Beneath the Stetson(28)

“Could you possibly enjoy the moment under the covers? I’m getting cold feet.”

That made her giggle, and some of the rigidity left her posture. “I’m on board with that.”

He tugged her close for a quick kiss and then turned back the covers on the large, wide bed. His sheets were soft white cotton, scented with sunshine. The housekeeper was a big fan of using a clothesline, and truth be told, Gil liked it. The smell made him think of being a kid.

When he helped Bailey crawl beneath the sheet and the quilt, however, childhood was the last thing on his mind. His brain blanked for a moment, all his senses absorbing the novel and gratifying sensation of feeling Bailey’s arms and legs tangle with his. She was soft, so soft. He held her tightly, burying his face in her hair.

“I’ve imagined this moment for weeks,” he admitted, flattening his palm on her belly and teasing her navel with his pinkie. It would almost have been enough just to hold her. To revel in the knowledge that she had come to him of her own free will and wanted to share his bed.

Bailey kissed his chin, her hands roving across his pecs and his shoulders. “Does it measure up?”

He wedged a thigh between hers and groaned as his thick, almost painful shaft rubbed against her leg. “I’m not sure. I’m having trouble believing this is real. I don’t want to wake up in a minute and find out I was dreaming.”

Without warning, her hand closed around his erection. “I’m real,” she said. “We’re real. Here. Together.”

When she began stroking him, his eyes closed involuntarily. He had been leaning over her on one elbow, but now he fell back on the bed, his hands fisting in the sheet. Holy hell. It wasn’t the effects of extended abstinence making him insane. It was the way she touched him. Her gentle movements were exactly right.

The first sexual encounter between a man and a woman was supposed to be fraught with pitfalls, neither partner knowing the other’s preferences. Bailey was putting paid to that idea. Everything she did was gut-level perfect. Now she was the one leaning over him, her silky hair falling around them as she kissed him softly. Kiss/stroke. Kiss/stroke. The sequence made him dizzy with lust.

His sex quivered every time her lips found his. He held the back of her neck to deepen the kiss and to make sure she didn’t stop what she was doing. But soon, far too soon, he had to call a halt. Sucking in raw lungfuls of air, he shook his head, half-crazed with hunger. “Enough,” he croaked. He hovered on a knife-edge of arousal.

As he predicted, the moon had found its way into his bedroom, the silver orb framed by his window. The drapes were open. Shafts of white light spilled over Bailey’s face, giving her the look of an ice queen. But no ice queen ever emanated the kind of warmth that could save a man’s life. Gil hadn’t fully understood the depths of his loneliness until he brought Bailey to his home and to his bed.

He had told himself repeatedly over the past few years that being Cade’s father was more important than anything. And it was. A sacred obligation. But Gil was neither a monk nor a saint, and in this instant he realized how sterile he had allowed his life to become.

Every cell in his body cried out at the indulgence of touching Bailey, of kissing her. Like flowers blooming wildly in the once-barren desert after a storm, he found himself drunk with pleasure. She rolled with him in the bed, laughing softly as they bumped noses.

“This is nice,” she said, the voice more prim than her actions. “I never knew Gil-the-sex-maniac existed.”

“You’re not naked,” he complained.

Sitting up, she reached behind her back and unfastened her bra, dropping it at the foot of the bed. Now, the moon painted two perfect breasts with a magical palette of light and shadow. Bailey dragged her hair over one shoulder, her head cocked as she tried to read his expression. He, unlike his partner, was cast in semi-gloom.

“Is this what you had in mind?”

“Getting there,” he muttered. He slid his hand between her smooth thighs and stroked the center of her panties. The scent of her came to him, warm and heady. “These, too.” Rising to his knees, he shoved the offending scrap of nylon down her hips.

Bailey lay back, arms above her head, and let him finish the job. The moon took her natural beauty and made it supernatural, as though a fairy or a sprite had come to him in a mirage. Touching her was the only way to prove she wouldn’t fade away.

Kneeling between her legs, he leaned forward and mapped her body like a blind man, his caresses making her whimper and stir restlessly. Her face, her throat. Each lovely breast. The narrow span of her waist. The flare of her hips.