Jennifer Greene - Wild in the Field

Pete seemed to know all the private places she’d been hiding in the dark.

Somewhere near the foot of the bed, he peeled the bra straps down her arms, then trailed the straps with his mouth, laving, biting, then baring her breasts for his view. He looked and kept looking, even as he was slowly zipping down her jeans and pushing them off her. There was naked and then there was naked . She’d been naked with Robert, but somehow she’d never felt this completely…exposed.

She kept telling herself that she was afraid, not ready, that she wanted to stop. But his hands were in her hair, and those kisses kept coming. She wasn’t protesting. She was claiming all the kisses he offered, taking everything he gave, demanding more, inviting more. When he lowered her to the bed, the old mattress springs creaked and groaned, not used to the weight of two wildly impatient lovers. The sheets felt moon-chilled, where her skin was unbearably hot. Fevered.

She hadn’t felt anything but anger in so long. She couldn’t explain what was happening. Morality didn’t seem to matter. This couldn’t be love…but it did seem to be about trusting Pete. Or his forcing her to trust him, because he gave and gave and gave. Liquid kisses. Golden kisses. Intimate kisses that tracked from her ankle to the inside of her thigh to the heart of her.

Need spiraled through her body, exploded through her senses, a fierce, urgent hunger that had nothing to do with lust-and yet everything to do with it. Desire coiled in her tighter than a spring, ready to let loose when he suddenly laughed, a low sound of masculine delight…and then he blew a raspberry in her navel to make her laugh, too. Laughter and sex, who’d have thought they went together? But when he nuzzled her breasts, her breath started coming in short, harsh gasps. As sweet as the laughter had been, suddenly she was in a desperate hurry for him, inside her, now .

She’d been torn apart for so many months. Alone for so many months. She didn’t know how to put her life back together. Wasn’t sure if she had a life that could be mended anymore.

But right then, it was as if Pete were taking her to some other place…a place where nothing existed but this urgent excitement. This rush of sensation. His wild mouth, his wicked eyes. His misbehaving hands, coaxing her to do things she didn’t do, to think things she didn’t think, to behave like a woman different than Camille. She was his lover. His abandoned, earthy lover at that moment, no one else, nothing else.

He pulled her beneath him, rising up, giving her a breath’s space-but she saw the glaze of desire in his eyes, saw the sheen of control in his face. She met his first thrust with her legs tight around him, then raised them higher and tighter yet, as if she could take him in as deep as her soul. He whispered something about how sweet she was, how wet, how tight, just for him, but he was already building a rhythm, pumping a beat, taking her on a long, fast ride.

She felt her spine arching, felt her pulse rushing and gathering speed, heard the call from her throat with his name on it. What she’d been so sure was lust wasn’t lust at all, but somehow magic. She felt protected in the circle of his arms, in his heat, in his warmth. He was stronger than she was and until those moments, that instant, she hadn’t known how strong she’d been. Or how badly she’d needed to let go, for a few minutes, to just be…weak. To be herself. To not hold up those steel emotional walls for just a little while.

And then release came to her like a sweet rush of rain, cleansing, healing, freeing. One burst of pleasure followed another, until she lay in his arms, breathless, whipped. He scooped her up and just held her. She heard his thundering heartbeat under her ear, felt his hand stroking down her shoulder and spine.

Gradually she became aware that clouds had chased across the moon. The room was darker, a night chill sneaking in. She’d felt the helpless smile on her lips, yet now felt that smile dying as her eyes opened.

There was no sudden sting of reality. The feeling of being cradled against his brawny chest was wonderful, the sensation of being sexually and emotionally sated was a call of life and hope that she hadn’t felt in months…if ever in her life. Yet when she suddenly lifted her head, she saw Pete’s eyes in the darkness, watching, waiting, as if he’d been half-tense in anticipation of her coming awake again.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Don’t steal my lines. And I can’t talk quite yet. I don’t know what just happened, but it feels like something on a par with hang gliding off Mt. Everest.”

A small smile. “Did we wear you out?”

“We? You did it all. And damn, you’re so small. Where you’ve been hiding all that power and passion, stranger?” Still his hand stroked, stroked, as if he were gentling a kitten who was braced to flee. “I knew we’d be good. It had to be good, Cam. But I never thought it’d be like this.”

“Neither did I.” But his warmth, his words of praise and tenderness, aroused an uneasy thread in her pulse. “I haven’t felt alive in months. I didn’t know I could feel…anything. Much less anything like this.”

“There’s no way you could have healed fast. You had a terrible hurt.”

Another uneasy thread bucked in her pulse. She touched his jaw, pushed back an unruly shock of hair from his brow. Whatever this had been about, she didn’t regret it. Couldn’t. He’d made her feel alive the way she never had, never thought she could.

But everything wasn’t about her. Pete had two sons-two vulnerable boys whose mom had left them, who didn’t trust women. He couldn’t just take any woman in his life. And Camille couldn’t imagine a woman less suited to be a healthy, trustworthy role model for his kids-or even be good for him. She barely knew what she was doing one day to the next.

“What are we going to call this, MacDougal?” she asked softly.

“How about if we don’t call it anything? I don’t need labels.”

She swallowed. “I don’t like labels either. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m a big boy.”

“I noticed that.”

He tapped the tip of her nose. “ That wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh. Well. What I meant was…I don’t know where we go from here.”

“We go wherever you want. Whatever feels natural.”

A pile of horse hockey if ever she’d heard one. Camille knew about vulnerability. Sometimes she felt so fragile she knew she could shatter if the wind blew from the wrong direction. And Pete looked tough and strong and mighty, because he was. But he hadn’t been a few minutes ago, in her arms. He’d needed her, no different than she’d needed him.

“I’m okay with doing what feels natural,” she said softly, “as long as neither of us build up unreasonable expectations.”

He stilled. His eyes met hers, unbending even in the darkness. “What are you worried about, Cam? Spill it out.”

She was worried about needing him too much. About hurting someone who’d been impossibly good to her. About failing a man who deserved someone who would never fail him. So she said, “I won’t lie to you, MacDougal. I loved Robert. I still love Robert. I don’t have the power to make those feelings go away.”

“No one’s asking you to,” he said sharply, but then he pulled her in his arms for a second time. The first kiss insured she was cut off from saying anything more. And then he made love to her, insuring she didn’t have the energy for anything but him-and them.

She woke once in the night, on the tip of a nightmare, but she found herself soothed and smoothed in Pete’s arms, and the bad dream just seemed to disappear.

The next time she opened her eyes, it was daybreak. And he was gone.