A Certain Kind of Hero (16 page)

She returned the gesture. “Yours, too.” Warm, long, thick and wonderful, she thought.

“You've got ‘Sounds of Nature' all around you tonight.” He turned his head slightly, rubbing the high part of his cheek up and down, over her temple, her eyelid, her cheek. He drew a deep breath, full of her scent. “Live, not recorded.”

“Mmm, yes.”

“You'll sleep like a baby,” he promised, his voice deliciously husky. “Good night, Raina.”

Unreasonably miffed, baffled by her own disappointment, she followed her sinking heart into the pocket of her bed, tossing him a whispered “Good night.” She closed her eyes and listened to the night sounds. They were better than a tape, of course. The crickets, the owl, the loon, all blended their clear, soft calls, bidding her to rest. She felt peaceful. The intimate sound of Gideon's slow, shallow breathing made her feel safe. And warm. And more. Waiting for sleep, she inadvertently kept it at bay.

Gideon lay on top of his sleeping bag, slumbering blissfully. Then something in his dreams must have disturbed him, for he groaned and flung one arm above his head, nestling his face in the crook of his elbow. His hair looked longer now. It spilled away from his face and neck like a pool of black ink. Moonlight skated over the contours of his muscular chest and puddled in the shallow saucer of his belly. His jeans rode low on his hips, the waistband slack, the snap undone.

Raina closed her eyes. She could almost feel his warm, satiny skin against her palms again. She flexed her fingers and recalled the firm flesh, the hard muscle. So close. Close enough to hear the change in the tempo of his breathing. He groaned again, almost painfully. What was he dreaming about? she wondered. Or whom? She imagined him calling to her, saying her name in his sleep. It was a fanciful notion,
of course, but it excited her. Almost as much as the bulge that had risen beneath the fly of his jeans.

Dear Gideon, in sleep your body betrays you. Your “high sign” refuses to lie dormant.

Her thighs tingled. A wicked urge sprouted deep within her and grew undeniably strong. Lying on her side, she scooted closer, braced herself on her elbow and slid her hand over his belly. It felt wonderfully hard and warm. Pleasure, she thought. It pleasured her simply to touch him, and it was a pleasure she longed to share.

Perhaps her touch alone would bring more pleasure to his secret dream. She found herself coveting his secrets, determined to become part of them, to insinuate herself into his dream. The contents of the pouch that lay against his chest was personal. The contents of the pouch in his jeans was personal, too. But while he slept, it revealed itself to her, beckoning, entreating. She told herself that she might do him another service. She might relieve this intensely personal tension, as she had relieved his other tension earlier.

Ah, he looked so beautiful, stretched out so that he filled the tent. Even in repose his body teemed with dangerous, alluring potential. Her hand stirred, her fingertips inched toward the unsnapped tab, searching first for the dimple in his belly. Her thumb found it, followed the rim, filled the depression, then moved on. The zipper gave way, a fraction of a fraction of an inch. Somehow his belly dipped away even farther, giving her hand more room to explore. What she sought was easy to find. The slick tip, the hard ridge, the oddly enticing thickness that filled her hand.

He held his breath for fear of scaring her away. He could understand the plight of a woman two years a widow, but did
she,
he wondered, understand his? In dreams she had touched him, but never, in his most compelling fantasy, had he been
gloved this tightly in her small hand. He felt the light touch of her lips on his shoulder, and then her hand slid away. His whole body followed its retreat, turning to her, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms.

Her eyes were filled with moonlight and awkward surprise. His eyes demanded an explanation. Not why she'd touched him—he wasn't one to question such bittersweet serendipity—but why she'd stopped.

“You looked so…so beautiful. I…” Her breathy excuse got caught in her throat.

“Me?” He would indulge himself no further than a smile. “You've gone without too long.”

“It's not that. It's…”
It's you.

He didn't need to know what it was. Didn't even want to know. It was bound to make everything more complicated when he was doing his damnedest to keep from jumping the gun with her. But those eyes, those big blue eyes, were brimming with complications.

His hand skimmed the length of his flannel shirt, following the S-curve that filled it out. At the end of the road, her thigh emerged. He gripped it and drew it toward him. “Just tell me what you need, Raina.”

“Gideon…”

“Gideon?” He nuzzled her neck and whispered into its hollows, “Gideon's what?”

“Gideon's everything.”

With a throaty chuckle, he cradled her in one arm while his free hand slipped the shirt buttons loose, his moist lips marking her skin at each interval.

“What would you do with ‘Gideon's everything'?” he muttered when he reached her belly.

“I would…I would….”

“Toy with it?” Reversing his direction, he nibbled a path to
the soft underside of her breast, where he nuzzled and nose-butted, like a calf coaxing its mother to let the milk down. “The way you started to a minute ago?”

She started to reach for him again, but he stopped her and tucked her arm behind her back. His supporting arm lurked beneath her, and his hand was a ready clamp, putting her seeking hand out of action. Another time, he told himself as he lowered his mouth over her thrusting breast. He flicked his tongue over her erect nipple, then nibbled and suckled until she moaned, almost, but not quite, pitiably.

He slid his hand over her hip, rotating it away from him as he moved down the outside, then up the inside of her thigh. Her legs clamped together instinctively, despite her erratic breathing, despite her needy groan.

“Open your legs for me, sweetheart.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his face in the vale between her breasts, tasting her salty-sweetness with the tip of his tongue. “Let me give you what you need.”

“No, let me,” she pleaded. “Let me show you…what I started to…what you want me to…”

“No, let
me.
” His fingertips arrowed into the juncture he sought, gaining access, fingers spreading, prying reluctant thighs apart. He drew dizzying circles around her nipple with the tip of his nose, distracting her from the two fingers he slipped between moist folds. “Relax, baby,” he whispered.

He suckled, and he stroked deeper, ever deeper. His tongue flicked, and his thumb did likewise, tuning her, then playing sweet, excruciatingly sweet notes. High notes. High, higher notes until there was only one note left, and she hit it like a bottle rocket.

 

Morning came veiled in blue-gray mist. Gideon had coffee ready. They sat side by side on a fallen log, scorching one
another with stolen glances, scalding one another with every accidentally-on-purpose touch. Each had tried to relieve tension for the other. Both wondered why it was still there, thicker and heavier than ever.

“We should get a move on. This is the best time to be out on the water.” Gideon heaved himself off the rustic sofa. He nodded toward the bright green head of a mallard gliding through the mist. “Everybody's out feeding.”

Raina sighed as she followed his lead. “I hate to leave this place now.”

“It wasn't easy to get you to come here.” They looked at each other. She gave the first shy smile. He shook his head, then permitted himself to laugh. “I never know what to expect with you, Raina.”

She walked away, dragging her feet against the grass. “It's just that it's so beautiful here.”

She had called him beautiful, too. He remembered it clearly. He wondered if she'd meant it. Any of it. “You roused the sleeping dragon, Raina.”

“I know.”

“Did it help?” She stood still, her back to him. Gently, he rephrased the question. “Did you sleep better?”

“Did you?”

Questions, questions, questions. Why couldn't she just answer him? Tell him yes. Just say,
Yes, Gideon, you gave me what I wanted. Thank you very much.

No, he had not slept better, partly because he didn't know where to go from here. He snatched his white T-shirt off the rock where he'd left it and pulled it over his head. It was damp and cold, and wearing it made him feel both good and miserable.

“It's beautiful out there, too,” he told her gruffly. “We'll have our breakfast on the water.”

He strapped the main camp pack to his back, hoisted the red canoe above his head and took the portage with determined stride. Raina followed in contemplative silence. Once they were out on the water, there was a certain freedom of motion that pulled their focus from each other, releasing mental suction in a way that produced an almost audible pop.

They slipped past a female moose feeding in the shallows. She lifted her shovel nose out of the water, grinding her dripping breakfast with powerful jaws as her eyes followed them with minimal interest. They both laughed when she shook her head, noisily flapping her big ears. Indifferent and absolutely unthreatened, she swung her head away, then dunked her nose for more juicy grazing.

As the morning wore on, low clouds kept the sun from burning the mist off the water. The fishing would have been great, Gideon thought. But he wasn't in the right mood. “I think we're in for some rain,” he said absently as his paddle sliced the water. Slip-slide, slip-slide, slip-slide.

Raina looked straight up. “It's not supposed to do that.” But an errant raindrop hit her nose. More drops pattered softly, scattering circles across the water in the pattern of a wedding-band quilt.

“Well, it's doing it anyway,” Gideon said.

By the time they put in to shore it was coming down steadily. Thunder started rumbling as they set up the tent. Birch leaves rattled in the wind, and the water dripped from the pines, intensifying the evergreen scent. They tossed the packs into the tent and scrambled in after them.

“You're soaking wet.” It was the only thing Gideon could think of to say. At least the stuff inside the packs was dry. He took out the two requisite towels, which, laid end-to-end, didn't add up to half a bath towel.

But at the prospect of spending a rainy afternoon inside the
tent, he had it in his mind to be gallant. He tossed her a towel, which she used on her hair, while he did the same. Then their eyes met. She looked incredibly sexy with tousled hair and wet clothes.

He tried to clear the gravel from his throat. “Let me help you get dry.”

It was an offer that entailed removing clothes. All it took was their shirts—skinning the cat with his, then peeling hers away with a bit more care and a thoughtful smoothing back of her hair after the shirt came away—and he was lost. He had the towel in his hand again, and he meant to use it, but his good intentions turned to mush at the mere sight of a drop of water on the swell of her breast. He dipped his head to claim it with his tongue.

The taste was pure ambrosia. He glanced up and saw the quick approval in her eyes. He unhooked the fastener between her breasts and stripped the wet fabric away. “So pretty,” he murmured, but in daylight her pale breasts seemed to want covering. So he cupped them in his dark hands.

The thunder grumbled overhead. The rain pelted all around them. Gideon lifted his gaze slowly from the place between her breasts where his thumbs lay side by side, to the little hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse throbbed, to her lower lip as she quickly sucked it and left it moist for him.

The motion drew him like a hawk descending for prey. His lips claimed hers. His tongue darted in search of hers, and hers met him at the door. His hands slid to her waist and made short work of the fastenings on her pants.

“Would you say we're going to need a bed?”

She nodded.

His eyes never left hers as he reached for a sleeping bag, dragged it close, undid the bands and flipped it open, all
with one hand. In another moment her wet clothes were gone. His were chafing him something fierce. He lowered her to the pallet and went hungering after her, pulling her hand down between the legs of his soggy jeans. He closed his eyes and caught his breath when she flexed her fingers, pressing, stroking.

He groaned. “It would be a damn shame if Gideon's everything caught a chill.”

Her small laugh was sensuously deep. She helped him peel off the wet jeans. Then, in the gray light of a rainy afternoon, they admired one another with unabashed eyes and unrestrained hands, with openmouthed kisses and bold tongues. Dampness turned steamy as they rubbed skin against skin, driving one another to the brink again and again, just to see how close they could come. But close would not suffice this time.

“Tell me what you want,” he exhorted gruffly as he rose above her, poised for a swift strike.

“This is what I want,” she whispered, caressing him between his legs. “All of this inside me.”

He prepared himself. All for her, he thought, properly gift-wrapped. But someday, maybe…

On that hope, he slipped himself inside her with long, strong, deep strokes. She gasped and cried out his name. He backed off only slightly as he slid his hands beneath her bottom. She locked her legs around his waist. His hips took the lead, tagging their tempo to the steady tapping of the rain, which picked up gradually until the heavens finally broke wide open and the deluge washed over them.

 

They dozed in each other's arms, reveling in timeless, weightless peace. The easy time. The afterglow. The distant
thunder was a soothing sound, as was the soft rain. They drifted, awash in unspoken love words.

But the drifting eventually stopped, and the words slipped away, still unspoken. They were two separate entities again. And they found themselves purposely not looking at each other for fear of detecting something in a look—some kind of disappointment, some sign of rejection—that would make them feel chillingly naked.