Midnight Remembered

And his face was set, harder than she had ever seen it before, a tic visible in the tightness of his jaw. As she watched, his lips flattened. Then he turned his head, looking out through the narrow opening once more. She felt the breath he took, deep and uneven.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He turned to face her, his eyes assessing. Then he stepped back, bending and laying his weapon on the concrete floor. He shrugged out of the camouflage backpack he was wearing, propping it carefully against the wall. Her eyes followed those movements. When Josh straightened, she expected some kind of explanation. Instead he simply looked at her again.

Unspoken permission to put her own gun away, as she had asked? If so, she wasn’t averse. Especially since she understood that would mean Josh felt they were no longer at risk.

They would probably wait out the night here. It was as good a place as any, especially since the village had already been searched. In the morning, according to plan, they would head for the border, deliver what they had been sent here to retrieve, and then get the hell out of Dodge. And despite Josh’s teasing, that hot bath was going to feel very good.

She lowered her pistol, unwrapping the nearly bloodless fingers of her left hand from around those of the right. She usually kept the weapon in the side pocket of the fatigue-type pants she wore, and she wanted it back there, out of the way. She doubted Josh would approve. The location was not particularly handy, not if she needed the gun in a hurry.

Given her ambiguous feelings about engaging in any kind of shoot-out with the rebel forces, however, that was okay by her. She’d leave the quick-draw responses to people like Joshua Stone.

She looked down to guide the insertion of the barrel back through the opening of her parka. Josh’s hands were suddenly there, preventing her. Surprised, she looked up, expecting to find that she had somehow misinterpreted what she had thought was permission to put her weapon away.

As she hesitated, trying to understand, his left hand took the pistol and shoved it into the pocket of his own jacket. And then his right hand slipped into the opened placket of her coat.

Holding her eyes, he began to unbutton her shirt, fingers moving quickly over the task, as if this were something he had done a thousand times. He probably had. But not with her.

As soon as he had undone two or three of the buttons, his hand flattened and pushed inside the opening he’d created. And his palm encountered not bare skin, of course, but her long johns. She could tell by the sudden widening of those blue eyes that he hadn’t expected the thermal underwear, despite the climate.

“Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels?” he asked, the teasing note back in his voice.

She was almost too shocked by what had happened to formulate an answer. And more shocked when his palm moved upward to cup the softness of her breast. As it did, his eyes dilated slightly, the pupils expanding outward into that rim of sapphire.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. She wasn’t all that well-endowed to begin with. Besides, Josh was right. She had on so many layers of clothing as protection against the cold that she had known no one would ever be able to tell. Now, of course…

Josh’s thumb and forefinger found her nipple, pebbled with cold and the aftereffects of fear. It seemed to have hardened even more now with anticipation. Watching her face, he rolled it between his fingers, the pressure almost enough to be pain. And almost ecstasy. As the sweet, hot heat began to roil through her lower body, she closed her eyes, exhaling through her mouth the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“You like that?” he asked softly, increasing the pressure.

She nodded wordlessly. The juices he’d talked about flooded her body in a molten stream of sensation as he touched her.

“Then tell me,” he demanded. “Tell me you like it, Daniels. I need to hear you say it.”

“I like it,” she whispered, knowing only now that this was what she had been waiting for for four months. Right or wrong. Smart or very stupid, she had been waiting for Joshua Stone to touch her. Waiting for him to claim her body. To possess it.

She wanted him to do those things. Most of all, she wanted him. Wanted him with a need so sharp it, too, verged on pain.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time,” he whispered, seeming to echo her silent confession. “A very long time. Every night I’d listen to the rustle of your clothes, and I’d imagine I was undressing you. And then I’d hear that cloth moving over your skin, and I’d imagine my mouth there instead. My tongue touching all the places you were bathing. But I’d be bathing them. Caressing them. Caressing you.”

He had put his cheek against her forehead, and his mouth was moving beside her temple, his whiskers abrasive. His breath was warm and moist as it stirred over the fragile skin, which had already dampened with a fine dew of perspiration just at the thought of what he was saying. Another sensation to add to the dominance of his fingers, which had never ceased their movement over and around her nipple.

“All those cold nights, I’d lie in that bed thinking about how warm I’d be if you were under me, your skin sliding, wet and slick, against mine.”

The last was so soft the words were little more than breath. Less sound than the suggestion of it. And the images they produced were as seductive as the husky timbre of his voice. His mouth on her skin, warm lips gliding over her cold, shivering body. His tongue touching all the intimate places that no man had ever touched in that way before. No one before Josh Stone.

Compared to him, she had known she was inexperienced. Maybe that had been one of the things she had found so exciting. She had known that if he ever made love to her, it would happen in exactly this way. He wouldn’t ask permission. Or give her warning. He would simply take her. Dominating. Controlling.

And even if she had no idea what she wanted, he would know how to please her. She had understood from the beginning that he would be this kind of lover. She had wanted him to be.

He lowered his head, putting his lips against her neck. His tongue followed the blood as it pulsed through the artery there. Then it traced to her ear, dipping inside, and slowly trailed downward again, until his mouth encountered the top of her shirt.

Think you could possibly have on any more clothes, Daniels? he had asked. But what she had put on, she could take off.

She wanted his lips and his tongue on her body. Moving over the hollow of her collarbone and across the small, highly sensitized swell of her breast. Circling her nipple, just as his fingers had caressed it, their movements sure and unhurried. So sure. So knowing. As his mouth would be.

She turned her head, bending her knees a little so she could put her lips under his. His head tilted to accommodate the kiss, his mouth fastening hungrily over hers. There was nothing tentative about the movement, but he didn’t push his tongue inside as she expected. His lips played with hers, making contact and then breaking it, only to touch her mouth again at a slightly different angle. A series of small weightless kisses, which gradually gave way to something else.

His mouth opened, his lips moist and warm, trailing languidly over hers. Breaking off and then coming back to hers again. And again. And yet again.

Only after what seemed an eternity did his mouth fully open and his tongue contact hers. Her lips had already parted, ready for the invasion that was not an invasion, but the long-awaited answer to an unspoken invitation.

His head turned slightly, the alignment again perfect. He eased her against the wall at her back, one arm around her waist. His fingers deserted her breast and worked at the buttons of her clothing, a barrier between them that neither wanted there.

He never released her mouth, however, plundering it even as he unfastened and pushed aside layers of fabric. He eased her parka over her shoulders, guiding it down her arms, and she let it fall to the floor.

She should have felt the cold, but she didn’t. She was aware of nothing but the movement of his mouth and his hands. After he had tugged her shirt out of her pants and unfastened the last of its buttons, it followed the jacket to the floor. Only when he pulled the top of her thermal underwear over her head did he break the contact of the kiss, just long enough to accomplish that task.

“Your turn,” he said, his mouth again over hers, so that the words were muffled by her lips, almost lost against them. Her mind seemed drugged by his kisses, so that she didn’t respond for a moment. And he didn’t wait.

He unzipped his parka, shrugging out of it and dropping it onto the floor beside hers. And then he took her hands and put them against the buttons of his shirt. Finally, she seemed to comprehend what he wanted her to do.

Her fingers trembled over the simple task, and after a moment his hands lifted, brushing hers aside as he pulled the shirt out of his pants and then apart, those two actions almost simultaneous. And as soon as he had, he leaned against her.

His bare chest pressed against her breasts, flattening them, and her breath released in a low moan. She was conscious on some level of the cold, damp stones behind her, but she was far more conscious of the warmth of the solid wall of his chest, hair-roughened, moving enticingly against the front of her body. Against the hardened peaks of her breasts.

Her arms went around him, spread hands caressing. Following the corded muscle of his shoulders and the long, elegantly sculpted back and narrow waist. Trailing up the smoothly ringed column of his spine.

They were completely naked above the waist, and oblivious to the cold. Their bodies were pressed tightly together. Hands exploring. And it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Not for either of them.

His palms cupped under her hips, lifting her into his erection. She gasped again as she felt the undeniable proof that he was as aroused by what they were doing as she was. A little danger gets the juices flowing.

Was that what this was all about? A reaction to what had just occurred? To the close call they’d had? And if it were? she asked herself, the intellectual question almost unimportant as her palms moved over the warm, smooth skin of his back. Did she really care about his motives? Were hers any purer?

This was about two people coming together after a long and tantalizing physical awareness. Maybe that’s all it was for him, despite what else it was for her. And if, as his reputation indicated, this was all Joshua Stone was ever willing to give, she would take it. Her decision. And her choice.

She arched her back, changing resolution into action. His hands were still cupped under her hips, and as she moved, he pulled her closer, groaning as their bodies came together, as close as they could get physically, given the situation.

And then he released her, dropping her back to the ground so quickly she staggered. His hands, working at the fastening of her pants, steadied her by the simple expedient of grabbing a handful of their fabric.

Then, he was unbuttoning and unzipping with a frenzied urgency. Her hands found the waistband of his trousers, working as hurriedly, as desperately.

Given that frenzy, she expected him to take her standing up, pressed against the wall behind her. Instead, he bent, putting one knee on the floor, and pulled the two down-filled parkas together to form a makeshift pallet at her feet.

When he looked up, the slant of fading light from the crack over his head fell on his eyes, highlighting them. Their pupils were wildly dilated now, either from the darkness in the cellar or because of what was happening between them.

She could barely see the rest of his features, but his mouth was set again, almost stern, unsmiling. And for some reason a jolt of anxiety moved through her stomach. That was not the way a man about to make love should look.