Thunder Snow (Thunder On The Mountain Series) (7 page)

CHAPTER  TWELVE

A
gentle knock at my door brought me awake the next morning. I grabbed my robe and opened the door without checking to see who it was.

“Don’t ever do that again. Did you learn nothing from your experience?” Jack said, not quite harshly. “Even in this trusting town, it could have been anyone on the other side of that door.”

“Why didn’t you just use your key, Jack? It’s never stopped you before,” I sassed as I headed off to the kitchen to set the coffee to brew.

“Give me just a minute. Let me splash some water on my face and wake up. I’ll be right out,” I said with a yawn.

By the time I came out, the coffee was finished and Jack was pouring two mugs.

“What brings you to my neck of the woods at this hour, sir?”

I was surprised to see it was already 6:30. “I must have been tired. I don’t normally sleep this late.”

“You’re usually at the Amber Rose by now. I have to admit, I came up here to check to make sure you were all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked softly.

“I have thought of little else since our conversation yesterday. I can’t get the image out of my head. I want to do damage to something, or preferably, someone. I want to take away the trauma it must have been so you don’t ever have to think of it again. Bottom line . . . I feel frustrated that there isn’t something I can do to make it right.”

We stood looking at each other while I tried to figure out what was happening. I knew he occupied most of my waking and sleeping thoughts, and I was feeling bold enough to voice what I wanted to say.

“There’s probably something you could do to erase the imagine for a while,” I said brazenly, holding his gaze.

“And what might that be?” he said, barely breathing.

“You can kiss me the way you did a few weeks ago. That might help me forget for a bit.” There was a small smile that crossed my face as I wondered who had taken over my rational mind and put those words in my mouth.

“Did you honestly just say that and then blush?” Jack asked me quietly as he put his mug on the counter.

“I’m not sure where those words came from, but I’m sure they couldn’t have been from
my
mouth,” I laughed.

“You definitely threw the gauntlet. Dear God, I have been watching nothing but your lips, and I assure you, that’s exactly where they came from.” He took my face in his hands and proceeded to cover my lips with his.

Some part of me was conscious that this was the most electrifying feeling my body knew. I wanted to repeat it; wanted to feel it again. Every single pore was singing with excitement . . . no, not singing, screaming with excitement.

If the world ended right this minute, I would die a happy woman. “Not sure exactly what it is you’re doing, Jack, but honest to God, no one has ever kissed me like that in my life. Please don’t stop.”

He pressed me against the counter so the full lengths of our bodies were touching. “It must be you, because I’m pretty sure I have never wanted to kiss someone the way I want to kiss you.”

My hands threaded through his wavy hair as I tried to bring him closer. I wanted to absorb him into me. This was magic, and I was transported by the feelings sweeping through me.

My hands were restless, my body intense. I wanted to touch him, all of him. I wanted to feel his strength. I touched his face. I ran my hands down his arms that were around me, intoxicated with his strength, with the passion he ignited in me. He lifted me to the counter as I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him even closer. My silky robe slid from my shoulders, exposing my breasts to his wandering hands.

“Do you always answer the door like that?” he groaned against my neck.

“You woke me up from a sound sleep. I covered up,” I said. “What more did you want?”

“You have no idea how much more I want. Is this the way you sleep?” he breathed, stepping back to look at me, to run his thumbs over my already hardened nipples.

“Every time I close my eyes I will have this vision. Perfection, absolute perfection,” he whispered as his lips took mine again.

We could have been there a minute, it could have been an hour. It didn’t matter. The sensations coursing through my body had me wanting more.

When his lips left mine to travel down my neck, I wanted only his intensity. I wanted to feel him, and feel what I was doing to him. When he took my nipple into his mouth and ran his tongue over it in the same way he had danced with my tongue, I let out a deep moan.

He came back to my lips, devouring them, gently then hard, tongues warring, then gentled again into a slow dance to a tune heard only by us. One by one, I unbuttoned his shirt, never breaking contact with his lips, never wanting this feeling to stop. My hands circled his waist to release him from the confines of his jeans, but he stilled my hand.

He pulled my robe from my shoulders, freeing me to explore. “Not yet, little one, we have all the time in the world.”

And yet the kisses became more intense, more drugging, making me wet and throbbing as his hand found my desire and caressed me, making me moan in pleasure. As his finger entered me, I was sure I was crossing into heaven. His thumb stroked me as our tongues continued to duel.

“Hush, little one, relax. Let me bring you pleasure,” he said as he gentled me to the counter.

Lying there, vulnerable, exposed, his hands caressing me like I was a treasure, he whispered, “You are absolutely stunning. So much more than I even could have imagined.”

His lips started at my navel, sending flames through my arousal. His thumbs were gentle on my mound, opening me to him, to touch, to explore, to enjoy. When his mouth touched me, I cried out.

“Hush,” he whispered. “I promise this won’t hurt.”

He covered me with his lips, stroked me with his tongue. I put my legs over his shoulders and opened up.

“What a delicate rose bud,” he said against me as his finger slid easily inside. Within minutes, his lips and his tongue moving in rhythm had me on the brink. “You ready, angel?”

“No, Jack, I want to pleasure you.”

“I told you, we have all the time in the world. Just let go and enjoy.”

When I came, I knew every cell in my body was involved. I was so sated and he was so tender that I’m not sure I could have moved on my own.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

“While I appreciate the thought, I am actually not so little,” I said.

Without missing a beat, he had my legs around his waist and pulled me against him, skin to skin. He started kissing me. It was almost delirious, tasting me on his lips. The kiss deepened, and we were in the bedroom before I was conscious we had moved.

Laying me down, I felt protected, cared for, safe. I had been so lost in the magic of the kissing that I was surprised to feel his tongue circling my nipple.

“Not so fast, Jack. It’s my turn now.”

His zipper was undone, and I made a ritual of removing his jeans. My warm tongue tasted him along the way as his pants were finally removed.

“Magnificent,” was the word that passed my lips as I worked my way back up to his manhood. Jack held my head as I took him in my mouth, guiding me, encouraging me.

When he was spent, he wrapped me in his arms, my head resting on his chest.

“I’m not sure what just happened. I have thought of little else the past few weeks, but that was not at all my intention when I came over this morning.”

He ran his fingers through my hair, stopping at the end to twirl a curl around his fingers. It seemed he did it unconsciously, but it was such a tender gesture.

“You’ll never hear me say I’m sorry,” I sassed as I hopped out of bed, surprisingly carefree in my lack of clothing.

“You’re right about that. Not something that will ever be defined by the word ‘sorry.’”

After retrieving and zipping his pants, he found my robe and put it around my shoulders as he pulled me into a soul-searing kiss. “Cover up or all of my good intentions will be gone in a flash.”

“For what purpose do you have good intentions, sir? Sounds pretty boring to me.” I pushed my arms into my sleeves and tied the sash.

“Busy day ahead of me, and you are a mighty distraction.”

“Not at all how I had thought to spend my morning, but I’m sure to be smiling all day,” I said, putting my arms around his neck and drawing him in for another indescribable kiss. I whispered against his lips, “Come up and see me again sometime.”

His eyes held mine. He ran his thumb across my cheek. “Don’t tempt me,” he said as he playfully swatted my butt. “I need to get out of here or the whole day will be spent discovering your secrets.”

“Promises, promises,” I said. His lips met mine, then he was gone.

What had just happened? Had we been circling the inevitable? What a complex man
—intriguing, intelligent, and wholly irresistible.

As the day progressed, I tried to work on an article for a publication that had a fast-approaching deadline. I found it hard to concentrate, and had no idea if it made any sense. I’d have to read it later to even know what it said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

E
dgy and distracted, I hopped in my car and started driving. The weather was cool but sunny. There were a lot of small towns nearby that I had not explored yet. Caribou was not too far up the road.

The former silver mining town was now a ghost town, and I had wanted to do some shooting up there for a while. The sun and warmth, combined with my tingling senses and diverted mental state, were a great combination for what I had in mind. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

Caribou was exactly what I was looking for that day. There wasn’t much there, only a few stone ruins and a dilapidated wooden building, but that kept me busy for quite a while. And then I just wandered. Wandered the hills, drove the back roads, stopping frequently to take pictures of things that caught my eye.

Sometime during the late afternoon, I found myself in Boulder. I stopped at a familiar haunt to grab a bite to eat, all the while thinking of Jack, thinking of the morning, feeling like a teenager with a crush, smiling a secret smile when I remembered. By the time I got to Nederland, the sun had set, but the lights were still on at the Amber Rose. I stopped in to see Sam.

I stepped back and held the door open to allow a matronly patron to leave. Sam’s scowl turned to a bright smile when he saw me coming in.

“What has you looking like such a grump, my friend?”

“That was ol’ Mornin’ Sun. What a complete misnomer. She ain’t anything like her name.”

“I take it she’s not gonna be warming your bed anytime soon?”

Sam made a noise that sounded like a bark and snickered as he wiped down the counter. “Nicest thing I can say about ol’ Mornin’ Sun is that she ain't a twin.”

When I realized what he had said, we broke into laughter.

“No wonder they call you Wicked Sam. You’re incorrigible.”

“I do my best,” he said. “Getcha a cuppa coffee?”

“Not tonight, Sam, but thanks. I just stopped in to see your old face. I wanted to tell you what a treasure I think you are.”

Blushing, he leaned across the bar and patted my hand. “I always knew ya, even though ya didn’t know me, so I jest feel like ya’ve come home. But I gotta say, I been findin’ m’self getting’ madder and madder ‘bout that story ya told. Wish I could have five minutes with that varmit.”

“Oh, Sam, I love that about you, your unconditional acceptance. But here’s a big lesson I learned from Jason. I’m not gonna let anyone steal my joy anymore. HE is not the one that gets to be in charge of my life. It was awful what happened. Let me help you let go of it like you’ve helped me.”

“Jest can’t help but thinkin’ ‘bout what woulda happened ta ya. Ya change lives. I’m glad yer here.”

“There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

As I drove the short drive home, I thought about how laid back this life was in comparison to what I had known up until this point. Perspective is an amazing thing. I was having a paradigm shift about what was important in my life and what wasn’t.

Completely relaxed, all I wanted was to complete my day in the ‘pond’ they called the bathtub. The water fanned out from the shower head above like a waterfall. As I slid under the warmth of the flowing water, I laughed to myself at the random things that reminded me of Jack, like the ocean blue of the tub being the color of his eyes. Yes, I was smitten, no doubt about it.

So smitten was I that I thought I conjured him up when I opened my eyes and saw him staring at me in the mirror. I closed my eyes, slid deep into the water, and chuckled.

“What’s so funny, little one?” he said softly.

“Jack?!” I said, splashing water as I came up hurriedly.

“You were expecting someone else, maybe?”

“I’d be lying if I said I minded you showing up at odd hours.” I felt myself blushing for my loose tongue and slid deeper under the water.

Jack came in and sat on the edge of this magnificent tub that was worked into the mountainside.

“Your most attractive quality, in my opinion, is that you don’t seem to have a filter on your honesty. I am often surprised you don’t hide behind guile. I’ve thought of little else all day.”

“’Thought of little else all day’ meaning my honesty?” I asked.

Smiling, he turned his gaze on me, the vision I had just been comparing to the blue of the pool. “Thought of little else all day besides you, and many of your different facets,” he said as he walked across the room and removed a towel from the heated holder.

“My facets or my assets?”

“Yes,” he said.

As he approached, he held the towel open to wrap me in. “Wondering how in the world you have come to occupy so much of my thought space. Wondering what kind of magnet you have that keeps drawing me back to you. Wondering what kind of spell you’ve cast that I can't seem to break.”
     Shocked at his words, at the thought behind them, at what they did to my entire being, I stepped into the towel, into his arms, and said quietly, “You don’t really want to, do you?”

I felt his body still. “Don’t really want to what?”

“Don’t really want to break the spell.”

He relaxed against me. “Certainly not tonight. None of this was in my plans, but nothing could have made me stay away. I have been hard for you all day. Have thought of the taste of you all day. Thought of the way you moved under my lips, and wanted you moving under me since the moment I walked out of here this morning."

“Well isn’t
that
a coincidence? I’ve been thinking of your lips all day. Wondering if you inject drugs into them. Wondering what magic they hold, and how they draw so much out of me. So it appears as though we are sharing an addiction,” I smiled as I headed to the bedroom and lit a solitary candle. “An addiction that could easily become an obsession.”

When he pulled my bath-warmed body against him, I shivered. I could feel the length of his hardness against me. I moaned deeply.

“I can’t ever remember wanting anything like I want you,” he said against my lips. And then his lips slid down my body, slowing at my breasts, my navel, and then my warmth that was writhing in wait for him.

I clutched at his hair, holding on because I never wanted these sensations to stop. “Please,” I begged, not sure what it was I needed. “I want you. Don’t stop.”

He worked his way up my eager body, kissing my lips in a way that was becoming familiar and necessary to my sanity.

“Please,” I said again.

“Please, what, angel?”

“Please help me,” I said breathlessly. “I need you. Now.”

He slid his hard tip against me. Slid his wet hardness gently over my most sensitive area as I moved, wanting more of him.

He continued to kiss me, drug me, embrace me. My hand reached for him, guiding him into my waiting moistness. Slowly, gently at first, his kisses activated every nerve in my body until I was desperate.

When I could stand it no more, he entered me completely, hard, deep, wet, all the while working in a motion as ageless as time. But now it was our time, and I couldn’t get enough.

As he filled me, brought me to the brink, slowed, then brought me to the brink again, he said softly against my lips, “Are you ready, little one?”

“Jack . . .”

“Imagine that we are on a cliff,” his voice was soft as he moved harder inside me. “You and I are the only ones in the world who will ever know where this particular cliff is. We are the only ones who will ever be able to revisit this memory we are creating . . . this interlude when our worlds stand still, if only for a moment.”

His words captivated me. The spell he was weaving around us was magical. I couldn’t get enough.

When I started to unravel, he was right there with me. “You are so exquisite. Let me watch you melt for me. Let me feel you around me, pulling me in and making us one.” I’m not sure I actually cried out his name as I found my fulfillment, but my whole being called to him.

A moment later, I felt his release, felt him tighten inside of me, felt his body shiver gently.

After a few minutes, he rolled to his back and took me with him, wrapped in his arms. “I have pictured you this way dozens of times, but I have never come close to realizing the true beauty of it, of you. What are you doing to me? Is this a witch’s spell you're casting?” he said quietly, running his fingers through my hair, twisting the end into a curl.

We spoke quietly for a while, then he sat up abruptly.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” I hoped that I didn’t sound desperate, pleading, but I couldn’t bear for this night to end.

He turned back towards me, resting on an elbow as he pulled the cover away from my body. “You are perfection to me,” he said, almost wistfully as his eyes covered me where his hands had been just a short while ago.

“No, I’m not leaving, angel. I’m going to lead you to your alluring shower and lather every inch of your body with just soap and my hands."

“Then what are you waiting for?” I called over my shoulder, wondering how just his words could inflame me again so soon.

I was sure, as long as I lived, that shower would be a memory that lived with me forever. Tender, passionate, playful, serious, intense, I was finding a side of Jack I could certainly get used to.

“Do you do this often?” he asked, almost hesitantly.

“You mean take showers with tall, dark, handsome men in a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere?”

“No, are you
with
many men?”

Sensing that my answer was important, I took the bar of soap and started lathering him as he had been doing to me. “It’s been years, Jack. I have been so sidetracked, first with my mother’s illness and death, and then throwing myself into my work to prove something, although I’m not sure any more who I was trying to prove it to. Then there was the debacle with Jason.

“Until I walked into the Amber Rose and saw you standing there talking to Sam, there hasn’t been one man in as long as I can remember who has made my heart flutter, has ignited my senses, has made me WANT the way that you do."

“My turn,” he said, removing the soap from my hands and turning me away from him. “Put your hands against the wall and lean forward," he said hoarsely, soaping my shoulders, cupping my breasts, running his slick hands down my spine.

When he came to the base of my spine, his hands stilled, then gently moved lower as he entered me. Moaning, I leaned even further forward, pushing out to get more of his ministrations. I felt him hard, rubbing against me. “It takes nothing for you to get me this way. Feel what you do to me?”

His hands came around to the front of me, sliding into my hidden folds, rubbing his soapy hands over me, while he guided himself into me from behind. “Oh, Jack, that’s wonderfully delicious.” Was it
my
voice that sounded so distant? But I didn’t want words just then, I wanted to feel.

I reached behind me to wrap my fingers around his shaft. Soapy and slick, he grew even harder as I held him in my fingers, milking, pressing, coaxing. The warm water and woodland setting added to the enchantment of the moment as we reached a shattering climax together.

Spent, I turned in his arms, and began what could easily become my favorite waking pastime, kissing Jack. By the time we had dried each other off, we collapsed, sated, into the softness of the king sized bed, cuddled together in the middle.

“I’m glad tomorrow is Sunday,” I smiled with my eyes closed. “Not sure I’ll have the fortitude to meet anyone and be coherent for a while. Not sure I’ll even be able to stand up.”

He kissed the top of my head and wrapped his arms around me even tighter. “Sleep, little one. Sleep as long as you can.”