Love, Come to Me(78)

“Heath, sit up here and let me help you off with your boots.”

“No . . . you don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do, because you’ll never get them off by yourself.”

Mumbling a curse, Heath relinquished the warm softness of her lap and pulled himself up onto the bed, holding one foot out for her to take hold of. She grasped the boot firmly and tried to work it off, finding that Heath’s effort to help by wiggling his toes hindered her progress considerably. After struggling for a few minutes, one boot came off, and then the other.

“You probably haven’t eaten anything all day,” she fretted, watching as Heath allowed himself to sprawl on the mattress with outflung arms.

“No.”

“So this is what happens when you fill an empty stomach with a pint of corn whiskey.” She crawled up beside him and undid his necktie. “I’ve never seen anyone drink that like it was water. I told you not to have any more.” As she scolded him gently, she went through the laborious process of undressing him. “Here, pull your arm out of that sleeve—”

“I can’t.”

“Heath, if you would just try—”

“I can’t. You didn’t unbutton it.”

“I’m glad you don’t drink very often, because I wouldn’t like having to do this for you all the time—”

“You’re not very good at it,” he said, clinging possessively to a lock of her hair as she tugged the hem of his shirt out of his pants.

“Well, I’m hardly going to apologize for my lack of experience at undressing men. My goodness, you’re heavy.” It was only with determination and a great deal of effort that Lucy finished stripping his clothes off, pausing only briefly to admire the muscled slope of his torso before reaching for a pillow. “Now, if we can just get you under the covers—”

“Cinda,” he said unsteadily, “I told you . . . to act like my wife . . . before . . . but I meant only if you . . . you know I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” she murmured, vaguely startled by his concern. Had he really been worrying about that, wondering if her responses to him were manufactured out of a sense of duty? You impossible man, she thought with a sudden rush of warmth, how can you know me so well in some ways and so little in others?

Her gaze was caught and trapped by his. His eyes were brilliant with an azure smolder, the heat of a summer sky, and she felt a tender throbbing of response deep inside. He rolled over and pulled her underneath him with surprising ease.

“You need to sleep.” She put her hands against his hard, bare chest.

“No.”

His mouth crushed hers in a hot, whiskey-flavored kiss, allowing her no chance to speak. She felt the violent pounding of his heart underneath her palm, and the tentative words of refusal she had meant to say vanished like a wisp of smoke. The ragged bonds of restraint snapped. His lips, demanding and plundering, took hers. His body straddled hers as he cradled her head in his hands, and he was rough in his desperation. He held her with bruising force, kissing her as if he were drinking of life itself, like a battered survivor, clinging to the only truth he knew.

She admitted to herself at last that she loved him. Love welled through her body, filling her br**sts, seeping through her throat, swirling through her head until she was dizzy. Love seemed to pour out of her fingertips as she slid her hands across his shoulders. Surely he could taste it on her lips, feel it thrilling inside her body. She was stunned at how much time it had taken to recognize it. Her entire life had been a prelude to this moment.

“I need you,” he groaned, and his mouth dragged over hers again and again, in intense, punishing kisses that robbed her of breath. Her lungs fought to accommodate a deep gulp of air, but her corset was as tight as a band of steel. Defenseless in his forceful grip, she offered her mouth and body freely, in an effort to show him that she was his. She would not deny him. But his desire was too savage, too elemental to pacify. She tried to unfasten the row of tiny buttons at her midriff, fumbling helplessly, but suddenly his hands were there, and he ripped the front of her dress open with a simple, savage tug. For once, her corset laces came undone easily.

Lucy twisted free of the remnants of her bodice and the binding stays, shivering as her na**d br**sts pressed against his hard, tanned flesh. His hands claimed her greedily, his touch lusty and sure as he rubbed her ni**les into hard, delicate buds. His uneven breath feathered against her neck, and she turned her face to his, nuzzling his lean cheek with her lips, clumsily seeking his mouth. She gave a half-stifled moan as he kissed her, the sound low and resonant against his lips. They had known each other intimately, as husband and wife, countless times. He had held her with tenderness and passion, but never with such rampant wildness.

The lower half of her body was swathed heavily in mounds of clothes. Impatiently he ripped and tugged until she was freed from the burdensome mass, and her pale skin gleamed in the early-evening light. She stretched the full length of her body along his, pressing her loins against the burning, turgid swell of his manhood. “I want you,” she whispered against his shoulder. “I want to give you whatever you need . . . whatever you want . . .”

His hand glided over her hip to the soft, pulsing ache between her legs, and he slipped the tip of his finger inside her, stroking the sleek heat of her. Lucy whimpered, moving her trembling thighs apart, burying her face in his throat in unconscious pleading. She slid her damp palms over the hard-textured surface of his back, digging the heels of her hands into the flexing muscles as his fingertip explored the secret hollow of her body. Always before, he had been aware of the exquisite fragility of her flesh, and there had been an element of self-restraint in his touch, as if he had been afraid he would hurt her. Now all constraints were gone, all deliberation had vanished. He lowered his h*ps to her and thrust into her violently, sending shocks of pleasure through her as their flesh merged. She groaned and shifted against him, her body expanding to hold him in a firm, hungry grasp. Submerged in a wave of unending sweetness, they tangled together more intimately, chaining each other with kisses and seeking caresses. Heath hooked his hands around the backs of her knees, lifting them and urging her legs to wrap around his hips. He whispered her name as if it were a love word, and his mouth drifted through the tear tracks on her face. They would not yield their secrets. Oh, but love . . .