Jennifer Greene - Conquer the Memories

Her skin was slightly damp, glowing and golden from the heat; her camisole was molded to her high, firm breasts. The white skirt swayed around her hips as she fussed around the kitchen, her face still turned away from him. She’d lost her shoes somewhere, and her bare toes peeked out from beneath the skirt hem. She looked sensual and sexual and beautiful and totally touchable, every texture that was Sonia soft and vibrantly warm and all woman.

“Craig!” She flushed still deeper at the sight of him and then quickly turned her eyes away, as if embarrassed, as if afraid he might guess what she’d been thinking.

“Ready to go home?” he asked her. He knew exactly what she’d been thinking. And it was past time to go home and take care of his wife, in the way he knew she needed taking care of.

“Didn’t think for a minute there.” Charlie’s voice came from an enormous distance. “You want me to help carry the gear into the house?”

“Thanks, Charlie, but it’ll all wait until morning.”

“Well. Sleep tight, then.”

Sonia half heard Charlie’s exaggerated yawn, then the door opening next to her ear. “Come on, little one,” coaxed Craig’s soft whisper.

Sleepily, Sonia opened her heavy eyes, and was immediately enfolded in strong arms pulling her out of the car. It was the same as sleep, that dark, still world. Her feet touched ground, but her head simply wanted to lie in that curve of his shoulder. “I didn’t really fall asleep. I’m just resting for a minute,” she murmured.

She heard his chuckle but didn’t pay any attention. Winding her arms around his waist, she nuzzled her head under his chin and closed her eyes again.

In her dream, she was in motion, cradled close and moving through darkness. Lips pressed on her forehead, warm and smooth, once, and then again. The swaying motion didn’t stop until her back sank onto a firm, cool surface. She was alone, bereft. Sliding sounds came from somewhere, then muted snaps, then…a zipper?…from a million miles away.

She forced her heavy eyes open, but that seemed to be part of the dream as well, because Craig was bending over her in that darkness, naked, his skin white in the moonlight. Only he couldn’t possibly be naked; they were still driving home.

Always, once Sonia had fallen asleep, she slept as if drugged, waking only slowly and with reluctance. Half smiling, Craig gently grazed her breasts with his knuckles, as one finger searched her camisole for a tiny pin. He found the pin and undid it, then silently pulled at the satin ribbons that held the camisole together. Her breasts strained free, all warm and heavy, pearl-smooth.

He sank down to the bed, leaning over her, his hands gently chasing up the material until the satiny flesh was freed for him. In slow, silent motion, his lips dipped down and rubbed velvet-soft kisses in that warm pocket between her breasts. She stirred restlessly. “Don’t wake,” he murmured soothingly. “Don’t wake, honey.”

He ached from just that touch of her. She stirred again as he pulled off the camisole. “Craig?”

“Everything’s fine,” he whispered, and heard a rush of a sigh escape her lungs. He had to lift her hips a little to slide down the skirt. Her panties were little wisps of silk, so fragile; his hands glided them down over long thighs and slim calves.

“Cold,” Sonia murmured.

He dropped the panties over the side of the bed, and when he turned back to her, she had rolled to her side, one leg bent at the knee, her arm unconsciously reaching for the empty spot on his side of the bed.

He didn’t move for a moment. Didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t think. He didn’t want to wake her. And he didn’t want to stop looking. Moonlight rubbed silver on her bare skin; his lover was sprawled wanton in innocence, lovely in vulnerability.

She couldn’t possibly know how much he loved her.

His heart ached with it; his head ached with it. His body, so aroused he felt on fire, burned with it. No one could ever understand what he’d felt when that slimy blond bastard had attacked her in Chicago. The explosive rage that anyone would dare hurt her…the splintering frustration that he couldn’t stop them…the searing guilt that he had been responsible…his failure as a man to protect his woman.

Somewhere, a long time back, he’d almost been amused at how hard love had hit him. For Sonia, he’d wanted to run rapids, climb mountains, battle foes, slay dragons.

Obviously, there were no dragons, and Craig had never considered himself a romantic man. He was a realist, a man of action, no poet. And in the darkness he reached for her, his touch so tender that at first she barely wakened.

***

Something smooth and warm and as light as a whisper brushed on the soles of her feet, then her ankles and calves. The very lightest pressure increased up the long expanse of her thighs. Lips trailed farther, furrowing sensual roads over the soft white flesh of her bottom, to the base of her spine and up her vertebrae, one by one. All nine million vertebrae. Fingers combed into her hair, followed by more kisses, and then the trail started down again.

Sonia stretched, murmuring sleepily. The lap of a tongue feathered down all those vertebrae again, such soft, secret licks that she felt all warm inside, warm and cuddly and sleepy. The faint dampness traced the curve of her hip with an intimacy that far surpassed any fantasy or any dream.

Her lashes fluttered open, to a room that was dark. Pitch-dark. Though the moon was full in the windows, her eyes could not adjust that quickly. And before they’d had that chance, fingers splayed on her thighs, gently urging her back flat to the mattress. Like a whisper of promise, she felt lips stealing down on hers, soft, elusive…and with all the taste and familiar warmth of Craig. Lazily, her arms lifted to snare her thief in the night, but his head had already moved down.

His cheek was beard-roughened, buried between her breasts. His hands cupped her breasts, and that stubbly cheek grazed against them, the tender nuzzle of a lover, his breath warm on her bare skin. Roused from sleep, Sonia felt her breath caught somewhere between the dream and the reality. Her nipples tightened and swelled for his tongue, so warm-wet, so unbearably tender. A calloused fingertip gently played with the tips, then his tongue again, then his fingertips. He hurt her. Really, he was hurting her terribly; the sweet, precious ache was both conscious and unconscious, spreading through all of her, engulfing her with intolerable longing.

“Easy,” he whispered.

“Craig-”

His mouth sealed hers in a silent, soft kiss that disarmed with its gentleness. Teeth gently pulled at her lips; she parted them. A firm, smooth tongue immediately took advantage, assaulting hers in a tender, soft battle of tastes and textures and exploding senses.

Her lungs hauled in air when his lips finally lifted. Blackness had lightened to charcoal; the only color in that chiaroscuro was the liquid blue of his eyes, more intense, more heated, than she’d ever seen them before.

“Lie there,” he whispered fiercely.

Lie there? She hadn’t the strength of a kitten. Long, sinewed arms cuddled her up; she felt all the hypnotizing massage of lips and fingertips trailing down. Her breasts first, but then he switched to the inside of her forearm, her elbow, her ribs-parts of her body that had never felt like erogenous zones. They did now.

From sleep to sheer wanton insanity was a miraculous transition. She’d made love with Craig a thousand times and never felt the lustful awareness of her own flesh that her lover was now engraining, inch by inch, so slowly. Her hands reached out, her fingers raking through his hair, wanting to draw his face up to hers, his lips up to hers again. A most familiar heat was pressing against her abdomen, then her thigh. Craig was in motion, and the feel of his arousal ignited restless fires in her bloodstream. He wanted her. He wanted her!

She wanted him. Now! Her fingers curled over firm, hot, smooth flesh-his hand covered hers, drew her away from his thighs. Her leg rose to encircle him, to draw him intimately closer, and another hand smoothed down her thigh in a caress, stopping her. The man was an expert at frustrating her.

So was the lover. His fingertips rushed over smooth skin that receded beneath his palms, arched for his touch. His tongue followed his fingertips, laving her breasts again, trailing to her navel, shifting down to the ticklish, curling hair below.

She shifted in a tangle of limbs and hands and lips, a flush tainting her skin that only the moonlight could see. “No,” she murmured. A certain kind of touch and she always turned shy.

“This time,” he whispered back. “Easy. Easy, little one…”

Inhibitions had no part in her relationship with Craig; they never had. It wasn’t inhibitions that lessened the pleasure of a certain touch, but an inexplicable loneliness at one being pleased and not the other. She wanted her mate inside her, safe, warm, with her. She didn’t like alone. Her pleasure was irretrievably linked with his, and her fingers reached again for the firm, hard evidence of exactly how much he wanted her.

He brushed her seeking fingertips aside and bent lower, his hands parting her thighs. Her muscles convulsed in sudden, unwilling tension. Craig surged back up the length of her to press a kiss on her lips. A long, lazy, slow kiss, sensual…scolding her for that brief denial of her response.

He was most unreasonable, her lover. She gave in, offering him exactly the response he wanted, her flesh brazenly arching for him again. Only then did his lips leave hers and wander down.

His tongue slowly traced soft, private skin; his palms pressed against the insides of her thighs. She surged up for him, an angry rush of a sigh escaping her lungs. She couldn’t fight both him and herself, not in this delicious war.