Barbara Samuel (20 page)

Luna laughed.

Thomas leaned in. “I love the way you laugh,” he said, taking her hand.

“Thank you.”

He cocked his head toward the dance floor. “Ready to come dance with me?”

She thought of their kiss, the sudden rush of heat through her limbs, and felt a touch of it again. “I don’t know if we should,” she said. “I’m really a bad dancer. I will step all over you. I mean, hurt you.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

If it hadn’t been for that sweep of glossy hair gleaming over one shoulder, Luna might have been able to say no. But she really couldn’t resist the idea of being so close to him, feeling his body, smelling his skin. “You’ll be sorry,” she said, but she stood up.

Spanish dancing in New Mexico was a very simple
thing. And Luna always thought it was utterly stupid that she hadn’t really ever learned to do it, but it was a classic catch-22: it was so embarrassing that she was so bad at it that she couldn’t seem to stick with actually learning it. Allie tried to teach her once and gave up because Luna nearly broke her instep.

So as much as she wanted to be next to the delectable Thomas, breathing in his smell, touching his body, the second they stepped out on the floor, she realized everyone would see her dancing badly with one of the most desirable men in the room and they would be snickering behind their hands for weeks. She could just imagine the teasing she’d get next week. “Oh, Thomas,” she said, pulling at his hand, “no, I don’t think I can do this. Never mind.”

He snared her before she could flee entirely. “Luna.”

The band started a new song, and he stood there for a second, listening. “Put your hand on my shoulder. The other on my waist. There you go. Now, let’s just move a little bit.”

Luna took a breath, trying to relax, and follow. But it was following that was hard. She couldn’t seem to do it, and stepped on him twice, then nearly beaned a woman nearby with her elbow. She halted, looking at him miserably.

His nostrils quivered. “You really are bad, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Come closer.” He put his hand on the small of her back and pressed her hips into his. “This is a control issue, you realize that, right? You can’t let go.”

“Oh!” Made perfect sense. Not that it would make much difference.

“Feel me, all right?” Thomas said. “Catch the rhythm of the music, feel it come through me.”

And it wasn’t awful to feel him. Not awful at all. His
hand was broad across the small of her back, his thighs laced between hers. “Feel that in my thigh? Now feel the echo in my hand?”

She looked up at him. “I think so,” she said softly.

Their eyes met, and that weird barometric pressure drop happened again. Luna could almost hear it. With it came a sense of overwhelming, almost shaky desire, and she felt the tremor in him, the small changes in his body. “God, I want you,” he said gruffly.

A man in a crisp, purple-and-white striped shirt swung his partner around next to them, bumping Thomas, and said something in Spanish. The woman laughed.

To her surprise, the desire was shaken by the bubble of annoyance that burst in her. “God, that irks me,” she muttered.

“What, the speaking in Spanish?”

“Yes.” She shook her hair out of her eyes. “It’s like whispering in front of other people—it’s so
exclusive.”

“I barely speak any.”

“But everybody speaks it to you, because you don’t look white.”

He laughed softly. “True. What’s wrong, little girl, nobody inviting you to their parties?” His hand moved on her back and she realized they were just standing there, swaying the slightest bit on their little space of floor. Feet planted, hands roving the slightest bit, body heat building between their bellies. She could smell his shampoo—something with lime in it.

“My father spoke Spanish,” she said before she knew she would. And a sharp sense of loss went through her, making her throat tight.

“Where is he now?”

“Dead.” She clipped the word to halt that angle of discussion. “Are you going to show me how to do this damned dance or not?”

“No,” he said, and catching her head in his hands, bent to kiss her. His eyes were open as he did it, and at the shock of his tongue, tasting faintly of tomato juice, a vivid, bright turquoise flash went racing down her nape, through her spine, into her buttocks. Her nipples pearled, almost embarrassingly so. “I’d rather get out of here, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Where?” she asked, and grew aware of the people noticing them. She backed away and pulled his hand, making her way to the edge of the floor, near the door. She knew where she wanted to go, but didn’t want to seem too—well,
slutty
was the word that came to mind.

But hell, they were grown-ups. Why bother with all that coyness when they both knew what they wanted?

Still, she let him say it. He eyed the band, holding her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “We can’t go to my house. Or yours, I guess.”

Disappointment pierced her. She nodded.

“Um.” He cleared his throat, bent close. “Don’t take this the wrong way. If you don’t think it’s too tacky, there’s a million hotel rooms in this city.”

It made her blush, and he started to take it back. “Okay, sorry. I’m not … it’s just—”

She raised a hand to his mouth. “The answer is yes, Thomas. Let’s go.”

His smile was positively dazzling, and Luna knew at least twelve women around them must have swooned dead in their tracks. She heard their breath sigh out of them and surround her with longing, the color of it a dusky purple. “My kind of woman,” he said, and pulled her outside, where they stopped to do a little more heavy kissing, then climbed into his truck. Shocking, she told herself. But it wasn’t.

It just wasn’t.

• • •

Luna sat in the cab of the truck while he went in, her hands trembling just below the surface, trembling enough that she had to tuck them beneath her thighs. A sense of distant shock rumbled through her, but it wasn’t enough to make her get out of the truck, make him stop registering. She watched him through the window, watched his hair move over his big shoulders, yellow lamplight shining on his hard, somewhat weary face, and her breath came a little higher and tighter in her chest.

Thomas.

Inside a room furnished with imitation Navajo blankets in red and gray, and touristy pottery, and fixtures with thunderbirds carved into them, Thomas turned on a lamp and locked the door, and then he came toward her, taking a condom out of his pocket, that he threw on the bed. “I got it in the bathroom at the VFW,” he said, explaining. She could see it made him shy to say it, to think about it.

Which made her feel suddenly shy. Stupid. Slutty. She put her hands over her face and said in an agonized voice, “Thomas—”

“Please don’t,” he said, and came to her. “It’s been so long since I wanted a woman.” He put his hands on her shoulders, touched her hair.

And it was so good to be touched. It grounded something in her, something that always felt like it was flying out, threatening to take her with it. His hands were big and heavy and warm, and his thumbs touched her neck. She looked up at him, seeing with a little shock that it was still that weary, handsome face, that it was still his gentle eyes looking down at her, so dark and liquid. He kissed her, holding her face in that gentle way, and Luna swayed into him.

“Don’t think, Luna,” he said as her hands lit on his
chest. “This is good, this is now. It doesn’t have to be anything else.”

She felt dizzy on the scent of him, and when he tugged on the hem of her shirt, she raised her arms so that he could pull it off over her head. Then she reached behind her and unfastened her bra, not even minding somehow that her breasts were too soft to sit up high, and her stomach wasn’t flat anymore—in fact there was a little indentation where the skirt waistband dug into her.

It didn’t feel that strange to stand topless in front of Thomas Coyote, bathed in lamplight and his gaze, which flickered and flowed over her shoulders and breasts, over her belly and bare legs, touched her hair and her lips before he started doing it all with his hands.

Luna had spun a dozen half fantasies about this man, but none of them matched the reality of his strong dark hands curving to the round of her shoulders, then lifting her breasts. She couldn’t close her eyes, didn’t want to, because the sight of him was so good. His hands, his hair, the look on his face, so intent and reverent and hot. He took his time, touching what he could see, trailing three fingers down the middle of her tummy, tracing her ribs. He kissed her, touching her, and then reached around to the zipper of her skirt. Luna let it fall, then backed away and skimmed her panties off, too, and stood there naked and brazen and not caring.
This is it.

Her bones were liquid as he stood back to look at her, sighing softly before he took off his own clothes with no grace. It wasn’t a perfect body, either, with its little round of belly and scars. He had some tattoos she would examine later, and a nasty scar low on his right hipbone. She loved the colors of his skin, dark mocha on his hands and arms that faded to a soft tan elsewhere, and the pure strength in his shoulders and arms, and the look of that black, long hair trailing over him.

“Jesus,” he said, and the word broke something waiting in her. Luna launched herself toward him and they tangled deep, the two of them, welcoming each other with lips and tongues, arms and hands and legs. Their skin skidded and slipped, elbows and teeth and knobs of knees getting in the way for a moment until they found a way to rearrange, fitting together again, finding ways to lace themselves into one.

It had been so long, and Luna had wanted this particular man so much that she found a great deep cry tearing from her throat as he entered her, all force and heat, his tongue in her mouth, his hands almost painful on her buttocks. The size of him around her, his hair falling over her, touching her face, her shoulder, the force of him …

She thought she might dissolve entirely in her orgasm, blown to bits by him, herself, the combination. There were times release could nearly hurt, and this was one of them, and she found herself holding on to him so fiercely that her entire body was one forceful muscle, and then he was starting to roar and growl in that guttural way, and they rocked hard together, until he curled his hands tight around her fanny and held her hard, pulsing, and she thought, her head falling back in purest nothingness,
Thank God.

Tomorrow, she might feel like a slut. Tomorrow, she could beat herself up about it.

Tonight, she would simply take what he offered.

They kissed, gasping and sweaty, he braced on his elbows, his big hands on her head, their hips moving in faint delicious echoes of release. They kissed. And kissed. Luna dragged her fingers through his hair, letting it slide like silk stockings over her wrists and forearms; breathed in the smell of him, fire and sage, and drank of
his mouth; reveled in the heft of him, the feeling of him around her, in her.

But he did finally get too heavy, and she shifted a little. “Can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.”

Which meant they had to slide apart, pulsing in aftermath, and think of what to do next. A few minutes ago, Luna had wanted nothing more than for him to see her naked, to see if that was what he could want and enjoy. Now she thought of the cellulite on the back of her thighs and the almost-nothingness of her small breasts and the age showing on her belly.

“Be right back,” he said, and as he pattered into the bathroom, she curled her arms on her chest, turning on her side to hide what she could, tucking her face between the pillows.

He came back, sturdy on his feet, carrying a warm washcloth and a towel. It unnerved her and she wasn’t quite sure how to perform such an intimate act under his eyes, but when she reached for the cloth, he shook his head gently. “Allow me.”

He washed her. She had to close her eyes. It made her heart hurt, his gentleness, the matter-of-fact way he didn’t mind looking
there
, and when he finished it with a soft, light kiss—also there—she nearly burst into tears.

“Let’s get under the covers,” he said quietly.

Luna had to open her eyes, move her body, stand up to pull the covers back. He climbed in and lifted them up in a big tent for her. She dived under them, curled close to his big body, and he let the covers settle down over them, tucking her under his arm. “You okay?” he asked.

Not really, she wanted to say. She wanted to put on
her clothes and go home now, and think about this and why it made her chest hurt. But that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

Raising her head, she started to make a light, complimentary comment about his prowess, like how great he was, what a good lover, how he had pleased her. But the moment she met his eyes, it slammed her again—he was
there
, his long dark eyes so gentle, that faintly raised scar on his neck reminding her that he knew about the hard, dark places of life. She said. “No. You?”

He swallowed, then shook his head. Moved that big hand over her hair, his gaze on the curl he toyed with. “I knew you’d feel bad. I should have stopped you.”

A wave of something came over Luna—sex and longing and a kind of wild, wild pain, like a wind howling down a mountain. It hurt and it swelled and the only thing that seemed available to help it was Thomas’s mouth. So she bent over his face and kissed him. Lightly. Tasting the full lower lip, the sharply cut upper. She traced the line of his jaw, the surface of his face, feeling below her fingertips the faint roughness of his scars. It helped. The pressure in her chest eased, and she let the primary need of him rise up again. She needed to learn him, the smell and taste, his sounds and wishes. “Oh, Thomas,” she whispered. “You scare me.”

“Don’t think,” he said, his touch suddenly urgent. “Make love to me, Luna. That’s all it needs to be tonight.” His tongue touched hers. “Don’t think.”