Birthright

the button on her ancient trousers.
    His lips pressed lightly, just above her waist, and made her moan.
    “Lift your hips,” he told her, and drew the worn cotton down her legs.
    He tugged off her boots, her socks. Then began to rub her feet.
    Now she groaned.
    “There was a time when I could barter a foot rub for any sort of exotic sexual favor.”
    She opened one eye, saw him grinning at her. “What did you have in mind?”
    “I’ll let you know.” He pressed the heel of his hand to her arch, watched her lashes flutter. “Still works, doesn’t it?”
    “Oh yeah. I still figure the first true orgasm started with the feet.”
    “I like your feet. They’re small, almost delicate.” He ran his teeth along the side, grinned again when her body jerked. “And very sensitive. Then there’s your legs.”
    He let his mouth roam over her ankle, up her calf. “Just can’t say enough about your legs.”
    Then suddenly, he pressed his face to her belly. “Christ, Callie, you smell the same. I’d wake up smelling you when you were a thousand miles away. Wake up wanting you,” he murmured and captured her mouth with his.
    Every day, every night, he thought as that scent surrounded him. Haunting him and taunting him until he’d wished with every fiber of his being he could hate her for it.
    Now she was here, her arms tight around him, her mouth eager under his. And it made him weak.
    Love for her blew through him and left him helpless.
    His hand came up to cup her face. His lips softened, gentled on hers.
    The change in tone had her eyes opening again. “Jake.”
    “Ssh.” He laid a kiss of utter tenderness in the hollow of her throat. “Don’t think,” he repeated. “Just feel.”
    When his mouth came back to hers in a kiss of lingering sweetness, she went pliant under him.
    A surrender, he realized. Both of them surrendering in a way they never had before. Her heart was thudding thickly under his lips, and her breath was slow and ragged. And still the tenderness for her drifted over desire like a mist.
    The air was so heavy, she thought. So heavy, so warm. So soft. It was gliding over her, and she over it to a world where there was only pleasure.
    He’d taken her there.
    She sighed his name as his lips, his tongue, his hands slid over her, as they soothed and aroused, calmed and awakened. When his lips found hers again, when they lingered as if there were nothing more vital in the world than that single kiss, her heart simply melted.
    The feel of him under her hands, that long, lean torso when he stripped his shirt away. The narrow hips and hard muscles. His body excited her, and knowing it was hers, hers for the taking brought her unbearable pleasure.
    She shuddered with it, nipped her teeth into his shoulder when the pressure built. “Jake.”
    “Not fast this time.” He stroked down her, over her, tormenting them both. “Fast is too easy.”
    Time, nothing but time. The scent of her, the quiver of her body, the heat that was beginning to pump out of her skin. He wanted all of that, and so much more.
    Having her now erased every lonely hour without her.
    He pressed his lips to her throat, her shoulder, her mouth, let the need for her rage through him. As he nudged her over the first peak, her strangled cry beat in his blood.
    Now they watched each other as he slid inside her, watched as they began to move together. He saw her eyes blur, both pleasure and tears as he gripped her hands with his.
    “Stay with me.” He crushed his mouth to hers. “Stay with me.”
    He stripped her heart bare. She wondered he didn’t feel it quivering in his hand. She wondered he couldn’t see it on her face as the tears welled in her eyes.
    So she closed them, kept her hands in his, stayed with him. Stayed with him. And was with him still when they shattered.
    S he slept, deeply for an hour, then fitfully as dreams began to chase her. In the woods, in the dark, in the cold water. It closed over her head, and hands tugged her in opposite directions.
    She couldn’t pull free of them, couldn’t kick her way free to the surface. Couldn’t breathe.
    As she struggled, the water shifted, changed, weighed down and became a grave.
    She woke with a start, strangling for breath. The trailer was dark, chilly. There was a thin cover tangled around her legs, and she was alone.
    Panicked, she leaped up, ramming a hip against the table, stumbling for the door. Her throat was closed, forcing her to gasp and gulp for air as