Jennifer Greene - Sunburst

He bent to whisper in her ear. “I think you have the same thing on your mind as I have, Mrs. McCrery. There isn’t a soul for miles around.”

“What exactly is it that you have on your mind?” she asked suspiciously, laughter golden in her eyes as she glanced at him.

He sank onto a grassy spot in the shadow of a gnarled old hickory, lying flat on his back with his knees up, and rooted out a long blade of grass to stick in his teeth, making a whistle of it. She shook her head ruefully at him, settling down beside him on her knees. “ First, as I said, I want to hear about this trip of yours. You’re all but bubbling over!”

She was. For a woman who had barely been able to balance a checkbook a short time ago, she was one sky-high bubble of happiness at discovering the satisfaction of real accomplishment. She talked for twenty minutes, churning out a dozen ideas on how she wanted to set up displays, on what she needed from Kyle in the way of carpentry work to accomplish it. The marketing was her arena; for the first time since they moved here, she felt like an equal partner, with a chance to help build the McCrery enterprise into something they could both be proud of. Advertising was an automatic spin-off of the display work. “We haven’t even begun to touch the rich folks who vacation on Lake Michigan, and Madison’s an affluent little city. We were talking about taking on do-it-yourselfers, Kyle…and I thought we could expand into crafts as well-quilts and crewelwork and needlepoint; they blend with wood and add depth and color to a display. If we could find a few local women who already…”

“You know,” he interrupted finally, “I like that blouse.” He fingered the gauzy material between two fingers, studying the fabric intently. “It gives the illusion that you can see it all, and then it doesn’t keep the promise. Even when you were standing full in sunlight, the flesh underneath was just shadowy-you don’t mind if I check it out in a little more detail? Keep talking,” he urged her politely. “I knew damn well you’d have a gift for setting up a classy showroom, lady. You get full applause for every idea so far.”

She tried, but she seemed to be having an increasing difficulty following the thread of her own conversation. He propelled her flat on her back. Her strawberry-blond hair fanned out on the mossy grass behind her, and her golden eyes began to laugh up at his. He was very professorlike, gravely verifying that there were shoulders and breasts and ribs within the gossamer fabric, not just shadowy promises. “I can’t believe how far you’ve progressed on the building in just two days, Kyle. You’re going to be done in another week, aren’t you? Here I’ve been selfishly rambling on, and I never even asked you about things here-”

“I changed my mind,” he said severely. “I don’t like this blouse at all.” He raised her up, ordered her to lift her arms above her head, slipped the creamy summer material over her head, and promptly allowed it to decorate a bush. “Now is there some reason we need this?” He pointed to the lacy bit of bra. “I can’t think of a reason in hell…”

“What if someone comes by?” The demurral was halfhearted, and he knew it.

“I have every intention of keeping you covered, lady…”

His lips were so warm, so soft from the sun, the scent of grass, the ripple of the light breeze, the perfume of the wheat so intoxicating. It seemed to Erica that their loving had never had so much sweetness, so much urgency, so much sheer uninhibited joy.

They were both laughing as they stood up to take off the rest of their clothes, but their exuberant laughter had faded to something soft and secret, like a sound only the two of them could hear. When the clothes were gone, there was a moment when neither made a move to touch the other. Kyle stood, allowing Erica’s eyes to sweep over his tall, bronzed form without shyness, as his own gaze took in, savored, loved her smaller feminine frame.

No man has a more beautiful body than you do. Did you know that? Would you like me to shout it out…?

Every inch, Erica. Lord, I want you. Just as you are, this very instant…

They spoke with their eyes. They spoke in the way their lips joined, the way they both felt an identical sensual rush when their bodies finally touched. His hard thighs were pressed against her softer ones; her breasts swelled and tightened against his warm chest, and his skin…such supple skin beneath her kneading hands, which slid from the breadth of his shoulders to his taut male buttocks. He warmed beneath her hands, responsive to her every touch.

His lips left hers to trail down to her throat, silk-soft kisses that made her heart skip beats, that seemed to drug her into the illusion that she had left the ground. She had. Rather than bending, he lifted her playfully to kiss where he wanted, so that his face was level with her throat and then her breasts as he lifted her high, higher. Her legs wrapped around his waist for balance, and a husky sound escaped from her throat, half joyful laughter and half a helpless little groan as his lips burrowed between her breasts, his strong arms arching her back to offer the full satin flesh to his mouth. He raised her higher yet, pressing a kiss to her navel and then lower, his cheek brushing in that soft, curly triangle as she felt the crazy sensation of being weightless, higher than life, higher than breath.

When her toes touched the mossy earth again, there was still no sensation of reality. The spirit of soaring was intensified by the look in his eyes, by that deep turquoise brightness that came with loving, compelling tenderness. In some vague way, she was aware they were no longer standing but kneeling, then lying together on the soft moss. Her senses inhaled the shudder of need that racked Kyle’s whole body, the husky whispers of loving in her ears, the surge that encompassed both of them as limbs suddenly feverishly tangled with limbs, neither of them wanting to rush and both of them in such a desperate hurry…

“Kyle…”

“How I love to see you happy, Erica. I’m going to take you so high you’ll never come down…” He arched over her supple form, covering her, his kiss drowning the moaning cry in her throat when he joined with her. She felt so much love in his giving…

When the rain started falling, it made no difference at all, the soft, warm drops falling on skin that was already slippery. The scents around them intensified as if to prove that they were in another world. She almost hurt from so much love, a bursting joy within her, so loud that the thunder seemed quiet. She touched the sun and then seemed to explode…

Still he held her, rocking her back and forth until her heart stopped hammering, until they could both breathe normally again.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

She already felt that. He’d already told her, in the best way a man can tell a woman. She just looked at him. Rain was streaming down; his face was damp, his hair curling wildly-he was blinking the water from his eyes. There were bits of grass on his neck and shoulders and a near carpet of it on his back.

He helped her up and shook his head at both of them as he took in her own appearance. “How the hell am I going to put you back together so we can be seen in public again?” he growled in mock irritation, almost having to shout above the sound of the storm. He glanced up at the skies. “We have to be crazy!”

He tried to brush the grass off her back but the task was hopeless; the grass stuck to his fingers and her skin. Her bra refused to snap for him; her blouse, now soaked, did not want to go back on. She knew her hair was a wet tangle of grass, yet all she could do was look at him, her laughter part of the joy inside that just would not let her come back down to earth. Her eyes were a rich, dark gold, that certain sheen of color reserved for only one man’s cache of treasures.