Merry and Bright(47)

He’d never in a million years imagined getting stuck in Colorado. Or liking it. But there was real life out here, adventure in every single moment. Not the drudge of an office, or any office politics, but warmth and affection from the people he was coming to know, and an easy, simple joy in the chores to run the place, which were anything but simple—

“Danny,” Hope said tightly, running her hands down his body, clearly checking him for broken bones.

It seemed certain things were becoming habit with him—a habit he could get used to.

“Talk to me,” she demanded.

“If I told you where it hurt, would you—”

“Oh, God. Can you make it inside?” Without waiting for an answer, she slipped her arm around his waist and tried to take all his weight as she led him to the back door. “Almost there—”

“Hope, I was only kidding—”

She took him through the kitchen, down the hallway into her bedroom. She pulled him past her bed and into her bathroom. “You’re icing up. Gotta get you out of those clothes.”

“Hope—”

“Hold on.” She cranked on the hot water and then turning back to him, tugged off his jacket, knit cap, gloves. But it wasn’t until she dropped to her knees in front of him that his breath backed up in his throat.

“Lift up,” she said, and he realized she’d untied his boots. Before he could say a word, she leaned past him to check the water temp. “Good,” she said to herself.

Shaking his head on a low laugh, he reached down and pulled her up.

She immediately went to work on unbuttoning his shirt, but because the feel of her hands on him set him back about thirty IQ points, it took him a minute to say her name again.

By then she had his shirt off and her hands were at the zipper of his pants, except if she got them off, she wasn’t going to find an injured man, but a hot, aroused one—

She shoved down his pants, then stared at his erection. “Well, hello there.”

“Yeah. I’m not hurt, Hope.”

“I’m beginning to get that,” she murmured, still looking at the part of him that was the happiest to be naked, which pretty much waved hello at her. “Did you fall off that roof so I’d sleep with you again?”

“Ha—Jesus,” he managed when she wrapped her hand around him and slowly stroked. “I—”

“Get in the shower, Danny.” Letting go of him, Hope put a hand to his chest and pushed him toward the steaming shower. Then she pulled off her shirt.

Never one to argue with a woman who was stripping, he took a step back into the water, not taking his eyes off her as she discarded her boots, unzipped her jeans, and shimmied out of them.

Gaze locked on his, she unhooked her bra, wriggled out of her panties, and then stepped into the shower.

“Look at you,” he whispered against her mouth, pleasure suffusing him as their now wet bodies slid up against each other. “You’re so beautiful, Hope.”

“So are you. Who’d have thought it, but I can’t keep my hands off you, Genius Boy.”

With the hot water raining over them, Hope moved her hands to his face, so close he could feel her gentle breath on his skin. “This is nice,” she whispered.

Nice. It was, but he hoped to hell he could do better than nice. Hope’s breasts were against his chest, her belly and thighs flush to his, pressing her back against the wall to free up his hands, which he skimmed up her body.

Her breath came out in a whoosh, and she melted against him. “I like it when you take charge,” she murmured.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Then turn around.”

“Um . . . what?”

Hands on her hips, he twisted her around so that she was now facing the wall.

“Danny—”

“Shh.” He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck, loving how she shivered as he took his mouth on a cruise downward, over the slim arch of her spine, to the sweetest ass known to man. He kissed the backs of her thighs, and then in between, urging her legs open so he could take her over the edge, which she let him do with ego-stroking ease. God. God, he thought as she came for him with some more of those sexy helpless little whimpers she made in the throes. He didn’t want this to be just a hot weekend affair.

Not when for him it was already so, so much more.

Still breathing heavily, she turned around to face him again, pulling him up to kiss his jaw, his throat, whatever she could reach, her mouth telling him that he was the best thing to happen to her since sliced bread, and he could have told her that it was the same for him. This, with her, was the rightest thing in his life. Her arms were wrapped tightly around him, so tightly he could scarcely breathe, and he didn’t care. Closing his eyes, he bent closer and tried to breathe her in as he lost himself in her. “Hope . . .”

“This is crazy, right? How much we want each other.”

“I know something even crazier.” He cupped her face. “How I feel about you. Hope, I—”

She yanked his mouth back to hers, kissing him deaf, blind, and dumb. Waaaay back in some dim recess of his mind he understood that she wasn’t ready to hear his feelings, but then she wrapped her legs around his waist so that he could enter her. “I have three condoms left,” she whispered in his ear just before she lightly sank her teeth into his earlobe.