Sleepless in Montana (27 page)

She stiffened, protesting and then giving
way, as his hands moved within the jeans too large for her, easing
them away. Hogan’s hands moved over her thighs, massaging them,
caressing the backs as his mouth pressed low on her stomach.

Jemma pushed him away slightly, shivering,
fearful of emotions that were flying away from her control. She
hadn’t trusted, hurrying through marital sex, because it was
expected, but Hogan was asking more, his hand cupping her, his
fingers incredibly warm and coaxing....

Still trusting him, Jemma dug her fingers
into his shoulders as Hogan held her there, high on that blinding
pinnacle, shocking her. Then, flying into the heat and flashes of
color, she cried out and melted slowly, slowly back onto the
blanket beside Hogan.

She thought she heard his chuckle; she didn’t
care, flopping her hand aside and lying in the aftermath of her
riveting pleasure.

He turned her face to his, shaking it gently.
“Jemma, open your eyes and look at me.”

“I can’t. Don’t make me do any more today. I
can’t find my bones— I’m one, big, warm puddle.”

Then she turned on her side, wrapped her arm
around his body and her leg between his, anchoring him until she
could catch her breath and do— do something to him.

“Rat,” she accused drowsily, drifting
pleasantly.

At sunset, she helped drag fir branches to
cover the bent young trees that served as a framework for Hogan’s
sweat house. “You’re exhausting me. We’ve already cast for hours.
My arm is falling off, and I didn’t catch a thing, and then you had
me clean those fish.... Oh, I’m never, never going to get the
feeling of those scales off my hands, and guts.... Why do fish have
to have guts? And so many of them everywhere?”

Repulsed by the memories of guts and more
fish guts, Jemma shivered. “Hogan—wet flies, dry flies, hatches,
spinners, leaders— it’s all too much. Now I have to understand bugs
and their life cycles— the almighty hatch and nymphs. There is no
way that a fish can be that selective about what he eats. And I do
not like looking into a fish’s eyes and knowing that he’s my next
meal. They are slimy, Hogan.”

Hogan bent to take a quick kiss, one of
several that had taken her breath away since he’d touched her so
sweetly. When she stopped talking, stunned by the quick, knowing
kiss, he grinned and placed his hand on her head, waggling it and
then tugged one of her braids. “Fun, huh?”

When she tried to hit him with a branch, he
sidestepped, raising his hands. “I give up.”

She blinked at the boyish, playful man in
front of her. “You’ve been rotten all day. What’s wrong?”

He had frowned, tilting his head to one side
and listening intently. “Bear. A big one.”

Jemma almost leaped into his arms, and Hogan
drew her tight and safe against him.

Then his mouth was on hers, not sweet and
tender, but demanding, slanting to take her breath away. This
wasn’t the gentle lover of the afternoon, or the stoic, stormy man
she’d always known. This was a man who wanted everything from her,
who would demand everything.

Jemma fisted his hair, damning him and
herself, trying to hold on to reality, when magic was taking her
flying.

“Are you afraid?” Hogan asked roughly as he
picked her up in his arms and carried her toward their
bedrolls.

The sunlight glittered between their faces.
Or was it magic?

“I should be afraid. I’m not.” This was
Hogan, who’d always been safe, whom she had always trusted. Now he
was the man she wanted to share her body, to give and to take
pleasure. “Are you going to give me one of those marvelous
massages?”

He eased her onto the bedroll and stood
straight, stretching his arms high. Her body rose slightly, aching
for his, and she waited for him to come to her arms. To gather all
that powerful body into her keeping—

“Nope,” he said. “I’m going to tie flies and
try to better match the hatch in this area.”

She stared at him, her body humming with the
need to be stroked and touched by Hogan’s hands. She wanted to feel
that wonderful mouth upon her skin. “I suppose that would be the
thing to do, since we’re up here to teach me about fly-fishing and
camping, right? Tie flies to match the hatch?”

His grin flashed in the dark. “You don’t have
the patience for this, Jemma. You want to hurry to the finish line
without enjoying the prework.”

She struggled to her feet She’d wanted
Hogan’s hands on her, she’d wanted to kiss him and feed upon
him—

“ ‘Prework’?” She regretted the frustration
in her voice, but then she’d never been hungry for a man before
Hogan.

He lifted his eyebrows. “A good fly fisherman
knows how to tie lures. You want to know all that, don’t you?”

She knew he’d deliberately jumped subjects,
waylaying her, taunting her. Twenty minutes later, Jemma wrapped
the blanket around her and sat staring off into the night. “I don’t
want to talk or think anymore about fly-tying now. Everything is
too tiny and too precise. I just wanted to learn how to fish, not
how to build bugs.”

“Good, you’re thinking now,” Hogan said. He
put away his supplies and closed his tackle box. “Maybe you’d
better rethink this fly-fisher-woman television-thing.”

“I can’t. The money is too good. But I may
have to put a different spin on it. I’ve always been able to find a
way to get the things I want, Hogan. I was thinking about that
reflexology—the massage you did for me. If I got good at that, Les
might not notice I was missing the finer points of
fly-fishing.”

“Uh-huh. Find a way around this,” Hogan said
with a dark edge to his tone, drawing her roughly up and into his
arms.

Hogan had never used his strength to hold a
woman before, never taken a woman’s mouth with raw hunger and need.
But then he’d never felt the lash of jealousy before, raised by the
thought of Jemma touching another man...

Jemma’s hands dug into his back, her arms
holding him tight, her mouth as hungry as his—

He hadn’t needed in his lifetime, really
needed. Now, shaken by his desire, Hogan grasped for his control
and found Jemma, moving into him, hot and warm and passionate,
burning away everything but the need. She wrapped her arms around
his shoulders and lifted her mouth to his. “Hogan?”

Hogan eased her away, shaking his head. “I
didn’t want— Not like this.”

She stared at him for a heartbeat, then hit
his chest with both fists. “There are just times, Hogan, when
contemplation and meticulous patience are not wanted.”

Hogan ran his hand across his taut jaw.
“You’re angry.”

“Wrong. I’m good and mad. I’m tired, I ache,
and I can’t figure out what’s in this for me, except a few good
massages. Did I ask for ‘prework’? Did I? I know the mechanics,
Hogan. I know there is something between us.... We’re adults. I
thought we’d get it over with and continue with our lives.... I
trust you. I know you are a meticulous man in your relationships
and not a bed-hopper. It’s just something that is on the desktop
now, and we’re going to have to deal with it and get it out of the
way.”

She paused, then added slowly, as if
pinpointing a reminder, “There is Simone, you know.”

Hogan tensed as though slapped; she’d
reminded him of another relationship without the passion and
tenderness he’d felt with Jemma. And now Jemma’s clinical
assessment of adult needs burned him, because that was exactly the
basis of his relationship with Simone. “Just like that? ‘Deal with
it.’ Is that how you think of lovemaking, Jemma-sweetheart?
Rush-rush, hurry-hurry, get-it-over?’’

Jemma took a deep steadying breath and looked
at the fiercely angry man tearing away his clothes and glaring at
her. “Now, Hogan—”

“You’ve always been difficult, Jemma. Let’s
try for a little class, shall we?” Hogan reached to remove the
single small hematite stud in his ear. The gesture was masculine,
abrupt, a dismissal of a personal irritant he didn’t want, as he
flung it into the campfire. The removal of that earring seemed
shockingly intimate to Jemma, as though he’d tossed away
civilization and the rules between them.

She’d seen Hogan retreat into his shadows
when pushed too far. She’d never seen him truly angry, his emotions
exposed. The rigid set of his naked, beautiful body spoke of his
anger as he turned and walked into the stream. Using soap, Hogan
cleansed himself quickly, returning to the grassy bank, to quickly
wrap a towel around his hips. He stoked the fire, studying the
flames as he crouched beside it, ignoring her.

Then, suddenly finding her in the night,
studying her, Hogan said, “It’s your choice. I won’t hurt you. I’ll
treasure what we do, I’ll keep you safe, and I’ll tend your needs.
I want you, Jemma. I want to be in you, by you, over you, under
you. I want to feel your body take mine, your heart beat against
mine. I want those gates wide-open like they were a moment ago. I
won’t settle for anything less... and I’ll be true to you. I ask
that you do the same.”

The declaration was too tender, too sweet,
and tipped her over a frightening edge. He’d asked for a commitment
of body and soul that she’d never given anyone.

She’d always been in control of
relationships— Relationships? She’d been married, a bargain that
suited her.

Heat burned through her, the need for Hogan
wrapped tightly inside her body.
But he was too dangerous!
Warning bells clanged amid the chatter of chipmunks and birds
calling. “I don’t know how to do this. Not with meaning. You
terrify me, Hogan. You’ll always want more. You’re too
intense.”

The fire crackled, sparks arcing off into the
night as Hogan stared at her. “You want a business arrangement. I’m
not made like that. Not now, with you. I enjoy textures— your skin
against mine... scents— Your scent is very erotic, Jemma, I’d know
it anywhere... Your taste— I want that and the rhythm of your heart
beating against mine, that trapped little frantic heart, the dark
glitter of your eyes when your body is heating for mine, waiting. I
want that wide-open fierce passion, unleashed and just for me.”

“You want everything.” Jemma feared giving
too much of herself; she’d already lost pieces of her when her
family died.

“I want honesty. In this, you’re honest with
me. Your body tells me what runs between us.”

Hogan had shaken her deeply, and she
struggled to make sense of the melting of her heart, the need to
hold him close. Terror leaped through her and she needed time....
“You’re cold. I mean, it’s cold tonight and you’re not
dressed—”

“No, I’m not,” Hogan said, standing and
taking away the towel. She fought to keep her eyes above his waist
and failed as he walked toward her. Her body tightened as
unwillingly, she found his arousal, awed by the bold, jutting
shape.

Jemma shivered, a painful memory slashing at
her, that of cold marital sex. Hogan would be too thorough and
demand too much. He’d forge too deeply, taking a part of her that
no one else had reached.

He touched her lips with his fingertips, her
cheeks, her lashes, then lifted her hair back from her face,
studying her. “Jemma?”

“Yes,” she whispered, knowing that she had to
have Hogan, to taste him, to feel his body ripple within her
keeping. She could do this— enter a relationship, learn how to
control her senses. But not just now, not when she ached to hold
Hogan tight, and feel his breath sweep across her skin, to have him
in her arms... To give herself to him, here, without restrictions
in the pure, fragrant air seemed as natural as breathing. It seemed
as if all the years knowing him as a boy and a man had led to
this....

He undressed her carefully, studying her body
so intently— the slope of her breast, the indentation of her waist,
the reddish nest of curls between her thighs— that she shivered.
Unused to being treasured, admired, she folded her arms in front of
her and Hogan drew them away.

He touched her nipple with a fingertip, his
expression darkening as he watched it contract. He skimmed her
throat with his thumbs, framed her shoulders with his hands as if
measuring her for his body’s fit. Then his hands flowed down her,
learning her, smoothing the indentation of her waist.

His thumbs traced her hipbones, fingers
digging possessively into her hips, his palms hot and hard against
her. He lifted her hands, brought them to his lips and suddenly
lifted her in his arms, walking out into the stream to bathe her in
the chilly water. He quickly soaped her body while she shivered and
pushed at him. “Oh! Hogan! Stop!”

“Okay.” Then he placed his large hands over
her breasts, caressing them. There was that quiet moment, his hands
burning her skin, callused palms gentle upon her nipples, his eyes
locked with hers, when Jemma forgot they stood in an icy
stream.

“I think I’m turning blue,” she whispered,
and wished she could leap upon him and—

He laughed outright, the first rumble
startling her— the first real laughter she’d heard from him.
Grinning as she swatted at him, he carried her to the bank and
briskly dried her.

“Oh! Oh! I’m freezing.” Jemma ran for the
sleeping bags and scooted into one, drawing it up to her throat and
glaring at him. “Hogan, I’m going to make you pay for that.”

“I know. I’m looking forward to it.” He
dried, hurled the towel aside, and walked toward her, a man
standing outlined in the moonlight, waiting. “Are you going to let
me in there, or not?”

“I should let you freeze.” But Jemma knew
that tonight Hogan was definitely on the menu. She flipped back the
edge of the sleeping bag and shivered, fearing that he’d take too
much, that she’d give too much.

He eased into the sleeping bag and gathered
her close against him. The naked impact of Hogan’s burning skin
against hers tore through her, locking heat deep within her.