Only 06 - Winter Fire

I’ve been cold so long …
    His lips brushed over hers, sipping at the gentle curve of her sleeping smile. His fingers eased carefully, completely into her hair, seeking the warmth beneath the cool strands. When he could get no closer to the heat of her, he held her head cupped in his hands, warming himself.
    Sarah sighed and moved her head slightly, as though savoring the feel of his hands.
    A shiver that had nothing to do with cold went through his body. It was desire and something more, something frightening stirring beneath the years of bleak denial.
    But desire was the only thing Case admitted to feeling.
    Desire was something he understood all too well since coming to Lost River ranch.
    Slowly, gently, he shifted until Sarah was lying half beneath him. When the blanket started to slide away, he caught it with his teeth and dragged it back over both of them so that she wouldn’t get cold and wake up.
    There was no danger that he would notice the bite of the winter dawn. The scent and feel and taste of her were burning him alive.
    His fingers went to the laces of her buckskin shirt. He pulled first one lace through a hole, then the other.
    I shouldn’t , he thought despite the hard, heavy running of his blood.
    Yet even as he told himself not to, he eased each lace through one more hole.
    Her skin gleamed like a pearl in the mixture of starlight and softly growing dawn.
    The hell with should or shouldn’t , he thought. If she didn’t want this as much as I do, she wouldn’t be here .
    Surely a widow knows how a man wakes up in the morning .
    That’s why she came crawling under my covers while I was asleep. She knew I wouldn’t make the first move, so she came up on my blind side .
    All I’m doing is returning the favor .
    Case was surprised to find that the lacing on the shirt went down all the way to Sarah’s navel, but he wasn’t complaining. He smoothed the flaps of doeskin aside and pulled back to see her better.
    I’ll just look at her. That’s all. There’s no harm in seeing her .
    She was silver and dusk and softly gleaming curves. A satin shadow lay between her breasts. Velvet darkness gathered at their tips, responding to the cold air flowing beneath the blanket.
    He stifled a groan of raw desire.
    My God. I could spend myself just looking at her .
    But he couldn’t stop looking at her any more than he could stop wanting to feel and taste and explore the softness he had just uncovered.
    He lowered his face between her breasts and took a deep, deep breath.
    It was like breathing a silky kind of fire.
    He stroked his forehead against the firm slope of one breast, then the other. When he discovered a velvety nipple, he lifted his head. His lips opened and his breath sighed out around her.
    With a hunger that was all the greater for his restraint,he drew the tip of her breast into his mouth. Licking, sucking, savoring, he shaped her into a velvety hardness that rubbed against his tongue, begging for more.
    I’ve got to stop this , he thought. I can’t give her what she wants along with the sex .
    Hearth, home, children .
    He lifted his head and saw her breast taut and pouting in the starlight.
    But God knows I can give her body what it hungers for .
    And God knows I’m fool to even think about it .
    He didn’t know how much of a fool he was until he tasted the velvet texture of her nipple again, warming the sweet female flesh, shaping it with his mouth, drawing it even tighter.
    Hunger raced through him like thunder, shaking him. Even as he bent his head to her other breast, he wondered if he could stop at all. There was even sweeter, hotter flesh waiting to be discovered, touched, cherished.
    He needed that. He needed it more than he needed to breathe.
    Sarah made a sleepy, throaty sound. She moved beneath Case, back arching slightly, both giving herself to him and demanding more of his loving.
    The motion was elemental, sensual, provocative, but she didn’t know any of that. All she knew was that she was lying beneath a beautiful, hot sun while liquid rays of warmth caressed her lazily, wonderfully.
    It made no sense, but then, dreams weren’t supposed to.
    All that mattered to her was that she was safe within the sensuous embrace of the dream. She knew it with a certainty that was greater than anything else, even the pleasure spreading through her body in slowly expanding rings.
    Without warning a hot rain of delight