him—body and soul.

She knew better than to ask where this knife slash had come from, to demand why that bullet hole had been made, to let him see the tear that dripped onto the scar at his back that no weapon she'd ever seen could match.

The perfection of her skin seemed to entice him as much as the marks on his enticed her. He ran his mouth from her toes to her eyes and back again, murmuring nonsense against her belly, tracing his tongue along her knee, finding places she'd never thought of before and making them scream to be touched again.

He had more patience than any man she'd ever known; not that she'd known so very many. He caressed her and kissed her, whispering what he would do and how she would feel, how he would feel, until she wanted to scream for him to do those things now.

And when he shifted, just enough, to fit himself in the hollow that wept with emptiness, she gasped and arched, calling him by the only name she knew.

"Mary," he murmured, the cadence of his voice trilling along her sensitive skin like a spring breeze. "Once we go farther, there's no going back. Right now I can still stop." He kissed her damp brow, and she rubbed her forehead along his lips. "All you have to do is ask."

When she opened her eyes, his were close enough for her to see yellow flecks amid the green. His face was tense, his body the same, but his eyes were gentle. If she said no, even now, flesh-to-flesh, heart-to-heart, hill-to-valley, he would not touch her anymore.

She ran her hand over the curve of his buttock, pulling him tighter against her. He started, and his eyes widened in shock before he grinned. "I guess that's as good an answer as any."

They kissed, their mouths still curved on a smile, and he moved forward again, probing gently but firmly at her entrance. On a sigh she welcomed his tongue into her mouth, his body into hers.

Deeper, harder, fuller, he stretched her, sinking into an incredible emptiness she'd never known was there until he filled it. Then he stopped.

She clutched his back, and his shoulders trembled. "Reese?"

"You know what happens now, don't you?"

"Not exactly." She arched, and he slid deeper, stopping at the edge of something she couldn't quite understand.

He cursed, shifted to the side, and put a hand on her hip, holding her still even as she ached to move. "This is going to hurt, Mary, just for a minute."

"Fine." Her head thrashed on the pillow. Her body was on fire. She didn't care what happened as long as
something
did.

He took a deep breath and the movement rubbed their bellies together. She moaned. He plunged forward, and her eyes shot open as something broke then gave within her.

His mouth took hers, swallowing her cry, kissing her and tasting her until she thought of nothing but the kiss. Then he began to move.

He had been right. It had only hurt for a minute.

She couldn't think; she could only feel. Empty, full, him, her, harder, faster. Something... something... something....
What?

His mouth left hers. His breath licked her skin; his lips nuzzled at the fullness of her breast. Her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him to her, never wanting to let go.

Then he plunged one last time, deeper than all the other times, and she felt a pulse so far inside that it touched off an answering quake within her. His lips closed over her nipple and he suckled, hard. She cried out as the world went bright and shiny behind her closed eyes, and all her questions suddenly had a single answer.

Them.

Chapter 14