Only 06 - Winter Fire

needle stitching through your soul. That’s not a real hurt, is it?”
    â€œNo. It’s beautiful. Like you, so strong and yet so careful of me.”
    Case kissed Sarah very gently.
    â€œI’d give my soul to take back what that savage old man did to you,” he whispered.
    Tears came suddenly to her eyes. She touched his mouth tenderly with her fingertips.
    â€œYou can’t go back,” she whispered. “You can only go forward.”
    With a hoarse sound, he put his forehead against her heart and let the steady beat of her life sink into him. Slowly, very slowly, his mouth slid down to her navel. He probed the sensitive hollow with his tongue.
    She gasped in surprise at the sensations radiating through her with each movement of his tongue. His hands circled her breasts and plucked the aching peaks. At the same time he repeated his velvet probing of her navel. Her back arched and she cried out in a low voice.
    An answering wave of passion swept through him, shaking him. Knowing that he was bringing her pleasure for the first time in her life was like a drug to him. Herepeated the caresses again and again and again, tenderly, recklessly.
    He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t even want to try.
    With trembling hands he unfastened her pants and eased them down her hips. Beneath doeskin and muslin, the scent of roses and feminine arousal combined in a heady perfume. He inhaled deeply, dizzy with the sensual possibilities of her body.
    â€œCase?” she asked, her voice uncertain.
    â€œThe sun, the moon, the stars,” he said thickly, looking at her. “Nothing is more beautiful than you.”
    The pale fire of his eyes devoured her, yet his hands and mouth on her body were as gentle as the golden shadow of flame.
    Torn between embarrassment and a heat she had felt only once before, in a dream of sunlight, she watched him caressing her. She didn’t object when he slid her pants completely off her legs and tucked the clothing under her. She didn’t object when he laid his cheek on her body and stroked her belly as he had once stroked her breasts, teeth and tongue and hands combined.
    Then he began smoothing his forehead and bearded cheeks over the top of her thighs. His silky mouth and sensuously hard hands followed. The sweetly conflicting textures were heightened by the tender raking of his teeth.
    Gently he seduced her legs as completely as he had seduced the rest of her body. She forgot that she was vulnerable to his much greater strength. She forgot the cold wind and the hard rock. She forgot everything but the pleasure gathering deep inside her with each kiss he gave her, each caress, each husky word telling her how much he cherished her body.
    The stiffness of her legs melted away before his tender assault. Distantly she realized that he was kissing and stroking the inside of her knees, her thighs, her—
    â€œ Case .”
    He made a hungry, questioning, oddly soothing sound.
    â€œYou’re inside me,” she said in a high voice.
    â€œGod, yes. You’re pure honey.”
    He moved his hand again, slowly.
    Satin heat flowed once more.
    â€œHoney and fire enough to melt winter itself,” he whispered.
    She tried to speak. She couldn’t. A wave of intense pleasure was bursting through her, arching her back like a drawn bow.
    With heavy-lidded eyes, Case watched shock and surprise and sensuality overwhelm Sarah. She no longer protested his hand moving so intimately between her legs. Instead, she gave herself to his caresses with a trust that humbled and savagely aroused him at the same time.
    Slowly, steadily, he doubled his presence inside her body, testing and stretching her in the same sensuous motions.
    She made a ragged, throaty sound.
    â€œDoes it hurt?” he asked.
    She couldn’t answer, but her body could.
    Her sultry response was even more irresistible to him than the call of the first meadowlark after winter’s silence. He shifted until he was kneeling between her legs. Then he repeated the caress slowly, deeply.
    In that instant Sarah realized she was completely vulnerable to him. She started to protest her helplessness, but words became a husky cry of pleasure as his hand moved again. When he was deep inside her once more, his thumb rubbed over the sleek bud that rising passion had revealed.
    Intense, shocking pleasure burst inside her, drenching her with heat.
    He shifted again, moving over her in a gentle,