Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

This time she didn’t have to listen and read and wait for a phone call. She had Cord next to her.

“I love the night sky.” She’d said that last night; she was sure of it. But she needed to hear the sound of her voice and learn how Cord might respond to it. Forget danger. Forget everything except need and hunger and the two of us alone, together. “Those city lights we used to look out at when we were in that stupid, cramped little apartment? How could I think they were exciting?”

“They are to some people.”

“But not to us.” Us . “Cord?” She heard her voice speaking his name but couldn’t think what she’d been about to say, if anything. “Cord?” she tried again. “I am so glad you’re here.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

She expected him to assume that she needed his expertise to locate Matt and that’s why she wanted him on the mountain with her. If he’d said that, would she have let it go at that?

But he didn’t speak. Instead, he freed her hand and with weathered fingers and palm began an exploration of her throat. She sat as motionless as his caress would allow. Her mind drifted, briefly, flitting into the past, touching on a thousand restless nights when she slept alone. There’d been two men she’d thought she’d begun to care for, but they hadn’t touched her soul in that way only Cord had.

She should have put him behind her. They were divorced, finished.

But they weren’t.

There was no need to ask permission. His touch had already told her everything she needed to know about his reaction to tonight and them. When she bracketed his face with her hands and pulled herself close to kiss him, she felt a deep shudder that might have come from either or both of them.

He met her open-mouthed; his breath rushed against her.

Her body came alive.

Bold, so bold that there was no questioning the move, she slid her hands down him, unbuttoning and pulling at the same time until she’d laid his chest bare. Although he tried to continue their kiss, she pulled free so she could run her mouth over his chin, down his throat, to the soft mat of hair that covered his chest. With her tongue she worked her way through the slight barrier until she could take his taste, his essence even, deep into her.

She felt his body tense.

She still needed words and emotions from him. She would always need those things. But tonight she could forget what had torn them apart and lose herself in what was both achingly familiar and so new that her heart sang with discovery.

He’d caught a few strands of hair that dropped along the side of her neck and was letting them slide lazily through his fingers. She concentrated on the slight tugging followed by a sensation of release. He held her hair in the shelter of his hand. Played with her. Promised.

Feeling hot and wild, free beyond belief, she ran her fingers around his waist until she touched the hard ridge of his backbone. It was both sheltered and surrounded by muscle and flesh and hers to explore. Simply searching that part of him dug a molten path through her.

Words flitted through her, questions, a promise freely given that tonight meant as much to him as it did to her. She opened her mouth to ask him to gift her with that, spotted the moon cradled between great tree shadows, lost the ability to speak.

When he ran his thumb along her collarbone, she again leaned forward, twisting her head at the same time. She took his right nipple between her teeth.

She felt his shudder, heard the rumble of his groan. Accepted when he freed himself.

Quickly, gently, almost tentatively, he concentrated on her blouse buttons. She worked with him as he slid the garment off her shoulders. She felt a cool rush of air at the base of her throat and across her back, but he must have known that was going to happen because before the cold could distract her, he pulled her against him. She thought he might want to stop with yet another embrace and wondered how long she could keep her body still, but he soon let her know that his needs went beyond that-matched hers.

He unfastened her bra with an ease that made a lie of the last seven years. With the heels of his hands brushing, always brushing against her, he pulled the garment off and dropped it on top of her blouse. Through eyes that wouldn’t focus, she stared at the moon and stars. The points of light blurred, came together.

Together. Like her and Cord.

Alive. The word, the emotion, melted through her. She lapped at his breast and then quivered when he held her in his strong hands so he could do the same to her. She felt her breasts swell and the tips harden, felt him draw her breast into his mouth as she would soon…soon take him into her.

I need this, Cord. Need you loving me. Giving yourself to me.

Without you I might die.

When he pulled back, leaving her dampened flesh vulnerable to the air, she moaned. Then, with indistinct vision, she watched as he spread their shirts out on the ground. She trembled, feeling like a sixteen-year-old virgin. He touched the base of her throat; it was the touch of a sixteen-year-old boy bombarded by emotions beyond his comprehension.

Then he leaned into her, eased her onto her back, and followed her down.

With one hand bracing himself, he worked at her jeans’ zipper. She arched her hips upward, helping. When her jeans caught around her hips and he had to work at pulling the denim off her, she whimpered at the delay. Night air found her newly naked thighs; the heat in her body surged to the surface, kept her hot.

The sound of a zipper slicing downward caught her attention. While she’d been lost in what he’d already done to her, he had stood and stepped out of his jeans. He started to reach for his briefs, but she reared up and grabbed his hands, stopping him. She needed his help to reach a kneeling position, then she finished the act of disrobing him while he stood with the night surrounding him and his eyes staring down at her, dark as midnight. He was a mountain, part of their untamed surroundings. Take me! Carry me to the horizon! Together we’ll find yesterday, tomorrow, a place without time!

He knelt in front of her, thighs and hands and breasts touching. Then he gripped the fragile elastic that held her panties in place and began a slow downward journey. When he could go no further, he stretched her out on their shirts and lifted first one leg and then the other, the gesture both practiced and new.

She lay naked beneath him, no longer existing anywhere else. The breeze, now like cool lace, brushed against flesh that felt touched by moonlight and lightning and, most of all, by Cord.

I need this, Cord. Need you loving me.

He seemed to hesitate. Could he, a man who saw the vast wilderness as his home, be afraid of making love with his wife? What little remained of her rational mind knew she hadn’t been his wife for a long, long time, but that didn’t matter.

Tonight they were right for each other, or if not right, beyond caring.

She held out her hands, accepted the swirling ball of heat deep inside her, and issued a silent invitation.

He heard, came, slowly at first, then with a sense of urgency that matched hers. There was no more foreplay, no more time wasted erasing the years.

She spread herself for him, took him into her. Lost herself against him.

And she cried, tears without meaning or understanding.

Sometime during the night, they left where they’d made love and, shivering a little, returned to their sleeping bags. She started to lower herself to her bed, but he stopped her with a touch and she responded. They made love again, just as silent and frenzied.

In the morning, she woke with the weight of his arm over her breast.