Stevie Lee (13 page)

The moon made a silvery track across her creamy skin, lighting a path for his hand to follow. He caressed the ripe fullness of her breasts, felt the weight and softness of each, all the while wondering how he’d lasted this long without her.

“Stevie,” he spoke her name gently, sliding his hand up her chest and throat, tilting her chin so he could see into her eyes. They were wide and soft, dark and mysterious in the starlight, and they filled him with longing. “I’ve never been in love before, but I’m in love now. I don’t know how it happened, or why, or what it all means . . . besides this”—with the slightest of pressures on the back of her neck, he drew her closer and buried his head in the silky veil of hair falling over her shoulder—“but I want to know, Stevie. I want you to teach me.” His mouth opened over her ear, soft and wet, sending shock waves coursing over her body. “Teach me how to love you,” he whispered. “How to make love to you.”

Every word seared his message on her heart and lit a flame deep inside her. Delicately his tongue traced the outside of her ear. Gently his teeth gnawed a path along her jaw to her mouth.

“Teach me, Stevie.” His breath warmed her lips. “And I’ll teach you how to make love to me.”

And so he began, taking her hands in his and showing her the softness of his skin and the hardness of the muscles beneath. The heated warmth of his body pressed against her breasts played a sensory counterpoint to the cooler air blowing across her face and shoulders. Stevie rubbed against him, her mouth finding the hollow curve of his collarbone, and felt his sharp intake of breath in the contraction of his chest. This was where she belonged, with her fantasies coming to life in her arms. Every touch, every kiss brought a response, urging her on to greater exploration of the wonder of Halsey Morgan.

He sighed when she traced the column of his throat with her tongue, his eyes drifting closed and his head falling back. His skin was salty and sweet, warm and exciting. He groaned when her fingers splayed across and lingered on the tightness of his abdomen. Touch for touch, his body met each foray of her hands, opened fully for her, exquisitely in tune with her desires.

The rest of the night flowed around them in an abundance of earth’s nature and the universe’s far-off lights. Darkness and wilderness surrounded them in a veil of privacy on the porch, leaving them free to find each other.

From the purity of the high Himalayas to the sultriness of a Calcutta night, Hal had discovered nothing to equal the magic silkiness of a half-naked Stevie Lee giving herself to him. She let him taste the textures of her skin, her hands rough from work, her breasts and throat tantalizing with their softness. She moaned her pleasure when he opened her jeans, and sighed deeply when he brought her against him.

Her hands tangled through the flaxen gold of his hair as she pulled his mouth down on hers, and with his kiss, slow and sweet, she felt herself melt inside. He was the man she needed, the love she’d been waiting for.

Hal felt her softening in his arms and held her closer, but it wasn’t close enough. He was torn between taking her or continuing this gentle game of pleasure they were playing. He’d been without either for so long. He wanted everything, wanted her to tease him and touch him until he reached the edge, then bring him back down and start all over again—and he told her, in the lowest of whispers, his mouth moving across the curve of her brow.

“Ah, yes, Stevie,” he said huskily as her fingers moved down the front of his jeans. “Yes.” Instinct and desire guided her hand, and when she hesitated, Hal guided her again, showing her just the way he needed her, how much he wanted her.

He was bare beneath his pants, giving her free access to seek the muscled curves of his back, the tender planes of his hipbones, and the special softness of the skin at the tops of his thighs. Slowly her hands stroked inward, meeting to hold him with her palm and fingertips. She touched his arousal, and her breath caught in her throat, electrifying her emotions and quickening her pulse. This time, though, instead of sinking into desire, Stevie found herself lifting to meet him.

A trail of yearning kisses drew her higher even as Hal pulled her between his legs. Their bodies met, his nakedness against her lace, his rhythm matching hers in gentle surges. A tightening pleasure stretched them to the edge of control. His kisses became wilder and found a matching abandon in the erotic track of her tongue following his jaw to his ear—until he couldn’t take anymore.

“Stevie?”

“Mmmm,” she murmured.

He rose against her, cupping her face in his hands. “You feel so good, so right.” His thumbs slowly traced the high curve of her cheeks, his skin rough and calloused against the satiny softness of hers. Passion-smudged eyes drifted closed under the gentleness of his touch. His mouth lowered for the lightest of kisses on her full, sweet mouth. “I love you, Stevie Lee. You’re warm and wonderful and beautiful . . . and I love you.” His breath whispered across her lips, and his voice lowered to a raspy drawl. “Come with me.”

Stevie felt his hand slide down her arm and his fingers entwine with hers. Once was enough for his request. She willingly went with him inside the cabin, her head resting on his shoulder, her heart full of tenderness and desire.

A shaft of moonlight spilled through his bedroom window, laying across his rumpled sheets and quilts in silver and shadow. Without a word he shrugged out of his shirt, letting it fall to the floor as he reached for the pale pink cotton draped over her breasts. His hands slid over her shoulders, pushing the cloth away even as he pulled her against his chest.

Her shirt joined his, and after a long searching kiss, the rest of their clothes followed, piece by piece until he held her naked in his arms. Stevie’s breath quickened under the lazy track of his mouth up the side of her neck, the heated caresses of his hands down the length of her back.

“Hal,” she sighed the name of her love, feeling his body come alive against hers. “You, too, are so very beautiful”—with the backs of her fingers she stroked the taut planes of his abdomen—“when I touch you here, and here . . .” her voice broke softly with the ache of wanting.

Hal understood every nuance of her emotions. They pulsed through him in waves as his mouth stole the rest of her words. The tension and excitement she created needed no more explanation than the riot of his senses, the craving in his soul to be one with her.

In the echoing passion of her kiss, he found the answers to love. In the arching of her body against his, he found the answers to loneliness. And touch by touch he gave everything he found back to her.

The muscles in his arms tightened with the strength to carry her to the bed and to hold her beneath him and to love her completely, slowly, and languorously while her satin soft thighs wrapped around his waist. He never wanted to stop, he wanted to be inside her forever.

“Stevie . . . open your eyes.”

Her response revealed dove-gray eyes darkened by passion and need, shadowed by sooty lashes.

“Ah, yes.” He groaned, feeling her draw him deeper and higher.

The action came naturally, easily, almost desperately, and suddenly she was entering unexplored territory inside of herself, new levels of sensation she hadn’t thought existed.

Hal saw the wonder widen her eyes, and the barest of smiles played at the corner of his mouth.

“Hal, I never . . .” she said with a gasp.

“Shh,” he reassured her softly, kissing her mouth, the side of her nose, the curve of her brow. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere without you . . . not tonight . . . not tonight, Stevie.” His words picked up the cadence of his body, turning his whispers into an aural assault on her senses. From every quarter he plied her with the sights, sounds, and physical pleasures of his love.

Stevie felt the world slip farther and farther away, leaving her with only one crucial realm of awareness—Halsey Morgan. Indigo eyes held hers with a sultry gleam. Soft, golden hair brushed across her skin. Strong arms and hands flexed around her and caressed her, always pulling her closer. He left no part of her untouched, from the sentient layer of her skin to the deepest recesses of her heart. He loved her forever, as he’d promised, until the lines between her thoughts and feelings, the differences between thinking and touching, vanished into the fantasy of her wildest dreams. Wave after wave of the purest pleasure coursed through her body, binding her to him more tightly than their entwined limbs.

For long moments afterward, he continued to kiss her, each touch of his lips gentler than the one before, and ever so slowly Stevie felt the tension leave his body and a new peace overcome them both.

“Ah, Stevie, you are so sweet.” He sighed in her ear, his fingers brushing sweat-dampened tendrils of hair away from her face. “So very sweet. I needed to love you a long time ago.”

She replied silently with a trail of soft wet kisses along his throat. Even sated with pleasure, she couldn’t get enough of him. The weight of him pressing her into the bed gave her a tranquil sense of security. The overheated, masculine scent of him surrounded her in a veil of private sensuality.

Free from common sense restraints and the frantic urges of desire, she allowed her mouth and hands to leisurely explore every hardened curve of his body: The broadness of his shoulders, the corded strength of his arms, the sun-browned satin quality of his skin.

Hal stretched under her stroking, tightening and releasing each muscle in turn as her slender fingers kneaded his body. “Mmm, that feels good.”

“Sure does,” she said, sighing. With the back of her hand she traced the angle of his jaw up to the shaggy mane of his hair, reveling in the closeness they shared. A year of marriage had given her nothing in comparison, nothing except betrayal, a measure of heartache, and an inadequate idea of the pleasure to be found with a man. But she’d found it with this man whom she’d so easily discounted as a mere detail in her desire to make a good deal on his property.

The thought brought with it an instant, overwhelming sense of guilt and dropped a shadow over her happiness. His lovemaking had left her emotionally vulnerable, too vulnerable to hide from her own selfish, heartless motives.
Bad news, Stevie. Halsey Morgan is alive . . . Sure he follows his own star —right off the edge of the earth . . . Pukapuka? Bora Bora? What does it matter? They say it’s his boat all right.

The memories brought a stark realization crashing down on top of her guilt. She might have lost him. If he’d died, she’d have seventy thousand dollars in her hands instead of the warm, powerful body she held so closely. The thought scared her senseless.

“Hal—” her voice caught on a broken whisper. “You could have died.”

His hand stopped in mid-caress, and a pair of quizzically wary blue eyes slowly lifted to meet hers. “Just now, you mean?”

“On the boat.”

“Oh, that.” Visible relief brought a quick grin to his mouth. “Not really, Stevie. I would have had to work at it,” He dismissed her fears with a shrug and went back to enjoying the beauty and softness of her body.

“Hal, I mean it. You might not have comeback.”

“I always come back,” he said easily, reaching up and brushing his thumb across her cheek. “Sometimes it just takes longer than others.”

“But—”

“No buts about it, I always come back—always,” he repeated for her sake, feeling her distress and wondering what had brought it on. He didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“I’m sorry, Hal. I’ve been selfish and awful. All the time you were suffering on that island I wasn’t even thinking of you. Only of myself and all the money I’d make”—a small, choking sob broke through on a gasp—“and not once did I think of you and what you were going through. I didn’t even think of you as a person, just a meal ticket out of here. And now I’m . . . I’m . . .”

“Stevie, Stevie.” He drew his fingertip across her lower lip, effectively silencing her with his touch. “Hey, come on now. You didn’t even know me. And believe me, if I’d known you, I’d have been working a lot harder to get back here.”

“You could have died,” she said, her voice full of sorrow, her eyes wide and filling with tears.

What she said was true, as Hal knew only too well, but faced with her sadness he decided to gloss over the bare facts. Because, quite honestly, he didn’t understand why she was being so hard on herself. He’d certainly run into rougher characters, people who had had real and dangerous designs on his continued existence. In contrast sweet Stevie Lee filled his life with more love than he’d ever expected to find. She easily deserved the best of him.

“Stevie, I hate to disappoint you, but being stranded in the South Pacific wasn’t all that bad,” he said with a smooth smile crooking one side of his mouth. “Delilah was a little rough on me, but the island . . . ah, darlin’, she was paradise. Palm trees swaying over the beaches. Sunsets that went to the end of the world. I had enough of
Freedom
left to supply myself with the basics, and the ocean came up with a few luxuries every now and then. If you’d been there, it would have been perfect.” There, he thought, that’s pretty much the whole story in a nutshell, without the gory details but also without any lies.

Stevie listened to every word, imagining the paradise he described as she absently wiped the moisture off her cheeks. When he finished, she asked, “Exactly how much of your boat did you have left?” She remembered clearly the stories about the wooden planks washing up in French Polynesia, the ones supposedly belonging to his boat.

Stifling a sigh, Hal glanced up to a point somewhere beyond those curious gray eyes and weighed the question in his mind. He tried it one way, then another, and still didn’t come up with a way to disguise the facts.

“About half,” he finally admitted.

His answer was met with silence, then a soft screech.
“Half?”

“Yeah. But it was the big half.”

“Half?”

“It was definitely the big half. A really huge half now that I think about it. I had the whole bow, most of port, and a good section of starboard. Mostly I was missing a shave or two off the stern. If I hadn’t lost the mast, there’s no telling how long I could have held out.”