Lone Star Winter (30 page)

And he kissed Libby enthusiastically while Jordan fumed.

 

When they were finally alone, hours later in Galveston, Jordan was still fuming about that kiss.

“You know Hayes was teasing,” she said, coaxing him into her arms. “But I'm not. I've waited twenty-four years for this,” she added with a wry smile. “I have great expectations.”

He drew her close with a worldly look. “And I expect to satisfy them fully!”

“I'm not going to be very good at this, at first,” she said breathlessly, when he began to undress her. “Is it all right?”

He smiled tenderly. “You're going to be great at it,” he countered. “The only real requirement is love. We're rich in that.”

She relaxed a little, watching his dark eyes glow as he uncovered the soft, petal-pink smoothness of her bare skin. She was a little nervous. Nobody had seen her undressed since she was a little girl.

Jordan realized that and it made him even more gentle. He'd never been with an innocent, but he knew enough about women that it wasn't going to be
a problem. She loved him. He wanted nothing more than to please her.

When she was standing in just her briefs, he bent and smoothed his warm mouth over the curve of her breasts. She smelled of roses. There was a faint moisture under his lips, which he rightly attributed to fear.

He lifted his head and looked down into her wide, uncertain eyes. “Women have been doing this since the dawn of time,” he whispered. “If it wasn't fun, nobody would want to do it. Right?”

She laughed nervously. “Right.”

He smiled tenderly. “So just relax and let me drive. It's going to be a journey you'll never forget.”

Her hands went to his tie. “Okay. But I get to make suggestions,” she told him impishly, and worked to unfasten the tie and then his white shirt. She opened it over a bronzed chest thick with dark, soft hair. He felt furry. But under the hair was hard, warm muscle. She liked the way he felt.

He kissed her softly while he coaxed her hands to his belt. She hesitated.

“Don't agonize over it,” he teased, moving her hands aside to unfasten it himself. “We'll go slow.”

“I'm not really a coward,” she whispered unsteadily.
“It's just uncharted territory. I've never even looked at pictures…”

He could imagine what sort of pictures she was talking about. He only smiled. “Next time, you'll be a veteran and it won't intimidate you.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

He bent to her mouth again. “I'm sure.”

His warm lips moved down her throat to her breasts, but this time they weren't gently teasing. They were invasive and insistent as they opened on the hard little nubs his caresses had already produced. When his hands moved her hips lazily against the hard thrust of his powerful body, she began to feel drugged.

She'd thought it would be embarrassing and uncomfortable to make love in the light. But Jordan was slow and thorough, easing her into an intimacy beyond anything she'd ever dreamed. He cradled her against him on the big bed, arousing her to such a fever pitch that when he removed the last bit of her clothing, it was a relief to feel the coolness of the room against her hot skin. And by the time he removed his own clothes, she was too hungry to be embarrassed. In fact, she was as aggressive as he was, starving for him in the tempestuous minutes that followed.

She remembered the first kiss they'd shared, beside her pickup truck at his fence. She'd known then that
she'd do anything he wanted her to do. But this was far from the vague dreams of fulfillment she'd had when she was alone. She hadn't known that passion was like a fever that nothing could quench, that desire brought intense desperation. She hadn't known that lovemaking was blind, deaf, mute slavery to a man's touch.

“I would die for you,” Jordan whispered huskily at her ear as he moved slowly into total possession with her trembling body.

“Will it…hurt?” she managed in a stranger's voice as she hesitated just momentarily at the enormity of what was happening to her.

He laughed sensuously as he began to move lazily against her. “Are you kidding?” he murmured. And with a sharp, deft movement, he produced a sensation that lifted her clear of the bed and against him with an unearthly little cry of pleasure.

From there, it was a descent into total madness. She shivered with every powerful thrust of his body. She clung to him with her arms, her legs, her soul. She moaned helplessly as sensation built on sensation, until she was almost screaming from the urgent need for satisfaction.

She heard her own voice pleading with him, but she couldn't understand her own words. She drove for ful
fillment, her body demanding, feverishly moving with his as they climbed the spiral of passion together.

She felt suddenly as if she'd been dropped from a great height into a hot, throbbing wave of pleasure that began and never seemed to end. She clung to him, terrified that he might stop, that he might draw back, that he might pull away.

“Shh,” he whispered tenderly. “I won't stop. It's all right. It's all right, honey. I love you…so much!”

“I love you, too!” she gasped.

Then he began to shudder, even as she felt herself move from one plane of ecstasy to another, and another, and another, each one deeper and more satisfying than the one before. At one point she thought she might actually die from the force of it. Her eyes closed and she let the waves wash over her in succession, glorying in the unbelievably sweet aftermath.

Above her, Jordan was just reaching his own culmination. He groaned harshly at her ear and shuddered one last time before he collapsed in her arms, dead weight on her damp, shivering body.

“And you were afraid,” he chided in a tender whisper, kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her throat.

She laughed. “So that's how it feels,” she said drowsily. “And now I'm sleepy.”

He laughed with her. “So am I.”

“Will you be here when I wake up?” she teased.

He kissed her swollen mouth gently. “For the rest of my life, honey. Until the very end.”

Her arms curved around him and she curled into his powerful body, feeling closer to him than she'd ever felt to another human being. It was poignant. She was a whole woman. She was loved.

“Until the very end, my darling,” she repeated, her voice trailing away in the silence of the room.

She slept in his arms. It was the best night of her life. But it was only the beginning for both of them.