All Through the Night (42 page)

And all she could think about as she stared at the rain was the bleak, hurt look in Jacob’s eyes.

Oh, get over yourself, she thought. She sank deeper into the water until her nose kissed the steaming surface. It was her own fault, and she knew it. Ever since she met the guy she’d been acting like a hysterical harpy. Predictably enough, he’d gotten sick of it and left. End of story. What point was there in beating a dead horse?

There was no point, but her restless mind was determined to torture itself. She couldn’t stop imagining how perfect the hot spring would be if Jacob were in the pool with her, the whole lean, solid length and breadth of him pressed against her, the hunger in his beautiful dark eyes making her feel beautiful and cherished, utterly desirable. For the rest of her life she was going to dream of those two nights with him and probably wake up crying. A sob welled up in her throat, and she almost choked in her effort to force it back down.

A twig snapped in the bushes, and a thrill of fear shivered down her spine. She realized with an unpleasant jolt how vulnerable she was. It wasn’t something she let herself think about very often; otherwise she would go stark raving paranoid and lose her nerve entirely.

The sound did not repeat, but her travel- and trouble-sharpened instincts sensed that she was being observed. The tiny little hairs behind her neck stirred, and the thought burst in her mind like fireworks. Jacob. He’d changed his mind and come back, in spite of everything. She dipped her face into the pool to conceal a crazy grin. He had disobeyed her dismissal, she thought, with a rush of feminine power. Bad boy. She would punish him for that later. Better yet, she would punish him right now. Let him watch her like a thief in the bushes and burn for her the way she burned for him. Let him beg for it.

She rose slowly, letting hot water cascade over her. Steaming rivulets snaked their sensual way down over the curves and valleys of her body. The water was hip deep, barely kissing the thatch of dark blonde hair between her thighs. She faced toward where she had heard the sound, arched her back and turned her face up to the rain, raising her arms high in a gesture of gratitude and acceptance. She folded them behind her head, thrusting her breasts forward in an aggressively sensual stance, and stretched luxuriously. The water had made her so hot. Too hot. She was burning up.

Let him look his fill at her in the broad daylight, steam rising off her flushed, naked body. The thought of his eyes on her made her nipples tingle, and she cupped her breasts tenderly in her hands, flinging her head back to the pelting rain. She swayed, lifting her arms like a pagan goddess, dancing a sultry dance of sexual abandon. She scooped hot water over herself and watched the droplets beading on her heated skin, rolling down her body. She was a fey, sylvan creature, lost in her own sensual fantasy, wild and wanton and mysterious.

She sank down onto one of the broad, flat boulders at the pool’s edge. The chill of the wet stone was a shock of pleasure to her overheated skin. She reclined against it, opening her eyes, her mouth, her arms to the sweet, cool rain, allowing the ravishing beauty and wild energy of nature to surround and embrace her. Sensual images flooded over her, and her hand trailed over her breasts, her belly, then lower.

She caressed her secret flesh with luxurious idleness until the memory of Jacob’s passionate, skillful lovemaking seized her in its grip, playing through her mind like a vivid dream. Her breasts tingled and her sex grew flushed, swollen with liquid longing at the thought of his strong, beautiful body, his joyous grin, his infectious laughter. His big, gentle hands and ardent mouth, teaching her, coaxing her, urging her with infinite tenderness to undreamed-of realms of pleasure. The raindrops that struck her body had to be hissing off into pure steam, she thought, as she undulated against the wet stone. Her legs opened, and her fingers delved tenderly into her own sultry flesh, seeking that blissful, shivering sweet spot. Her hips moved in a subtle pulsing motion, her back arched, her breasts jutted out, pink and swollen. She caressed them too as she spread her thighs like a goddess opening herself to the embrace of a deity.

Jacob stared at her from behind the screen of bushes, transfixed. Part of him wanted to burst out of the trees and demand that she cover herself. A much stronger part wanted to fall on her and become the phantom lover that she was welcoming so rapturously into her body. He wondered with a stab of wild, irrational jealousy who she was thinking about as she parted her slender white thighs and caressed the deep pink glistening folds of her cunt, completely open to his sight as it had never been before in the darkness of her tent.

He bit down on his knuckles to keep from groaning, from screaming, and wondered how in the hell she managed not to hear his heart, thudding against his rib cage like a stallion kicking at its stall. She must know he was watching. She had to be putting on this show for his benefit. Otherwise he had to conclude that she was crazy to bare herself like that to the naked sky. Christ, anybody could be watching from the trees, just as he was watching. Anybody.

Possessive anger jolted through him, tugging at his reason. His cock was so hard, it hurt to move. He was primed to explode and make a mess inside his jeans. Wouldn’t that be just the perfect final blow to his battered self-esteem, he thought with a flash of grim humor. Annie really knew how to take a man apart, piece by piece, until he didn’t even recognize himself in the rubble.

He would wait, he told himself. He would hold back for just a few more moments, watching her lush, slender body glowing like a rose-tinted pearl as she writhed on the rain-washed slab of stone, as wide open as a sacrificial offering. He would let her finish her little pageant, and then he would burst out of these goddamn bushes and show her just exactly what kind of fire she was playing with.

Then he would drive himself inside her, deep and hard, and make her arch and writhe and open herself like that, just for him.

Then he would bathe himself in that glistening dew that drenched the flushed, pouting folds of her cunt, that gleamed on her trembling fingers, tempting him, tantalizing him.

He watched her avidly, his breath sawing harshly in and out of his chest. Her hips jerked and she let out a shudder* ing cry, closing her thighs tightly around her hand as her face convulsed in ecstasy.

Suddenly, a loud crack and a rustling sound came out of the woods. Annie sprang up and slid swiftly back into the water with a startled gasp. There was the sound of bushes snapping back into place.

A bellow of primordial rage burst out of his throat. He crashed out of the bushes, ready to hunt down whoever had just seen the wanton display Annie had made of herself. And when he found the guy, he would convince him to forget every detail. Limb by broken, bloody limb.

Annie stood up in the water. “Jacob, I think it’s just a—”

“Get the
hell
back down into that water!” His voice cracked like a whip. Annie sank instantly into the pool, her eyes huge and startled.

A doe leaped out of the bushes. She froze, and stared at him with enormous, fathomless dark eyes before she gathered herself and bounded away, feather-light and graceful. She disappeared into the trees on the opposite bank. The air slowly escaped from Jacob’s lungs. He walked back to the pool, his fists still clenched. “What the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded.

She looked up at him, her gray eyes mysterious and luminous. “You saw me,” she murmured. “Exactly what it looked like I was doing.”

Her cool, offhand tone enraged him still further. “Yeah. I saw you. So would anyone else who took a notion to hike up here today,” he said, his voice shaking with fury.

Her lips tightened mutinously. “I knew it was you.”

“How? How the hell could you be sure? Did you see me?”

She shrank away from the harshness in his voice. “I just knew,” she repeated, in a small, stubborn voice.

He tried to stop his chest from heaving. “You knew,” he repeated. “First you tell me to fuck off. Then you put on a sex show for me. What’s your game, Annie? Are you trying to drive me out of my mind?”

She looked up sidewise and gave a small decisive nod.

That smug gesture was too much for him. He grabbed her upper arm and hauled her out of the water. She held herself proudly upright, not giving an inch. He stared down at her flushed, exquisite body, his heart thundering and his mind swamped with erotic images. He reached down and cupped her mound in his hand, thrusting his fingers inside her. She jerked and cried out, her chest heaving. Her cunt was slick and wet, silky soft from pleasuring herself. He slid his fingers slowly out of her tight sheath, then drove in again, deeper, rougher. “You play dangerous games, Annie,” he muttered.

The seething darkness in his eyes finally registered. She licked her lips, her silky thighs clenching involuntarily around his hand. Her eyes dilated with alarm as she sensed his primitive instinct to subdue her with his body. His hand tightened on her arm, and she gasped.

He let go of her suddenly, in a spasm of self-disgust, and she stumbled back. “Get your clothes on,” he rapped out.

“Jacob, I didn’t mean to—”

“
Not… one… word
. Get your clothes on, or I’m going to fuck you right here. And I don’t think you’d like it. I’m not feeling very generous.”

The menace in his words finally appeared to sink in, because she scrambled to obey him. He forced himself to look away as she struggled into her damp clothes. He didn’t trust himself in this state. He didn’t even know himself.

He was on wild, uncharted ground.

Annie scrambled down the muddy path, clutching the towel over her chest to cover the nipples that were poking through her sodden shirt. She was acutely aware of his seething fury as he stalked silently behind her. It rolled off him in waves, it showed in his burning eyes and the grim set of his mouth. What on earth had she unleashed? She’d wanted to tease him, to make him laugh, to make his eyes light up with desire. By no means had she wanted to provoke a black rage.

God, she was sick to death of tiptoeing around men in black rages, she thought, with a burst of temper. She’d done more than her share of it in her lifetime. She whirled around to tell him so. “Jacob—”

He gave a short warning shake of his head. The look in his eyes made her turn tail and scurry on ahead of him, her heart in her mouth.

After an eternity of stumbling on her trembling legs, they finally arrived at the campground. The place was deserted; not another car or tent in sight. Rain streamed off the canopy over the tent. The sealed plastic bags Jacob had brought were beaded with rain. She was soaked to the skin, but too flushed and agitated to feel cold. Jacob’s gleaming hair was plastered to his head. Raindrops slid down over the beautifully sculpted planes of his grim face.

Twilight was deepening. Charcoal gray clouds sat heavily on the hills above them, smothering the horizon in a thick, blurry fog that muffled the sound of the cars passing on the nearby highway. There was no other sound but the immense sigh and rustle of rain on the billows of fallen leaves.

Annie turned to face him, feeling very small and alone. “Stop glowering at me, Jacob.”

“I can’t. I’m fucking furious. You’re jerking me around, Annie.”

She shivered, feeling the cold for the first time. “I did it to please you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry you didn’t like it. I wanted—” She stopped. A hard knot was forming in her throat, blocking the words.

“You wanted what?” he prompted.

“To turn you on,” she confessed in a tiny voice.

Instantly he was upon her, one hand pinioning her against his chest, the other twining itself deep into her tan-gled hair. “Yeah, well, it worked,” he said roughly. “In case you were wondering.” And his mouth covered hers in a hard, plundering kiss.

Always before his kisses had been exquisitely gentle, and she had loved his gentleness; it had set her sensuality free. But the savagery of this kiss unleashed something deeper, something dangerous and wild. She loved his fierce intensity, his controlled strength, his tongue plunging into her mouth, a possessive intrusion meant to subdue her, but it only inflamed her. She wanted to claw him, bite him, provoke him. The towel fell to the ground, and she grabbed a thick handful of his hair and kissed him back like a wild thing.

He pulled his mouth away with a suddenness that left her reeling. “Never play with me like that again, Annie.”

She reached for him, dazed and aroused. “Jacob, I—”

His hands clamped painfully onto her shoulders. “Anyone who happened to be up there in that canyon could have seen you with your legs open and your hands on yourself.”

She tried to twist out of his iron grip, but it was useless. “There was no one else!” she protested. “It was all for you!”

His hand moved swiftly, and buttons flew as he ripped open her shirt. “All for me,” he muttered, staring at her breasts.

She displayed herself to him, feeling bold and reckless. “Did you like it, then, Jacob? Is the image burned into your memory?”

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he said in a harsh, grating voice. “When my time comes and my life flashes before my eyes, that scene is going to get extra play time. Does that make you happy? Driving me nuts, messing with my mind, you find that really entertaining?”