Not Even for Love(41)

He reached up behind her head and pulled out the barrette that held her ponytail. Released, her hair fell about her face and neck. He smiled and lay his head again in her lap. “Kiss me,” he said.

The die was cast.

Jordan didn’t think of refusing. Instead, she leaned over him and pressed her lips to his. He didn’t move. Neither accepting nor rejecting her kiss, he just lay there. He was issuing a challenge she wasn’t about to ignore.

Her hand moved down the hard wall of his chest until it insinuated its way under the heavy sweater. It brushed past the waistband of his shorts to caress the warm, vibrant skin. She fanned the crinkly hair on his chest before settling her palm over the masculine contours and massaging them.

Her lips parted slightly and treated his face to kisses so light he might well have imagined them. With his eyes closed, he couldn’t tell where the next feather-light touch would strike. She kissed him at the temple, on the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nose, the hard cheek, and the rigid line of jaw. But she moved out of order, with no sequence, so that each kiss was an unexpected gift. Eventually she worked her way back to his mouth. She saw his lips form her name.

Her tongue, warm and wet, stroked along his bottom lip and urged the corners of his mouth to relax. At the same time, her fingertips found that hard kernel of flesh on his chest nestled in the soft mat of hair and worried it until it became distended. He groaned softly while she played with it as her tongue demanded entrance to his mouth.

At last he relented. Violently. He crooked his outside arm around her neck and drew her closer. His head maneuvered between her breasts and his mouth allowed her tongue its sweet violation.

“You taste like chocolate,” he breathed between kisses.

“I’m sorry.”

“I love it. You’re delicious.”

“So are you.”

They kissed again while her hand traced the silky line of hair that disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. She explored his navel.

“Do you know what that’s doing to me?” he grated.

Suddenly she did know and was shocked at what she was doing. She yanked her hand from under his sweater and sat erect, smoothing her hair. Her breath was erratic. It matched his.

“I wasn’t complaining, you know.” His eyes were twinkling mischievously.

“Yes, I know. I didn’t realize…It’s…I…” She was confused by her own unstable emotions and the throbbing ache deep in her body that begged cessation.

He caught her hand to his chest as he folded his arms across it. “Let’s take a nap. Then we can start back down.”

“All right.”

She sighed and leaned her head back against the rough bark of the tree, but for some reason, she wasn’t uncomfortable. Her contentment had something to do with the heavy weight of his head on her thighs and abdomen, with the warm, moist breath she could feel on her stomach through her clothes, and with the even beating of her heart that pumped strong and sure beneath her hand.

She took one last look at Reeves, then closed her eyes. Within seconds her breath was synchronized with his and they both slept.

It wasn’t a sound that awakened her. Rather it was the pervading silence. She opened her eyes slowly, trying to assimilate where she was. Her sleep had been deep and reviving, but it seemed that she was trapped in a wakeful dream.

She and Reeves were under the protective branches of the pine, but the rest of the world, outside the perimeter of the wide, spreading limbs, was dusted with white talc. It looked like a fairyland of swirling white crystals.

Even as she glanced down at Reeves, one of the crystals filtered through the pine needles and settled on his eyelashes.

Jordan raised her head and stared out at the scene once again. Sudden clarity rang loud alarms in her head. This wasn’t a dream.

“Reeves,” she cried, shaking him awake. “It’s snowing!”





CHAPTER 8



That?” He sat up so abruptly that they almost bumped heads. “My God! Will you look at that!” He came to his feet and spread his arms wide to catch the snowflakes that danced around them.

“What are we going to do? ” Jordan asked anxiously.

“Do? What do you mean do?”

“Reeves, we’re up here on this mountain in a snowstorm. How will we get down?”

He smiled and hugged her briefly. “The same way we came up. It doesn’t look too bad. If we hurry, we’ll be fine. Does it usually snow this early in the season?”

She was looking at the snowfall, still not convinced that their trip back down the mountain wouldn’t be dangerous. “Sometimes up here in the higher elevations it does. It’s probably not even snowing in the valley.”