Black Hills

the ice blue that had always snagged her heart, caught hers. “A hot bath makes you feel better. This is more, Lil. We’ll both have to deal with that.”
    When his mouth took hers it wasn’t for comfort, or to soothe, but to ignite. So that slow simmer, never fully banked, came roaring back to full, furious flame.
    Peace of mind? Had she thought she would find peace here, with him? There would be no peace with the war raging between them, inside her. Engulfed, she gave herself to it, and to him.
    Maybe this time the battle would be done, and that constant flame inside her finally, finally burned out.
    The need rose up, riding along her skin, filling her breasts, her belly with heat. Familiar, perhaps. But more and less than what had been. Had his hands been so sure, his mouth so urgent?
    She was still wound around him when he strode to the bed. The lights from the compound slanted through the slats of her blinds, thin bars of light that fell over the bed, over her when he set her on the edge. A kind of cage, she supposed. Well, she walked into it willingly.
    He gripped her boot, tugged. She heard herself laugh, nervous joy, as he pulled off the other. Then he reached down to unbutton her flannel shirt.
    “Unbraid your hair.” He drew the shirt off. “Please.”
    She lifted her arms, slid the tie at the end of her braid onto her wrist out of habit, and loosened her braid as he took off his shirt.
    “No, I’ll do that,” he said as she started to comb her fingers through her hair.
    “I’d think about your hair, the way it feels and smells, the way it looks after I’ve had my hands in it. All that midnight hair.”
    He wrapped her hair around his fist, tugged so that her face tipped up to his. The gesture, the flare of heat in his eyes spoke as much of temper as passion. “I’d see you when you weren’t there. Like a damn ghost. A glimpse in a crowd, a tease out of the corner of my eye, disappearing around a corner. You were everywhere.”
    She started to shake her head, but he tightened his grip. For an instant she saw that anger flash, then he released her hair. “Now you’re here,” he said, and drew the thermal shirt over her head.
    “I’ve been here.”
    No, he thought. No. But she was here now. Aroused, a little annoyed, just as he was. To please himself, to pleasure her, he traced his fingers down her collarbone, over the subtle swell of her breasts. The girl he’d known had been a willow stem. She’d bloomed without him.
    She shivered at his touch; he’d wanted her to.
    Then he pressed the heel of his hand to her forehead, gave her a light shove onto her back. And made her laugh again.
    “Mr. Smooth,” she said, then he was on her, his body pressing her into the mattress. “You’ve put on a few pounds.”
    “You too.”
    “Really?”
    “In interesting places.”
    She smiled a little, and combed her fingers through his hair as he had with hers. “Well, it’s been a while.”
    “I think I remember how everything works. How you work.”
    He brushed his lips to hers, a teasing, then a sinking, sinking until it was drowning deep. His hands were on her, reminding her what it had been, confusing her with what it was now.
    Strong, hard, working hands, sliding over her, pressing, molding until her breath quickened, until past and present were one brilliant blur over her senses.
    He flipped open her bra, tugged it aside, and had her—hands and mouth, teeth and tongue—so quickened breaths became gasps, gasps became moans. She dragged at his thermal, yanking it up and away, impatient now to feel him. Strong back, ridges of muscle. New and fascinating.
    He’d been a boy, just a boy really, when last she’d touched him like this. It was a man under her hands now, a man whose body pressed down on hers.
    In the dark, barred with light, they rediscovered each other. A curve, an angle, a new point of pleasure. Her fingers skimmed over a scar that hadn’t been there before. And she whispered his name as his lips raced frantically down her body.
    She quivered when he unbuttoned her jeans, hitched her hips up to help him pull them away. Rolled with him over the bed as they hurried to strip off every barrier.
    Outside one of the cats called out, a wild thing prowling the dark. He took her there, into the dark, and what was wild in her cried out, released in harsh and primitive pleasure.
    She moved for him, and with him, her eyes a gleam in the shadows. Everything he’d found and lost,