The Endless Sky (Cheyenne Series) (41 page)

      
Hugh had always made her feel cold and inept in bed, accused her of driving him to seek other women. She felt so uncertain, so insecure, yet the sweetness of Chase's kisses and the seductive purr of his voice made her bold enough to ask, “What if I don't please you? What if—”

      
“What if a starving man would not want food?” he crooned, smiling into her hair as his fingers began to massage her back and shoulders very gently through the heavy fur. “I've already seen all there is to see of your beautiful body...and what I saw I liked very, very much, remember? And you've just recently seen all of me, even if I was too feverish to enjoy it at the time.”

      
She could feel Chase's body heat through her heavy robe, feel the magic of his hands as they slowly worked their way past the barrier of fur and began to caress her hips, gliding around to the ripe slim curves of her buttocks. He kneaded them, sending exquisite ripples of pleasure coursing through her, pressing her lower body against his. All the while he continued to rain soft delicate kisses across her face, down to the wildly beating pulse at the base of her throat.

      
She threw back her head, clinging to his shoulders, baring her neck to his lips. A hot, dizzying flush spread across her like a blanket of fire, sending her blood racing madly through her veins. She was so warm, burning up. A small incoherent cry escaped her lips as she felt the robe slip from her body. Chase enveloped her in his arms then and centered his mouth on hers for a deep dizzying kiss. Her lips, already parted, accepted the invasion of his tongue, feeling small frissons of delight as its tip probed hers, sweeping around her teeth, darting and teasing until she grew bold enough to answer in kind.

      
When he felt her response, it was all he could do not to press her down onto the furs and plunge into her. Schooling himself to go slow, Chase let her explore his mouth timidly at first, encouraging and coaxing her to greater boldness, until their exchange grew fierce and breathless. Tearing his lips from hers, he trailed soft nips and brushing caresses down her throat to her collarbone, then lower, taking her breasts in his hands as she knelt before him. Reverently he raised the small perfect globes, letting his thumbs graze and tease the nipples, which at the first touch of his hands had hardened into tight little rosettes of palest pink.

      
The touch of his hands on her breasts, raising them, cupping them and caressing their fiery ache, was scalding in intensity. But then he took one nipple in his mouth and tugged on it. What had been a tingling ache suddenly blossomed into an intense throbbing deep in the core of her body. She arched her back, pulling his head closer as he switched from one breast to the other, repeating the breathless magic. Her fingers worked their way deep into the coarse shiny thickness of his night black hair, holding him to her as she repeated his name over and over, like a litany.

      
Chase raised his head at last from the feast of her breasts, his fingers splayed around her rib cage. He looked up into her flushed face and met her eyes, heavy lidded and dilated with passion now. ‘‘Lie back,” he commanded softly, helping her to stretch out on the pallet of fur on which they knelt. The rosy glow of firelight gilded her creamy flesh, so pale in contrast to the coppery darkness of his hands moving over it. He let one hand slide slowly from the soft mound of her breast over the hollow indentation of her slender waist, then skim across the concave silk of her belly.

      
“You are even more incredibly lovely than I remembered,” he said raggedly, staring down at her.

      
Stephanie could suddenly see that long-ago day when they were in the hunting lodge and he had stood over her naked body, appraising it with frank male desire. What a different course both of their lives would have taken if he had not pulled away from her then, if he had made love to her. Her eyes locked with his as if he, too, were recalling that fateful day. “I only wish...I...”

      
“Shh...this was always fated to be. We just didn't know it then. But now we do.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips, planting soft wet kisses on her palm and fingertips, then pressed it to his chest where his heart slammed hard and furious as a war drum.

      
Her fingers burrowed into the black hair. She thrilled at the racing of his heart, knowing it beat so for her. Then her hand felt the heavy ridge of the Sun Dance scar, alien and forbidding, yet as much a part of Chase as the dream which sprung from it—a dream she had mysteriously shared. She placed a soft kiss on the scar, then on the other one opposite it, unable to imagine the agony he must have endured to belong with the Cheyenne. “I belong only to you,” she whispered.

      
“I've waited all my life to hear you say that,” he replied, trembling with relief that she could accept who and what he was.

      
Stephanie marveled at the differences in their bodies, his dark, hard and sinewy, with crisp beguiling patterns of hair on his chest, arms and legs. She pressed her mouth to the muscled wall of his chest, letting the tickle of hair brush her face as her lips sought the hardened coppery coin of a flat male nipple. Small white teeth nipped at it and he cried out in pleasure. She repeated the caress on the other one, nuzzling his chest and murmuring, “I love the feel of this.”

      
He smiled, twining her warm bronze hair in his fingers as he said, “I always hated having a hairy body—a reminder of my Remington blood...white blood, but now I'm glad if it pleases you.”

      
When she raised her head from his chest, he lowered his and kissed her once more, moving his body across hers. One long powerful leg pressed her into the pallet as he insinuated it between her thighs, spreading them. Willingly she let her legs slide apart, opening for him. His hand moved down, sweeping over her hip, then across her belly to reach the soft dark curls at her mound. When he massaged it she moaned into his mouth. The feel of his hand on her there sent a raw jolt of need through her. The low insistent ache deep in her belly had been growing with every love word, each caress. She felt her hips arch up, her pelvis tilt against the massaging of his hand.
Yes, do it now. Touch me!

      
He moved deeper, his fingers brushing the soft wet petals of her sex, finding her ready for him. Still he did not give in to the ache in his groin. To plunge in now would be disaster for he would surely spill his seed before he could bring her with him. She writhed restlessly beneath the soft massage of his hand.

      
“You want this...even though you don't know yet what it is,” he murmured against her throat, kissing the racing pulse there, then moving lower, taking time to lavish more caresses on her breasts.

      
The faint scratch of his whiskers against her sensitive nipple made her keen her pleasure in a high soft wail. She stroked his cheeks and jaw line, urging him on as he suckled her, then at last abandoned her breasts, moving lower to dip the tip of his tongue into her navel and swirl it around. She felt that tightening ache squeeze even tighter. His strange words of a moment before flitted through her mind. Yes, she wanted him to complete the act, to plunge into her, deep inside and join his flesh with hers. What then?

      
What more could there be? Before she had felt nothing but tight dry pain, and she had always been glad it was mercifully over quickly. But now she desired this joining—this man—so intensely she wanted it never to end. When . his fingers found the small mysterious bud of her passion and glided ever so softly over it, she gasped, nearly fainting with the sudden, utterly unexpected pleasure.

      
She was like a watch spring, wound so tightly now that she was ready to burst. Chase could feel the delicate quivering of her sweet feminine flesh, smell the heady musk of her newly awakened passion. He sensed she had never before felt this gift he would give her. As he continued stroking her with his hand, he lowered his head, finally nestling it between her thighs.

      
Stephanie was so intent on the breathless, delicious waves of sensation sweeping over her that she did not realize his intent until she felt the heat of his mouth replace his hand. She should have been shocked! Appalled! She should have withdrawn, but instead she arched against the hot insistence of his lips and tongue, moving on her swollen aching flesh as it blazed to even greater life. All conscious thought slipped away as she felt herself spiraling down, down, deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of pleasure, drowning in a vortex which began to build toward a culmination—something she must have even though she did not understand it, could never imagine it.

      
But she craved it with such a fierce intensity she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and felt her whole body focus on the center of her femininity and the incredible pain-pleasure Chase was giving her. Suddenly the crest swept over her and she screamed out his name. Wave after wave of contractions suffused her body, radiating outward like ripples widening on a pool of water.

      
When she stiffened and cried his name, Chase raised his head, feasting his eyes on her loveliness as the rosy flush of climax painted her pale skin. He moved up, cradling her in his arms, kissing her breasts and throat, her fluttering eyelids and then centering on the lushness of her parted lips. All the while his hand continued to massage her mound as the contractions slowly ebbed. When she opened her eyes and looked into his face with total surprise and love it made his heart stop beating. And he knew this was what he had waited for all of his life.

      
“Stevie,” he murmured.

      
Stephanie studied his passion-glazed eyes, heavy lidded, glittering with triumph for the pleasure he had just brought her, a gift truly beyond price. Yet even as she caressed his beloved face, she could sense the tightly coiled tension in his body and feel the hard insistent pressure of his staff pressing into her belly.

      
Her hand sought it and closed over the velvety length. He gasped when she did so, crying out raggedly in his need. “Come into me, Chase,” she whispered softly, opening her body to him, glorying in the hunger on his face. He was utterly vulnerable now in spite of the way he pinned her wrists over her head. Chase raised his body above her, poised to take possession as she had invited him to do.

      
As he probed at her, gliding the thick dark head of his staff in the wetness of her petals, his eyes never left hers.

“Look at me, Stevie, while I come into you,” he said, repeating her words.

      
She complied, arching to take the teasing pressure of his staff deeper, drawing him into the wet heat of her sheath. With a muffled oath he sank deep, burying himself fully. She was so soft yet so incredibly tight, surrounding him with her satiny flesh. He closed his eyes and poised very still inside of her, afraid to move, not only for fear of spilling himself too soon, but also to savor this moment, this joining. “At last, at last,” he whispered through clenched teeth.

      
Stephanie looked up at the tense beauty of his face, feeling the power of his body as he filled her, stretching her, pinioning her to the furs beneath her with raw male power. She expected pain, but there was only a sense of wonder at the slick glide of his flesh inside her—and at his sudden stillness. She could see sweat break out on his brow as his eyes closed and his lips drew back in a feral grimace. The tendons stood out in his neck as he threw back his head. His expression could have indicated pain, yet she sensed it did not.

      
She freed one hand from his grasp and reached up to caress his cheek tenderly. Then his eyes opened and he looked down at her. All breath left her body when she saw the raw need in his eyes, an openness of the very soul which she knew must be reflected in her own eyes. “I love you, Chase,” she said, undulating her hips without realizing she had done so.

      
He let out an oath that was an endearment and held on to his control as he said, “I love you, Stevie.” Then he gave in to the power of their passion, beginning to stroke now, slowly, letting every subtle, delicate nuance of possessing her steal over his senses, praising her with his body as he did with words. “You're so slick and tight, so perfectly formed to fit me.”

      
Stephanie felt an answering awakening in her satiated flesh. Slow, delicate sensations began to radiate through her with each thrust of his phallus. He moved so slowly, carefully as if she were fragile as a flower. But she was made of sturdier stuff. Her young body, so long denied the satisfaction of this act, craved it fiercely. She locked her legs around his hips and met each thrust, urging him on, harder, faster, more...more.

      
Chase felt her nails dig into his back as her hips fitted themselves in perfect sync to his, glorying in each thrust. Her body silently begged for more and he answered her plea, moving with greater power and swiftness, carrying her along with him to the brink, then waiting, exerting every ounce of control he possessed until he felt her plunging over the abyss into the fire. Her eyes flew open and she cried out, arching up to meet him as the culmination began. Only then did he let his own body swell and pulse deep, deep within her, shuddering with every thrust, spilling his seed high against her womb in hard, long thrusts that utterly drained him.

      
Feeling him join her as his whole body stiffened, going utterly taut, brought her another surge of joy, newer and stranger yet than the last time. When he collapsed on top of her, he did not pull away as she expected. Instead he cradled her in his arms and held her, kissing her cheeks and eyes, her lips, then burying his face in her hair. Stephanie stroked his shiny black hair as the tears began, seeping from beneath the thickness of her lashes, trailing in silvery rivulets down her cheeks.