“Cheese, cold cuts, potato chips, candy bars.”
He was finding the goodies as she enumerated them. He ate hungrily and she watched him. Her breath had almost stopped when she spotted him coming toward her front door that morning. He was dressed in shorts and hiking boots as she was. His calves and thighs were bunched with lean muscles and dusted with hair. He had on a blue chambray shirt. Now that he was hot from their hard climb and the sun, he had unbuttoned the shirt almost to his waist.
His chest was matted with an intriguing network of dark crinkly hair. Each time she looked at it, her insides seemed to thicken and a heavy pulse began to beat shamefully between her thighs. It was embarrassing. It was thrilling. And she had a hard time deciding whether to quell it or cater to it and keep on looking at him.
When sunlight caught on his hair, it burnished it with reddish highlights. His eyes, behind their thick screen of lashes, seemed a part of the woods around them, green with shadows of gray and flecks of brown.
When they were finished eating, she leaned her back against a tree and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply of the clean air. The languorous motion stretched her shirt over her breasts and brought Hunter’s attention back to them.
“You don’t wear a brassiere very often, do you?”
Her eyes snapped open and focused immediately on his. “What?”
He sat up slowly and inched across the ground on his bottom until he was close to her. Bracing his hand near her head on the tree, he leaned forward and came perilously close to bumping noses. “That day you fainted on the witness stand, you weren’t wearing a brassiere. It surprised me.”
“It surprised me to wake up and find—” She broke off suddenly.
“Find me kissing you?”
“Yes.”
“And find yourself kissing me back?”
“I’m still not convinced I was.”
“You were,” he said softly, his eyes dropping significantly to her mouth. “Do you know why I unbuttoned your blouse?”
She made a soft moaning sound and turned her head. She pressed her forehead into the hollow of his elbow and squeezed her eyes shut. “You said it was to revive me.”
“Partially.”
“Then, you have lied to me on more than one occasion.”
“Maybe that was a white lie,” he confessed softly. His hand fiddled with the collar of her shirt. “I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to look at you, Kari.” His hand closed around her neck and slid down the slender column. “I still want to.” His voice was as tantalizing as the breeze that whispered through the dense branches overhead.
His fingers deftly unfastened the first button. “You’re not wearing anything underneath today either.”
“No.”
“Or last night.”
She rolled her forehead against his arm. “No.”
“That’s why I didn’t kiss you last night. If I had touched you, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. I would have had to touch your breasts. Kiss them. You know where it would have gone from there.”
His fingers moved down to the next button. He toyed with it and when she made no move to halt him, he undid it. Then the next. The next.
Her flowery scent wafted up to him as he pushed aside the fabric so his hand could slip inside. His eyes closed in an agony of pleasure as his palm found her skin as warm and smooth and alive as he had imagined it.
He cupped the firm globe of her breast. It filled his hand. His fingers flexed in a gentle kneading motion. “Kari, Kari,” he groaned. “You feel beautiful.” His hand moved to her other breast and treated it to the same loving caress.
His thumb tenderly finessed her nipple. It beaded in response and he murmured endearments against her neck. When the peak grew pebble-hard, he rolled it between his finger and thumb, then fanned it lightly with his fingertips.
A small weeping sound brought his eyes open. He was alarmed to see a tear rolling down her cheek. His hand stilled instantly. “Kari? What’s wrong? Am I hurting you?”
“No,” she whispered, leaving her face buried in the crease of his elbow.
“Are you insulted? I swear—”
“No.”
“Then, what is it? Why are you crying? Do you want me to stop?”
She raised her head. Her eyes were luminous with tears. “That’s just it. I don’t want you to stop. It feels wonderful.” She shuddered. “And I don’t know what to think about that.”
He moved like summer lightning. Kneeling before her, he caught her head between his hands and pulled her mouth to within a breath of his. “Then, don’t think about it. Don’t think at all.”
Chapter Ten