Spotting the bottle of red she’d opened the other night, Will did as asked. Then he leaned back against the wall and watched her move around the kitchen. It was a small space and she filled it to overflowing, her energy intense.
He took a swallow of his beer, ran his eyes over the elegant curves of her body. She caught him at it. “Somehow, cop, I don’t think your mind is on food.”
“I am thinking of eating something.”
Anahera turned off the stove. “Food’s done.” She prowled over to him until her breasts touched his chest, her bare feet against his. When she tilted up her head, it was with unhidden challenge in her eyes.
Will slid his free hand behind her neck, under the dark heaviness of her hair, and massaged. “You like the taste of beer?”
“I don’t mind it.”
Keeping his hand where it was, he leaned down to kiss her. She rose up into the kiss, no passive receiver but an active participant. If his mouth tasted like beer, hers was rich red wine and something deeper, more potent, intrinsically Anahera.
He knew already she’d never be an easy woman to be with—if tonight wasn’t the only night they were to spend together. Anahera was complicated and strong and apt to be difficult at times. Of course, Will wasn’t exactly easy himself.
Sinking deeper into the kiss, he fisted his hand in her hair but drew back before it could go any further. “How about a bed?” He leaned around her to put his beer on the counter.
“It’s a single,” she warned.
Will looked to the fireplace. “Hold that thought.”
Leaving her with an amused look on her face, he went into the bedroom and hauled off the mattress to put it in front of the fireplace. She padded across to him as he was throwing the sheet over it. He’d just finished tucking it in when she reached back and undid the zipper on her dress. “Protection’s in the bedside drawer,” she said as the dress slid down her body, the firelight flickering over her proudly naked form.
“I got us covered.” Pulling the foil packets from his jeans pocket and throwing them down beside the mattress, he put his hands on this woman who made him remember he was alive.
Anahera felt as if she was coming out of a long winter. That winter hadn’t begun with Edward’s death; it had started in the years prior, when they’d slowly become strangers to one another.
Will’s hands, rough and large, were as different from Edward’s as she was from the girl who’d once run wild on the beach below the cliffs. Sinking into the sensations, she pushed up his T-shirt until he tore it off, then ran her own hands over the hard ridges and hollows of his chest and around to his back.
The ridges there were unexpected, the skin coarse.
“Burns,” he said, breaking the kiss. “They bother you?”
Anahera devoured his mouth in response. A few scars didn’t bother her. Not when her nerves crackled with an electric heat. All she wanted was to feel more and more and more. Like a prisoner who’d been starved, she wanted to gorge.
The firelight pulsed against Will’s body as he rose to strip off the rest of his clothing, and she had the best view in the house. When he came down over her, she picked up one of the flat packets beside the mattress and slapped it to his chest. “Put it on. We can do the foreplay later.”
She wanted him inside her, wanted to feel sexually alive from the inside out.
Rising up onto his knees, he sheathed himself. “Ready?”
“Since you arrived.” Her words seemed to pitch him over the edge, this controlled man who burned against her.
The next few moments weren’t controlled at all, the two of them coming together in a storm of need and lust and hunger.
Racing heartbeats.
Demanding hands.
A guttural grunt from Will.
A short scream from Anahera.
Harsh breaths.
46
“I haven’t screamed for a long time,” Anahera said long minutes later. It might’ve been a cold crash into reality except that Will had his arm around her shoulders, and she was lying with her head against his chest. Anahera wasn’t sure how she felt about the intimacy—sex was easy, it was the rest that complicated things.
Will stroked his hand down her spine. “I haven’t been with anyone for over a year.”
“High standards?” she said with a self-mocking smile.
“Nightmares.”
“Those nightmares have anything to do with the burns on your back?”