Water Witch (12 page)

The sound aroused a need in her more primitive and potent than any she’d ever known. It ripped away her restraint, and she went wild— twisting, whimpering, begging.

“Easy, love,” Sam said, pulling away. “We’ve got all night, and I’m going to look at and taste and touch every luscious inch of you.” He grinned. “With you responding to me like that, I won’t last thirty seconds.”

She stilled. What had gotten into her? For a moment she’d felt as if a strange woman had possessed her body. Granted, it had been a long time, but this was a new feeling.

He tossed the covers aside and slipped the nightshirt from her shoulders. It landed on the carpet by the bed. He stood and kicked off his shoes, then turned to look down at her. While he was still dressed in jeans, only a scrap of beige lace and silk shielded her from his scrutiny. Max grew uncomfortable and reached for the light.

“Don’t, Angel. I want to see you. You’re beautiful, more beautiful than I dreamed. And I’ve dreamed of you often.” His eyes seemed to devour her. “I’m going to paint you like this some day. In our bed with your breasts still wet from my mouth.”

Bending over her, he slipped his hands up the length of her legs as if marveling at every curve and dip. They paused at the band of panties riding low on her hips. His thumbs hooked the lace and slowly peeled the delicate fabric back over the route he’d come. Never taking his eyes off her, he flung the beige wisp over his shoulder.

Starting with her toes, he kissed and caressed his way up her body. Max felt as if she were being worshiped on a pagan altar, but by the time he reached her throat, she was a writhing mass of nerve-endings screaming for release from exquisite torment. He lay half covering her, one leg between hers.

The wild woman was back. “Sam, please,” she begged, but his mouth silenced her with a kiss so breathless and urgent, she almost drowned in the white-hot fury of it. She clung to him, her fingers biting into the flesh of his back as his tongue thrust over hers with a rhythm that caused her pelvis to move against the rough material of his jeans in the same tempo. Her small cries were answered by moans from him, and her hand tugged at his waistband.

He stilled her hand and tore his lips from hers. “Wait, love. Are you protected?” She shook her head and he slipped from her side.

When he stripped off his jeans and faced her, her eyes widened and she sucked in her breath. He was magnificent. Covered with a glistening sheen, he was like a copper stallion, his big frame all taut muscle from shoulder to ankle. He was boldly immodest. And shamelessly aroused.

“You like what you see?”

She nodded slowly and a lazy grin spread over his face. He reached into a drawer of the night-stand and withdrew a packet. Her heart pounded and her breathing was shallow as she watched him. Never had she witnessed anything more erotic than his movements as he stood before her and slowly rolled on the sheath.

She held out her arms and the mattress dipped as he knelt between her parted thighs. His hands slipped along the sides of her legs, her hips, her rib cage, and stopped when each was filled with the spill of her breasts. His thumbs teased the nipples, fanning the sparks of her desire. “I’m all yours, Angel. Body and soul and worldly possessions. And now and forever, you’re mine.”

He lifted her hips and took her slowly, watching her face as he slipped inside. She saw the muscles of his jaw twitch and felt the trembling of his thighs and hands as he fought for control. Was that really love she saw in his eyes? How could anything so tender be simple lust? And at that gentle moment Max felt something more than passion stirring within her.  Not simple lust–something more intense. Something she’d never felt before.

“I love you, Sam,” she whispered.

His control shattered in an ecstatic grimace and he plunged into her, hard and deep. Their love-making changed from gentle to fevered. It was flash and fire. Hunger and desperation. His hands and his mouth were all over her as he thrust in an urgent frenzy. Their breathing became labored and their bodies slick with sweat as they moved together—arching, plunging, writhing, reaching. . . reaching.

Max touched an inner sun that burst into a million prisms of light as she exploded in sensual delight. She cried out and arched against the source of her pleasure. Sam hesitated a second, then thrust a last time and found his release.

After a moment, he rolled away and gathered her damp body close to his side, pulling the sheet over them against a sudden chill. “Are you all right, love? I didn’t mean to get so rough. But, Lord, I went crazy. I don’t seem to have much control around you. Hell, I don’t have any control.”

Smiling, she brushed away the auburn locks, darkened and curly with sweat, that clung to his forehead. “You weren’t rough. You were wonderful. I won’t break, Sam. Except for my weird notions about things that go bump in the night, I’m pretty tough.”

“You’re not tough at all, sweetheart,” he said, running one big hand along the curve of her hip. “You’re soft as silk. And the only thing that goes bump in the night around here is me. Go to sleep, love. I’ll fight the monsters tonight.”

His gentle stroking soon lulled her, and her lashes fluttered against her cheeks. For a long time Sam held her, savoring his love for her, planning their future, wondering about her past, about the bastard who’d made her childhood hell. He suspected that anyone who would scare a kid with monsters would do worse things.

When he heard scratching and whining outside the door, he sighed and got up, careful not to disturb Max. Dowser was going to damn well have to learn to sleep in the kitchen.

*    *    *

The smell of coffee teased Max awake. A hand was on her breast, a cold nose on her cheek. She blinked a few times to get her bearings. The hand was Sam’s; the nose was Dowser’s. The Doberman stared at her with large, soulful eyes and she smiled in understanding. Putting a finger to her lips to signal quiet, she began to ease away from Sam’s warm body, which rested spoon-fashion behind hers.

Instantly, his grip tightened and one big leg was slung over hers. “Where are you going?” His voice was husky with sleep.

“Dowser needs to go outside.”

“You stay here,” he said, nuzzling the back of her neck. “I’ll do it.”

He didn’t move except to trail tickling kisses down her spine to her shoulder blades. Dowser whined.

She giggled. “Sam.”

“Okay, okay.” He dropped a final kiss on her back, climbed out of bed, and grabbed a robe from the closet. “The first thing we’re going to have to do, boy,” he said to the Doberman as he tied the belt, “is make you one of those doggie doors.”

Dowser looked up at him with a pitiful expression and whined again as if to say, “Can we discuss this later?”

Sam laughed and snapped his fingers. “Come on, fellow.” At the door he paused and turned to Max. “Hold my place, love. I’ll be right back.”

Max stretched like a contented cat. She felt wonderful. Sam was a delightful lover, vigorous and considerate. She couldn’t imagine anyone pleasing her more. Not that she was all that experienced, she thought as she arose and padded toward the bathroom. There were only two others she could use for comparison. One, she’d been semi-engaged to in college, and the other was a brief and disastrous fling with an engineer. The sex hadn’t been all that great. In fact, she’d wondered what all the fuss was about. Now she knew.

Adjusting the knobs on the shower, she stepped under the warm spray and hummed as she lathered her body, noting a new tenderness in a few places. “Green . . . Guadalupe-green . . . eyes,” she sang softly in her deep, throaty voice.

The shower door clicked open and there stood Sam, stripped of everything except a grin and the mug he held in his hand.

“I brought your coffee.” He stepped into the spray and handed it to her. “Why don’t you drink it while I do wonderful things to your body?”

And he did.

“Sam,” she squealed, “I’m getting water in my coffee.”

He plucked the mug from her hands and set it in a corner of the shower. “There’s plenty more.” And he went back to what he was doing.

It was a while before she got another cup.

Later, wrapped in towels, they sat in the middle of his bed sipping orange juice and feeding each other warm, sticky cinnamon rolls. “I love these,” Max said, licking a dollop of icing from his finger.

“I’ll have Loma fix them for you every morning.”

She stilled. “Is Loma here? Lord, Sam what must she think? We weren’t very quiet in the shower.”

“You weren’t very quiet, you mean,” he said, laughing as he stripped her towel away and trickled orange juice in her navel. “I was very quiet.” His tongue licked up every drop, and he filled it again.

“Sam. I’m mortified. I’ll never be able to face her again.”

He rested his chin on her abdomen and cut his eyes up at her. They were alive with dancing green devilment. “Don’t worry, Angel. Loma doesn’t work on Sundays. She just leaves the coffeepot and bun warmer on automatic timers. There was nobody here to hear your lovely little screams but me.” He gave a knowing wink and a rakish smile. “And I liked it.”

 “Sa-am,” they both said at the same time.

“Well, I did.” Laughing, he scooped her up and rolled over on his back, placing her astride of him. “Have I told you this morning how much I love you?”

*    *    *

It was past noon when Sam loaded the big inner tubes in the back of the truck. The day was warm and sunny, perfect for tubing on the Guadalupe, Sam declared. They were both dressed in sneakers and bathing suits—his, a form-fitting dark blue, hers, a red maillot borrowed from his niece’s wardrobe. Both wore Sam’s T-shirts.

As he hoisted the picnic basket into the pickup, she asked, “Why can’t we use the river right here?”

“Too swift and rocky,” he replied. He helped her into the cab and drove down the lane from his house. “There’s a better place a couple of miles from here. I can’t believe you’ve never been tubing. I thought you said you’d spent summers around here with your grandfather.”

“I did. Those were my loveliest memories as a little girl. I adored him, and we had lots of fun fishing and boating and walking in the hills. I used to beg to live with him all the time.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“My father wouldn’t allow it. Spite, I guess. He and my grandfather hated each other. Too, I suppose my father didn’t want to give up the social security payments that came to me after my mother died. She was a nurse.”

“He sounds like a real prince. Where is he now?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion. I left home the day I was eighteen and could take charge of the trust fund my grandfather left me. It was enough to see me through college.”

“And you haven’t seen your father since then?”

She shook her head. “I sent him an invitation when I graduated with honors from Texas A&M, but I never heard from him.”

“What about your stepbrother?”

“I suppose he’s still in the Marines. He joined right after he flunked out of college. My father had high hopes that he would become a geologist or an engineer—something higher on the oil patch pecking order than a roughneck like he was—but Carl wasn’t much of a student.” Max turned on the radio to a country music station and started singing along with Taylor Swift.

Taking the cue that the subject of her family was exhausted, Sam said, “This truck surely is a handy vehicle to have around here. I may buy something like it.”

“I love the Silverado.” She ran her hand along the dashboard in almost a caress. “I’d hate to part with it. I like it better than the Lexus I had for a while.”

They pulled to a stop beside the river. Soon the two of them were bobbing down shallow rapids on their inner tubes, dodging boulders and paddling when the current calmed. Dowser ran along the bank barking and twisting his bobtailed bottom with excitement.

They made several trips down the river before they called a break for a late afternoon lunch. They sat on a blanket Sam had spread under a buckeye tree and dined on meat loaf sandwiches and beer that tasted like ambrosia to Max.

“Did you have fun?” he asked.

“Lots of fun. Even if my bottom did get a little battered on the rocks.” Sam popped the top of another beer and offered it to her. She shook her head. “I couldn’t hold another thing.” Her fingers gently touched his shin, where the bruises were fading from purple to a yellowish shade and the scrape was new pink skin. “I’m sorry about this.”

“I’m not.” His eyes lit with an impish grin. “Think what a story we can tell our grandkids.”

Smiling wistfully, Max let the comment go by and lay back on the blanket. Sam stretched out on his stomach beside her and tickled her nose with a tiny yellow wild flower he’d plucked. She had never been so contented in her life. At this moment she didn’t have a care in the world. It was unbelievable how her life had changed in the last few days. She had a feeling that things were finally turning around for her.

Max had a splitting headache and her feet hurt. To top it all off, she could feel a run slither up the leg of her last decent pair of pantyhose. She shucked her navy pin-striped jacket, tossed it on the seat of the truck, and climbed in after it. Crossing her arms over the steering wheel, she rested her head against them and fought the blue devils tormenting her.