Keeping his eyes locked with hers, he reached down and untied the thong holding his holster against his thigh, then unbuckled the gun belt and set it in a chair. His coat was wet. It clung, but he worked himself out of it. He flipped his braces off his shoulders, opened several buttons of his shirt, then impatiently pulled it over his head. Shoes and socks went next. He unbuttoned his fly but stopped there.
He knelt in front of her and slipped off her shoes. Sliding his hands up her legs under her skirt, he found her garters, rolled down her stockings, and peeled them off her chilled feet.
When he stood up, he reached behind her head, pulled out what few pins remained in her hair, and dropped them to the floor. As her hair tumbled down her back, he combed his fingers through it.
“Thatcher, I—”
With abject misery, he moaned, “Please don’t shy from me, Laurel.”
“I’m not. It’s just…” In a purely feminine, self-conscious gesture, she touched the tear tracks on her cheeks, then moved her hand down to her collar, which she drew closed over her throat. “I’m not very tidy.”
His heart thumped with restored anticipation. Her voice was husky from weeping, and so seductive he wanted to trap it inside her mouth and taste it. “I don’t need you tidy. I need you now.”
He placed his hands flat against the wall on either side of her head, lowered his, and used his nose to nudge open the collar she’d closed. He pressed an open-mouth kiss on the side of her neck, nibbled up the slender column of it to her ear where he breathed, “I won’t hold back.”
“Please don’t. Make me forget.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
That sighed consent unleashed a primal urge in him to claim, possess, mate. He came up against her and covered her face with kisses, then slanted his mouth over hers. He ate from it, unable to draw as much from it as he was yearning for, greedy for. He went back and back and back for more. He slid his hands from the wall to her breasts. There was no corset to prevent him from massaging and reshaping them. She leaned into the caresses in unshy offering.
Somehow he managed to keep their mouths fused as he pulled her blouse free of her waistband and unbuttoned it. The buttons were small and round and devils to work free of the wet material, but at last he got them undone, and her blouse was off.
He skimmed his hands over her front, feeling the warmth of her skin through her chemise. He compressed the tips of her breasts between his fingers and heard her breath flutter around his name as she sighed it.
After two failed attempts, he found the fastening of her skirt and undid it. The skirt, weighted with rainwater, crumpled to the floor. Laurel stepped out of it, leaving her in only her chemise and underpants.
He took her hands and tugged her forward as he backed up to the bed and sat down on the side of it, then wrapped her in his arms and pressed his face into the giving softness of her middle. Hands splayed over her back, he held her there and breathed her in.
Then he drew her down onto the bed, turned her to lie on her back, and, following her down, half covered her body as he kissed her. She clasped his head, digging her fingers into his hair.
His hands moved over her, charting the dips and swells of her body until he reached the hem of her chemise. He bunched it to her waist, pushed it up over her breasts, and pulled it over her head. She lifted her hair free of it, tossed it over the side of the bed, and lay back, drawing him back down to her.
He kissed her breasts, suckled them in turn as he stroked the plain of her stomach with the backs of his fingers, moving a little lower with each brush of skin over skin until he encountered the row of tiny buttons on her underpants. He toyed with them, plucked at them, then popped them free. He worked the garment over her hips, down her thighs, past her knees, and off.
The hair in the vee of her thighs was soft against his palm as he cupped her. Sliding his fingers deeper, he dipped into her and caressed, then rolled onto his hip, opened his fly, and made the head of his cock slick with the moisture his fingertips had collected.
He levered himself above her. Her thighs hugged his hips. His first probe found her tight, but yielding. He pressed inside, barely breaching but snugly securing himself in silky heat. He forced himself to hold there. But Laurel was looking up at him with lambent eyes, puffing soft and rapid breaths through her lips. Her fingers linked behind his neck. So he rocked into her incrementally, inch by intoxicating inch, until he was gloved by her.
His breath soughed loudly in the otherwise silent room. He bracketed her upper body with his forearms, leaving his hands free to touch her eyebrows, cheeks, lips. He kissed her gently. At least it started out that way, but her tongue tangled with his, and he resumed the hungry kisses of before.
She angled herself up against him, rubbing belly to belly, restlessly grazing her nipples against his chest. Her hands coasted down his spine to the small of his back, then into his loose trousers and onto his butt. For hands so small, they squeezed him with surprising strength, insistent on pulling him closer, deeper.
He heard the primal growl that came from his own throat as he began to move. Slow, penetrating glides. Near withdrawals before sinking deep, deeper. Shallow, rapid strokes that appealed to his carnal instinct to come. To come now.
He didn’t. But he tilted his hips just enough to change the point of friction, to enable a prolonged grind against that elusive little bead that he had acquainted her with. Her first climax had alarmed her. She had resisted and rejected it. Now she was arching up in want of another.
He’d had wet dreams about just this, about Laurel’s desperate reaching for the abandon he could give her.
His control slipping, he groaned her name in a plea, a prayer.
Her breath turned choppy, then stopped altogether as her body bowed and went taut. She gave a soft, startled cry, then began milking him with such perfection, he almost waited too late to pull out.
* * *
Really not since Derby had come home from Europe had Laurel felt completely at rest. This must be the way it felt when a beguiling narcotic channeled through one’s veins, replacing distress, anger, grief, all things horrid with a honeyed peace. The languor was lo