Montana Wildfire (27 page)

Amanda hesitated, then nodded as best she could with her head thrown back, and Jake's breath burning hotly over her chin, along her jaw, down the sensitive taper of her neck. "I... yes, Jake, I remember."

"It didn't work for me either. I didn't forget you, Amanda. I tried... God, how I tried! But I didn't,
couldn't
forget how sweet you taste. How much I wanted to taste you again."

"I know," she said hoarsely and sucked in a shaky breath when his teeth nibbled a particularly vulnerable spot, the center of her lower lip. A trickle of heat feathered through her blood, a hot surge of desire poured through her veins. Her hands fisted his shirt, even as she arched more closely against his hard male heat. "I—I know you didn't forget, Jake."

His silky hair tickled her throat when he nodded. He tasted the skin on the side of her neck, just below her ear. With a throaty moan, he sucked a patch of it into his mouth.

Damn, she tasted good! All creamy and sweet. Forbidden fruit, forbidden white skin. He hesitated, abandoning himself to the bittersweet flavor of her, the bittersweet feel of her flesh skimming beneath his hungry tongue. He kissed her neck, nuzzled the possessive red mark his suckling mouth had branded into her flesh. He stopped to gulp in a long, shuddering breath.

Jake's head lifted. His passion-darkened gaze seared into Amanda. Her head was thrown back, cradled against his shoulder, her throat eagerly exposed to him. He could see the pulse pounding in the creamy hollow. As tempting as it would be to caress that frantic beat with his tongue, he didn't. Not yet. But the temptation was there, and it was stronger than anything he'd ever felt before.

His gaze lifted. Wispy strands of spun gold had escaped the braid at her nape. The long, rain-dampened tendrils made spirals to frame her cheeks and brow. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. So moist. So tempting. As he watched, her lips parted oh, so softly, as though begging for a fuller exploration.

Jake promised himself she would get exactly that.

Soon. But there was something his mind demanded he say to this woman before his body took control. He waited until her lashes had swooped up. The fear that he was about to stop this sensuous madness shimmered in her eyes; it was tempered by a determined green glint that said she would not
let
him stop. Not now, perhaps not ever.

"I told you I don't repeat my mistakes, Amanda Lennox," he said, his voice strained. He tightened his hold on her when she flinched. Her eyes looked huge and moist in what little light the day offered. Her attention shifted to the side of his neck, which was concealed from view by the thick black curtain of his hair. Their thoughts meshed on the scar creasing his skin.

Pain swam in her eyes, tightened her expression. The same pain knifed through Jake. The intensity of it might have made him stop talking there and then, had he allowed himself to surrender to it. He didn't.

He sandwiched her cheeks in his open palms and held her steady when she would have looked away. Dammit, he didn't want her looking away from him! Not now. He wanted her eyes on him, nowhere else, when he said what needed to be said and said it as quickly as humanly possible. "Kissing you once and hoping it would get you out of my system was a mistake, lady. One I don't intend to repeat."

"Kissing me is a mistake?" she asked weakly. Her voice cracked, but it was nothing compared to the crack his words chiseled in her heart. He was going to reject her again. She could feel it, dreaded it.

"No, princess. God, no! Thinking I could kiss you
once
, then turn my back on you...
that
was my mistake. I've learned my lesson, though. I know better now. Once won't be enough for me. Not with you." He hesitated, willing himself to continue when he'd rather have kissed her again. "Do you understand what I'm saying to you, Amanda?"

She nodded, but it was an unconvincing gesture. Jake's frustration mounted. Somehow, he had to make her understand the rules of this newer, more dangerous game they were playing—rules he wasn't sure he understood himself—and he had to do it quickly, before things went any further between them.

"I'm only a human, lady. I can't... not just once... not with you... Damn!" For the first time in his life, Jake was tongue-tied. Jesus, the depths he'd sunk to! Maybe if he came right out and
said
what was on his mind? To hell with trying to coat the truth in sugary phrases. He'd never been good with words. And the way Amanda was gazing up at him, her lovely green eyes shimmering with sweet confusion, wasn't making this any easier.

His grip on her tightened as he pushed the truth harshly past his lips. "I'm going to have you, Amanda Lennox. There's no stopping now. I'm going to do things to your body that you'd be too embarrassed to dream about. And you're going to do things to mine. We've both wanted this too long and too badly to hold back. The problem is... hell, what I'm trying to say is that one time with you isn't going to be enough for me. I'm going to want you in my bed again. And again. And I
will
have you there, again and again, for however many times it takes to work you out of my system. You have to know that up front. You have to go into this with those beautiful green eyes of yours wide open... the way I intend to go into you."

Her hands lifted. She blanketed his roughened knuckles with her trembling palms. "What about me, Jake? Don't I have any say in this?"

"No." The way he said it made Amanda think he acknowledged his answer only as he mouthed the word. "I don't think you do. I don't think I can
let
you have a say in it."

"Pity. I'll have my say anyway." She hesitated, rolling her lips inward. Jake swallowed back a groan, knowing she had no idea how provocative the gesture was to him. "Did it never occur to you, that I might want
you
again?" Her gaze burned over his lips, her eyelids thickened slumberously. "And again?" Her lips parted oh, so softly, oh, so invitingly. "And again?"

Her words rustled like a sweet summer breeze in his ears. It wasn't the prissy, sensible answer Jake had expected, had prepared himself to hear. His entire body convulsed, as though he'd sustained a crushing blow. His gaze shifted to where his fingers curled over her shoulder. Her neck was a mere fraction away from his fingertips. The contrast in color and texture—satin-soft and sandpaper-rough, burnt-copper and milky-white—was jarring. What he couldn't figure out was why,
why
that wasn't the stumbling block it should be?

His eyelids hooded but in no way blotted out the intensity of his gaze. "It's wrong," he whispered, and the words felt like they'd been torn from his throat. It cut him up inside to think them, let alone say them aloud. Not that it made a difference. No matter what he said to Amanda now, no matter what she said to him, it wouldn't matter. Words couldn't stop him. He was beyond caring about logic and consequence. The sharp edges of reality had blurred to the white-hot need sluicing through him. "It's wrong for us to be together. You know that, don't you? Jesus, lady, tell me you know that!"

"In your mind, Jake. Not in mine." With the tip of her index finger she ironed out the creases between his brows. His skin felt warm and smooth and wonderful. Would the rest of him feel this good? Amanda suspected it would, and she had a desperate need to prove the theory out. "The way you make me feel is right, Jacob Blackhawk Chandler. Very right. Very good. That's all I know, all I want or
need
to know."

His spine went rigid. His jaw jutted up at a proud angle. At that moment, his silver eyes shimmering with restrained passion, his expression tight, Amanda thought he'd never looked more like the proud, untamed savage. The observation frightened her, but in a way it thrilled her, too.

His gaze sliced downward. Steel grey meshed with luminescent green. "I want you," he said simply, harshly, as if those three words were all that mattered to either of them.

They were all that mattered to Amanda.
I want you
were three words no one had ever said to her before. There were three other words she'd never heard, even from her father, but she knew instinctively that this man would not be the one to say them. Jake wanted her physically, the way she wanted and needed him, but that was all he wanted. It would have to be enough. He wouldn't give her more, and her pride demanded she not ask it of him. Because if he refused her, if he rejected her again...

"Show me," she demanded huskily, even as she curled her arms around his neck and tugged. He remained stiff, unmoving, but only for a second. His posture loosened, and he bowed over her, around her, as though sheltering her with his body from the drizzling rain. His cheek caressed her temple. His hot breath blasted raggedly in her ear. The heat of it, of
him,
seeped into her skin, warming her flesh to a feverish degree.

His hair fell forward over his shoulders. The damp, dark strands grazed Amanda's jaw as she turned, her mouth searching out his neck. She nuzzled the warm, earthy scented skin with her lips, and whispered huskily against it, "Show me how much you want me, Jake. Please, I need you to show me."

Jake didn't need an invitation to take from this woman what, to his mind, had been his from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her. But now that she'd given her permission, it dawned on him that he wasn't
taking
anything from her. At least nothing that wasn't freely given. It brought a subtle change to his perspective, added a complex aspect to an act that in past had always been very, very simple; an act that had once been driven only by physical necessity.

Amanda Lennox wasn't for sale. What she offered, she offered freely. Damned if that gesture didn't touch Jake deeply.

He slid from the white, still cradling Amanda close. His movements were slower, gentler than they would have been a few passion-fogged minutes ago. He carried her to a spot where two fallen tree trunks crossed, sheltering the earth beneath and keeping it relatively dry.

Amanda sighed, and curled comfortably within the safe harbor of Jake's arms as he kicked prickly twigs and rocks aside. His heart drummed a wild beat beneath her ear. His breaths burned over her hair, seared into her scalp.

Ingrained morals said she should be protesting right now, not surrendering. But Amanda was honest enough with herself to admit there would be no sense to that. She
wanted
this—wanted
Jake—
too badly to give social standing and racial barriers a thought. How could she? Jake's arms were cradling her to his hard chest, pinning her to him gently, as though she was a priceless, fragile piece of art that needed sheltering and protecting. His tenderness, so unexpected, touched her.

When the hard ground came up to meet her back, Amanda knew she'd never in her life felt a bed so wonderful, or a blanket so warm and inviting as the virile body that eased itself atop her.

They met chest to chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Jake's elbows flanked her ribs, supporting the majority of his weight. Amanda's hands were free to test the tautness of his waist, to slip behind and glide up the corded musculature of his back. His shirt moved with her, gliding over his skin, until she could almost feel his sleek, unpadded flesh beneath her fingertips.

He was hard. Not an ounce of fat clung to his lean frame. He was warm—tantalizingly hot, actually. His body felt so good and perfect molded atop hers that it made Amanda's breath catch.

Jake's attention snagged on the choppy little sound. His gaze shifted, spearing into hers. His eyes were hot with the build-up of three hellish days and nights of denied passion. His body remembered vividly every second of denial, and now it was humming for that time to be over.

His attention settled on her lips. Her mouth looked moist and swollen, well-kissed. Her lips parted. Her lower lip trembled, inviting him closer, teasing him to take another taste.

His restraint snapped.

With a groan, Jake's mouth crashed down on hers. Instead of protesting, as he'd half expected her to do, Amanda flowered open beneath him. Her fingers curled inward, tunneling through his shirt, digging into the warm skin beneath. She clung to him, arched beneath him, and pressed her body hungrily against his.

There was nothing gentle about this kiss. It was savage and thorough, hard and demanding. Devouring. Give and take manifested into a white-hot need for immediate satisfaction. Their tongues warred and tasted, plundered and claimed. No one led, no one followed. Desire kindled, fanning the flame burning inside them both. Mutual need flared to demanding life.

Jake wanted to go slowly with her this first time. But then Amanda snuck her sweet, distracting little tongue into his mouth, and urged his to join in a primitive mating dance. A surge of heat blasted up his spine when she sucked his tongue into her mouth.

Her hips arched, rubbing against the hard, aching length of him. Did she know what she was doing to him? Did she care?

Jake groaned, and realized that slow was no longer a possibility. Not now, not with this woman, not ever. When it came to Amanda Lennox, the definition of the word restraint was lost on him. Nor did he have the time or patience to relearn it.

He balanced his weight on his left elbow. His fingers trembled as he reached down and fisted calico and linen, dragging her skirt up until it bunched in wrinkled folds high on her slender white thighs. She wore a single chemise, and a dainty pair of pantalets. The pantalets were quickly dispersed. The crisp white linen chemise proved no barrier. Shifting his weight, Jake nudged her legs open with his knee. His leg rose, and his lower thigh wedged itself against moist, beckoning heat.

His hand opened, splaying over her small, tight stomach. He felt the breaths rushing in and out of her, felt the warmth of those breaths scald his cheek as he dragged his lips from hers, lifted, and let his gaze skim down her perfectly curved body.

His hand blanketed almost her entire stomach. His fingers looked big and dark and strong against the lush feminine backdrop. Beneath the calico, he felt minute tremors quaver through her. The tiny shivers of anticipation vibrated up his arm like the clap of thunder that echoed around them. Matching tremors rippled through his blood like waves of molten heat.