Wedding Survivor (31 page)

It really wasn't until later—how much later, she had no idea—that the sound of thunder startled her from her sleep.

At the top of the world, stars seem close enough to touch. Thunder also seems a whole hell of a lot closer. Like in the tent with her. Marnie didn't like it so close, and pulled the sleeping bag over her head, trying to muffle the sound of it, but it was impossible. The wind was picking up something awful, and it was obvious the storm was moving toward her, not away.

Cooper had said these storms passed quickly, and she lay there hoping it would rush right by. But then rain began to fall, big sheets of torrential rain, pounding so hard on the tent that she feared it would give way. Still, Marnie was determined not to be a big baby about a storm… until the crack of lightning striking something very nearby scared her out of her wits. She came up like a shot, unzipped the tent, and looked outside into a downpour. The wind was blowing so hard now that it actually lifted one comer of her tent.

With the second gust, Marnie had an image of herself rolling down to the bottom of the ravine, tumbling and crashing into rocks. The next gust convinced her; with a shriek, she grabbed her backpack and darted outside. She was quickly soaked through and freezing—the sting of rain on her face felt more like shards of ice. She crawled the fifteen feet on all fours to Eli's tent. "
Eli
!" she shouted, and groped for the zipper of his tent. Another clap of thunder on top of her and she screamed.

The flap of the tent suddenly came open and whipped away. Elf was on the other side, reaching for her with two strong hands, dragging her through the entrance and quickly zipping it up again.

"What the hell?" he asked calmly in pitch blackness. "You should have stayed in your tent—you could have been struck by lightning!"

"I know, I know." Jesus, her teeth were chattering.

A flare of soft light startled her; Eli had a small kerosene lamp, just enough light to read by or, in Marnie's case, to get a good look at Eli in his thermal shirt and boxer shorts.

Eli didn't notice—he was too busy frowning at her. With his big hands he pushed her wet hair away from her eyes and behind her ears. He clutched both sides of her head and lifted her face up to his, studying her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes.
No
! The storm is on top of us, and I thought I was going to blow away!"

"Yeah, it's a bad one," he said, just as another crack and flare of light shattered the dark around them. He ignored it and rummaged through his bag, pulling out a long-sleeved tee. "Here," he said. "Put this on. You're soaked through."

"No, no, that's okay."

"It's not okay. You could get hypothermia." He thrust the shirt at her. "The pants come off, too."

With a sniff, Marnie reluctantly took the shirt and shifted around as best she could in the tent, took off her shirt with her back to him, glanced over her shoulder to see him watching her intently, then hastily pulled the T-shirt over her head. She glanced over her shoulder again—he had stretched out on the sleeping bag, one leg bent at the knee, obviously enjoying the show. She frowned at him and artfully wiggled out of her pajama pants.

Eli watched her—or her legs, rather—with a look that sent a warm rush of blood through her. But another crack of lightning brought her back to her senses. She glanced fearfully at his tent, expecting it to rip away from the poles. "This is really bad, isn't it?" she asked as the rain beat down on the nylon.

"It's a little freakish," he admitted. He threw open the top layer of his sleeping bag and slid his bare legs into it. "Come on… get in."

Now the warm blood spread to her face. "That's really not a good idea," she said, shaking her head. "We're, ah… we're not going there, remember?"

"You have a better idea? Come on, coppertop—it's freezing. It's not a declaration or an invitation—it's survival."

She might have argued, but it was freezing and another rip of thunder and a gust of wind sent her into the sleeping bag with him.

Eli covered them up, zipping the thing all the way around so that they were snugly ensconced. In deference to their mutual agreement not to go there, Marnie turned on her side, but Eli spooned her, putting his arm around her waist and holding her tightly to him.

The wind was whipping the tent; another crack of lightning struck something nearby, eerily illuminating the world outside, and Marnie scrunched down deeper in the warmth of his bag. "Is it possible mis could be a tornado?" she asked.

"No," he said softly, his breath warm on the back of her neck. "Don't be afraid—this will pass. We won't blow away, I promise."

Marnie wished she could believe him, but groaned softly at a succession of thunder and lightning claps. The wind was so fierce that the tent seemed to be sliding along. "We're moving!" she said desperately.

Beneath the cover of his thermal bag, Eli caressed her arm. "We're not moving, Marnie. We're staked down all the way to China."

Staked.
Shit
! She'd forgotten to stake her tent! No wonder she'd felt the comer lift! She squeezed her eyes shut, could feel a tear slip from the comer of one.

"Marnie?"

She couldn't answer, because if she did, she'd scream.

"It's all right, coppertop," he said soothingly into her ear. "It's all right." And he continued to caress her arm, his hand amazingly soft for one so large and callused. She hoped he'd never stop, that he'd keep caressing her arm, and that if he couldn't do it forever, that he would at least do it until the storm passed. But then his hand went to her hair, stroking it, his fingers carefully moving the wet, tangled tresses from her face.

She wasn't so cold anymore. She could feel her limbs wanning, the blood in her swirling around, spreading out in a hot stream. The memory of the night they were together was suddenly the only thing on her mind. The storm raging around them was fading in her consciousness and being replaced by the memory of how it felt to have him cover her body, to move inside her.

The release of her breath was inadvertent, like the leak of air from a balloon, long and soft Eli draped a leg around her, pulled her into his body, and his hand slipped up beneath the T-shirt she wore. His fingers were rough; the feel of them on her skin ignited her as he rolled the peak of her breast between his fingers and filled his hand with her. That was when Marnie rolled over and buried her face in his neck, surrendering her fear to him.

The rain continued relentlessly, pounding the tent in hard sheets while thunder shattered the air around them.

But the storm was only a distant noise to Marnie—suddenly, there was nothing but a rough-and-tumble cowboy and his girl, making love by the light of the campfire, beneath the stars and the shadow of horses. His hands moved expertly on her body, arousing her breasts, then skimming down to her bare leg, and up again, his fingers slipping carelessly and enticingly between her legs and the folds of her sex.

His mouth moved, too, sliding down to the breast he'd somehow managed to bare, and up, to her shoulder, and her neck, and her mouth again, which he filled with his tongue. He nipped at her lips, licked her cheek, and sucked on the lobe of her ear before descending to her breasts again to tease her nipples with his teeth.

All the while, his hands were moving, stroking and caressing her, making her slick with desire, then retreating to more untouched skin. Marnie stopped trying to keep pace with him; her arms moved upward, out of the bag and above her head, and she closed her eyes, let her head drift to one side as he moved so smoothly across her body.

When he came over her, straddling her legs, his cock pressed into her belly, he smiled wickedly at her in the dim glow of the kerosene lamp, and he very adroitly unzipped the bag. "I love the taste of you," he said, nipping at her lips.

'Taste," she repeated breathlessly, incapable of speech.

"Yeah…
taste
," he growled, and moved down her body, his mouth trailing little bites on her skin, his hands moving to her hips. Marnie's knees came up and apart, and as he sank between them, she gasped—his tongue plunged into her deep and hard, then feathered her with little strokes, up and down, circling around, circling and nipping and teasing her until she couldn't bear it. She would die with longing, she was sure of it, so close to release yet so very far from it. And when she thought she would cry out with the agony of wanting it, his mouth closed around her, his teeth lightly nibbled her, and his tongue danced across her clit.

Marnie lifted her hips to him, moving in primal rhythm to his mouth. And then she was falling away, bits of her raining down as she came with atomic force. Her heart pounded with the exertion of the explosion in her, and she gulped the cold mountain air.

Eli slowly made his way up her body, retracing the path of his mouth, his breath hot on her skin. And when he reached her head, he sank his hand into her hair, his fingers reaching for the back of her head, and he slowly sank his cock into her with a long sigh of relief. He moved fluidly inside her, gliding in and out, the rhythm fast and furious as his hand moved through her hair, to her neck, her chin, and her hair again as his tempo increased. When he at last reached his release, he groaned against her skin, his breath hot and his voice deep and roughened with pleasure.

A moment later, breathing hard, Eli slid off her but not out of her—he pulled Marnie to her side, keeping her close to his chest and his warmth.

She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, smiled as he brushed her hair from his face, and thought she'd never felt so safe or warm in her life.

Nor so sated.

Or close.

In that tent, on top of the world, Eli was the only warmth. She loved him. She knew she did, she loved him, and she didn't want anything to move so she wouldn't lose the moment.

At some point, she realized the storm had moved north, and the downpour had slackened to a hard rain. Marnie drifted easily into sleep, knowing that in his arms, the world was safe and impossibly still.

ELI woke at dawn the next morning in something or a panic, first of all, because he'd made love to Marnie last night—mind-altering, killer sex—and second, because waking up next to that woman gave him a boner the size of a pine tree.