Amanda (26 page)

She was still again, wide darkened eyes fixed on his face. She wet her lips in a gesture that was nervous rather than provocative. “I—I don’t know. … I didn’t mean to come over here tonight, not all the way to the house, I just started walking, following the path, and when I saw you, I …”

“You expected a civilized conversation followed by a little genteel necking?”

This time, his harsh mockery didn’t disturb her, because she was so absorbed by the startling change in
him. It astonished her that the sleek, cool, and rather dispassionate man of the past weeks had hidden within him such fierce, dark, turbulent emotion, and she didn’t know quite what to make of him. He was right —she had thought no further than likely kisses and possibly an affair of sorts—hadn’t let herself think further than that—and it was utterly tame compared to the obsessive desire he described so vehemently.

He was also right in believing it wasn’t what she wanted. Not now. With the overwhelming complications in her life right now, the various strains and tensions and undercurrents and puzzles, the last thing she would have gone looking for was anything—
anything
—demanding more of herself than she wanted to give.

“It doesn’t matter what I expected,” she managed to say calmly, very conscious of his nearness, his unexpectedly powerful chest and arms, and the way his fingers kneaded her shoulders with strong, restless movements he probably wasn’t even aware of. “You don’t like what you feel, and I don’t have the emotional energy to cope with—” She conjured a twisted smile. “—with anything more complicated than getting laid.”

“Then I’ll have to settle for that, won’t I?”

Even in the dimness, his expression was almost frightening in its intensity, and Amanda felt a queer inner jolt, as if all her senses had received a profound, almost primitive shock. She wanted to back away— no, to
run
away—but she couldn’t move at all. Her heart was pounding, and suddenly it was difficult to breathe and deep inside her was a heat she had never felt before.

“No.” She swallowed hard, unable to even look away from him. “I can’t. You want too much. You—”

He bent his head in an abrupt movement, his mouth covering hers hungrily, and Amanda forgot
whatever she’d been about to say. Her hands were on his naked chest, fingertips probing thick, soft hair and hardness beneath. He didn’t feel like a man who spent his days in a suit behind a desk. He felt like a construction worker or a rancher, like a man who used his muscles in the vigorous daily struggles of life.

And he was hot, hotter than the night, his skin burning as if it could hardly contain the fever raging inside him. Her lower body molded itself to his of its own volition, and the shock of his arousal sent another wave of heat through her. She knew she was kissing him back, her mouth as fierce and blindly compulsive as his, and that almost-brutal desire was so powerful and so unexpected it made her dizzy.

Then Walker jerked his head up, leaving her lips feeling swollen and throbbing, almost bruised from the force of him, and he drew a breath that sounded more like a growl. “I need you.” His voice grated.
“Need
you. I thought it would go away, but it hasn’t, it’s only gotten worse.”

Amanda stared up at him, mesmerized. She had the hazy understanding that she would have been able to pull away if he had offered only the lustful but in-control desire she had seen and felt before, and understood. A passion of the flesh only, touching the emotions but lightly and the soul not at all. She could have walked away from that, or stayed without anxiety, accepting what he offered in the mutual understanding of pleasure for its own sake. That would have been … civilized.

There was nothing civilized about this. His desire had burst forth like floodwaters over a dam, sweeping her into a burning current she was unable to control, and even as she was carried along wildly, the sure knowledge that he was every bit as overwhelmed was
incredibly seductive. She had never in her life felt so
necessary
to a man.

“Goddammit, Amanda.” He surrounded her face with hands that shook and kissed her again, his mouth as hard and fierce as his voice. “Either say yes or else tell me to go to hell again, but don’t make me wait another minute for some kind of answer.”

Somewhere in her mind was the whisper of a sane warning to slow down and think about this, to estimate the cost of allowing him to see her vulnerable, but rational thought was swamped by wild emotion. Shaken, she heard an unnervingly sensual little whimper escape her, a response to him and to her own burning desire, and her hands slid slowly around him until her nails dug into the shifting muscles of his back. The tips of her breasts, already visibly aroused beneath the fine cotton of her blouse, touched his chest.

Walker caught his breath. “Yes?” he demanded thickly.

“Yes.” She wasn’t even sure she would say it until the word emerged, but uncertainty dissolved in a flood of sensations when he kissed her again with that intense, overwhelming hunger.

His fingers slid down her throat and followed the thin lapels of her blouse until he reached the first button. Before Amanda could move to help him, the blouse was swiftly opened and jerked down her arms, making her back arch and her naked breasts rake hard against his chest.

He made a rough sound, his teeth and tongue playing with her lips in carnal bites and enticing touches more wildly arousing than simple kisses could ever be, and his hands slid down her back to pull her close to him. He was moving, rubbing himself against her swelling breasts.

Amanda heard herself whimper, felt her breasts ache and her nipples burn, the urgent desire rising in her so quickly it was like some kind of madness taking hold of her. Wild and rapt, she caught his bottom lip between her teeth, and the low sound he made in response was a growl, their breath mingling. His hands were at the elastic waistband of her shorts, pushing them down over her hips, and only when she felt the damp grass beneath her bare feet did she realize she had gotten rid of her shoes.

She fumbled for the snap of his jeans, her fingers awkward in her impatience but still able to open the snap and slide the zipper down. He caught her hand when she would have reached for him, and his voice was hoarse.

“No. If you touch me, I’ll—”

“Hurry,” she whispered, no longer surprised by her own compulsion to have him.

Walker shuddered and made another low sound, but then he was shoving his jeans and shorts down, kicking them to one side as Amanda kicked her shorts out of the way. He pulled her down to the ground and pressed her back into the dew-wet grass, and she moaned when she felt him dispense with her panties by simply tearing them off her.

“I can’t wait,” he muttered, one heavy hand rubbing over her breasts and stomach and then sliding down to ease between her shaking thighs and cup her mound.

Amanda whimpered, her hips lifting needfully when his long fingers probed and stroked. She was burning, aching, empty in a way she’d never felt before. Nothing else was important, nothing mattered except feeling him inside her. “Don’t wait,” she told him, her husky voice curiously broken.

“I have to. I have to slow down. Christ, it’s like I’m starving for you …”

His mouth was at her breast, and he let her feel his teeth as well as his tongue tease her nipple as he sucked strongly. His hunger was so powerful it made his caresses ferocious, primitive, and he almost hurt her. But his very lack of control was arousing in itself, evidence of the depth of his need, and Amanda felt freer to let herself go, to enjoy her own passion without holding anything back.

She pulled at his shoulders frantically, her body arching up off the wet ground as his mouth and fingers drove her higher and higher, so high it was frightening. Then his mouth was sliding hotly down over her quivering stomach, lower, and she let out a low, wordless cry of pleasure when his tongue stroked the most exquisitely sensitive spot her body possessed.

She fought to catch her breath, to be still, but there was no control left to her. At first dizzily aware of the scents of grass and honeysuckle and the soap he’d used, aware of the humid heat of the night and the sounds of crickets and the faint rumbles of thunder off in the mountains and their breathing, all her senses began to focus until she was aware of nothing but him and the raging needs of her own body.

“Walker … I can’t stand it … please …”

He moved back up her shaking body with painstaking slowness, his mouth caressing the silky flesh over her belly and rib cage, her breasts, her throat. His hips spread her thighs wider, his hardness rubbing against her, and Amanda moaned.

“Damn
you. …”

“Easy,” he muttered, but he seemed to be ordering himself because his every movement, every caress, lingered achingly. When he raised his head, his face was taut, his eyes glittering down at her with the almost-blind
look of frantic lust. “I wanted to … make it last … but—”

Amanda felt him, hard and insistent, and she made a choked little sound as her body began to admit him. It had been a long time for her, and his slow penetration stole what was left of her breath. She opened for him, stretched almost painfully, gripped him tightly. She was full of him, so full, and then he abruptly withdrew and thrust hard just once, and she writhed with a sob because she had never felt anything so wildly perfect.

“Jesus—” He groaned gutturally and bore down as if he needed to go deeper inside her, then uttered another harsh, primitive sound when she moaned and raked his back with her nails. “I have to—”

“Yes, Walker, please,” she pleaded, her legs lifting and gripping his hips desperately.

His forearms slid under her back, his hands gripping her shoulders, and the heavy thrusts, deep and hard, quickened until he was like some untamed creature obeying ancient drives to possess its mate. Amanda felt possessed, taken in a primal way unlike anything she’d ever experienced, and her body gloried in it. Her hips lifted eagerly to receive him, her hands roamed over the rippling muscles of his back in the frenzied need to touch and seek and hold, and her body shivered beneath the onslaught of his possession.

Without warning, the coiling tension inside her snapped, and Amanda cried out as waves and waves of throbbing pleasure swept through her and over her. He groaned and kept driving into her, holding her pinned beneath him and refusing to allow her to drift away from him. Dazed, all her senses buffeted, she felt her body obey his insistence as fresh tension wound swiftly and sharply inside her, and when it peaked this time the release was so devastating that her scream of pleasure was utterly silent.

Still shuddering, she felt him jerk and heard the hoarse cry that seemed ripped from deep in his chest. Then he was pouring his seed into her, his weight heavy on her as he bore her back into the ground.

Amanda didn’t know how much time passed, but gradually she became aware of her surroundings. Beneath her, the grass was thick enough to provide a marginally comfortable bed and she no longer felt the dampness of dew—probably because both her body and his were slick with sweat. Not that she cared. The air was hot and still, humid, and when she opened her eyes she saw lightning bugs flickering high up in the spreading branches of the old oak tree. She could hear crickets and, faintly, thunder. She could hear her still uneven breathing, and his.

Walker lifted his head, easing himself up onto his elbows. There was an indefinably male look of satisfaction stamped into his handsome features but no triumph, as if he realized that this had been more a respite than a resolution. He kissed her, slowly and thoroughly, then lifted his head again.

“That was … remarkable,” he said, his voice low but matter-of-fact.

Knowing it would be useless to try hiding how completely overwhelmed she had been, she merely said, “I think I’d choose another word. Maybe … frantic.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” She glided her palms over his back slowly and remembered digging her nails in more than once. “But I think I drew blood.”

He chuckled, a lazy sound of amusement. “I don’t think you broke the skin.”

Amanda didn’t protest when he lifted himself off
her and relaxed by her side, but when he kept one hand on her just beneath her breasts, she was obscurely glad he didn’t withdraw completely from her. She should have been uncomfortable lying there naked, she thought, but though she was mildly astonished at herself for having sex right out in the open under a tree on a brightly moonlit night, she wasn’t embarrassed.

A slight breeze stirred then, rustling in the tree above them and wafting over her moist body, cooling and drying her feverish skin. It felt wonderful. She didn’t want to move.

Rising on his elbow beside her, Walker looked down at her for a moment, then began to fondle her breasts with indolent interest, kneading, lifting, and shaping them. It was as if he had to touch her, as if his desire had been only temporarily appeased rather than sated.

“I think you have a perfect body,” he told her, still casual.

She gazed at his absorbed expression, feeling her pulse begin to quicken and her flesh respond to the caresses, and she tried to hold her voice steady when she murmured, “Thank you. Good genes, I suppose.” His hand paused, and Amanda silently swore at herself for reminding him. For reminding them both.

Then he was stroking again, his fingers tracing curves and examining her tightening nipples. “you’re surprisingly voluptuous for such a little thing,” he murmured. “Judging by the painting, your mother wasn’t.”

If she was your mother, of course.

He didn’t have to say it, and Amanda felt herself tense. With an effort, she kept that out of her voice. “No, she always bemoaned having the figure of a child. Whenever she bought my bras, she said it depressed
her no end that mine were a cup size larger than hers.”

Walker pulled gently at a stiff nipple, then leaned over and flicked it with his tongue in a brief but wildly arousing caress. When he raised his head, he was smiling. “Nice detail.”

Knowing damned well he wasn’t referring to her breasts, she pushed his hand away and sat up, reaching for her clothing.