He couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t think, hell, he could hardly see straight.
“How many condoms did you bring?”
The breathy, timid question made him laugh. “A few.”
“Thank God.” She curved her arm around his head, lacing her fingers through his hair. “Thank God.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHEN REBECCA WOKE up the next morning she was aware of the bite in the air touching her face and one shoulder that was above the covers. The fire had obviously gone out in the woodstove overnight, and since it was only just now getting into the fall, she hadn’t got out the space heaters she used to keep the bedroom warm on chillier nights.
The second thing she became conscious of was the fact that she wasn’t cold. Not really. She was nestled up against a hard, warm body that was acting like her own personal furnace. She turned over, looking at the large man in her very small bed. Pale light was filtering through the curtains, exposing him and the careless expression that erased lines from his face as he slept. Exposing her and her imperfect skin.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to move. She turned over, pressing her fingertips against the broad expanse of his chest, tracing over his muscles lightly, relishing the feel of all that gorgeous masculine hair. She hadn’t realized how much she would like that. How enticing she would find those stark reminders that he was very much a man and she was a woman.
His size, his strength, the uncompromising masculinity in every line of his body aroused her on every level.
He aroused her. Inescapably. Against her will.
When he’d called last night and asked if she was home—when he had said he was going to come over—she should have barred the door. Should have locked it. Should have had some sense of self-preservation. But no. Here they were.
She wasn’t even all that sorry.
Gage stirred beneath her touch, placing one large, warm hand over hers, pressing her palm more firmly against his chest, until she could feel his heart beating. A low, steady rhythm that seemed to echo inside of her, modulating her own, making it beat in time with his.
She felt dizzy then, overwhelmed with sensation. She blinked hard, then when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring into his.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice raspy from disuse.
She tried to force a smile, and she found she couldn’t readily find any words. So she just nodded.
“I didn’t mean to stay the night,” he said.
“I know,” she croaked, her own voice completely useless.
“How are you?” She could tell by the expression on his face he really meant it. He lifted his hand, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone, and she shivered.
“Cold?”
“Yeah,” she said, because the only other response was no, and that would betray that it was just his touch that made her tremble.
He lifted the blankets up higher, covering her bare shoulder, then turned her body, so that she was pressed against him from breasts to toe. “Better?”
“Better,” she responded.
She ached all over, not physically—it was something deep inside, something that she couldn’t put a name or a bandage on.
She wondered what it was that drew her so inexplicably to this man. If it was some kind of extension of self-destruction, or just the fact that he loomed so large in her past.
That thought made her frown. Because none of that seemed like it had any place in this moment. She didn’t feel angry. She didn’t feel outraged or disgusted by him.
She didn’t know how that could be. All she knew about him, all she had ever known about him before he had come back into town was that he was the man who had—through his negligence—caused her lifelong injuries. But that wasn’t the end of the story, and she knew it. It wasn’t the sum total of Gage West any more than it was the sum total of Rebecca Bear.
Maybe it did make her kind of sick, wanting the man whom she blamed for so much. But right now she didn’t want it to be about that.
Suddenly, she felt hungry to add more details to the picture of him that she had in her mind. Suddenly, it seemed imperative that she make him something else. Because otherwise, she was well and truly fucked in the head.
“Tell me,” she said, resting her cheek on his chest, his warmth spreading through her. “Tell me what you did with all those years.”
His fingertips froze on her arm, then began to slide up