True to the Law (19 page)

His chuckle was quiet, faintly wicked. “No. You’re right. I was thinking we would start here.”

Chapter Seven

“Here?” she said in a voice that was unlike her own.

He nodded. “Here.”

Then to Tru’s way of thinking, he did an astonishing thing. He cupped her heel in his palm and raised her foot at the same time he bent his head. He kissed her instep.

Her lips parted around a perfect O, but no sound emerged. When he turned his head sideways to gauge her reaction, she felt her mouth pulling to the left in a bemused and lopsided grin.

“How lovely,” she whispered. “And how peculiar.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You think so?”

She nodded.

Rather than matching her crooked smile, Cobb sobered as he lowered her foot to his lap. “You’re certain about this, Tru? I need to know you’re certain.”

“I am.” She hesitated. “I can’t . . .”

Cobb waited. He lightly stroked her foot from ankle to toe.

“I can’t explain it. Don’t ask me to explain it.”

“All right.” He slid out from under her leg and stood to unbutton his vest. He angled his head toward the lamp on the bedside table. “Do you want to put out the light?”

Tru glanced at the lamp. A small vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows, and she began to worry her lower lip.

Cobb chuckled. “Do you want me to decide?”

She blew out a small breath and nodded.

“Very well.” He took off his vest and folded it before he laid it on top of his jacket. He approached the table and turned back the lamp’s wick just enough to mute the glow.

Tru stared at the lamp. “I should have been able to decide.” But she knew why she hadn’t, why she couldn’t. She said nothing about that.

“Decide this,” he said. “Right or left?”

She had no idea what he meant, but that made it easier to answer. “Left.”

“Then move over.”

Tru found she had the wherewithal to smile. She scooted toward the middle of the bed and then a little beyond.

Cobb sat in the space she made for him and removed his shoes. Tru hardly heard them drop to the floor for the hammering of her own heart. After he took off his socks and tucked them into his shoes, he shrugged off his suspenders and unfastened the fly of his trousers. He stood again, this time just long enough to shed his black woolen trousers and suspenders and add them to the carefully folded clothes on the back of the chair.

“You’re very particular,” she said.

Cobb turned to face the bed as he unbuttoned his shirt. “What?”

“You’re particular,” she said, pointing to the stack of clothes.

He glanced at the pile. “I suppose I am. In my family, if you didn’t take care of it, it couldn’t be handed down. We looked out for each other that way.”

Thoughtful, Tru inclined her head. “That’s nice.”

“That’s necessity.” Cobb tossed his shirt over his shoulder but couldn’t resist glancing back to see if it landed on the chair. It did. He was wearing a half-smile and his drawers when he returned to the bed. Tru lifted the covers, and he crawled in. “Warm,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I know.” Tru was lying on her back. She looked at him askance. “I wish I had chosen differently.”

Chuckling, Cobb turned on his side to face her and propped himself on an elbow. “You can move this way now.” Under the quilts, he ran his free hand over the space that still separated them. “It’s warmer right here.” When she didn’t stir, he said, “Or, I can move.”

Tru released a small breath as he edged closer and caught it again when his hand rested in the curve of her waist. She stared at the ceiling, aware that he was studying her from his slightly higher vantage point.

For a long time, he did nothing except listen to her careful, deliberate breathing. He waited her out, and his patience was rewarded when she turned her head just that fraction necessary to look at him.

“Aren’t we going to kiss?” she whispered.

“I was wondering that myself.”

“Oh. Were you? I suppose I could begin.”

“You could.”

She nodded. “All right.” Tru turned on her side. Her movement did not dislodge his hand. She was glad of that; it grounded her. Leaning into him, she found his mouth. It was so simple after that.

There was no hurry, no reason to. She kissed him at her leisure, softly and carefully, exploring the shape of his lips with her tongue, touching the ridge of his teeth. Her mouth parted to draw in his lower lip. She worried it gently the way she often worried her own. His mouth was damp, warm. He tasted of peppermint and a hint of whiskey. Her lips parted. She changed the slant of her mouth, testing the kiss from one angle and then another. She found she liked them all.

She brushed his jaw with her knuckles and beneath the stubble she felt a muscle jump in his cheek. Her finger moved toward his ear, and she tucked a strand of hair behind it. She laid her palm against his neck. His pulse beat steadily under her hand.

The lamp was behind him when she drew back. A halo of light surrounded his head. His face was shadowed, but his hair gleamed with threads of gold. She touched the crown, flicking at an unruly thatch with her fingertips. It made no difference what she did. There was no taming it.

“I want to touch you,” she whispered.

“You are touching me.”

She shook her head and laid her palm on his chest. “Here,” she said. “I want to touch you here.”

He withdrew the hand resting on her waist and touched the uppermost button on his union suit.

Tru put her hand over his. “No. I want to do it.” She returned his hand to her waist and unfastened the first button. One after another, she unbuttoned his suit from neckline to navel. When she glanced at him, she saw he was watching her face, not her fingers. She wondered what he was thinking.

Cobb pushed his elbow out, lowering his head a fraction so that lamplight grazed the side of his face and spilled over hers.

Tru glimpsed his satisfied, secretive smile. She poked him in the chest with her fingertip. It wasn’t the way she imagined touching him, but moments ago she hadn’t thought she possessed the courage to ask him about the thoughts behind his hooded stare.

“What?” she said.

“Your tongue,” he said. “I could see it at the corner of your mouth.”

She clamped her lips together, tongue safely on the inside.

“Don’t do that on my account. I like your tongue.”

Tru stopped pressing pointedly against his chest and tapped it lightly instead. “You say extraordinary things, Cobb Bridger.”

“Your mouth is . . .” He paused, studying it. “Succulent.”

Those succulent lips sipped air in response to the last extraordinary thing he said. She couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Goodness.” She rested her hand against his chest. Her fingers splayed. She felt his heartbeat under her palm, still strong and steady and, yes, faster.

Tru’s hand made a pass upward toward his throat and then down toward his groin. His skin retracted slightly in anticipation of her touch. She felt the murmur trapped at the base of his throat as a vibration against her fingertips, and as she explored the breadth of his chest, she sensed a stirring in him just below the surface of his skin.

Tru traced the line of his collarbone and rested her hand against his shoulder. It required only the slightest pressure to make him bend toward her. She inched closer, found his mouth, and kissed him again, this time long and hard and deeply.

She did not know precisely when or how the tables were turned, but she thought later that it had probably happened sometime during this kiss. She insisted. He persisted.

Tru found herself on her back. It was incidental that her hands were clasped behind Cobb’s neck. She wasn’t restraining him. He was not going anywhere. When he turned on his side, his hip nudged hers. There was no mistaking the press of his erection for anything but what it was. She felt him shift again, raising a bent knee so that it rested across her thighs.

Tru never had the sense that she was trapped. He did not rest heavily against her, and the knowledge that he would let her go if she asked made it possible for her to remain just as she was.

His fingers plucked at the ribbon closure at her neckline. When he parted the fabric, his thumb rested at the base of her throat while his finger stroked her collarbone. Tru made a small sound of protest when he broke the kiss and lifted his head. His eyes grazed her face. She stared back, waiting, and when he lowered his lips to her neck, she turned her head slightly to offer him what they both wanted.

His mouth was warm against her skin. The prelude to the touch of his lips was a teasing flick with the damp edge of his tongue. He marked her twice, first with that fleeting pass, then with the suck of his mouth. He found a cord in her that made her fingers curl with pleasure. Between her thighs she felt a contraction.

He left her neck eventually. Her lips parted in anticipation of his mouth returning to hers. Instead, he inched lower. His mouth followed the path his hand had taken, and when his palm slid over her breast, Tru knew she could expect that his lips would eventually do the same.

It was a delicious sort of friction that he applied. He did not fully part the neckline of her nightgown. Instead, he laved the tip of her breast through the fabric, creating a damp circle that would have revealed her pink aureole in better light. The cotton puckered along with her nipple and the sweet, rhythmic suck of his lips snapped every one of her nerves to attention.

One of her heels dug into the mattress as her hips lifted involuntarily. She felt a second contraction, this one deep in her womb. He gave her room to move, repositioning his knee, sliding it between her legs. Until then she hadn’t known the hem of her nightgown was lying across her thighs, and she did not give a moment’s thought as to how that had come to be. His mouth was making a trail to her other breast. She concentrated on that, taking shallow breaths and biting down softly on her lower lip. She was very nearly light-headed by the time his mouth closed over her breast.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to close her eyes. Tru did . . . and then opened them almost immediately. She needed assurance, and looking down, she found it in the threads of sunlight in his hair. Cobb. That was all right then, but she kept her eyes open just the same.

Her fingers tangled in the curling strands of hair at the back of his neck. She tugged and ruffled and smoothed them. She lightly stroked his nape. The rhythm she found was the same as his.

He spread her neckline wider and slipped part of it past her shoulder. The next time he touched her breast, there was nothing between his mouth and her flesh. The heat of that caress had Tru pressing her nails into Cobb’s back and arching her neck.

A whimper lodged in her throat. She sucked in a breath to clear it.

Cobb slowly lifted his head. He said nothing, merely arched an eyebrow.

Tru’s hands left his back and came to rest on his shoulders. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “You don’t make me afraid.”

His eyebrow lifted a fraction higher.

Tru did not offer an explanation. Her fingertips found his nape again and applied just that amount of pressure needed to invite him closer. He did not return his attention to her breast. He covered her mouth, and this time his touch ignited a firestorm.

Tru felt heat infuse her blood and course her veins. It seemed as if her heart might explode. The thrumming reached her ears, and she could not hear anything outside of the rush and roar in her own head.

It was beyond what she was able to imagine that she could feel this way.

He moved over her, setting his forearms on either side of her shoulders, taking most of the weight she was so willing to bear. Her arms circled his back. Her hands ran the length of his spine. His muscles bunched and unwound in response to her touch. She raised her knees with no prompting and made a cradle for his hips. It was then that she felt the rigid outline of his erection. Her heels found purchase in the mattress. There was no conscious thought in the effort; it could not even properly be considered an effort. It happened of its own accord. Her pelvis lifted and ground against him.

Tru was staring at him unblinkingly when he tore his mouth away from hers. He searched her face, but she had no idea what he expected to find. The boldness of her unwavering stare vanished when she swallowed hard.

He lowered his hips a fraction; hers jerked against him.

“Do you want a pillow?” he asked.

She didn’t know. How was she supposed to know? Was he trying to make her comfortable or smother her? “Yes,” she said because it seemed as if it were the better choice no matter what his intentions were. She started to raise her head.

Cobb grabbed one of the pillows that was teetering on the edge of the bed and pulled it under the covers. “Lift,” he said.

Now that his purpose was clear to her, Tru wished she had said no. When he came up on his knees to give her space, she raised her hips in spite of her wish to do otherwise, and he pushed the pillow under them. The act of it made her feel as though she were being prepared for sacrifice. It was a disturbing image, and she felt herself go cold inside. Closing her eyes even briefly did not help.