Not Even for Love(49)

“Jordan—” he gasped. “God, that feels good. How … how did you know to do this?”

“Instinct,” she breathed against his skin.

“God bless Mother Nature.”

He couldn’t say more. Her mouth continued to amuse itself on his chest while her hands slid lower down his torso.

His breath was trapped in his lungs, longing to burst free. He waited in anguished anticipation until her fingers combed through the dark thatch on his abdomen and beyond. Only then did a soft, almost painful moan escape from his throat. He fell back against the blanket.

Frugal as they must be with their food, the crust of bread was tossed, forgotten into a corner.

“Is this—”

“Heaven?” he interrupted. “Yes, it’s heaven.”

“Do you like—”

“Do you have to ask?”

“I want you to tell me.”

He opened his eyes and searched her anxious expression. She was still almost virginal, innocent, nervous, wanting to please him. His face softened as he placed his palms on both sides of her face. “Yes, yes. Touch me, Jordan.”

Her mouth was brutalized by lips that conquered with finesse. Her breasts were attacked by hands whose strength lay in the persuasion of their tender touch. Her nipples were lashed by a rough-soft tongue that was only a harbinger to greedy lips tempered by gentleness.

By now their bodies were so well acquainted that he knew the instant she was ready to receive him. He plunged into her, deeper, fuller, more certain of his right to be there than ever before. Every part of him, the man he was, the man he aspired to be, concentrated in that mysterious haven that belonged uniquely to Jordan. He felt enriched, emboldened, empowered, and for the first time in his life knew the spiritual heights of loving as well as the physical.

“I meant what I said that first night,” he said hoarsely in her ear.

“What?” It wasn’t a word. It was a soft expulsion of breath that only he could understand.

“It’s never been like this for me, Jordan.” On the last word, the tumult came and he repeated her name in a rhythmic meter. That’s why he couldn’t hear the soft words she chanted into his shoulder. “I love you I love you I love you.”

“Jordan? Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“It’s getting light outside.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” He stirred slightly and arched his head backward. “I can see daylight through the crack under the door.” The woman beside him didn’t move and he resumed his original position with his chin resting on the crown of her head. “The wind isn’t blowing.”

She sighed heavily but only hugged him tighter. “Do you think the storm is over?” The words were more portentous then either of them wanted to admit.

“Yes.” He didn’t feel inclined to move either. Half-heartedly he said, “We really should get up and dress.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“I don’t want to,” he groaned.

“I don’t either.”

They clung to each other tenaciously and kissed with desperate passion. They knew their idyll was over. Someone would come looking for them.

Helmut.

They got up and dressed silently, suddenly shy of each other. After hours of immodest, total nakedness, they now averted their heads. Their conversation, when they dared to speak at all, was trite, and so they dropped the embarrassing effort. Everything that could be said had been.

Reeves opened the door and looked out. The mountain-side was blanketed with snow, but it wasn’t very deep. The sky was still cloudy, but not oppressive. The wind had diminished to a breeze that barely disturbed the clumps of snow in the pine needles on the trees.

“I think we can make it down once we get a bearing on where we are. We’ll take it slow.”

“All right,” she answered listlessly. While Reeves banked the fire so it would harmlessly burn itself out, she folded the tarps and stored them where they had been.

Reeves pulled on his windbreaker and zipped it closed. He insisted that she wrap the blanket around her, though they didn’t think the cold air would be nearly so bad without the howling wind of last evening. When the backpack, the camera case, and the picnic basket were divided as they had been the day before, they left the sanctuary of the shed.

Jordan took one slow, sweeping glance around the small room, ostensibly to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything. Actually she wanted to fix it firmly in her mind, to safeguard it forever in her memory. Tears made the snow-covered landscape look watery as she followed Reeves out of the shed. She trekked along behind his lead.

Cautiously, but easily, they reached the edge of the timberline. Soon after they cleared it, they saw the search party below them snaking up the side of the mountain. There must have been thirty or forty men in mountain-climbing attire fanned out in a long horizontal line on the hillside.