Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

He felt pressure building in his chest and throat and belly. Lightning flashed against his eyelids, and in the second of silence that followed he heard her whimper. He opened his mouth, and she did, too, just as the thunder crashed in on top of them. It drove them together, a collision of lips and teeth and tongues and bodies. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her closer, and closer yet, while her arms coiled around his neck, urging his head lower.

The sky opened up and let loose the rain; it pounded on his head and pummeled his shoulders like a demon taking out its pent-up fury. For all Troy knew or cared, it could have been the Johnstown Flood. He was caught up in a natural disaster of a different kind.

They broke apart, gasping and drenched, to stare at one another for an incredulous, immeasurable time. Then, as if the spell that enchanted them both had suddenly broken, they turned and plunged through the open door together. Troy kicked the door shut behind them and reached for her in the sudden darkness. But the space around him was empty-he could feel its emptiness with every revved-up nerve and sense in his body.

A light came on-thelamp above the bed. Charly was poised in a half crouch beside it, looking like a wild thing pinioned in a car’s headlights, eyes wide and luminous, dangerous and alluring as a bayou on a moonlit night.

Cocked and wary, breath coming shallow and quick, he held up a calming hand. “Look-” But she held up a hand, too, and stopped him right there.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, urgent growl. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking of me. But I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Troy drawled with a calm he was a long way from feeling, folding his arms across his hammering heart. Outside, the thunder cracked and grumbled, and the rain roared like a whole herd of demons, and it was nothing like what was going on inside him. “I understand.”

She shook her head with controlled fury, hugging herself as if to keep from coming apart. “No, you don’t. I want to-I do. Lord knows, I’m crazy, but…I do. All right, so I’m out of my mind. But I’m not stupid, okay? I’m not stupid. We can’t…do this.”

And all at once Troy was pretty sure he did understand. Taking the kind of heart-stopping, gut-tightening gamble he thought he’d left behind him for good, he reached into his jeans pocket, took out a small foil-wrapped package and tossed it onto the bed. “This what you’re worried about?”

Her startled glance flicked at it, then at him. She caught a breath, and some of the fight and fury went out of her eyes and was replaced with laughter. Husky and breathless with it, she murmured, “I should have known. You were a Boy Scout, right?”

“What? Oh, Be Prepared, you mean?” He shook his head, half-smiling. “No, ma’am-navy. SEAL.” He paused, then said stiffly, “I want you to know, just because I believe in being ready for any and all contingencies, doesn’t mean I expect those contingencies to take place. You understand? What happened out there just now-maybe we both got a little bit carried away, okay? You want it to end right here, you say the word and I’m gone. No questions, no blame.”

She heard him out, lips slightly parted, eyes never leaving his. And when he’d finished she went on like that, just staring at him, while ropes of tension coiled and tightened around his chest.

Finally, unable to stand the torture any longer, he growled, “Well? What’s it gonna be?”

She shook her head and said slowly, “I can think of about a hundred reasons why you should go…and only one reason why you should stay.”

“And that is?”

“Because-” the growl in her voice became a purr, a vibration he could almost feel in his bones “-I want you to.”

She came toward him, one slow step, then another, her eyes catching fire the way hazel eyes can, sometimes, when the light’s just right. “Because,” she whispered, “I’ve just had one of the worst days of my life.” She stopped right square in front of him. “And I don’t feel like sleepin’ alone.”

He let out a breath, lifted his hands to her upper arms and brushed his fingers back and forth over the smooth, cool skin, and still felt as if the fire in her eyes were consuming him alive. “You don’t have to do that,” he mumbled, his throat dry and scratchy as kindling. “If that’s all you want…”

“Don’t be stupid.”

He laughed then, a soft hissing like the sound rain makes when it falls on live coals. He tightened his hands on her arms, and she swayed toward him, leaning against their support. “Lady,” he growled, “your clothes are soakin’ wet.”

“So are yours.”

“Maybe we’d best get out of ’em-”

“-before we catch our death.”

Their laughter tumbled giddily together with shivers as he skimmed his hands down her sides, gathered in the damp, limp fabric of her top, drew it from her waistband, peeled it up and over her head. Her bra was the kind that closed in the back; he reached around her and unhooked it with the kind of practiced ease he could feel grateful for without being proud of. Some things about his life he’d learned it was best not to agonize over, or regret too much, but just to accept as part of what it had taken to bring him to where he was.

And, he thought, where he was now was just about the last place he’d ever thought he’d be when he’d gotten out of bed that morning. Life could be full of surprises.

He flattened his hands and splayed his fingers across her back, then moved them slowly upward, watching her eyes as he hooked his fingers under the straps of her bra, willing now, since he knew it was okay, to let the fire take him.

Slowly he drew the straps over her shoulders and down her arms, lightly grazing her skin with his fingernails so that every tiny follicle sprang erect in a rash of goose bumps. So that when he let it fall, the bra brushed over nipples so hard and sensitive she had to gasp with the exquisite shock of it. Then and only then did he let his gaze leave hers, and set it free to explore what he’d uncovered.

He felt like a kid, opening up his own special box of treasures. Her breasts were small but round and full, the nipples tight and pert, the exact pinky brown of certain seashells. He could almost taste them, cold and sweet on his tongue, feel them warm and. swell and soften in his mouth…

His body’s response to that notion nearly made him groan aloud. Tight and airless with self-control, he managed an edgy laugh. “You’re freezin’ to death.”

Her response was immediate, if bumpy. “Then warm me.”

Her hands were on his sides, already entangled in his rain-damp shirt. He meant to let go of her just long enough to haul it up his back and over his head and toss it aside. But now her hands were tugging at his belt buckle, and it seemed like a smart idea to dispose of that obstacle, too. And then there was her belt. And her hands under his waistband, sliding over the slick, sensitive places just below. And his hands inside her trousers, inside her underpants, pushing them over the swell of her hips so that they fell in a pool around her feet, leaving his hands free to touch, to savor and explore…

His hands stirred over Charly’s cold-prickled flesh like a magician’s wands, leaving behind showers of sparkly shivers; electricity skated up and down her legs, generating heat that turned her insides to melted honey. Her body grew heavy; pulses throbbed in her belly and between her legs. She leaned against him, lightning flickering around the edges of her consciousness, weak with wanting, so tightly strung with need that every muscle and fiber and sinew in her body quivered, like a tuning fork that hadn’t yet found the right overtone. She would know it when she found it, that moment when all the vibrations meshed into one perfect harmony that would drown the dissonances inside her head-the rage and sorrow and pain and regret. The loss and betrayal. The guilt.