The shirt was stripped, a broad expanse of golden chest uncaged to the sun. Belt and boots, jeans and briefs…she drew in her breath. He waded in the water, and she saw that all of his body had a golden tan. His stomach was flat and his thighs pure sinew and the man moved like liquid. He submerged for a moment under the waterfall. His nakedness was so natural in the country he fit so well, a country of predators and prey. Yet it was also a country where the most vulnerable of wildflowers flourished in such gentle profusion…images flooded her mind in a wild warm rush. He was wading toward her, his eyes burning.
He reached out a hand while his legs still shimmered in water. “You want to talk, Tish?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk. It was all said the moment she took his hand, a sweet whisper of laughter escaping from her at the renewed shock of icy water against her sun-warmed skin. He drew her close, damp hands gliding over her heated body, his mouth blocking out a too-bright sun.
He was wet and shivering cold all over to her baked skin, but the blend was shockingly erotic. His cool lips suddenly heated, claiming hers with a pressure that stole her laughter. The shape of her mouth molded to his, open to the slow curl of his tongue inside, the taste of him filling her until the blend of tastes was the same, no longer hers or his. His palms stroked a silken touch from the nape of her neck down the taper of her spine, down the gentle round of her hips until his fingertips touched thigh. The second time his hands were less teasingly soft, more deliberately arousing in texture and sensation, and the third time he was kneading her skin to his, forcing her swelling breasts to mold to his chest, forcing her hips to the cradle of his.
The kiss ended when he lifted his head to look at her. Her face was still raised to his. Like smooth warm silk his palms cupped her breasts, his thumbs gently rubbing their tips until she closed her eyes in restless need. Gently the palms smoothed their way up, fingering the delicate arch of collarbone, the hollow of her throat. His kiss followed the same trail as he picked her up.
The pool, the rocks, were brilliant with sun, blinding. The stretch of moss held sun-dappled shade, cool on her back, a grazing sensation that fired new primitive sensations within. The smells were invasive-the sweet white flower she’d never named, the rich pungent moss, Kern’s smell of earth and man…and her own.
There was fear-of the power of the man which she saw in his smoke-colored eyes. He would possess her. It was the choice she had made, but there was a different flavor knowing she could not take it back. His touch aroused her like the heat and excitement of danger, but the very old fear came with it. What she craved was in his keeping, and her hands suddenly clenched his shoulders, desperate to feel held, protected. And his hands were gentle, soothing, loving, promising. It seemed so easy suddenly.
His flesh was luscious in her hands, filled with vibrant warmth, blood, life. The beard tickled at her breasts when his mouth loved the hollow of her throat. She writhed, small sounds escaping from her throat. She knew where he wanted touching; she had always known. There had always been a fear of not doing it well, but that fear had no place when everywhere she touched invoked an answering trembling in Kern, an odd pitch in his breathing, his need so sweet, so potent. The song was racing through her veins, out of control. God, Kern, now… “Please…”
“Tell me, Tish,” he ordered roughly. “I need to hear you say it’s different. I want you to say you couldn’t pretend if you tried, couldn’t walk away…”
“Please…”
But he was insistently slow, the brush of his beard sweeping her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. He kissed her from her toes to her lips. And it seemed to take a lifetime. The fire kept building inside, lapping at every sense, and there was now a new fear, an almost frantic fear that it would not subside. When his body shifted over hers she clutched at his shoulders, to force him closer.
“Easy, Tish…”
“Love me, Kern.”
“Come with me,” he murmured. “Come with me, come with me…”
Perhaps the pain was imagined when he pierced through her private core, a sweet pain of promise. Like a virgin’s, this one moment was irretrievable. This erased the past. His body controlled hers, taking her higher, closer to flame. Tears burst from her eyes at the same time her body seemed to explode in pleasure…
For an hour they lay together, hands quietly soothing each other after the avalanche of lovemaking. A red squirrel popped from a corner of the thicket to scold, making them laugh. They shifted then-Kern with his back to a tree and Trisha half reclining, her head against his chest and her eyes half closed. A sleepy lethargy seemed to have overtaken her body, yet she was soaring still in the most gentle way from the explosive emotions she’d found for the first time in loving.
“We’re going to have to get up, you know.” Kern was threading his fingers through her hair in hypnotic fashion.
“Hmm.”
“Although if you continue to lie like that without a stitch on…”
A shy smile touched her lips, but she neither moved nor opened her eyes.
“You know…the Tish I married would never have sun-bathed nude, never have explored such off-the-beaten paths to find a place like this. Five years…” he murmured. “You were loving then and I thought in time the passion would grow. You were so inexperienced, so young…but I never guessed at this kind of hidden fire, at this kind of sexual abandonment.”
The words were sweet but Trisha’s eyes flickered open, uncertain suddenly at his tone.
“How many have there been, Tish?”
Her head lifted from his lap. “Pardon?”
“Men.”
She felt an odd shiver of chill inside, and her throat was suddenly dry-as if she were about to take off on a roller-coaster ride headed downhill. “Do there have to be other men?”
His smoke eyes rested on hers. “From a woman who shied from lights-on at night to wanton in broad daylight? I think it more than likely that men were part of the transition. If you think I’m judging, Tish, I’m not. I find you beautiful, more compelling in passion than any woman I’ve ever known. And tonight we’ll have a bed, not just a stolen moment…”
She drew back almost unconsciously. The urge to cover herself had not been there before, but suddenly it was. She was suddenly aware of bits and pieces of moss clinging to her skin, of a small red graze on her thigh where a stone had scraped, of a heat on her breasts that felt like sunburn.
“You sound to me like you are judging,” she said sharply. And the invitation to tonight’s bed sounded like an invitation extended to a mistress, not a wife. She stood up and took the few steps to her shorts and halter top still in a heap on the flat white rock. “I never asked if you were celibate for five years, Kern. Though the answer would obviously be no. It wouldn’t even have been…healthy if you had. Five years is a long time.”
“I only asked you a question. You don’t have to answer it. But don’t tell me I don’t have the right to ask, Tish.”
She drew up the shorts, buttoned them. But when she tried to slip on the emerald-and-navy top, she winced in discomfort.
“You can wear my shirt.” He lurched up stiffly to a standing position, preparing to get his own clothes.
“No, thank you.” Her head was bent, trying to do the halter straps in a tangle of hair at her neck. Her hands were firmly and suddenly pushed away. He did the straps, smoothed the hair free and then pulled her back against his bare chest. His arms enfolded her in a sensual cage, his lips pressing into her hair.
“Jealousy feels like hell, Tish, and I spoke before thinking. Nothing matters right now; it wasn’t the time to say anything. Smile again for me, bright eyes.”
She smiled, and kissed him. But she heard the “right now.” The trip down the steep slope was quick. The sun was setting in the west, reminding Trisha of how many hours they had stolen. And of how much had suddenly changed-and how much had not. Everything was right when he was holding her close, but Trisha was all too aware that they walked the last steps separately. Without his arms around her she felt oddly cold, unsure, and in some incomprehensible way, despairing.