He paused with his hands on his thighs and turned to look at her across his shoulders. His dark eyes were narrowed and hard. “I guess we’re both sorry about a lot of things,” he concluded grimly.
There were so many things she wanted to say, but it would only make the situation worse. So she said the mundane instead. “Will you be warm enough?”
“I’ll never be warm enough, Lilli, not if your body isn’t next to mine,” he told her.
She choked on a little cry and attempted to rise, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her around to him. “You think you’re hurt,” Webb mocked bitterly as frustration raged inside him. “You have no idea what it’s like to want someone so much that you can’t look at anyone else.”
“Webb, don’t.” She didn’t struggle in his hold.
“You shouldn’t have come out here, Lilli,” he groaned, then crushed her hard in his arms, his weight driving her backward into the straw. The rough kiss was a punishment for tempting his control by coming to the shed. Lilli understood. It was a situation where neither and both of them were to blame for the position they now found themselves in. Lilli understood that better than Webb. Men preferred to believe they had control over what happened to them; Lilli knew better.
As suddenly as the angry embrace had begun, Webb was rolling his weight from her and sitting up to hunch over his knees. The hat came off as he raked a hand through his hair and kept his head lowered, breathing raggedly. “Get out of here,” he ordered in a hoarse voice.
Aware his control was teetering on a thin edge, Lilli finally acknowledged the subconscious decision that had prompted her to come to the shed. Right or wrong, she wanted him to make her feel alive. There was no more thinking, no more restraint. Webb was here now, and the problems tomorrow might bring were blown away before this primary reasoning.
Not moving from her prone position, half on the quilt and half on the straw, she lifted a hand to touch him. “Webb, I don’t want to go,” she said. His body went still. “I wanted this to happen. The restlessness—the cabin fever, you said—that isn’t what it was. I don’t think I’ve thought about anything else but this moment for a long time. You’ve been in my mind since we met at the depot, taking up more and more of it until—”
His stillness was broken as he slowly turned, bringing his hand down and prying into her with his gaze, uncertain that she knew what she was saying. With a faint curve of her mouth, she opened her arms to him, inviting him to come to her. He lowered himself onto the straw beside her and curved an arm possessively across her. For a long second, it was enough just to look at her.
Her fingers wandered over the ridged bone of his cheek. “This is all I can give you, Webb.” She wouldn’t leave Stefan, and she wanted this to be enough, even though she knew it wouldn’t be. A time would come when they would both want more, but that time wasn’t here.
The straw rustled as Webb moved to warm her lips with his kiss. Her hand curved to the back of his head to increase the pressure and deepen the kiss, guided by the instinct of desire. Webb had already discovered in past encounters that she knew little of the preliminary arts that led to the act of love. He wanted to take it slow and teach them to her, but the need in him was a hot, fierce rod that impatiently demanded satisfaction.
Outside the shed, the blizzard howled and whined, dropping the temperature everywhere except in the corner where the bed of straw was located. There, the friction of two bodies trying to get closer created its own warmth. The black gelding snorted at all the rustling noises coming from the straw pile and turned its head to eye the entwined couple.
Their clothes were an encumbrance that couldn’t be removed in this cold, only temporarily shifted out of the way so their hands could seek and invade chosen areas. His mouth grew more hungry for her, eating at her lips and clashing with her tongue. Her breasts strained under his cupping hands, stretching the material that bound them and kept him from touching her warm flesh.
The h
eat of her body was burning through what restraint he possessed. Little panting moans were coming from her throat as she turned into him with her hips and legs. Webb sensed her uncertainty, her confusion that he hadn’t already taken her. It destroyed the rest of his control, sending hot blood coursing wildly through his veins and blocking out all other considerations with his need to have her.
The weighty material of her skirts was an irritating barrier to be lifted to reach her pantalettes. The heat of her skin burned through the cotton undergarment, warming his hand and briefly distracting him. He spread his hand across the rounded cheeks of her bottom, feeling the tautness of them. Then he was shifting her squarely onto the straw, his hand coming around to the front and gliding to her pubic bone. Her astonished gasp of pleasure nearly drove him over the brink. Impatiently he tugged at the undergarment, and her hips arched to help him ease it down.
When he slid into the tight opening, the swelling need inside him nearly exploded on contact. He went rigid, gritting his teeth to check it. She shifted under him, exciting all his senses. His hands dug into her to stop all motion.
“Hold still,” Webb ordered thickly, the muscles in his jaw flexing with the tearing effort. “Or it will be over before you’ve had a chance to begin.”
“What?” There was a trace of confusion in her throaty voice.
It gave him the edge of control he needed as his mouth rubbed over her moist lips. “I’ll show you what I mean.”
While he took possession of her mouth, his hands slid down to her hips and held them still as he moved slowly against them. But the pressure grew, bringing with it the roughness and the wonder of searing desire. She was all motion under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from him. Her breath began coming quick and fast and Webb drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both take over. Sensation kicked through him.
The storm’s frigid chill eventually made itself felt, and exposed skin was covered, clothes bundled around them once more. Contentment brought a serenity to her features when Lilli finally looked at him. There was a tightness in his throat, emotion choking him with the need to tell her all she’d given him. The ache in his loins was satisfied, but it was more than that.
“I wondered if it would be like this,” she murmured, gazing at him from her pillow of straw. “Now I know.”
“Just this isn’t enough.” His hand cupped her face, his thumb rubbing at her lower lip. “I’ll want more of this—and more beyond this.”
“You have me. I can’t hold back from that anymore.” The lightness left her face.
“We’ll never be satisfied with that, Lilli. The kind of closeness we’re craving isn’t satisfied with the breaching of flesh walls,” he warned. “I want to eat with you and talk with you and sleep every night with you in my arms. I love you.”
Her blue eyes became brilliant with tears. “This is all we’ve got, Webb. At least we have this much.” Her voice was choked. “I can’t leave Stefan.”
His argument was silenced by the sad but determined line of her mouth. Webb brought his hand away, conscious that she shivered from the loss of contact. “You’d better go back where it’s warm.” He rolled to his feet and waited for her to stand up, too.
Slowly she arranged the shawl like a hood over her head. “Aren’t you coming?” Her eyes clung to him.