Chapter Nineteen

First there was the kiss. Remington opened the other side of his blanket and Phoebe turned, stepped in, and then she was enveloped in his arms, cocooned. His head lowered, hers lifted. Their mouths touched.

Phoebe had little experience with kissing. When Remington had surprised her in the shed, planting that hard, brief kiss on her mouth, she counted it as her first true kiss. It was all she had to compare with what he was doing to her now.

He nudged her lips with his, parting them. She caught just a sip of air before he began to explore the shape of her mouth, and it was warm and musky on her tongue. She realized she had stolen that breath from him. That made her smile.

He felt the change in the slant of her mouth, thought he could actually taste the sweet bubble of laughter that hovered on her lips. He brushed her mouth. Once. Twice. Their lips clung. He touched the tip of his tongue to her upper lip. She shivered. A moment later so did he.

Neither of them was cold.

Her mouth opened under the pressure of his. Her lips were damp, soft, and sensitive, and what he did with his mouth and tongue kept them that way. She moaned because it was not possible to keep that sound trapped in the back of her throat. He made it impossible. It was all right, though, because she meant to give him everything.

The kiss deepened. Every thread of tension that supported Phoebe’s legs snapped. She sagged against Remington, and whatever space existed between them vanished. Her arms were caught at her sides. She wriggled, slid her palms up his chest, over his shoulders, and then folded her hands behind his neck. She kept his mouth to hers. Why had she never known hunger for this until she was starving?

The shortest route was indeed down. With Phoebe’s arms locked around him, Remington only had to lower himself to the mattress. The blanket unfolded as he stretched out and Phoebe stretched out over him. It was not the position he had imagined when calculating his path, but it was a very good one. He was grinning when she lifted her head, and he surrendered that smile when she lowered it again.

She kissed the corner of his mouth, brushed her lips against his jaw. She teased him with tiny tasting kisses along the cord in his neck. He brought her back to his mouth and kept her there with the heat and the hunger.

Without quite knowing how it happened, Phoebe found herself under Remington, not completely, not so his weight was pressing down on her, but covered by enough of him to feel all of his warmth. That was important right now because he was tugging at the knot that kept her blanket closed. This knot did not require the use of his knife. He raised himself on an elbow, watching her, not what he was doing.

The blanket did not fall open at once, but that was because Phoebe was not in charge of this curtain. Remington was. And he damn well was going to take his time. He studied the narrow part in the blanket; or rather he studied the slim line of milky flesh that it revealed. He rested his hand on the flat of her abdomen and then walked his fingers up the part, through the Valley of Elah, and on to the hollow of her throat. He could feel her faint pulse against his fingertips.

Remington bent, kissed her lightly, and then retraced his trail to where the knot had been. He nudged one side of the blanket. Under his fingers, the edge of it climbed up her breast, caught on the stiff bud of her nipple, and then made a rapid descent when he flicked it aside.

He cupped the underside of her breast and passed his thumb across the pink aureole. The little rosebud stood at attention so he gave it his, covering it with the gentle suck of his mouth. Phoebe’s spine arched as if he had pulled hard on a thread. She found support by driving the heels of her hands between lumps in the mattress. She pressed her head back and felt the line of her neck stretch taut. It drew him there. He left her breast and set his lips against her throat, her neck, and when he came to the hollow just behind her collarbone, he used his teeth to make his mark and his tongue to lave it.

She wanted to weep with the pleasure of it. She whimpered instead.

He followed the same path he had walked with his fingers but used his mouth this time. The blanket no longer covered her—the lift of her arching spine had taken care of that—and Remington now gave attention to the breast he had ignored. She did not react as if she were going to come out of her skin, but she did clutch his shoulders and make small crescents in his skin with her nails. Remington took that as a sign of her approval and stayed where he was until she reversed the pressure and pushed him away.

Raising his head, he searched her face. Her eyelids were heavy, but her eyes were alert. She had pressed her lips together and was breathing shallowly through her nose. “Too much?” he asked. His voice was rough, like gravel, but the whisper softened it.

“Mm. A little.” She whispered as well and was barely able to hear herself above the sound of the rain hitting the roof. “And not quite enough.”

The corners of his mouth turned up in a shadow of a smile that was equal parts regret and empathy. “I understand. Perhaps I should return the reins.”

She didn’t know what he meant until he was once again on his back and she was stretched along his length. He slipped a hand under her upper leg and lifted it across both of his. It was natural for her to rise up on one elbow and set her gaze on him. She ran the back of her hand along his jaw. The brush of his stubble was a pleasant sensation against her knuckles. She tapped his chin once with her forefinger before she slid it up to his mouth and rested it against his lips.

“I’m not shushing you,” she said. “I’m letting you keep your secrets.”

Because she did not raise her finger, he said, “Mm.”

“You have the kind of mouth they hide behind, the kind that rests easy on your face, seems open, friendly, but then it twists slightly, reveals the wryness and says there’s something you know that I don’t, that maybe no one does. I like it.” She raised her finger but not so he could comment. She kissed him on that beautiful mouth and whispered, “Perfect,” against it.

She moved her hand to his chest, rested her palm over his heartbeat, and felt its thrum. Much as he had done, and because he had shown her how to do it, Phoebe walked her fingers to the flat of his belly and then spread them across it. His skin retracted under her touch, and she felt a sense of, if not quite power, then control. Somehow he had known she needed that before she recognized the same, and he gave it to her without hesitation, never risking the possibility that she would not ask for it. Where she was concerned, his instincts were flawless.

It was the same with the horses.

She was able to swallow her chuckle but was unsuccessful biting back her smile. It was not the thought that tickled her, not exactly. It was because she had thought of it now.

“What is it?” he asked.

She sighed. “Of course you would notice.”

“Phoebe. You are lying beside me in what anyone would say is a provocative state of undress, and you—”

“Half-naked,” she said. “That’s what anyone except you would say, although it was nice of you to add ‘provocative.’”

“And you,” he went on as if she had not interrupted, “are smiling as widely as the Cheshire cat. It’s disturbing.”

She did laugh, then, and showered him with the sound of joy.

Remington let her fumble with the buttons on his fly until she asked for help between gulps of air. She surprised him by not trying to work his trousers over his hips. Instead, she attended to the fly on her trousers. She began to wriggle out of them, which made her breasts bounce in a most appealing way. She stopped, though not, it seemed, because he was ogling her.

It was a matter of her boots. She took back the leg he had pulled over his and sat up. “I forgot about these,” she said. “There’s an order, isn’t there, when you want to get out of your trousers?” She bent one knee, pulled up her calf crossways, and wrestled the boot off.

Remington watched her toss aside the boot and then begin to contemplate her sock. It would have been amusing if his cock were not as hard as an iron bar and pressing with some urgency against his drawers. He almost groaned with relief when she decided to keep the sock on and turned her attention to the other boot.

The boot thumped to the floor. This sock also stayed on, although for a long, painful moment it appeared she was reconsidering her decision. Remington was tempted to thump his head against the mattress. He could make at least as much noise as the boot had and probably feel better for it.

“Are you all right?” she asked, turning her head to look at him.

“Fine.” He wondered if his voice sounded as strangled as his throat felt. “Fine,” he repeated and it was marginally better this time. “Are you going to take those off?”

“My socks?”

“No. God, no. The pants.”

“Oh, I thought I’d let you.”

He had to roll out of the way when she flopped backward. The mattress was narrow and he spilled right over the edge. It was only a few inches to the floor but he landed with a satisfying thump. He rolled right back on, sat up and straddled Phoebe, and then worked the trousers over her hips. He inched lower as he tugged the pants past her thighs, her knees, and finally pulled them away.

“The flourish was nice,” she said. She imitated it, raising her arm and rotating her wrist, then letting the invisible pants in her hand fly. “Very theatrical.”

Remington hadn’t given any thought to what she might be wearing under her trousers. If he had, he would have supposed she had on a pair of long flannel drawers similar to his—and he would have supposed wrong.

She wore a pair of split-crotch, white cotton knickers with three fussy tiers of ruffles where they ended just below her knee. He had seen fancier. Dance hall girls wore knickers with ruffles over their backsides and all the way down to the hem, and sometimes there were cascades of delicate lace, but this was the first time he’d seen feminine wear exposed after the removal of a pair of men’s trousers.

When he realized those little ruffles had been hiding there all day, it was nearly his undoing. Now when she wore trousers, he would always wonder.

He bent his head, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered, “Witch.”

There was no way Phoebe could hear that as anything but a compliment. She turned her head, lifted it to find his mouth, and kissed him for a deliciously long time.

He ended up removing his own trousers because they were both impatient by then. There was no repeat of the theatrical flourish; he simply shoved them out of the way. They rearranged the blankets, tugging and yanking until one mostly covered the mattress and the other covered them. Their bedding was musty, smelled of horses and sweat and wood smoke, but that was of no account when their senses were teased by the fragrances of musk and sex.

Remington nudged her knees until they made a V for him. She raised them on either side of his hips; he levered between them and supported himself on his forearms. He brushed her lips, gently pushing them apart to tease her with his tongue. “Do you want to help me?” he asked against her mouth.

Phoebe took a shallow breath and whispered, “Tell me how.”

Her answer surprised him, but he didn’t reveal it in any way. What he did was tell her in terms both plain and temperate what he wanted her to do, and if he surprised her, she also did not reveal it.

Phoebe reached between their bodies, found the opening in his drawers, and slipped her hand inside. She closed her hand around his erection and felt his blood surge. She remembered the thrum of his heart against her palm. This was like that, only stronger, more insistent, and Phoebe’s fingers began to uncurl.

“No,” he said.

Her fist tightened reflexively. When he groaned, she understood that it was pleasure that pushed the sound past his throat. She lifted her hips and guided him to her. She expected there to be pain, had prepared herself to accept it as the natural consequence of the intimacy she wanted with this man, but then he was inside her and she realized that she had never known intimacy with any man. In every way that mattered, he, Remington Frost, was her first.

His hips fell as he settled in her. He could have prepared her better, he thought, taken more time to make certain she was ready. She was tight, tight as her fist had been, and he wanted to drive into her as deeply as he could. He held back because the pleasure he felt was not shared. Not yet.

“All right?” he asked.

She nodded because she believed it was true, and she continued to believe it right up until the moment he proved to her that it wasn’t.

“Come here,” he said. “Another riding lesson, I think.”

She didn’t understand, didn’t pretend to; she simply followed his lead. With some adjustment, some awkwardness, he turned them so she was straddling him and very much riding tall in the saddle. “I suppose you should let me have the reins again,” she said.

And he did, letting her establish the rhythm. She leaned forward, made her breasts available to his lips and tongue. His hand slid between her legs, parted her lips with his fingertips, and stroked that other rosebud until it was wet with her dew.

He watched her pupils darken, grow larger, until her gold-flecked green irises were only thin rings of color. Sometimes the tip of her pink tongue would appear at the corner of her mouth. She unlocked her back, rose and fell with him, swayed. Her cadence matched his and she began to take increasing short and shallow breaths as the rise and fall of her body quickened.

Remington recognized her rising pleasure. He felt it, too. He grabbed her thick mane of hair when it fell over her shoulder and hung on until she came. The shudder that rocked her, rocked him, and he bucked sideways, toppling but not dislodging her, and finally drove into her as deeply as he’d wanted to from the first. Four hard strokes and he came to the same noisy end that she had.

They were no better than half on the mattress. Remington’s head and shoulders rested against the rough wooden planks of the floor while the small of his back was curved uncomfortably at the mattress’s edge. Phoebe had it better because she lay on Remington, and while he was smoother than the floor and less lumpy than the mattress, he was only marginally softer than either.

Phoebe’s cheek was pressed to his shoulder. She raised her head, regarded him through eyes that were vaguely unfocused, and immediately dropped back to his shoulder. “I’ll move,” she said. “Soon. I promise.”

“Don’t. Not yet. I can’t.”

She smiled because it required too much effort to laugh. She closed her eyes. “Neither can I.”

In the corner of the cabin, the roof continued to leak. The steady drip had the excellent timing of a metronome. In minutes they were both sleeping.