"I sure didn't think… I mean with you seeing… Listen, are you just feeling sorry for me, or—"
"Louise? It's cold sitting here. Could you just say yes or no?"
"Yes!" Her laugh was throaty and floated on the frosty air with the warmth of a promise. "Yes, yes, yes!"
As he drove the wagon toward the shed, it occurred to him that he'd made love to her with reluctance, and he'd made love to her in anger. Tonight was the first time he would make love to her because he truly wanted to. And damned if he wasn't as surprised as she that it would happen tonight.
Anticipation made his fingers tremble as he unhitched the wagon and turned the horses into the corral.
He was so intent on the image of finding Louise naked in his bed that he didn't consider the significance of the snowflakes silently spinning out of the black sky. He didn't think of anything but her.
When he entered the bedroom, she was in bed, the covers pulled up under her chin, her brown hair loose on the pillow. Red tinted her cheeks, and her eyes were wide and round.
"You aren't hiding that wretched nightgown under those blankets, are you?" Smiling, he sat on the vanity bench and pulled off his boots and wiggled his toes with a sigh of pleasure.
"I'm naked as the day I was born," she whispered. The red in her cheeks turned fiery.
What an odd woman she was, he thought as he pulled off his trousers and unbuttoned his shirt. She dressed and undressed in the closet, didn't display an inch of flesh if she could cover it. She was not flirtatious or a tease. In fact, he would have said that modesty formed one of her defining traits. Yet, in his dark moment she had bared herself to him and given him the most erotic evening of his life. He would never forget that night on the kitchen floor He wanted to give her a night that she wouldn't forget.
Sliding beneath the blankets, he spooned his body around her to warm the chill on his skin. Instantly he felt himself respond to the firm heat of her nakedness.
"Louise?" he murmured against the nape of her neck after he pushed aside her hair. "There's going to be lots of dawdling tonight."
"What does that mean?" Suspicion placed a wobble in her voice, and he felt her stiffen.
"You'll have to wait and see." He let his breath flow across the tender skin beneath her ear, and he slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her closer into the hard curve of his body.
"You didn't blow out the lamp."
"No, I didn't." He ran his hand along the curve of her thigh, dipped to the hollow of her waist, then teased his fingers up her rib cage, moving his palm to her arm and up to her shoulder. A little puff of breath blew between her lips and he knew she had expected him to touch her breasts. And he would.
Eventually.
Nuzzling her, he moved his lips on the nape of her neck, traveling to her ear, then rising above her to follow the line of her jaw. She smelled like apple cider as she had earlier, but there was another scent, a deeper fragrance that was hers alone. It was a warm earthy scent that aroused him on a primitive level, the scent of woman. Turning her beneath his hands, he followed her jaw with his lips, kissing the corners of her lips, pulling slightly away when she would have returned his kiss.
Now, his mouth found her collarbone and traveled to the hollow of her throat. He pressed his tongue against the wild throbbing of her pulse.
"Oh my God." Her hands started to rise, but he gently pressed them back to her sides. "Am I supposed to do something?" she asked in a husky murmur.
"Just relax." Lifting away from her, he gazed down at her full, magnificent breasts. Then he stroked his thumbs across budding nipples and felt them harden like stones.
She made a choked sound. "How am I going to relax with you doing… what you're doing!" Her back arched, lifting her breasts to his hands, but he lowered his mouth instead. "What are you …? Oh Max!
Oh my!" Heat flooded her skin, and her hands made a helpless fluttering motion near her waist.
"Shhh," he said, smiling as he drew her nipple into his mouth and heard her gasp. Her fingers found his hair and dug into his scalp. As he stroked his tongue across and around the tip of her breast, he heard her breathing grow ragged, and she couldn't hold her body still. Her fingers flew around his head and shoulders; her hips rocked and tried to turn toward him.
When her skin felt hot enough to burst into flame, he ran his hand across her lower belly and teased his fingers through the soft brown curls between her legs.
"Oh!" She tried to sit up, but he pressed her back, and returned his hand to the hot, moist mystery. "Oh Max. Oh Max."
He caressed her, stroked her, teased, and tasted until her body trembled and her breath came in mindless gasps midway between a sob and a moan. She no longer tried to pull the blankets over them, no longer resisted his mouth and hands as he explored her.
There was joy in awakening her body, and in taking her mind to the edge of new and vivid, feverish sensations, then easing away and rising to kiss her lips and gaze into her stunned eyes. "I'm going to kiss every inch of you," he whispered against her lips.
Her eyes flared wide. "Every inch?" She wet her lips. "Every… no, no, don't do that."
But he did, taking his time, tasting deep of her, leading her along paths she had not traveled. And when he felt her shudder deeply and cry his name, he held her tightly in his arms until the shudders subsided and she lay limp against him, her eyes dark with amazement.
