Читать книгу Mountain Wild - Stacey Kayne - Страница 13

She spoke to him through the darkness. Her soothing touch pulled him from the cold depths of a nightmare. Heat suffused across his body as images of delicate ivory features and piercing blue eyes flickered through his mind.

Garret knocked a weight from his shoulders then shifted against the warmth pressing against him. His hand slid over a distinctly feminine form. A bare leg, a smooth hip curving into a narrow waist. He snuggled closer. Silky hair brushed his face. Her fresh, floral scent swirled across his senses as a soft, satiny breast filled his palm.

His body stirred, increasing the heat radiating beneath his skin. Her sensual moan dragged him toward consciousness. He wanted to open his eyes, to see her before she slipped back into the darkness. He blinked, letting in a flicker of light, then forced his heavy lids to open.

She was there, in the soft glow, sleeping against his chest just the way he’d always imagined a woman should sleep with her man. Relaxed against him, her head on his shoulder, her silky black hair fanned over his arm. His other hand was tucked inside her shirt. The bunched gray wool revealed a trim belly and the deep curve of her hip. It had been far too long since he’d had a woman in his bed.

I must be dead…or dreaming.

Looking at her pretty face, he didn’t much care which. She was a vision to be marveled, cherished. He leaned in, touching his lips to hers in the lightest caress. His thumb bushed over the firm peak of her breast and her breathing deepened. He dusted light kisses across her cheek and down her slender neck as his hand explored the smooth silk of her abdomen.

She moaned, the husky sound increasing the heavy beat of his pulse. He pressed a kiss to the hollow of her throat as the satin fullness of her breast filled his palm once more.

Her breath broke, her back arched.

Starving to taste what she offered, he nudged at the fabric with his mouth. A button gave way, revealing the soft, supple swell of her breast and beaded pink crown.

Garret gave up on trying to breathe. His lips closed over her and he simply tasted. She stretched and shifted beneath him, twisting against his caressing mouth like a gentle flame. His body warmed to a fevered pitch as he drew his dream lover from sleep in the sweetest way he’d ever imagined.

“Oh! What are…!” Her fingers drove into his hair and tugged.

Groaning with regret, he released her. Despite her hold on his hair, he brushed his lips over the glistening peak once more before easing up. Wide blue eyes stared at him.

Blue as sapphires, just as he knew they would be.

“Garret?”

A tingle of surprise rippled through him. Of course she’d know his name.

“You are…so beautiful.” He brushed his mouth over her parted lips. She tensed against him and gripped his shoulders.

“Gar—”

His name became a muffled cry as he deepened the kiss. He wasn’t ready to give up this dream. His fingertips lightly skimmed her breast, her waist, her thigh.

A pleasing groan was lost inside his mouth. Her tight hold on his shoulders became an arousing embrace as she shuddered against him. Her fingers slid over his back as she returned his fiery kiss. Triumph roared through him. The rush of passion and the pounding of his pulse forced him to release her mouth. He dragged for breath as he trailed kisses across her throat.

“You’re perfect.” He wanted her; he wanted to know her name.

An intense pain throbbed through his mind, blurring his vision. He gathered his dream lover close, his body aching for her. “Stay,” he said, but her delicate features began to fade. Darkness closed in around him, pulling her out of reach.

Trapped beneath Garret’s unmoving weight, Maggie’s eyes burned with unshed tears as she fought for breath. Her mind spun in a tangle of overwhelming sensation and utter confusion. One moment she’d been dreaming of floating in a hot spring, the soothing heat of the water rippling over her sensitive skin—in the next moment Garret Daines had his lips on her, creating a kind of heat she’d never felt before.

She was sure she’d opened her mouth to tell him to stop, but had only managed a strangled moan as he had flooded her body with sensations she’d never experienced in her life.

“Don’t go,” he whispered against her ear, the vibrations rekindling the wild tingles in all the places he’d touched. His arm tightened over her ribs.

Suddenly she was frightfully aware of her exposed damp skin, the warmth of his thigh wedged between hers, the very male portion of him pressed firmly against her hip.

Damnation!

She shoved his arm away and scrambled for the end of the bed. She stumbled over the trunk and fell to the cold floor. She sprang up, tugging her wool nightshirt closed as she bumped against her table, wobbling the lit oil lamp. Light shifted over shadows and the naked man sprawled in her bed.

She inched toward the stove, grabbed her now dry clothes then backed toward the door. How long had she slept?

Too long, she reminded herself, still trembling from Garret’s touch. She wasn’t about to look away from the man before her to search for signs of daylight seeping around the door. She shoved her feet into her warm buckskin pants and jerked them up. The shift of fabric against her damp flesh made her shudder. What had he done to her? She tugged on her buckskin tunic over the wool shirt. Her shaky fingers cinched the ties.

Ira had warned her about the violent intentions of randy men. He claimed she was his woman to those they encountered to keep her safe from such advances, but she hadn’t always traveled with Ira. She’d been chased more than once by men with such intentions to hold her down and hurt her—they’d never caught her.

Keeping her gaze on Garret, she slid her foot into a tall moccasin. She should have left him in the snow! Shot him, and then left him in the snow!

After lacing both boots she stuffed the bottom of her shirt into her pants. His coloring had returned. The light hair on his legs stood out against the darker skin beneath. Her gaze trailed across his bare backside.

The heated swirls he’d conjured rose up, stealing her breath.

She strapped her arms around her trembling middle and realized her belt and knife were missing.

Her gaze landed on her belt hanging from the bedpost.

Why hadn’t she reached for her blade?

Boots stood up in the corner and stretched. The black shaggy dog trotted toward her and bumped her leg. Keeping her gaze on Garret, she reached down to pat the dog’s head.

“What’s the matter with him?” she whispered. How could he still be sleeping when her pulse hammered erratically from the things he’d done to her?

He hadn’t actually hurt her. He’d kissed her, in ways she’d never imagined a man would kiss a woman. Her teeth clamped down on her trembling lower lip. The memory of his mouth on her breast, his tongue moving against hers added to the violent stir of her pulse. His touch had been tender, his kisses…overwhelming. She recalled the time Morgan and his bride had invaded her old cabin some years back. She hadn’t meant to watch them; she’d been mesmerized by their gentle embraces and tender kisses as Morgan had convinced Cora to marry him.

No wonder they seemed to enjoy themselves. Kissing Garret so intimately…She drew a deep, ragged breath and had to wonder if a man would have courted her with such tenderness, had she been allowed to grow into the proper lady her father always believed she’d become.

Bitter sentiment squelched the thought.

She wasn’t some gentile lady full of ignorant fanciful notions. She didn’t entertain suitors. At twenty-seven she was well into spinsterhood and had put such notions behind her. Garret Daines had no call to touch her in such a manner!

He continued to lie there, his back rising slightly with his deep, even breaths. Could a man put his mouth on her one moment and be unconscious the next?

She moved toward the bed. His dog stayed beside her.

“Garret?”

He didn’t stir. Her stomach dipped at the sight of his sleeping face and flushed lips. Far too handsome. She stepped closer. Heat radiated off his body. She touched his shoulder. His skin fairly scalded her hand. He moaned at her touch.

He’s raging with fever.

“Garret?”

When he didn’t respond, she reached over him, grabbed her belt and quickly strapped it around her waist. She picked up one of the blankets he’d knocked to the floor and draped it over the firm slope of his bare backside. Fever or not, her sensibilities could only handle so much.

“Thaw him out to cool him off,” she muttered on her way to the door. Outside she was stunned to discover nighttime encroaching on a stormy gray sky. She’d slept nearly the whole day.

A short while later she was packing snow into the embroidered hand towels she’d intended to sell. Garret moaned in his sleep as she placed them over his superheated body but didn’t fully rouse. The snow melted quickly against his shoulders and the back of his neck. As she swabbed his flushed skin with the cool cloth a troubling thought increased the unease welling inside her.

He’d been out of his mind with fever, and she’d nearly succumbed to his hallucinations. He’d called her beautiful and she’d lost her mind right along with him.

Thank goodness he’d passed out. She could just imagine his reaction when he awoke to discover it was Mad Mag he’d been kissing in that bed.

Her hands paused on his back, the thought of facing his scorn twisting her stomach into a painful knot. She hadn’t just allowed him to kiss her, she’d reveled in the bursts of pleasing sensation, the shocking intimacy of his deep kiss.

Shame washed through her. Good God. What would he think of her?

Same as everyone else, she supposed. Tears stung her eyes, a reaction that stunned her.

This time she’d finally earned the moniker Mad Mag.